Chapter 1: What is organizational behavior?
1. Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace.
Soft skills  team working, communicating effectively, leadership and cultural awareness. These
interpersonal skills are essential for managerial effectiveness: easier to hire and keep qualified people.
2. Describe the manager’s functions, roles and skills
Managers  get things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate resources and direct
the activities of others to attain goals. Managers do their work in an organization, which is a
consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively
continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.
Managers perform four management functions:
1. Planning  process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing plans
to coordinate activities.
2. Organizing  determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to
be grouped, who reports to whom and where decisions are to be made.
3. Leading  function that includes motivating employees, directing others, selecting the most
effective communication channels and resolving conflicts.
4. Controlling  monitoring activities to ensure that they are being accomplished as planned
and correcting any significant deviations.
Managers perform 10 different, highly interrelated roles. As shown on p. 5, these can be grouped as:
•
Interpersonal roles
a. Figurehead role  performing duties that are ceremonial in nature.
b. Leadership role  training, motivating and disciplining employees.
c. Liaison role  contacting outsiders who provide the manager with
information.
•
Informational roles
a. Monitor role  collecting information from outside organizations and
institutions.
b. Disseminator role  transmitting information to organizational members.
c. Spokesperson role  representing the organization to outsiders.
•
Decisional roles
a. Entrepreneur role  initiating and overseeing new projects that will improve
their organization’s performance.
b. Disturbance handlers  taking corrective action in response to unforeseen
problems.
c. Resource allocators  being responsible for allocating human, physical and
monetary resources.
d. Negotiator role  discussing issues and bargain with other units to gain
advantages for their own unit.
Management skills:
•
Technical skills  ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise.
•
Human skills  ability to work with, understand and motivate other people, both individually
and in groups.
•
Conceptual skills  mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations.
Managers engage in four managerial activities:
1. Traditional management  decision making, planning, and controlling
2. Communication  exchanging routine information and processing paperwork
3. Human resource management  motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing and
training.
4. Networking  socializing, politicking and interacting with outsiders.
Managers who are successful (defined in terms of the speed of promotion within their organization
have a very different emphasis from managers who are effective (defined in terms of the quantity and
quality of their performance and the satisfaction and commitment of their employees).
3. Define organizational behavior.
Organizational behavior  a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and
structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward
improving an organization’s effectiveness
4. Show the value to OB of systematic study.
There are certain fundamental consistencies underlying the behavior of all individuals that can be
identified and then modified to reflect individual differences. Behavior is generally predictable, and
the systematic study of behavior is a means to making reasonably accurate predictions.
Systematic study  can be time-consuming.
Evidence-based management (EBM)  basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific
evidence.
Intuition  gut feeling not necessarily supported by research, often based on inaccurate information.
Core values of science:
Intuition
Accuracy
Objectivity
Skepticism
Systematic
study
• Gut feelings
• Individual observation
• Commonsense
• Looks at relationships
• Scientific evidence
• Predicts behaviors
Open-mindedness
Use evidence as much as possible to inform your intuition and experience  promise of OB.
5. Identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to OB.
Psychology  science that seeks to measure, explain and sometimes change the behavior of humans
and other animals.
Social psychology  area of psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and
that focuses on the influence of people on one another. Change has been a major area receiving
considerable investigation  how to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its acceptance.
Sociology  study of people in relation to their social environment or culture.
Anthropology  study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. See page 11.
6. Demonstrate why there are few absolutes in OB.
Contingency variables  situational factors: variables that moderate the relationship between two or
more other variables.
7. Identify the challenges and opportunities managers have in applying OB concepts.
Responding to globalization:
•
Increased foreign assignments  manage a workforce that is likely to be very different in
needs, aspirations and attitudes.
•
Working with people from different cultures  to work effectively with people from
different cultures, you need to understand how their culture, geography and religion have
shaped them and how to adapt your management style to their differences.
•
Coping with anti-capitalism backlash  management practices need to be modified to
reflect the values of the different countries in which an organization operates.
•
Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with low-cost labor  managers must deal with
the difficult task of balancing the interests of their organization with their responsibilities to
the communities in which they operate.
Managing workforce diversity  organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of
gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and inclusion of other diverse groups.
•
Embracing diversity  replace melting-pot assumption by one that recognizes and values
differences.
•
Changing European demographics  age and gender.
•
Implications  workforce diversity has implications for management practice  they have to
shift their philosophy from treating everyone alike to recognizing differences and responding
to those differences in ways that ensure employee retention and greater productivity, while, at
the same time, not discriminating.
Improving quality and productivity  excess capacity translates into increased competition, and
that is forcing managers to reduce costs and, at the same time, improve their organization’s
productivity and the quality of the products and services they offer.
Improving customer service  management needs to create a customer-responsive culture.
Improving people skills  explain and predict the behavior of people at work.
Stimulation innovation and change  stimulate employees’ creativity and tolerance for change.
Coping with ‘temporariness’  learn to live with flexibility, spontaneity and unpredictability.
Working in networked organizations  computerization, the Internet, and the ability to link
computers within organizations and between organizations have created a different workplace for
many employees, so managers need to develop new skills.
Helping employees balance work-life conflicts
Creating a positive work environment  to realize a competitive advantage. Positive
organizational scholarship  how organizations develop human strengths, foster vitality and
resilience and unlock potential. It challenges organizations to think about how to exploit their
employees’ strengths rather than dwell on their limitations.
Improving ethical behavior  members of organizations are increasingly finding themselves facing
ethical dilemmas, situations in which they are required to define right and wrong conduct. Managers
need to create an ethically healthy climate for their employees, where they can do their work
productively and confront a minimal degree of ambiguity regarding what constitutes right and wrong.
8. Compare the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model.
Model  abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon. Each
level is constructed on the previous level, see page 25.
Dependent variable  key factor that you want to explain and that is affected by some other factor.
•
Productivity  performance measure that includes effectiveness and efficiency. It implies a
concern for both effectiveness (achievement of goals) and efficiency (ratio of effective output
to the input required to achieve it)
•
Absenteeism  failure to report to work. Organizations benefit when absenteeism is low.
•
Turnover  voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization.
Reasonable levels of employee-initiated turnover facilitate organizational flexibility and
employee independence, and they can lessen the need for management-initiated layoffs.
•
Deviant workplace behavior (antisocial behavior or workplace incivility)  voluntary
behavior that violates significant organizational norms and, in so doing, threatens the
wellbeing of the organization or its members. Managers want to understand the source of
workplace deviance in order to avoid a chaotic work environment, and workplace deviance
can also have a considerable financial impact.
•
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)  discretionary behavior that is not part of an
employee’s formal job requirements, but that nevertheless promotes the effective functioning
of the organization.
•
Job satisfaction  positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics, represents attitude rather than behavior.
Independent variables  presumed cause of some changes in a dependent variable.
•
Individual-level variables  people enter organizations with certain intact characteristics
that will influence their behavior at work. There is little management can do to alter them.
•
Group-level variables  the behavior of people in groups is more than the sum total of all
the individuals acting in their own way. The complexity of our model is increased when we
acknowledge that people behave differently in groups or alone.
•
Organization system-level variables  OB reaches its highest level of sophistication when
we add formal structure to our previous knowledge of individual and group behavior.
Chapter 2: Foundations of individual behavior
1. Contrast the two types of ability.
From management’s standpoint, the issue is not whether people differ in terms of their abilities. They
clearly do. The issue is knowing how people differ in abilities and using that knowledge to increase the
likelihood that an employee will perform their job well.
Ability  an individual’s capacity to perform the various tasks in a job. An individual’s overall
abilities are essentially made up of two sets of factors: intellectual and physical.
2. Define intellectual ability and demonstrate its relevance to OB.
Intellectual abilities  abilities needed to perform mental activities – for thinking, reasoning and
problem solving. The seven most frequently cited dimensions making up intellectual abilities are
number aptitude, verbal comprehension, perceptual speed, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning,
spatial visualization and memory, see page 35.
General mental ability (GMA)  overall factor of intelligence, as suggested by the positive
correlations among specific intellectual ability dimensions.
Physical abilities  capacity to do tasks that demand stamina, dexterity, strength, and similar
characteristics.
3. Identify the key biographical characteristics and describe how they are relevant to OB.
Biographical characteristics  personal characteristics that are objective and easily obtained from
personnel records.
•
Age  the relationship between age and job performance is likely to be an issue of increasing
importance during the next decade for two primary reasons. First, performance declines with
increasing age. Second, the workforce is aging.
a. Age – turnover  the older you get, the less likely you are to quit a job.
b. Age – absenteeism  is partially a function of whether the absence is avoidable or
unavoidable.
c. Age – productivity  unrelated
d. Age – satisfaction  satisfaction tends to continually increase among professionals as
they age, but it falls among non-professionals during middle age and then rises again
in the later years.
•
Gender  few issues initiate more debates, misconceptions and unsupported opinions than
whether women perform as well on jobs as men do. There is no significant difference in job
productivity between men and women. However, there is an issue that does seem to differ
between genders, namely the preference for work schedules.
•
Race  it is in characteristics like skin tones, hair textures and other physical characteristics,
along with culture and ethnic origins, that people may use to group themselves and others into
‘races’  biological heritage people use to identify themselves. It relates to employment
outcomes such as personnel selection decision, performance evaluations, pay and workplace
discrimination.
Other biographical characteristics:
•
Employment tenure  the length of time that a worker has spent with the same employer. \
a. Seniority – productivity  positive
b. Seniority – absenteeism  negative
c. Seniority – turnover  negative
d. Seniority – job satisfaction  positive
•
Religion  is clearly having an effect in the workplace, however, there has not been a great
deal of research into these affects to date. What is known is that workers who are the victims
of religious discrimination have higher levels of health problems, absence and turnover (the
rate at which an employer gains and loses employees).
4. Define learning and outline the principles of the three major theories of learning.
If we want to explain and predict behavior, we need to understand how people learn. Learning  a
relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience.
1. Learning involves change.
2. Is relatively permanent.
3. Is acquired through experience.
Theories of learning:
•
Classical conditioning  type of conditioning in which an individual responds to some
stimulus that would not ordinarily produce such a response.
•
Operant conditioning  type of conditioning in which desired voluntary behavior leads to a
reward or prevents a punishment. If a behavior fails to be positively reinforced, the probability
that the behavior will be repeated declines. The concept was part of Skinner’s broader concept
of behaviorism  a theory which argues that behavior follows stimuli in a relatively
unthinking manner.
•
Social-learning theory  the view that people can learn through direct experience, but also
indirectly by observation, reading, or just hearing about someone else’s experiences. The
influence of models is central in the social-learning viewpoint. Four processes have been
found to determine the influence that a model will have on an individual:
1. Attentional processes  people learn from a model only when they recognize and pay
attention to its critical features.
2. Retention processes  a model’s influence depends on how well the individual
remembers the model’s action after the model is no longer readily available.
3. Motor reproduction processes  after a person has seen a new behavior by observing
the model, the watching must be converted to doing. This process then demonstrates
that the individual can perform the modelled activities.
4. Reinforcement processes  individuals are motivated to exhibit the modelled
behavior if positive incentives or rewards are provided. Behaviors that are positively
reinforced are given more attention, learned better and performed more often.
5. Define shaping and show how it can be used in OB.
Shaping behavior  systematically reinforcing each successive step that moves an individual closer
to the desired response.
