Organizational Behavior Exam Two Review

Attitudes, Job Satisfaction, and Self-Leadership

• Components of an Attitude:

  • Cognitive Component: The belief or opinion segment of an attitude (e.g., beliefs held about a situation or object).
  • Affective Component: The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude (e.g., feelings towards a situation or person).
  • Behavioral Component: An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.

• Self-Efficacy:

  • Definition: What individuals believe about their ability to perform a particular task.
  • Building Self-Efficacy:
  1. Mastery Experience: Successfully doing something in practice.
  2. Vicarious Modeling: Seeing others successfully perform a task.
  3. Social Persuasion: Being encouraged by others to attempt a task.
  • Impact of Verbal Communication and Beliefs:
  • What is said to others and to oneself directly impacts personal and shared beliefs.
  • Believed capability significantly impacts actual performance outcomes.

• Leadership and Self-Efficacy:

  • Effective leaders maintain positive and solution-oriented communication rather than problem-oriented dwelling.
  • Key leadership strategies for enhancing follower self-efficacy include:
  • Holding high performance expectations for followers.
  • Providing high levels of support.
  • Asking specific, actionable questions regarding how to improve processes.
  • Explicitly expressing belief in the capabilities of others.

• Self-Leadership:

  • Definition (Charles Manz, 1992): "The process of influencing oneself to establish the self-direction and self-motivation needed to perform."
  • Cognitive Strategies (Godwin, Neck, & Houghton, 1999):
  • Self-Management of Beliefs and Assumptions: "The elimination or alteration of distorted individual beliefs that form the basis of dysfunctional thought processes."
  • Self-Dialogue: "What we covertly tell ourselves."
  • Mental Imagery: "The creation and, in essence, symbolic experience of imagined results of our behavior before we actually perform."

• Cognitive Dissonance:

  • Definition: "Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes."

• Major Job Attitudes:

  • Job Satisfaction: "A positive feeling about one's job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics."
  • Measurement Approaches:
    • Global Measurement: Single general response rating.
    • Facet / Dimension Measurement: Evaluation of individual core dimensions, including Job Duties, Pay, Promotion Opportunities, Supervision, and Coworkers.
  • Job Involvement: "The degree to which a person identifies with a job, actively participates in it, and considers performance important to self-worth."
  • Psychological Empowerment: "Employees' belief in the degree to which they affect their work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, and their perceived autonomy in their work."
  • Organizational Commitment: "The degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization."
  • Three Dimensions of Organizational Commitment:
    1. Affective Commitment: "An emotional attachment to an organization and a belief in its values."
    2. Continuance Commitment: "The perceived economic value of remaining with an organization compared with leaving it."
    3. Normative Commitment: "An obligation to remain with an organization for moral or ethical reasons."
  • Perceived Organizational Support (POS): "The degree to which employees believe an organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being."
  • High POS is present when rewards are perceived as fair, employees have a voice in organizational decisions, and supervisors are supportive.
  • Attitude Overlap and Correlation:
  • Major job attitudes are highly correlated due to shared workplace environments, underlying personality dimensions, and conceptual overlap of the same basic constructs.

• Framework for Responses to Job Dissatisfaction:

  • Exit: Active and destructive response; behavior directed toward leaving the organization, including seeking a new position or resigning.
  • Voice: Active and constructive response; actively and constructively attempting to improve conditions, including suggesting improvements or discussing problems with supervisors.
  • Loyalty: Passive and constructive response; passively but optimistically waiting for conditions to improve, including speaking up for the organization in the face of external criticism.
  • Neglect: Passive and destructive response; passively allowing conditions to worsen, including chronic absenteeism, reduced effort, and increased error rates.

• Organizational Research Findings on Job Satisfaction:

  • Job Satisfaction and Productivity: Positive relationship (demonstrated strongest at the organizational level of analysis).
  • Job Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs): Positive relationship.
  • Job Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction: Positive relationship.
  • Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism: Negative relationship.
  • Job Satisfaction and Turnover: Negative relationship.
  • Job Satisfaction and Workplace Deviance: Negative relationship.

Emotions, Moods, and Workplace Affect

• Foundational Definitions:

  • Affect: "A broad range of feelings that people experience."
  • Emotions: "Intense feelings that are directed at someone or something."
  • Moods: "Feelings that end to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus."

• Affect Dimensions and Characteristics:

  • Positive Affect: "A mood dimension that consists of specific positive emotions such as excitement, self-assurance, and cheerfulness at the high end and boredom, sluggishness, and tiredness at the low end."
  • Negative Affect: "A mood dimension that consists of emotions such as nervousness, stress, and anxiety at the high end and relaxation, tranquility, and poise at the low end."
  • Positive Offset: "The tendency of most individuals to experience a mildly positive mood at zero input (when nothing in particular is going on)."
  • Affect Intensity: "Individual differences in the strength with which individuals experience their emotions."
  • Illusory Correlation: "The tendency of people to associate two events when in reality there is no connection" (e.g., incorrectly linking weather variations directly to mood changes).

• Ten Primary Sources of Emotions and Moods:

  1. Personality
  2. Day of the Week
  3. Time of Day
  4. Stress
  5. Social Activities
  6. Sleep
  7. Exercise
  8. Age
  9. Gender
  10. Specific Events

• Emotional Labor and Regulation at Work:

  • Emotional Labor: "A situation in which an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions at work."
  • Emotional Dissonance: "Inconsistencies between the emotions people feel and the emotions they project."
  • Felt Emotions: "An individual's actual emotions."
  • Displayed Emotions: "Emotions that are organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given job."
  • Surface Acting: "Hiding one's inner feelings and forgoing emotional expressions in response to display rules."
  • Deep Acting: "Trying to modify one's true inner feelings based on display rules."

