Employee Behavior and Motivation Notes

8-1 Identify and discuss the basic forms of behaviors that employees exhibit in organizations.
8-2 Describe the nature and importance of individual differences among employees.
8-3 Explain the meaning and importance of psychological contracts and the person-job fit in the workplace.
8-4 Identify and summarize the most important models and concepts of employee motivation.
8-5 Describe some of the strategies and techniques used by organizations to improve employee motivation.

Employee Behavior: The pattern of actions by the members of an organization that directly or indirectly influences the organization’s effectiveness.
Performance Behaviors: The total set of work-related behaviors that the organization expects employees to display.
Organizational Citizenship: The behavior of individuals who make a positive overall contribution to the organization.

Counterproductive Behaviors: Behaviors that detract from organizational performance.
- Absenteeism: When an employee does not show up for work.
- Turnover: Annual percentage of an organization’s workforce that leaves and must be replaced.

Individual Differences: Personal attributes that vary from one person to another.
Personality: The relatively stable set of psychological attributes that distinguish one person from another.

Agreeableness: A person’s ability to get along with others.
Conscientiousness: A reflection of the number of things a person tries to accomplish.
Emotionality: The degree to which people tend to be positive or negative in their outlook and behaviors toward others.
Extraversion: A person’s comfort level with relationships.
Openness: Reflects how open or rigid a person is in terms of his or her beliefs.

The extent to which people are self-aware, can manage their emotions, can motivate themselves, express empathy for others, and possess social skills.
Self-awareness: A person’s capacity for being aware of how they are feeling.
Managing emotions: A person’s capacities to balance anxiety, fear, and anger so that they do not overly interfere with getting things accomplished.
Motivating oneself: A person’s ability to remain optimistic and to continue striving in the face of setbacks, barriers, and failure.
Empathy: A person’s ability to understand how others are feeling even without being explicitly told.
Social skills: A person’s ability to get along with others and to establish positive relationships.

Authoritarianism: The extent to which a person believes that power and status differences are appropriate within hierarchical social systems such as organizations.
Machiavellianism: Behavior directed at gaining power and controlling the behavior of others.
Self-Esteem: The extent to which a person believes that he or she is a worthwhile and deserving individual.
Risk Propensity: The degree to which a person is willing to take chances and make risky decisions.

Attitudes: A person’s beliefs and feelings about specific ideas, situations, or people.
Job Satisfaction: Degree of enjoyment that people derive from performing their jobs.
Organizational Commitment: An individual’s identification with the organization and its mission.
Cognitive Dissonance: When two sets of cognitions or perceptions are contradictory or incongruent.

Psychological Contract: Set of expectations held by an employee concerning what he or she will contribute to an organization (referred to as contributions) and what the organization will in return provide the employee (referred to as inducements).

Contributions from the Individual: effort, ability, loyalty, skills, time, competency
Inducements from the Organization: pay, benefits, job security, status, promotion opportunities, career opportunities

Person-Job Fit: The extent to which a person’s contributions and the organization’s inducements match one another.

Motivation: The set of forces that cause people to behave in certain ways.
Classical Theory of Motivation: Theory holding that workers are motivated solely by money.

Theory X: Theory of motivation holding that people are naturally lazy and uncooperative.
Theory Y: Theory of motivation holding that people are naturally energetic, growth-oriented, self-motivated, and interested in being productive.

Theory X	Theory Y
People are lazy.	People are energetic.
People lack ambition.	People are ambitious and seek responsibility.
People are self-centered.	People can be selfless.
People resist change.	People want to contribute to business growth and change.
People are gullible and not bright.	People are intelligent.

Hierarchy of Human Needs Model: Theory of motivation describing five levels of human needs and arguing that basic needs must be fulfilled before people work to satisfy higher-level needs.

Two-Factor Theory: Theory of motivation holding that job satisfaction depends on two factors, hygiene and motivation.

Motivation Factors: achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement and growth
Hygiene Factors: supervisors, working conditions, interpersonal relations, pay and security, company policies and administration

Expectancy Theory: Theory of motivation holding that people are motivated to work toward rewards that they want and that they believe they have a reasonable chance of obtaining.
Equity Theory: Theory of motivation holding that people evaluate their treatment by the organization relative to the treatment of others.

Method of increasing job satisfaction by giving employees a voice in the management of their jobs and the company.