There are four ways to shape behavior:
1. Positive reinforcement  following a response with something pleasant (learning)
2. Negative reinforcement  following a response by the termination or withdrawal of
something unpleasant (learning)
3. Punishment  causing an unpleasant condition in an attempt to eliminate an undesirable
behavior (unlearning)
4. Extinction  eliminating any reinforcement that is maintaining a behavior (unlearning)
See page 46 for schedules of reinforcement, the two major types are:
•
Continuous reinforcement  reinforcing a desired behavior each time it is demonstrated.
•
Intermittent reinforcement  reinforcing a desired behavior often enough to make the
behavior worth repeating but not every time it is demonstrated.
a. Ratio schedules depend on how many responses the subject makes.
o
o
Fixed-ratio schedule  initiating rewards after a fixed or constant number of
responses.
Variable-ratio schedule  varying the reward relative to the behavior of the
individual (very powerful!).
b. Interval schedules depend on how much time has passed since last reinforcement.

Fixed-interval schedule  rewards are spaced at uniform time intervals. The critical
value is time, which is held constant.
 Variable-interval schedule  rewards are distributed in time so that reinforcements
are unpredictable (very powerful!).
OB Mod  application of reinforcement concepts to individuals in the work setting.
The typical OB Mod programme follows a five-step problem-solving model:
1. Identify critical behaviors
2. Develop baseline data
3. Identify behavioral consequences
4. Develop and implementing an intervention strategy
5. Evaluate performance improvement
One problem with behaviorism is that thoughts and feelings immediately follow environmental
stimuli, even those explicitly meant to shape behavior. This is contrary to the assumptions of
behaviorism and OB Mod, which assume that people’s innermost thoughts and feelings in response to
the environment are irrelevant.
6. Show how culture affects our understanding of intellectual abilities, biographical characteristics
and learning.
Evidence strongly supports the idea that the structure of intellectual abilities generalize across cultures.
The relationships between for example age and performance are not different across cultures.
Chapter 3: Attitudes and job satisfaction
Attitudes  evaluative statements or judgements concerning objects, people or events.
1. Contrast the three components of an attitude.
Researchers have assumed that attitudes have three components:
•
Cognitive component  the opinion or belief segment of an attitude.
•
Affective component  the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude.
•
Behavioral component  an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or
something.
2. Summarize the relationship between attitudes and behavior.
Cognitive dissonance  any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and
attitudes. Any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable and individuals will attempt to reduce the
dissonance and, hence, the discomfort. The desire to reduce dissonance depends on:
•
the importance of the elements creating it
•
the degree of influence the individual believes he has over the elements
•
the rewards of dissonance
The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior relationship are:
•
the importance of the attitude  attitudes that individuals consider important tend to show a
strong relationship to behavior.
•
its correspondence to behavior  the more closely the attitude and the behavior are matched
or correspond, the stronger the relationship.
•
its accessibility  attitudes we remember easily are more likely to predict our behavior.
•
whether there exist social pressures  discrepancies between attitudes and behavior are more
likely to occur when social pressures to behave in certain ways hold exceptional power.
•
whether a person has direct experience with the attitude  the attitude-behavior relationship is
likely to be much stronger if an attitude refers to something with which the individual has
direct personal experience.
3. Compare and contrast the major job attitudes.
Most of the research in OB has looked at three attitudes: job satisfaction, job involvement and
organizational commitment. A few other attitudes attraction attention from researchers include
perceived organizational support and employee engagement.
Job satisfaction  a positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics. When people speak of employee attitudes, they usually mean job satisfaction.
Related to job satisfaction is job involvement  the degree to which a person identifies with a job,
actively participates in it and considers performance important to self-worth. Another loosely related
concept is 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. So, high job
involvement means identifying with your specific job, while high organization commitment means
identifying with your employing organization. There are three separate dimensions:
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 to leaving it.
3. Normative commitment  an obligation to remain with an organization for moral or ethical
reasons.
The relationship between organizational commitment and job productivity is strongest for new
employees, and it is considerably weaker for more experienced employees. As with job involvement,
the research evidence demonstrates negative relationships between organizational commitment and
both absenteeism and turnover.
Perceived organizational support (POS)  the degree to which employees believe an organization
values their contribution and cares about their well-being. Research shows that people perceive their
organization as supportive when rewards are deemed fair, when employees have a voice in decisions,
and when their supervisors are seen as supportive. Employees with strong POS perceptions are more
likely to have higher levels of organizational citizenship behaviors and job performance.
Employee engagement  an individual’s involvement and satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for, the
work he or she does. Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep
connection to their company, disengaged employees do not.
4. Define job satisfaction and show how it can be measured.
The two most widely used approaches to measure job satisfaction are:
•
Global rating  a response to the question ‘All things considered, how satisfied are you with
your job?’ Respondents circle a number between 1 and 5. It is not time-consuming.
•
Summation score made up of a number of job facets  identifies key elements in a job and
asks for the employee’s feelings about each. Typical elements here are the nature of the work,
supervision, present pay, promotion opportunities and relations with co-workers. Respondents
rate the on a standardized scale, and researchers add the ratings to create an overall job
satisfaction score. It helps managers to zero in on where the problem exists.
The concept of job satisfaction is inherently so broad that the single question captures its essence.
5. Summarize the main causes of job satisfaction.
Of the major job-satisfaction facets, enjoying the work is almost always the one most strongly
correlated with high levels of overall job satisfaction. Interesting jobs that provide training, variety,
independence and control satisfy most employees. Jobs involving solving unforeseen problems,
performing complex tasks and learning new things have been associated with higher levels of work
satisfaction. In other words, most people prefer work that is challenging and stimulating over work
that is predictable and routine. Education, job security, job autonomy, work/life balance and employee
participation are all strongly correlated with increased job satisfaction. Good benefits do appear to
satisfy employees, but high pay levels much less so.
Job satisfaction is not just about job conditions, personality also plays a role. People who are
emotional stable, extravert, and have positive core self-evaluations are more satisfied with their jobs
than those with negative core self-evaluations.
Core self-evaluations  bottom-line conclusions individuals have about their capabilities,
competence and worth as a person.
6. Identify four employee responses to dissatisfaction.
One theoretical model, namely the exit-voice-loyalty-neglect framework, is helpful in understanding
the consequences in dissatisfaction.
Job satisfaction and job performance  happy workers are more likely to be productive. Job
satisfaction and OCB  it seems logical to assume that job satisfaction should be a major determinant
of an employee’s organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Satisfied employees would seem more
likely to talk positively about the organization, help others, and go beyond the normal expectations in
their job. Moreover, satisfied employees might be more prone to go beyond the call of duty because
they want to reciprocate their positive experiences. Evidence suggests that job satisfaction is
moderately correlated with OCBs, such that people who are more satisfied with their jobs are more
likely to engage in OCBs.
Job satisfaction and customer satisfaction  satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and
loyalty. The relationship also seems to apply in reverse: dissatisfied customers can increase an
employee’s job dissatisfaction.
Job satisfaction and absenteeism  there is a consistent negative relationship between satisfaction and
absenteeism, but the correlation is moderate to weak.
Job satisfaction and turnover  satisfaction is also negatively related to turnover, but the correlation is
stronger than what we found for absenteeism. Other factors, such as labor-market conditions,
expectations about alternative job opportunities and length of tenure with the organization, are important
constraints on an employee’s decision to leave their current job. Evidence indicates that an important
moderator of the satisfaction-turnover relationship is the employee’s level of performance.
Job satisfaction and workplace deviance  job dissatisfaction predicts a lot of specific behaviors
including substance abuse, stealing at work, undue socializing and tardiness. Researchers argue that these
behaviors are indicators of a broader syndrome that we would term deviant behavior in the workplace
(or employee withdrawal). The key is that if employees don’t like their work environment, they will
respond somehow. If employers want to control the undesirable consequences of job dissatisfaction, they
should attack the source of the problem, the dissatisfaction, rather than try to control the different
responses.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the impact of job satisfaction on the bottom line, most managers
are either unconcerned about or overestimate worker satisfaction.
7. Show whether job satisfaction is an important concept globally.
It appears that similar factors cause, and result from, job satisfaction across cultures, but that doesn’t
mean there are no cultural differences in job satisfaction. Evidence suggests that employees in Western
cultures have higher levels of job satisfaction than those in Eastern cultures.
Chapter 46: Emotions and Moods
1. Differentiate emotions from moods and list the basic emotions and moods.
Affect  a broad range of feelings that people experience. It is an umbrella concept that encompasses
both emotions and moods.
Emotions  intense feelings that are directed at someone or something.
Moods  feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus.
Emotions are reactions to a person or an event, but moods are usually not directed to a person or an
event. Emotions can turn into moods when you lose focus on the event or object that started the
feeling. And, by the same token, good or bad moods can make you more emotional in response to an
event, see page 203.
The basic emotions:
•
•
Anger
Fear
•
•
•
Sadness
Happiness
Disgust
•
Surprise
When we group emotions into positive and negative categories, they become mood states because we
are now looking at them more generally instead of isolating one particular emotion.
•
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, tranquillity and poise at the low end.
Positivity offset  the tendency of most individuals to experience a mildly positive mood at zero
input (when nothing in particular is going on).
2. Discuss whether emotions are rational and what functions they serve.
Emotions are critical to rational thinking. We must have the ability to experience emotions to be
rational, because our emotions provide important information about how we understand the world
around us. The key to good decision making is to employ both thinking and feeling in one’s decision.
Evolutionary psychology  an area of inquiry which argues that we must experience the emotions
we do because they serve a purpose.
3. Identify the sources of emotions and moods.
Some of the primary influences on moods and emotions:
•
Personality  affect intensity  individual differences in the strength with which individuals
experience their emotions.
•
Day of the week and time of the day
•
Weather  evidence suggests that weather has little effect on mood  illusory correlation 
occurs when people associate two events but in reality there is no connection  explains why
people tend to think that nice weather improves their mood.
•
Stress
•
Social activities  people in positive moods seek out social interactions, and social
interactions cause people to be in a good mood. Research suggests that physical, informal, or
dining activities are more strongly associated with increase in positive mood than formal or
sedentary events.
•
Sleep
•
Exercise
•
Age  research implies that emotional experience tends to improve with age, so as we get
older, we experience fewer negative emotions.
•
Gender  women are more emotionally expressive than are men, they experience emotions
more intensely, they tend to hold onto emotions longer, and they display more frequent
expressions of both positive and negative emotions, except anger.
4. Show the impact emotional labor has on employees.
Emotional labor  an employee’s expression of organizationally desired emotions during
interpersonal transactions at work.
Emotional dissonance  inconsistencies between the emotions people feel and the emotions they
project. Bottled-up feelings or frustration, anger and resentment can eventually lead to emotional
exhaustion and burnout.
It can help you, on the job especially, if you separate emotions:
•
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. Deals with one’s displayed emotions.
Deep acting  trying to modify one’s true inner feelings based on display rules. Deals with one’s felt
emotions.
5. Describe affective events theory and identify its applications.
Affective events theory (AET)  a model which suggests that workplace events cause emotional
reactions on the part of employees, which then influence workplace attitudes and behaviors, see page
212. It offers two important messages:
1. Emotions provide valuable insights into understanding employee behavior. The model
demonstrates how workplace hassles and uplifting events influence employee performance and
satisfaction.