• Workplace Emotion Focus: Gratitude and Thankfulness:

  • Etymological and Theoretical Context (Robert Emmons, 2004, The Psychology of Gratitude):
  • The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) defines gratitude as "the quality or condition of being thankful; the appreciation of an inclination to return kindness" (p. 1135).
  • Derived from the Latin gratus, meaning pleasing. All derivatives relate to "kindness, generousness, gifts, the beauty of giving and receiving, or getting something for nothing" (Pruyser, 1976, p. 69).
  • Adjective Definitions and Lexical Relationships:
  • Pleased and relieved: Synonyms include relieved, pleased, glad, grateful; antonyms include disappointed.
  • Expressing gratitude and relief: Synonyms include grateful, filled with gratitude, indebted, obliged, under an obligation, obligated, beholden; antonyms include ungrateful.
  • Multi-Dimensional Views of Gratitude:
  • Gratitude functions variously as a virtue, an attitude, a trait, a mood, or an emotion.
  • Historical Perspective: "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others." — Cicero.

• Biblical Perspective on Gratitude:
  • "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." — 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.

• Emotional Intelligence (EI):
  • Definition: "The ability to detect and to manage emotional cues and information."
  • Four-Dimension Framework (McShane & Von Glinow, 2009, Organizational Behavior, 4th ed.):
  • Self-Awareness: "…is the ability to perceive and understand the meaning of your own emotions" (Recognition of own emotions).
  • Self-Management: "…is the ability to manage your own emotions…" (Regulation of own emotions).
  • Social Awareness: "…is the ability to perceive and understand the emotions of other people" (Recognition of others' emotions).
  • Relationship Management: "…managing other people's emotions" (Regulation of others' emotions).

Personality, Values, and Organizational Ethics

• Values:

  • Definition: "Basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence."
  • Value System: "A hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual's values in terms of the intensity."
  • Terminal vs. Instrumental Values:
  • Terminal Values: "Desirable end-states of existence; the goals a person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime."
  • Instrumental Values: "Preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving one's terminal values."

• Hofstede's Framework for Assessing Cultural Values:

  • Power Distance: Degree to which a society accepts that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.
  • Individualism vs. Collectivism: Individualism is the degree to which people prefer to act as individuals; collectivism emphasizes tight social frameworks.
  • Masculinity vs. Femininity: Masculinity favors traditional masculine roles (achievement, power, control); femininity favors gender equality and relationship quality.
  • Uncertainty Avoidance: Degree to which people prefer structured over unstructured situations.
  • Long-Term vs. Short-Term Orientation: Long-term looks to the future and values thrift and persistence; short-term values the present and tradition.

• Corporate Core Values Case Study:

  • Safety: More than compliance; an ethical obligation.
  • People: Achievements are measured by the success of employee owners; supporting programs that share financial gains and providing a work environment where employees can develop and thrive.
  • Integrity: Holding to the highest standards of ethical conduct in all business, professional, and community interactions.
  • Respect: Creating an atmosphere of trust where everyone is treated with mutual respect to build long-term relationships with customers, employees, and suppliers.
  • Teamwork: Collaboration within and among crews, operations, and management to benefit customers and communities.
  • Commitment: Supporting the community and the communities where employees live and work, enduring as good stewards of the environment.
  • Dependability: Doing the job right the first time by engaging the highest quality people, products, and services.

• Workplace Focus: Forgiveness in the Workplace:

  • General Definition: "To cease to feel resentment against (an offender) : PARDON forgive one's enemies" (Merriam-Webster).
  • Biblical Definition: The act of pardoning an offender; the Greek word translated as "forgiveness" literally means "to let go".

• Personality:

  • Definition: "The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others."
  • Personality Traits: "Enduring characteristics that describe an individual's behavior."
  • Determinants and Utility:
  • Largely determined by heredity.
  • Influenced by social interactions.
  • Essential for understanding systematic differences between people.

• The Big Five Personality Model:

  • Extraversion: "A personality dimension describing someone who is sociable, gregarious, and assertive."
  • Agreeableness: "A personality dimension that describes someone who is good natured, cooperative, and trusting."
  • Conscientiousness: "A personality dimension that describes someone who is responsible, dependable, persistent, and organized."
  • Emotional Stability: "A personality dimension that characterizes someone as calm, self-confident, secure (positive) versus nervous, depressed, and insecure (negative)."
  • Openness to Experience: "A personality dimension that characterizes someone in terms of imagination, sensitivity, and curiosity."

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI):

  • Extroverted (E) vs. Introverted (I) — How energy is directed:
  • Extroverted: Focused on outer world, energized by being around others, tends to speak then reflect.
  • Introverted: Focused on inner world, energized by time alone, tends to reflect then (maybe) speak.
  • Sensing (S) vs. Intuitive (N) — How information is gathered:
  • Sensing: Uses five senses, present focus, realistic view of the way things are, values measuring and step-by-step processing.
  • Intuitive: Conceptual focus, future orientation, vision for the way things could be, inventive, jumps in at any point.
  • Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F) — How decisions are made:
  • Thinking: Driven by logic, objective analysis, focused on