2. Employees and managers shouldn’t ignore emotions and the events that cause them, even
when they appear to be minor, because they accumulate.
6. Contrast the evidence for and against the existence of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence (EI)  the ability to detect and to manage emotional cues and information.
The arguments in favour of EI include:
•
Intuitive appeal  people who can detect emotions in others, control their own emotions, and
handle social interactions well will have a powerful leg up in the business world.
•
EI predicts criteria that matter  more and more evidence is suggesting that a high level of EI
means a person will perform well on the job.
EI is biologically based  EI is neurologically based in a way that’s unrelated to standard
measures of intelligence and that people who suffer neurological damage score lower on EI
and make poorer decisions than people who are healthier in this regard.
The arguments against EI include:
•
•
EI is too vague a concept
EI can’t be measured
•
The validity of EI is suspect  some critics argue that because EI is so closely related to
intelligence and personality, once you control for these factors, EI has nothing unique to offer.
7. Apply concepts about emotions and moods to specific OB issues.
•
Selection  employers should consider EI a factor in hiring employees, especially in jobs that
demand a high degree of social interaction.
•
Decision making  moods and emotions have important effects on decision-making.
•
Creativity  supervisors should actively try to keep employees happy because doing so
creates more good moods, which in turn leads to people to be more creative  not proven.
•
Motivation  organizations that promote positive moods at work are likely to have more
motivated workers.
•
Leadership  by arousing emotions and linking them to an appealing vision, leaders increase
the likelihood that managers and employees alike will accept change.
•
Negotiation  people who suffer damage to the emotional centres of their brains may be the
best negotiators because they are not likely to overcorrect when faced with negative outcomes.
•
Customer service  a worker’s emotional state influences customer service, which
influences levels of repeat business and levels of customer satisfaction. Emotional contagion
is the process by which peoples’ emotions are caused by the emotions of others.
•
Job attitudes  people who had a good day at work tend to be in a better mood at home that
evening.
•
Deviant workplace behaviors  people who feel negative emotions are more likely than
people who don’t feel negative emotions to engage in deviant behavior at work.
Managers can use humour and give their employees small tokens of appreciation for work well done to
improve their employees’ moods. Also, research indicates that when leaders are in good moods, group
members are more positive, and as a result, the members cooperate more. Finally, selecting positive
team members can have a contagion effect as positive moods transmit from team member to team
member.
8. Contrast the experience, interpretation and expression of emotions across cultures.
Chapter 5: Personality and values
Our personalities shape our behaviors, so if we want to better understand the behavior of someone in
an organization, it helps if we know something about their personality.
1. Define personality, describe how it is measured and explain the factors that determine an
individual’s personality.
Personality  the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others.
Personality tests are useful in hiring decisions. By far the most common means of measuring
personality is through self-report surveys, with which individuals evaluate themselves by rating
themselves on a series of factors such as ‘I worry a lot about the future.’ One weakness of these
measures is that the respondent might lie or practice impression management, that is, the person could
fake answers on the test to create a good impression. Another problem is accuracy. In other words, a
perfectly good candidate could have just been in a bad mood when the survey was taken.
Observer-ratings surveys provide an independent assessment of personality. Instead of self-reporting,
a co-worker or another observer does the rating. Even though the results of self-report surveys and
observer-rating surveys are strongly correlated, research suggests that observer-ratings surveys are a
better predictor of success on the job.
Personality appears to be a result of both hereditary and environmental factors. However, research in
personality development has tended to better support the importance of heredity over the environment.
Heredity  factors determined at conception, one’s biological, physiological and inherent
psychological makeup.
Personality traits  enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior. The ore
consistent the characteristic and the ore frequently a trait occurs in diverse situations, the more
important that trait is in describing the individual.
There are two approaches that have become the dominant frameworks for identifying and classifying
traits, namely the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Big Five Model.
2. Describe the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality framework and assess its strengths and
weaknesses.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)  a personality test that taps four characteristics and
classifies people into 1 of 16 personality types. It is a 100-question personality test that asks people
how they usually feel or act in particular situations. The terms are defined as follows:
•
Extraverted (E) versus introverted (I)  extraverted individuals are outgoing, sociable, and
assertive. Introverts are quiet and shy.
•
Sensing (S) versus intuitive (N)  sensing types are practical and prefer routine and order.
They focus on details. Intuitive rely on unconscious processes and look at the big picture.
•
Thinking (T) versus feeling (F)  thinking types use reason and logic to handle problems.
Feeling types rely on their personal values and emotions.
•
Judging (J) versus perceiving (P)  judging types want control and prefer their world to be
ordered and structured. Perceiving types are flexible and spontaneous.
These classifications together describe 16 personality types. The MBTI can be a valuable tool for
increasing self-awareness and providing career guidance. But because results tend to be unrelated to
job performance, managers probably shouldn’t use it as a selection test for job candidates.
3. Identify the key traits in the Big Five personality model.
Big Five Model  a personality assessment model that taps five basic dimensions.
•
Extraversion  a personality dimension that captures one’s comfort level with relationships.
Extraverts tend to gregarious, assertive and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid and
quiet.
•
Agreeableness  a personality dimension that refers to an individual’s propensity to defer to
others. Highly agreeable people are cooperative, warm and trusting. People who score low on
agreeableness are cold, disagreeable and antagonistic.
•
Conscientiousness  a personality dimension that measures reliability. A highly
conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable and persistent. Those who score
low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized and unreliable.
•
Emotional stability  a personality dimension taps a person’s ability to withstand stress.
People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-confident and secure. Those with
high negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed and insecure.
•
Openness to experience  a personality dimension that addresses one’s range of interests
and fascination with novelty. Extremely open people are creative, curious and artistically
sensitive. Those at the other end of the openness category are conventional and find comfort in
the familiar.
4. Demonstrate how the Big Five traits predict behavior at work.
The preponderance of evidence shows that individuals who are dependable, reliable, careful, thorough,
able to plan, organized, hardworking, persistent, and achievement-oriented tend to have higher job
performance in most if not all occupations. Employees who score higher in conscientiousness develop
higher levels of job knowledge, probably because highly conscientious people exert greater levels of
effort on their jobs. The higher levels of job knowledge then contribute to higher levels of job
performance. Although conscientiousness is the Big Five trait most consistently related to job
performance, the other traits are related to aspects of performance in some situations. All five traits
have other implications for work and for life:
People who score high on emotional stability are happier than those who score low. Of the Big Five
traits, emotional stability is most strongly related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction and low stress
levels. One upside of low emotional stability, is that when in a bad mood, such people make faster and
better decisions than emotionally stable people in bad moods.
You might expect agreeable people to be happier than disagreeable people, and they are, but only
slightly. Agreeable individuals are less likely to engage in organizational deviance. One downside of
agreeableness is that it is associated with lower levels of career success (especially earnings). This
may occur because agreeable individuals are poorer negotiators, they are so concerned with pleasing
others that they often don’t negotiate as much for themselves as do others.
Individuals who score high on openness to experience are more creative in science and in art than
those who score low. Because creativity is important to leadership, open people are more likely to be
effective leaders. Also, open individuals are more comfortable with ambiguity and change than are
those who score lower on this trait. As a result, open people cope better with organizational change
and are more adaptable in changing contexts.
Compared to introverts, extraverts tend to be happier in their jobs and in their lives as a whole. They
tend to perform better in jobs that require significant interpersonal interaction, perhaps because they
have more social skills. Extraversion is a relatively strong predictor of leadership emergence in
groups, extraverts are more socially dominant, take charge sorts of people, and they generally are more
assertive than introverts. One downside of extraversion is that extraverts are more impulsive than
introverts, they are more likely to be absent from work and engage in risky behavior.
Conscientious people live longer than less conscientious people, because they tend to take better care
of themselves and engage in fewer risky behavior. Still there are downsides to conscientiousness. It
appears that conscientious people, probably because they’re so organized and structured, don’t adapt
as well to changing contexts. Conscientious people are generally performance-oriented They have
more trouble than less conscientious people learning complex skills early in the training process
because their focus is on performance rather than on learning. Finally, conscientious people are often
less creative than less conscientious people, especially artistically.
5. Identify other personality traits relevant to OB.
Although the Big Five traits have proven to be highly relevant to OB, they don’t exhaust the range of
traits we can use to describe someone’s personality. Now we’ll look at other, more specific,
personality attributes that have been found to be powerful predictors of behavior in organizations:
•
Core self-evaluation  the degree to which an individual likes or dislikes himself or herself,
whether the person sees himself or herself as capable and effective, and whether the person
feels in control of his or her environment or powerless over the environment. We discussed in
chapter 3 that core self-evaluations relate to job satisfaction because people with positive core
self-evaluations see more challenge in their job and actually attain more complex jobs. They
also perform better than others because they set more ambitious goals, are more committed to
their goals and persist longer at attempting to reach these goals.
•
Machiavellianism  the degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional
distance and believes that ends can justify means. ‘If it works, use it,’ is consistent with a highMach perspective. High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less and persuade
others more than do low Machs. Yet high-Mach outcomes are moderated by situational
factors. It has been found that high Machs flourish:
when they interact face-to-face with others rather than indirectly
when the situation has a minimal number of rules and regulation, thus allowing
latitude for improvisation
when emotional involvement with details irrelevant to winning distracts low Machs.
Thus, whether high Machs make good employees depends on the type of jobs.
•
Narcissism  the tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-importance, require
excessive admiration and have a sense of entitlement. Narcissists are rated by their bosses as
less effective at their jobs than others, particularly when it comes to helping others.
•
Self-monitoring  a personality trait that measures an individual’s ability to adjust his or her
behavior to external, situational factors. Individuals high in self-monitoring show considerable
adaptability in adjusting their behavior to external situations. High self-monitors are capable of
presenting striking contradictions between their public persona and their private self. Evidence
indicates that high self-monitors tend to pay closer attention to the behavior of others and are
more capable of confirming than are low self-monitors. They also receive better performance
ratings, are more likely to emerge as leaders, and show less commitment to their organizations.
In addition, high self-monitoring managers tend to be more mobile in their careers, receive
more promotions (both internal and cross-organizational), and are more likely to occupy
central positions in an organization.
•
Risk taking  people differ in their willingness to take chances. This propensity to assume or
avoid risk has been shown to have an impact on how long it takes managers to make a decision
and how much information they require before making a choice. High risk-taking managers
make more rapid decisions and use less information in making their choices than did the low
risk-taking managers. Interestingly, decision accuracy was the same for both groups.
•
Type A personality  aggressive involvement in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve
more and more in less and less time and, if necessary, against the opposing efforts of other
things or other people. Type A’s:
1. are always moving, walking and eating rapidly
2. feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place
3. strive to think or do two or more things at once
4. cannot cope with leisure time
5. are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how
much of everything they acquire.
In contrast to the Type A personality is the Type B, who is exactly opposite. Type B’s are 
rarely harried by the desire to obtain a wildly increasing number of things or participate in an
endless growing series of events in an ever-decreasing amount of time. They never suffer from
a sense of time urgency with is accompanying impatience, can relax without guilt and so on.
Type A’s do better than Type B’s in job interviews, because they are more likely to be judged
as having desirable traits such as high drive, competence, aggressiveness and success
motivation.
•
Proactive personality  people who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action and
persevere until meaningful change occurs. Not surprisingly, proactive have many desirable
behaviors that organizations cover. Evidence indicates that proactive are more likely than
others to be seen as leaders and more likely to act as change agents within an organization.
Other actions of proactive can be positive or negative, depending on the organization and the
situation.
Although personality and values are related, they’re not the same. Values are often specific and
describe belief systems rather than behavioral tendencies. Some beliefs or values don’t say much
about a person’s personality, and we don’t always act in ways that are consistent with our values.
6. Define values, demonstrate the importance of values and contrast terminal and instrumental values.
Values  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. They contain
a judgmental element in that they carry an individual’s ideas as to what is right, good or desirable.
Values have both content and intensity attributes.
The content attribute says that a mode of conduct or an end-state of existence is important.
The intensity attribute specifies how important it is.
Value system  a hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual’s values in terms of their intensity.
This system is identified by the relative importance we assign to values such as freedom, pleasure,
self-respect, honesty, obedience and equality.
Values are important to the study or OB because they lay the foundation for our understanding of
people’s attitudes and motivation and because they influence our perceptions. Values cloud objectivity
and rationality. Values generally influence attitudes and behavior.
Terminal values  desirable end-states of existence, the goals a person would like to achieve during
their lifetime.
Instrumental values  preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving one’s terminal values.
7. Identify the dominant values in today’s workforce.
Contemporary work values  whilst it must be recognized that there will be significant variations
within groups, it is useful to recognize that groups tend to reflect similar values and this can be a
valuable aid in explaining and predicting behavior.
Linking individual’s personality and values to the workplace:
•
Personality-job fit theory  a theory that identifies six personality types and proposes that
the fit between personality type and occupational environment determines satisfaction and
turnover. It presents six personality types and proposes that satisfaction and the propensity to
leave a position depend on the degree to which individuals successfully match their
personalities to a job. The key points of this model are:
1. There do appear to be intrinsic differences in personality among individuals.
2. There are different types of jobs.
3. People in jobs congruent with their personality should be more satisfied and less likely
to voluntarily resign than people in incongruent jobs.
•
Personality-organization fit  if an organization faces a dynamic and changing environment
and requires employees who are able to readily change tasks and move easily between teams,
it is more important that employees’ personalities fit with the overall organization’s culture
than with the characteristics of any specific job. People are attracted to and selected by
organizations that match their values, and they leave organizations that are not compatible
with their personalities. The fit of employees’ values with the culture of their organization
predicts job satisfaction, commitment to the organization, and low turnover.
8. Identify Hofstede’s fine value dimensions of national culture.
The five personality factors identified the Big Five model appear in almost all cross-cultural studies.
Differences tend to be in the emphasis on dimensions and whether countries are predominantly
individualistic or collectivistic.
Because values differ across cultures, an understanding of these differences should be helpful in
explaining and predicting behavior of employees from different countries.
On one of the most widely referenced approaches for analyzing variations among cultures was done by
Hofstede. He surveyed more than 116.000 IBM employees in 40 countries about their work-related
values and found that managers and employees vary on five value dimensions of national culture:
•
Power distance  a national culture attribute that describes the extent to which a society
accepts that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.
•
Individualism  a national culture attribute that describes the degree to which people prefer
to act as individuals rather than as members of groups.
Collectivism  a national culture attribute that describes a tight social framework in which
people expect others in groups of which they are a part to look after them and protect them.
•
Masculinity  a national culture attribute that describes the extent to which the culture favors
traditional masculine work roles of achievement, power and control. Societal values are
characterized by assertiveness and materialism.
Femininity  a national culture attribute that has little differentiation between male and
female roles, where women are treated as the equals of men in all aspects of the society.
•
Uncertainty avoidance  a national culture attribute that describes the extent to which a
society feels threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations and tries to avoid them.
•
Long-term orientation  a national culture attribute that emphasizes the future, thrift and
persistence.
Short-term orientation  a national culture attribute that emphasizes the past and present
respect for tradition and fulfilment of social obligations.
Despite a few concerns, Hofstede has been one of the most widely cited social scientists ever, and his
framework has left a lasting mark on OB.
The GLOBE team identified nine dimensions on which national cultures differ. The main difference
with Hofstede is that it added dimensions, such as humane orientation and performance orientation.
Chapter 6: Perception and individual decision making
1. Define perception and explain the factors that influence it.
Perception  a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order
to give meaning to their environment. People’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is,
not on reality itself. The world as it is perceived is the world that is behaviorally important.
A number of factors operate to shape and sometimes distort perception. These factors can reside in the
perceiver, the target or the situation in which the perception is made  see page 111.
2. Explain attribution theory and list the three determinants of attribution.
Attribution theory  an attempt to determine whether an individual’s behavior is internally or
externally caused. Internally caused behaviors are those we believe to be under the personal control of
the individual. External caused behavior is what we imagine the situation forced the individual to do.
That determination depends largely on three factors:
1. Distinctiveness  refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different
situations.
2. Consensus  if everyone who faces a similar situation responds in the same way.
3. Consistency  does the person respond the same way over time?
Errors or biases distort attributions.
•
Fundamental attribution error  the tendency to underestimate the influence of external
factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgements about the
behavior of others. We blame people first, not the situation.
•
Self-serving bias  the tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal
factors and put the blame for failures on external factors. It is our success but their failure.
3. Identify the shortcuts individuals use in making judgements about others.
We use a number of shortcuts when we judge others. These techniques are frequently valuable: they
allow us to make accurate perceptions rapidly and provide valid data for making predictions.
However, they are not foolproof. They can do get us into trouble.
•
Selective perception  the tendency to selectively interpret what one sees on the basis of
one’s interest, background, experience and attitudes. It allows us to speed-read others, but not
without the risk of drawing an inaccurate picture. Because we see what we want to see, we can
draw unwarranted conclusions from an ambiguous situation.
•
Halo effect  the tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a
single characteristic.
•
Contrast effects  evaluation of a person’s characteristics that is affected by comparisons
with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.
Stereotyping  judging someone on the basis of one’s perception of the group to which that
person belongs. One specific manifestation of stereotypes is profiling  a form of
stereotyping in which a group of individuals is singled out – typically on the basis of race or
ethnicity – for intensive inquiry, scrutiny or investigation. One of the problems of stereotyping
is that they are widespread and often useful generalizations, despite the fact that they may not
contain a shred of truth when applied to a particular person or situation.
•
In many cases, our judgements have important consequences for the organization:
•
Employment interview  evidence indicates that interviewers make perceptual judgements
that are often inaccurate. They generally draw early impressions that very quickly become
entrenched.
•
Performance expectations  people attempt to validate their perceptions of reality, even
when those perceptions are faulty. This characteristic is particularly relevant when we consider
performance expectations on the job. The terms self-fulfilling prophecy and Pygmalion effect
have evolved to characterize the fact that an individual’s behavior is determined by other
people’s expectations. Self-fulfilling prophecy  a situation in which a person inaccurately
perceives a second person, and the resulting expectations cause the second person to behave in
ways consistent with the original perception.
•
Performance evaluation  subjective evaluations of performance, though often necessary,
are problematic because of all the errors we’ve discussed thus far affect them.
4. Explain the link between perception and decision making.
Individuals in organizations make decisions  they make choices from among two or more
alternatives. Individual decision making is an important part of organizational behavior. But how
individuals in organizations make decisions and the quality of their final choices are largely influenced
by their perceptions.
Decision making occurs as a reaction to a problem  a discrepancy between the current state of affair
and some desired state. The awareness that a problem exists and whether a decision needs to be made
is a perceptual issue.
5. Apply the rational model of decision making and contrast it with bounded rationality and intuition.
Business schools generally train students to follow rational decision-making models. If we are to
improve how we make decisions in organizations, we need to understand the decision-making errors
that people commit.
We often think the best decision maker is rational  characterized by making consistent, value
maximizing choices with specified constraints. These decisions follow a six-step rational decisionmaking model  a decision-making model that describes how individuals should behave in order to
maximize some outcome.
1. Define the problem
4. Develop the alternatives
2. Identify the decision criteria
5. Evaluate the alternatives
3. Allocate weights to the criteria
6. Select the best alternative
The rational decision-making model relies on a number of assumptions
Well-defined problem
Clear criteria and criteria rating
Complete (or at least reliable) information
Stable preferences  ability to identify all the relevant options in an unbiased manner.
The limited information-processing capability of human beings makes it impossible to assimilate and
understand all the information necessary to optimize. So people satisfice, that is, they seek solutions
that are satisfactory and sufficient.
Bouded rationality  a process of making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract
the essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity. So the solution represents
a satisficing choice, the first acceptable one we encounter, rather than an optimal one.
Intuitive decision making  an unconscious process created out of distilled experience. Its defining
qualities are that it occurs outside conscious thought: it relies on holistic associations, or links between
disparate pieces of information, it is fast, and it is affectively charged, meaning that it usually engages
the emotions. There is growing recognition that rational analysis has been overemphasized and that, in
certain instances, relying on intuition can improve decision making. But while intuition can be
invaluable in making good decisions, we can’t rely on it too much. Because it is so unquantifiable, it is
hard to know when our hunches are right or wrong. The key is not to either abandon or rely solely on
intuition but to supplement it with evidence and good judgement.
6. List and explain the common decision biases or errors.
Decision makers engage in bounded rationality, but an accumulating body of research tells us that
decision makers also allow systematic biases and errors to creep into their judgements. These come
from attempts to shortcut the decision process. To minimize effort and avoid difficult trade-offs,
people tend to rely too heavily on experience, impulses, gut feelings and convenient rules of thumb. In
many instances, these shortcuts are helpful. However, they can lead to severe distortions of rationality.
There are three meta biases that result in decision biases:
•
Availability shortcut
Availability bias  the tendency for people to base their judgements on information
that is readily available to them, leads to over or underestimation.
•
Anchoring bias  a tendency to fixate on initial information, from which one then
fails to adequately adjust for subsequent information.
Self enhancement
Self-serving attributions
Confirmation bias  the tendency to seek out information that reaffirms past choices
and to discount information that contradicts past judgements. The rational decisionmaking process assumes that we objectively gather information, but we don’t. We
selectively gather it.
Escalation of commitment  an increased commitment to a previous decision in
spite of negative information.
Egocentric accounting  occurs when people claim more responsibility for
themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would credit them.
Better-than-average-effect  the tendency for people to evaluate themselves as
better than average on desirable skills, characteristics and behaviors.
Low self-esteem (accurate self-assessment)  are generally accurate in assessing
their competencies relative to others.
Illusion of control
Illusory correlations  seeing the relationship one expects in a set of data even
when no such relationship exists.
Hindsight bias  the tendency to believe falsely, after an outcome of an event is
actually known, that one would have accurately predicted that outcome.
Overconfidence bias
Victim blaming  holding the victims of a crime, an accident or any type of abuse
maltreatment to be entirely or partially responsible for the unfortunate incident.
Randomness error  the tendency of individuals to believe that they can predict the outcome of
random events. At the extreme, some decision makers become controlled by their superstitions,
making it nearly impossible for them to change routines or objectively process new information.
Winner’s curse  a decision-making dictum which argues that the winning participants in an auction
typically pay too much for the winning item. Logic predicts that the winner’s curse gets stronger as the
number of bidders increases. The more bidders there are, the more likely that some of them have
greatly overestimated the good’s value. So, beware of auctions with an unexpectedly large number of
bidders.
7. Explain how individual differences and organizational constraints affect decision making.
Individual differences create deviations from the rational model.
•
Personality  two facets of conscientiousness, namely achievement striving and dutifulness,
have opposite effects on escalation of commitment. First, achievement striving people are
more likely to escalate their commitment, whereas dutiful people are less likely. Second,
achievement striving individuals appear to be more susceptible to the hindsight bias. Finally,
people with high self-esteem appear to be especially susceptible to the self-serving bias.
•
Gender  overall, the evidence indicates that women analyse decisions more than men do.
Rumination refers to deflecting at length. In terms of decision making, it means overthinking
problems. Women, in general, are more likely than men to engage in rumination.
Organizations can constrain decision makers, creating deviations from the rational model.
•
Performance evaluation  managers are strongly influenced in their decision making by the
criteria on which they are evaluated.
•
Reward systems  influences decision makers by suggesting to them what choices are
preferable in terms of personal payoff.
•
Formal regulations  intended to get individuals to act in the intended manner. In so doing,
they limit the decision maker’s choice.
•
System-imposed time constraints  organizations impose deadlines on decisions. These
conditions create time pressures on decision makers and often make it difficult, if not
impossible, to gather all the information they might like to have before making a final choice.
•
Historical precedents  choices made today are largely a result of choices made over the
years.
Contrast the three ethical decision criteria.
Ethical considerations should be an important criterion in organizational decision making. There are
three different ways to frame decisions ethically.
1. Utilitarianism  a system in which decisions are made to provide the greatest good for the
greatest number. It promotes efficiency and productivity, but can result in ignoring the rights
of some individuals, particularly those with minority representation in the organization.
2. Rights  this calls on individuals to make decisions consistent with fundamental liberties and
privileges, as set forth in documents such as the European Convention on Human Rights.
Whistle-blowers are individuals who report unethical practices by their employer to outsiders.
The use of rights as a criterion protects individuals from injury and is consistent with freedom
and privacy, but it can create an overly legalistic work environment that hinders productivity
and efficiency.
3. Justice  requires individuals to impose and enforce rules fairly and impartially so that there
is an equitable distribution of benefits and costs. It protects the interests of the
underrepresented and less powerful, but it can encourage a sense of entitlement that reduces
risk taking, innovation and productivity.
8. Define creativity and discuss the three-component novel and useful ideas. Creativity  the ability
to produce novel and useful ideas. It allows the decision maker to more fully appraise and
understand the problem, including seeing problems others can’t see.
Most people have creative potential they can use when confronted with a decision-making problem.
But to unleash that potential, they have to get out of the psychological ruts many of us fall into and
learn how to think about a problem in divergent ways. People who score high on openness to
experience and intelligence are more likely than others to be creative. Other traits associated with
creative people include independence, self-confidence, risk taking, an internal locus of control,
tolerance for ambiguity, a low need for structure and perseverance in the face of frustration.
Three-component model of creativity  the proposition that individual creativity requires expertise,
creative thinking skills and intrinsic task motivation.
•
Expertise is the foundation for all creative work. The potential for creativity is enhanced when
individuals have abilities, knowledge, proficiencies, and similar expertise in their field of
endeavor.
•
Creative-thinking skills encompasses personality characteristics associated with creativity, the
ability to use analogies, and the talent to see the familiar in a different light.
•
Intrinsic task motivation is the desire to work on something because it’s interesting involving,
exciting, satisfying or personally challenging. This motivational component is what turns
creativity potential into actual creative ideas.
Chapter 7: Motivation concepts
1. Define the three key elements of motivation
Motivation  the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of
effort toward attaining a goal. While general motivation is concerned with effort toward any goal,
we’ll narrow the focus to organizational goals in order to reflect our singular interest in work-related
behavior. The three key elements in our definition are:
1. Intensity  how hard a person tries.
2. Direction  effort that is channelled toward, and consistent with, organizational goals
3. Persistence  how long a person can maintain effort.
2. Identify four early theories of motivation and evaluate their applicability today.
Early motivation theories represent a foundation from which contemporary theories have grown, and
practicing managers still regularly use these theories and their terminology in explaining employee
motivation.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory  a hierarchy of five needs in which, as each need is
substantially satisfied, the next need becomes dominant.
•
Physiological  includes hunger, thirst, shelter, sex and other bodily needs.
•
Safety  security and protection from physical and emotional harm.
•
Social  affection, belongingness, acceptance and friendship.
•
Esteem  internal factors such as self-respect, autonomy and achievement, and external
factors such as status, recognition and attention.
•
Self-actualization  drive to become what one is capable of becoming: includes growth,
achieving one’s potential and self-fulfillment.
From the standpoint of motivation, the theory would say that although no need is ever fully gratified, a
substantially satisfied need no longer motivates. So if you want to motivate someone, you need to
understand what level of the hierarchy that person is currently on and focus on satisfying the needs at
or above that level.
Lower-order needs are physiological and safety needs. Higher-order needs are social, esteem and
self-actualization needs. The differentiation between the two orders was made on the premise that
higher-order needs are satisfied internally, whereas lower-order needs are predominantly satisfied
externally.
Alderfer attempted to rework Maslow’s need hierarchy to align it more closely with empirical
research. His revised need hierarchy is labelled ERG theory  a theory that posits the three groups of
core needs: existence, relatedness and growth. He didn’t assume that these needs existed in a rigid
hierarchy. An individual could be focusing on all three need categories simultaneously.
McGregor’s Theory X  the assumption that employees dislike work, are lazy, dislike responsibility
and must be coerced to perform.
McGregor’s Theory Y  the assumption that employees like work, are creative, seek responsibility
and can exercise self-direction.
Herzberg proposed the two-factor theory also called motivation-hygiene theory  a theory that
relates to intrinsic factors to job satisfaction and associates with extrinsic factors with dissatisfaction.
Removing dissatisfying characteristics from a job does not necessarily make the job satisfying. So the
opposite of satisfaction is no satisfaction, and the opposite of dissatisfaction is no dissatisfaction.
Hygiene factors  factors – such as company policy and administration, supervision and salary –
that, when adequate in a job, people will not be dissatisfied, neither will they be satisfied.
The criticisms of the theory include the following:
•
•
The procedure that Herzberg used is limited by its methodology. When things are going well,
people tend to credit themselves. Contrarily, they blame failure on extrinsic environment.
The reliability of Herzberg’s methodology is questioned.
•
No overall measure of satisfaction was utilized.
•
Herzberg assumed a relationship between satisfaction and productivity, but the research
methodology he used looked only at satisfaction and not at productivity.
McCelland’s theory of needs  a theory which states that achievement, power and affiliation are
three important needs that help explain motivation.
•
Need for achievement (nAch)  the drive to excel, to achieve in relationship to a set of
standards and to strive to succeed.
•
Need for power (nPow)  the need to make others behave in a way in which they would not
have behaved otherwise.
•
Need for affiliation (nAff)  the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships.
First, when jobs have a high degree of personal responsibility and feedback and an intermediate degree
of risk, high achievers are strongly motivated. Second, a high need to achieve does not necessarily
make someone a good manager, especially in large organizations. Third, the needs for affiliation and
power tend to be closely related to managerial success. The best managers are high in their need for
power and low in their affiliation.
There are a number of contemporary theories that have a reasonable degree of valid supporting
documentation.
3. Apply the predictions of cognitive evaluation theory to intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.
Cognitive evaluation theory  a theory which states that allocating extrinsic rewards for behavior
that has been previously intrinsically rewarding tends to decrease the overall level of motivation. If
cognitive evaluation theory is correct, it would make sense to make an individual’s pay noncontingent
on performance in order to avoid decreasing intrinsic motivation. Verbal extrinsic rewards increase
intrinsic motivation, whereas tangible extrinsic rewards undermine it.
Self-concordance  the degree to which a person’s reasons for pursuing a goal is consistent with the
person’s interests and core values. People who pursue work goals for intrinsic reasons are more
satisfied with their jobs, feel like they fit into their organizations and may perform better.
4. Compare and contrast goal-setting theory and management by objectives.
Goal/setting theory  a theory which says that specific and difficult goals, with self-generated
feedback, lead to higher performance.
Three other factors have been found to influence the goals-performance relationship:
1. Goal commitment  an individual is determined not to lower or abandon the goal. This means
that an individual believes that they can achieve the goal and want to achieve it.
2. Task characteristics  evidence suggests that goals seem to have a more substantial effect on
performance when tasks are simple rather than complex, and independent rather than
interdependent.
3. National culture
Management by objectives (MBO)  a programme that encompasses specific goals, anticipatively
set, for an explicit time period, with feedback on goal progress.
•
Goal specificity
•
Participation in decision making
•
Explicit time period
•
Performance feedback
5. Contrast reinforcement theory and goal-setting theory.
Self-efficacy (also known as social cognitive theory or social learning theory)  an individual’s
belief that they are capable of performing a task. Managers can help their employees achieve high
levels of self-efficacy by bringing together goal-setting theory and self-efficacy theory, page 152.
There are four ways self-efficacy can be increased:
1. Enactive mastery  gaining relevant experience with the task or job. If you’ve been able to do
the job successfully in the past, then you’re more confident you’ll be able to do it in the future.
2. Vicarious modelling  becoming more confident because you see someone else doing the
task. It is most effective when you set yourself similar to the person you are observing.
3. Verbal persuasion  becoming more confident because someone convinces you that you
have the skills necessary to be successful.
4. Arousal  leads to an energized state, which drives a person to complete a task.
The best way for a manager to use verbal persuasion is through:
•
Pygmalion effect  a form of a self-fulfilling prophecy in which believing something to be
true can make it true. Self-efficacy is increased by communicating to an individual’s teacher or
supervisor that the person is of high ability.
•
Galatea effect  occurs when high performance expectations are communicated directly to an
employee.
6. Demonstrate how organizational justice is a refinement of equity theory.
Reinforcement theory  a theory which says that behavior is a function of its consequences. It is not
a theory of motivation. In its pure form, reinforcement theory ignores feelings, attitudes, expectations
and other cognitive variables that are known to affect behavior.
7. Apply the key tenets of expectancy theory to motivating employees.
Equity theory  a theory which says that individuals compare their job inputs and outcomes with
those of others and then respond to eliminate any inequities. There are four relevant comparisons:
1. Self-inside  an employee’s experiences in a different position inside the employee’s current
organization.
2. Self-outside  an employee’s experiences in a situation or position outside the employee’s
current organization.
3. Other-inside  another individual or group of individuals inside the employee’s organization.
4. Other-outside  another individual or group of individuals outside the employee’s
organization.
Based on equity-theory, when employees perceive inequity, they can be predicted to make one of six
choices:
1. Change their inputs
2. Change their outcomes
3. Distort perceptions of self
4. Distort perceptions of others
5. Choose a different referent
6. Leave the field
The theory establishes the following propositions relating to inequitable pay:
A. Given payment by time, over rewarded employees will produce more than will equitably paid
employees.
B. Given payment by quantity of production, over rewarded employees will produce fewer, but
high-quality, units than will equitably paid employees.
C. Given payment by time, under rewarded employees will produce less or poorer quality of
output.
D. Given payment by quantity of production, under rewarded employees will produce a large
number of low-quality units in comparison with equitably paid employees.
Historically, equity theory focused on distributive justice  perceived fairness of the amount and
allocation of rewards among individuals. But increasingly equity is thought of from the standpoint of
organizational justice  an overall perception of what is fair in the workplace, composed of
distributive, procedural and interactional justice. One key element is perception of justice.
Beyond distributive justice, the key addition under organizational justice was procedural justice 
the perceived fairness of the process used to determine the distribution of rewards. Two key elements:
• Process control  opportunity to present one’s point of view about desired outcomes to
decision makers.
•
Explanations  clear reasons for the outcome that management gives to a person.
Thus, for employees to see a process as fair, they need to feel that they have some control over the
outcome and feel that they were given an adequate explanation about why the outcome occurred. Also,
for procedural fairness, it’s important that a manager is consistent, unbiased, makes decisions based on
accurate information, and is open to appeals.
Interactional justice  the perceived degree to which an individual is treated with dignity, concern
and respect.
Managers can take several steps to foster employee’s perceptions of fairness. First, they should realise
that employees are especially sensitive to unfairness in procedures when bad news has to be
communicated. Thus, when managers have bad news to communicate, it is especially important to
openly share information about how allocation decisions are made, follow consistent and unbiased
procedures, and engage in similar practices to increase the perception of procedural justice. Second,
when addressing perceived injustices, managers need to focus their actions on the source of the
problem.
8. Compare contemporary theories of motivation.
Expectancy theory  theory which says that the strength of a tendency to act in a certain way
depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the
attractiveness of that outcome to the individual. In more practical form, it says that employees will be
motivated to exert a high level of effort when they believe that effort will lead to a good performance
appraisal; that a good appraisal will lead to organizational rewards such as bonuses, salary increases or
promotions; and that the reward will satisfy the employees’ personal goals. It focuses on three
relationships:
1. Effort-performance relationship  the probability perceived by the individual that exerting
a given amount of effort will lead to performance.
2. Performance-reward relationship  the degree to which the individual believes that
performing at a particular level will lead to the attainment of a desired outcome.
3. Rewards-personal goals relationship  the degree to which organizational rewards satisfy
an individual’s personal goals or needs and the attractiveness of those potential rewards for the
individual.
9. Explain to what degree motivation theories are culture bound.
See page 161 for integrating contemporary theories of motivation.
Chapter 8: Motivation: from concepts to applications
1. Describe the job characteristics model and evaluate the way it motivates by changing the work
environment.
Job design  the way the elements in a job are organized. This can act to increase or decrease effort.
Job characteristics model (JCM)  a model that proposes that any job can be described in terms of
five core job dimensions:
1. Skills variety  requirements for different tasks in the job.
2. Task identity  completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work.
3. Task significance  the job’s impact on the lives or work of other people.
4. Autonomy  level of discretion in decision making.
5. Feedback  amount of direct and clear information on performance.
The core dimensions can be combined into a single predictive index, called the motivating potential
score (MPS), which is calculated as follows:
MPS = (Skill variety + Task identity + Task significance) / 3 x Autonomy x Feedback
If jobs score high on motivating potential, the model predicts that motivation, performance and
satisfaction will be positively affected and that the likelihood of absence and turnover will be reduced.
2. Compare and contrast the three main ways jobs can be redesigned.
Job rotation  the periodic shifting of an employee from one task to another.
•
Strengths  it reduces boredom, increases motivation through diversifying the employee’s
activities, and helps employees better understand how their work contributes to the
organization. It also has benefits for the organization because when employees have a wider
range of skills, management has more flexibility in scheduling work and adapting to changes.
•
Weaknesses  training costs are increased, and productivity is reduced by moving a worker
into a new position. It also creates disruptions. Members of the work group have to adjust to
the new employee. And supervisors may also have to spend more time answering questions
and monitoring the work of recently rotated employees.
Job enlargement  horizontal expansion of jobs, which increases the number and variety of tasks
that an individual performs. Job enlargement results in jobs with more diversity.
Job enrichment  vertical expansion of jobs, which increases the degree to which the worker
controls the planning, execution and evaluation of the work. It organizes tasks so as to allow the
worker to do a complete activity, increases the employee’s freedom and independence, increases
responsibility and provides feedback so individuals will be able to assess and correct their own
performance.
A manager can enrich an employee’s job by:
•
Combining tasks takes existing and fractionalized tasks and puts them back together to form a
new and larger module of work.
•
Forming natural work units means that the tasks an employee does create an identifiable and
meaningful whole.
•
Establishing client relationships increases the direct relationships between workers and their
clients.
•
Expanding jobs vertically gives employees responsibilities and control that were formerly
reserved for management.
•
Opening feedback channels lets employees know how well they are performing their jobs and
whether their performance is improving, deteriorating or remaining at a constant level.
3. Identify three alternative work arrangements and show how they might motivate employees.
Three alternative work arrangements:
•
Flextime  flexible work hours.
o
Strengths: reduces absenteeism and frequently improves worker productivity.
o
•
Weaknesses: it is not applicable to every job.
Job sharing  an arrangement that allows two or more individuals to split a traditional
40hour-a-week job.
o
o
Strengths: it allows an organization to draw on the talents of more than one individual
in a given job and it increases flexibility. It can increase motivation and satisfaction
for those to whom a full-time job is just not practical.
Weaknesses: difficult to find compatible pairs of employees who can successfully
coordinate the intricacies of one job.
•
Teleworking  people who work mainly in their own home or mainly in different places
using home as a base, who use both a telephone and a computer to carry out their work.
o
o
Strengths: flexibility, larger labor pool from which to select, higher productivity, less
turnover, improved morale and reduced office-space costs.
Weaknesses: less direct supervision of employees and more difficult to coordinate
teamwork. For employees with a high social need, teleworking can increase feelings
of isolation and reduce job satisfaction.
Success on a job is facilitated or hindered by the existence or absence of support resources.
Opportunity to perform  absence of obstacles that constrain the employee. High levels of
performance are partially a function of the opportunity to perform.
A way of thinking about employee performance is as a function (f) of the interaction of ability (A) and
motivation (M) and opportunity to perform (O)  performance = f(A x M x O)
4. Give examples of employee involvement measures and show how they can motivate employees.
Employee involvement  a participative process that uses the input of employees and is intended to
increase employee commitment to an organization’s success. The underlying logic is that if we
involve workers in the decisions that affect them and increase their autonomy and control over their
work lives, employees will become more motivated, more committed to the organization, more
productive and more satisfied with their jobs. There are three major forms of employee involvement:
•
Participative management  a process in which subordinates share a significant degree of
decision-making power with their immediate superiors.
•
Representative participation  a system in which workers participate in organizational
decision making through a small group of representative employees. The two most common
forms representative participation takes are works councils and board representatives.
•
Quality circles  a work group of employees who meet regularly to discuss their quality
problems, investigate causes, recommend solutions and take corrective actions.
5. Demonstrate how the different types of variable-pay programmes can increase employee
motivation.
We consider four major strategic rewards decisions that need to be made.
1. What to pay: establishing a pay structure
Pay more, and you may get better-qualified, more highly motivated employees who will stay with the
organization longer. But pay is often the highest single operating cost for an organization, which
means that paying too much can make the organization’s products or services too expensive. It’s a
strategic decision an organization must make, with clear trade-offs.
2. How to pay: rewarding individual employees through variable-pay programmes
Variable-pay programme  a pay plan that bases a portion of an employee’s pay on some individual
and/or organizational measure of performance.
•
Piece-rate pay plan  a pay plan in which workers are paid a fixed sum for each unit of
production completed.
•
Merit-based pay plan  a pay plan based on performance appraisal ratings.
•
Bonus  a pay plan that rewards employees for recent rather than historical performance.
•
Skill-based pay (also called competency-based or knowledge-based pay)  a pay plan that
sets pay levels on the basis of how many skills employees have or how many jobs they can do.
•
Profit-sharing plan  an organization wide programme that distributes compensation based
on some established formula designed around a company’s profitability.
•
Gain sharing  a formula-based group incentive plan.
•
Employee stock ownership plan (ESOP)  a company-established benefits plan in which
employees acquire stock, often at below-market prices, as part of their benefits.
6. Show how flexible benefits turn benefits into motivators.
3. Flexible benefits: developing a benefits package
Flexible benefits  a benefits plan that allows each employee to put together a benefits package
individually tailored to their own needs and situation. The three most popular types of benefits plans:
•
Modular plans are predesigned packages of benefits, with each module put together to meet
the needs of a specific group of employees.
•
Core-plus plans consist of a core of essential benefits and a menu-like selection of other
benefit options from which employees can select and add to the core.
•
Flexible spending plans allow employees to set aside up to the euro amount offered in the plan
to pay for particular services.
7. Identify the motivational benefits of intrinsic rewards.
4. Intrinsic rewards: employee recognition programmes
Important work rewards can be both intrinsic and extrinsic. Rewards are intrinsic in the form of
employee recognition programmes and extrinsic in the form of compensation systems.
Chapter 9: Foundations of group behavior
Work groups have properties that shape the behavior of members and make it possible to explain and
predict a large portion of individual behavior within the group as well as the performance of the group
itself.
1. Define group and differentiate between different types of groups.
Group  two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve
particular objectives.
Formal group  a designated work group defined by an organization’s structure.
•
Informal group  a group that is neither formally structured nor organizationally
determined, such a group appears in response to the need for social contact.
It is possible to further subclassify groups:
•
Command group  a group composed of the individuals who report directly to a given
managers.
•
Task group  people working together to complete a job task.
•
Interest group  people working together to attain a specific objective with which each is
concerned.
•
Friendship group  people brought together because they share one or more common
characteristics.
Why do people join groups?
•
Security Affiliation
•
Status Power
•
Self-esteem Goal achievement
2. Identify the five stages of group development.
Five-stage group-development model  the five distinct stages groups go through:
1. Forming stage  the first stage in group development, characterized by much uncertainty.
2. Storming stage  the second stage in group development, characterized by intragroup
conflict.
3. Norming stage  the third stage in group development, characterized by close relationships
and cohesiveness.
4. Performing stage  the fourth stage in group development, during which the group is fully
functional.
5. Adjourning stage  the final stage in group development for temporary groups,
characterized by concern with wrapping up activities rather than task performance.
Temporary groups with deadlines don’t seem to follow the usual five-stage model. Studies indicate
that they have their own unique sequencing of actions.
1. Their first meeting sets the group’s direction
2. This first phase of group activity is one of inertia
3. A transition takes place at the end of this first phase, which occurs exactly when the group has
used up half its allotted time
4. A transition initiates major changes.
5. A second phase of inertia follows the transition
6. The group’s last meeting is characterized by markedly accelerated activity.
This pattern is called the punctuated-equilibrium model  a set of phases that temporary groups go
through that involves transitions between inertia and activity.
3. Show how role requirements change in different situations.
Group property 1: Role  a set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone occupying a
given position in a social unit.
Role identity  certain attitudes and behaviors consistent with a role.
Role perception  an individual’s view of how he or she is supposed to act in a given situation.
Role expectations  how others believe a person should act in a given situation.
In the workplace, it can be helpful to look at the topic of role expectations through the perspective of
the psychological contract  an unwritten agreement that sets out what management expects from an
employee and vice versa.
Role conflict  a situation in which an individual is confronted by divergent role expectations.
4. Demonstrate how norms and status exert influence on an individual’s behavior.
Group property 2: Norms  acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by the
group’s members. Probably the most common group norm is a performance norm. Work groups
typically provide their members with explicit cues to how hard they should work, how to get the job
done, what their level of output should be, what level of punctuality is appropriate, and the like. These
norms are extremely powerful in affecting an individual employee’s performance. Other types of
norms include appearance norms, social arrangement norms, and resource allocation norms. As a
member of a group, you desire acceptance by the group. Because of your desire for acceptance, you
are susceptible to conforming to the group’s norms. There is considerable evidence that groups can
place strong pressures on individual members to change their attitudes and behaviors to conform the
group’s standard.
Reference groups  important groups to which individuals belong or hope to belong and with whose
norms individuals are likely to conform.
Conformity  the adjustment of one’s behavior to align with the norms of the group.
Deviant workplace behavior, also called antisocial behavior or workplace incivility  voluntary
behavior that violates significant organizational norms and, in so doing, threatens the well-being of the
organization or its members. Also called antisocial behavior or workplace incivility. It is likely to
flourish where it is supported by group norms. In addition, just being part of a group can increase an
individual’s deviant behavior.
Group property 3: Status  a socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members
by others, it differentiates group members.
Status characteristics theory  a theory which states that differences in status characteristics create
status hierarchies within groups. Status tends to be derived from one of three sources:
1. The power a person wields over others. Because they likely control the group’s resources,
people who control the outcomes of a group through their power tend to be perceived as high
status.
2. A person’s ability to contribute to a group’s goals. People whose contributions are critical
to the group’s success tend to have high status.
3. An individual’s personal characteristics. Someone whose personal characteristics are
positively valued by the group typically has higher status than someone who has fewer valued
attributes.
5. Show how group size affects group performance.
Group property 4: Size  twelve or more members is a large group, seven or less a small group.
One of the most important findings related to the size of a group has been labelled social loafing 
the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working
individually. There are several ways to prevent social loafing:
1. Set group goals so that the group has a common purpose to strive toward
2. Increase intergroup competition, which again focuses the group on the shared outcome
3. Engage in peer evaluation so that each person’s contribution to the group is evaluated by each
group member
4. If possible, distribute group rewards, in part, based on each member’s unique contributions
6. Contrast the benefits and disadvantages of cohesive groups.
Group property 5: Cohesiveness  the degree to which group members are attracted to each other
and are motivated to stay in the group. See relationships on page 244.
To encourage group cohesiveness, managers can:
1. Make the group smaller
2. Encourage agreement with group goals
3. Increase the time members spend together
4. Increase the status of the group and the perceived difficulty of attaining membership in the
group
5. Stimulate competition with other groups
6. Give rewards to the group rather than to individual members
7. Physically isolate the group.
7. Contrast the strengths and weaknesses of group decision making.
Strengths of group decision making:
•
Groups generate more complete information and knowledge.
•
They offer increased diversity of views.
•
Groups lead to increased acceptance of a solution.
Weaknesses of group decision making:
•
Conformity pressures in groups.
•
Group discussion can be dominated by one or a few members.
•
Group decisions suffer from ambiguous responsibility.
Whether groups are more effective than individuals depend on the criteria you use to define
effectiveness.
•
Accuracy  group decisions are generally more accurate than the decisions of the average
individual in a group, but they are less accurate than the judgements of the most accurate
group member.
•
Speed  individuals are superior.
•
Creativity  groups tend to be more effective than individuals.
•
Acceptance  the nod again goes to the group.
But effectiveness cannot be considered without also assessing efficiency. In terms of efficiency,
groups almost always stack up as a poor second to the individual decision maker.
Two by products of group decision making have the potential to affect a group’s ability to appraise
alternatives objectively and to arrive at quality decision solutions:
•
Groupthink  a phenomenon in which the norm for consensus overrides the realistic
appraisal of alternative courses of action. What can managers do to minimise groupthink? o
Monitor group size.
o Encourage group leaders to play an impartial role. Leaders should actively seek input
from all their members and avoid expressing their own opinions, especially in the
early stages of deliberation.
o
o
Appoint one group member to play the role of devil’s advocate.
Use exercises that stimulate active discussion of diverse alternatives without
threatening the group and intensifying identity protection.
Group shift  a change in decision risk between a group’s decision and an individual
decision that a member within the group would make; the shift can be toward either
conservatism or great risk.
8. Compare the effectiveness of interacting, brainstorming, nominal and electronic meeting groups.
Having discussed group decision making and its pros and cons, we now turn to the techniques by
which groups make decisions. These techniques reduce some of the dysfunctional aspects of group
decision making.
Interacting groups  typical groups in which members interact with each other face-to-face.
Brainstorming  an idea-generation process that specifically encourages any and all alternatives
while withholding any criticism of those alternatives. Research consistently shows that individuals
working alone generate more ideas than a group in a brainstorming session.
Nominal group technique  a group decision-making method in which individual members meet
face-to-face to pool their judgements in a systematic but independent fashion. A problem is presented
and then the group takes the following steps:
1. Members meet as a group, but before any discussion takes place, each member independently
writes down ideas on the problem.
2. After this silent period, each member presents one idea to the group. Each member takes a
turn, presenting a single idea, until all ideas have been presented and recorded. No discussion
takes place until all ideas have been recorded.
3. The group discusses the ideas for clarity and evaluates them.
4. Each group member silently and independently rank-orders the ideas. The idea with the
highest aggregate ranking determines the final decision.
Electronic meeting  a meeting in which members interact on computers, allowing for anonymity of
comments and aggregation of votes.
9. Evaluate evidence for cultural differences in group status and social loafing, as well as the effects
of diversity in groups.
American groups (individualistic) loaf more than Chinese groups (collectivistic).
Chapter 10: Understanding work teams
1. Analyze the growing popularity of using teams in organizations.
As organizations have restructured themselves to compete more effectively and efficiently, they have
turned to teams as a better way to use employee talents. Teams have the capability to quickly
assemble, deploy, refocus, and disband.
2. Contrast groups and teams.
Work group  a group
that interacts primarily to
share information and to
make decisions to help
each group member
perform within his or her
area of responsibility.
Work team  a group
whose individual efforts
result in performance that
is greater than the sum of the individual
inputs.
The extensive use of teams creates the potential for an organization to generate greater outputs with no
increase in inputs.
3. Compare and contrast four types of teams.
Teams can do a variety of things. They can make products, provide services, negotiate deals,
coordinate projects, offer advice, and make decisions. The four most common types of teams:
1. Problem-solving teams  groups of 5 to 12 employees from the same department who meet
for a few hours each week to discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency and the work
environment. In problem-solving teams, members share ideas or offer suggestions on how
work processes and methods can be improved; they rarely have the authority to unilaterally
implement any of their suggested actions.
2. Self-managed work teams  groups of 10 to 15 people who take on responsibilities of their
former supervisors. Typically, these tasks are involved in planning and scheduling work,
assigning tasks to members, making operating decisions, taking action on problems and
working with suppliers and customers.
3. Cross-functional teams  employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from
different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task.
4. Virtual teams  teams that use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed
members in order to achieve a common goal. For virtual teams to be effective, management
should ensure that:
Trust is established among team members.
Team progress is monitored closely.
The efforts and products of the virtual team are publicized throughout the
organization.
4. Identify the characteristics of effective teams.
The key components of effective teams can be subsumed into four general categories, see page 267!
1. The resources and other contextual influences that make teams effective.
2. The team’s composition.
3. Work design.
4. Process variables reflect those things that go on in the team that influences effectiveness.
The four contextual factors that appear to be most significantly related to team performance are:
•
Adequate resources
•
Effective leadership  especially important in multi-team systems  systems in which
different teams need to coordinate their efforts to produce a desired outcome.
•
A climate of trust
•
A performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions
The team composition category includes variables that relate to how teams should be staffed:
•
Abilities of members  to perform effectively, a team requires three different types of skills:
1. Technical expertise
2. Problem-solving and decision-making skills
3. Interpersonal skills
•
Personality of members  three of the Big Five traits are especially important for team
performance, namely conscientiousness, openness to experience and agreeableness.
•
Allocation of roles  see page 271.
•
Diversity of members  the key is for diverse teams to communicate what they uniquely know
and also what they don’t know. Organizational demography  the degree to which
members of a work unit share a common demographic attribute, such as age, sex, race,
educational level or length of service in an organization, and the impact of this attribute on
turnover.
•
Size of teams  the most effective teams have five to nine members.
•
Member preferences  high performing teams are likely to be composed of people who prefer
working as part of a group.
These work design characteristics motivate because they increase member’s sense of responsibility
and ownership of the work and because they make the work more interesting to perform:
•
Freedom
•
Autonomy
•
Skill variety
•
Task identity
•
Task significance
Process variables:
Potential group effectiveness + Process gains – Process losses = Actual group effectiveness
•
Common plan and purpose  it provides direction and guidance under any and all conditions.
Effective teams also show reflexivity  a team characteristic of reflecting on and adjusting
the master plan when necessary.
•
Specific goals  must be specific, measurable, realistic and challenging.
•
•
Team efficacy  teams have confidence in themselves.
Mental models  team member’s knowledge and beliefs about how the work gets done by the
team.
•
Conflict levels  effective teams can be characterized as having an appropriate level of
conflict, task conflicts may be helpful, interpersonal conflicts are not.
•
Social loafing  successful teams make members individually and jointly accountable for the
team’s purpose, goals, and approach.
5. Show how organizations can create team players.
The following are the primary options managers have for trying to turn individuals into team players:
•
Selection: hiring team players  make team skills one of the interpersonal skills in the hire
process.
•
Training: creating team players  individualistic people can learn.
•
Rewarding: providing incentives to be a good team player  encourage cooperative efforts
rather than competitive (individual) ones and continue to recognize individual contributions
while still emphasizing the importance of teamwork.
6. Decide when to use individuals instead of teams.
It has been suggested that three tests be applied to see if a team fits the situation.
1. Can the work be done better by more than one person? A good indicator is the complexity of
the work and the need for different perspectives.
2. Does the work create a common purpose or set of goals for the people in the group that is more
than the aggregate of individual goals?
3. Are the members of the group interdependent? Using teams makes sense when there is
interdependence between tasks – when the success of the whole depends on the success of
each one and the success of each one depends on the success of the others.
7. Show how the understanding of teams differ in a global context.
Chapter 11: Communication
Communication  the transference and understanding of meaning.
1. Identify the main functions of communication.
Communication serves four major functions within a group or organization:
•
It acts to control member behavior in several ways.
•
It fosters motivation by clarifying to employees what is to be done, how well they are doing,
and what can be done to improve performance if it’s below expectations.
•
It provides a release for the emotional expression of feelings and for fulfilment of social needs.
•
It provides the information that individuals and groups need to make decisions by transmitting
the data to identify and evaluate alternative choices.
•
It reduces uncertainty
•
It coordinates actions
Effective communication is crucial for task performance.
2. Describe the communication process and distinguish between formal and informal communication.
Communication process  the steps between a source and a receiver that result in the transfer and
understanding of meaning. The key parts of this model are:
•
•
The sender initiates a message by encoding a thought.
The message is the actual physical product from the sender’s encoding.
•
The channel is the medium through which the message travels. It is selected by the sender,
who must determine whether to use a formal or informal channel:
o
Formal channels  communication channels established by an organization to
transmit messages related to the professional activities of members.
o
Informal channels  communication channels that are created spontaneously and
that emerge as responses to individual choices.
•
The receiver is the object to whom the message is directed.
•
But before the message can be received, the symbols in it must be translated into a form that
can be understood by the deceiver  decoding.
•
Noise represents communication barriers that distort the clarity of the message.
•
Feedback is the check on how successful we have been in transferring our message as
originally intended. It determines whether understanding has been achieved. A return message
regarding the initial communication.
3. Contrast downward, upward, and lateral communication and provide examples of each.
Communication can flow vertically or laterally. The vertical dimension can be further divided into
downward and upward directions.
•
Downward communication  communication that flows from one level of a group or
organization to a lower level. The best communicators are those who explain the reasons
behind their downward communications, but also solicit upward communication from the
employees they supervise.
•
Upward communication  communication that flows to a higher level in the group or
organization. To engage in effective upward communication, try to reduce distractions,
communicate in headlines not paragraphs, support your headlines with actionable items and
prepare an agenda to make sure you use your boss’s attention well.
•
Lateral communication  when communication takes place among members of the same
work group, among members of work groups at the same level, among managers at the same
level, or among any other horizontally equivalent personnel. It is often necessary to save time
and facilitate coordination.
4. Contrast oral, written and nonverbal communication.
There are three basic methods to transfer meaning:
•
Oral communication
o Advantages: speed and feedback.
o
Disadvantage: the more people a message must pass through, the greater the potential
distortion and misunderstandings.
•
Written communication
o Advantages: often tangible and verifiable. Well thought out, logical and clear.
o
•
Disadvantage: time-consuming and lacks feedback.
Nonverbal communication  the two most important messages that body language conveys
are the extent to which an individual likes another and is interested in their views and the
relative perceived status between a sender and receiver. Intonations or emphasis we give to
words. Facial expressions also convey a meaning. The way individuals space themselves in
terms of physical distance also has a meaning.
o
o
Advantages: supports other communications and provides observable expression of
emotions and feelings
Disadvantage: misperception of body language or gesture can influence receiver’s
interpretation of message.
5. Contrast formal communication networks and the grapevine.
Formal organizational networks can be condensed into three common small groups of five people
each.
•
•
Chain  rigidly follows the formal chain of command.
Wheel  relies on a central figure to act as the conduit for all the group’s communication.
•
All-channel  permits all group members to actively communicate with each other, so self
managed teams.
Grapevine  an organization’s informal communication network. It has three main characteristics:
1. It is not controlled by management, so informal.
2. It is perceived by most employees as being more believable and reliable than formal
communiqués issued by top management.
3. It is largely used to serve the self-interests of people within it.
Rumours emerge as a response to situations that are important to us, when there is ambiguity, and
under conditions that arouse anxiety. The fact that work situations frequently contain these three
elements explain why rumours flourish in organizations.
The grapevine is an important part of any group or organization communication network. It gives
managers a feel for the morale of their organization, identifies issues that employees consider
important, and helps tap into employee anxieties. The grapevine also serves employees’ needs.
Reducing rumours:
•
Announce timetables for making important decisions
•
Explain decisions and behaviors that may appear inconsistent or secretive
•
Emphasize the downside, as well as the upside, of current decisions and future plans
•
Openly discuss worst-case possibilities – they are almost never as anxiety-provoking as the
unspoken fantasy
6. Analyse the advantages and challenges of electronic communication.
Electronic communications include:
•
E-mail uses the internet to transmit and receive computer-generated text and documents.
o Advantages: quickly written, sent, and stored, and it has low costs for distribution.
o
Disadvantages:
Misinterpreting the message
Not appropriate for communicating negative messages
Overuse of e-mail
Removes inhibitions and can cause emotional responses and flaming, it is
difficult to get emotional state understood
Privacy concerns
•
Instant messaging and text messaging
o
Advantages: fast and inexpensive
o
Disadvantages: intrusive, distracting and unsecure, can be seen as too informal
•
Networking software
•
Internet or web logs  a website where entries are written, generally displayed in reverse
chronological order, about news, events and personal diary entries.
o Disadvantages: blogs could be construed as harmful to a company’s reputation.
•
Video conferencing  permits employees in an organization to have meetings with people at
different locations.
o Advantages: alternative to expensive and time-consuming travel.
Knowledge management (KM)  the process of organizing and distributing an organization’s
collective wisdom so the right information gets to the right people at the right time. When done
properly, KM provides an organization with both a competitive edge and improved organizational
performance because it makes its employees smarter.
7. Show how channel richness underlies the choice of communication channel.
A model of media richness has been developed to explain channel selection among managers.
Research has found that channels differ in their capacity to convey information. Some are rich in that
they have the ability to:
1. Handle multiple cues simultaneously
2. Facilitate rapid feedback
3. Be very personal
Channel richness  the amount of information that can be transmitted during a communication
episode.
8. Identify common barriers to effective communication.
A number of barriers can retard or distort effective communications:
•
Filtering  a sender’s manipulation of information so that it will be seen more favourably by
the receiver.
•
Selective perception  the receivers selectively see and hear based on their needs,
motivations, experience, background and other personal characteristics.
•
Information overload  a condition in which information inflow exceeds an individual’s
processing capacity.
•
Emotions  how the receiver feels at the time of receipt of a communication influences how
they interpret it.
•
•
Language
Communication apprehension  undue tension and anxiety about oral communication,
written communication, or both.
•
Gender differences
9. Show how to overcome the potential problems in cross-cultural communication.
Cross-cultural factors clearly create the potential for increased communication problems. There are
four specific problems related to language difficulties in cross-cultural communications:
1. Barriers caused by semantics  words mean different things to different people.
2. Barriers caused by word connotations  words imply different things in different languages.
3. Barriers caused by tone differences
4. Barriers caused by differences among perceptions  people who speak different languages
actually view the world in different ways.
Cultures tend to differ in the importance to which context influences the meaning that individuals take
from what is actually said or written in light of who the other person is.
•
High-context cultures  cultures that rely heavily on nonverbal and subtle situational cues in
communication.
•
Low-context cultures  cultures that rely heavily on words to convey meaning in
communication.
The following four rules can be helpful to reduce misperceptions, misinterpretations and
misevaluations when communicating with people from a different culture:
1. Assume differences until similarity is proven.
2. Emphasize description rather than interpretation or evaluation.
3. Practice empathy.
4. Treat your interpretations as a working hypothesis.
How can you communicate more stickily?
•
Simplicity
•
Unexpectedness
•
Concreteness
•
Credibility
•
•
Emotional
Stories
When should you use the SUCCES principles?
When remembering its critical
When word of mouth is critical
When you don’t have much power
Chapter 12: Basic approaches to leadership
1. Define leadership and contrast leadership and management.
Leadership  the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals.
•
Formal influence  provided by the possession of managerial rank in an organization.
•
Non-sanctioned leadership  provided outside the formal structure of the organization.
Management  use of authority inherent in designated formal rank to obtain compliance from
organizational members.
Organizations need strong leadership and strong management for optimal effectiveness.
•
Leaders to challenge the status quo, to create visions of the future, and to inspire
organizational members to want to achieve the visions  coping with change.
•
Managers to formulate detailed plans, create efficient organizational structures and oversee
day-to-day operations  coping with complexity.
2. Summarize the conclusions of trait theories.
Trait theories of leadership  theories that consider personality, social, physical, or intellectual
traits to differentiate leaders from non-leaders.
•
Traits can predict leadership  extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience and
emotional intelligence.
•
Traits do a better job at predicting the emerge of leaders and the appearance of leadership than
in actually distinguishing between effective and ineffective leaders.
Physical traits are height, gender, face, hair, age, weight etcetera. Height is related to leadership:
•
Taller people are more likely leaders
•
Get higher salaries
•
Have a more social esteem
3. Identify the central tenets and main limitations of behavioral theories.
Behavioral theories of leadership  theories proposing that specific behaviors differentiate leaders
from non-leaders.
Trait theories assume that leaders are born rather than made. However, if there were specific behaviors
that identified leaders, then we could teach leadership: we could design programmes that implanted
these behavioral patterns in individuals who desired to be effective leaders.
Ohio State studies  the most comprehensive and replicated of the behavioral theories resulted from
research that began at Ohio State University in the late 1940’s. Researchers sought to identify
independent dimensions of leader behavior:
•
Initiating structure  the extent to which a leader is likely to define and structure his or her
role and those of subordinators in the search for goal attainment.
•
Consideration  the extent to which a leader is likely to have job relationships characterized
by mutual trust, respect for subordinates’ ideas, and regard for their feelings.
University of Michigan studies  also came up with two dimensions of leadership behavior:
•
Employee-oriented leader  leader who emphasizes interpersonal relations, takes a personal
interest in the needs of employees, and accepts individual differences among members.
•
Production-oriented leader  a leader who emphasizes technical or task aspects of the job.
Drawing from the Ohio State and Michigan studies, Blake and Mouton proposed a managerial grid
based on the styles of concern for people and concern for production  a nine-by-nine matrix
outlining 81 different leadership styles.
4. Assess contingency theories of leadership by their level of support
Leadership effectiveness is dependent on the situation and another to be able to isolate those
situational situations. Several approaches to isolating key situational variables have proven more
successful than others and, as a result, have gained wider recognition.
Fiedler contingency model  theory that effective groups depend on a proper match between a
leader’s style of interacting with subordinates and the degree to which the situation gives control and
influence to the leader.
Fiedler believes a key factor in leadership success is the individual’s basic leadership style. So he
begins by trying to find out what that basic style is. Fiedler created the least preferred co-worker
(LPC) questionnaire for this purpose  an instrument that purports to measure whether a person is
task- or relationship-oriented.
After an individual’s basic leadership style has been assessed through the LPC questionnaire, it is
necessary to match the leader with the situation. Fiedler has identified three contingency dimensions
that define the key situational factors that determine leadership effectiveness:
1. Leader-member relations  degree of confidence, trust, and respect subordinates have in
their leader.
2. Task structure  degree to which job assignments are procedurised (structured or not)
3. Position power  influence derived from one’s formal structural position in the organization,
which includes power to hire, fire, discipline, promote and give salary increases.
The next step in the Fiedler model is to evaluate the situation in terms of these three contingency
variables. Task-oriented leaders perform best in situations of high and low control, while relationship
oriented leaders perform best in moderate control situations.
Fiedler views an individual’s leadership style as being fixed, therefore there are only two ways in
which to improve leader effectiveness:
•
Change the leader to fit the situation.
•
Change the situation to fit the leader.
There is ample evidence to support Fiedler’s conclusions, but there are problems with the LPC
questionnaire and the practical use of the model:
•
•
The logic underlying the LPC is not well understood
Studies have shown that respondent’s LPC scores are not stable
•
The contingency variables are complex and difficult for practitioners to assess
More recently, Fiedler has reconceptualized his original theory. Cognitive resource theory  a
theory of leadership which states that stress unfavorably affects a situation and that intelligence and
experience can reduce the influence of stress on the leader. It is the level of stress in the situation that
determines whether an individual’s intelligence or experience will contribute to leadership
performance.
Hersey and Blanchard’s situational leadership theory (SLT)  a contingency theory that focuses
on follower’s readiness.
The emphasis on the followers in leadership effectiveness reflects the reality that it is the followers
who accept or reject the leader. Readiness refers to the extent to which people have the ability and
willingness to accomplish a specific task.
Hersey and Blanchard identify four specific leader behaviors – from highly directive to highly laissezfaire.
1. If followers are unable and unwilling to do a task, the leader needs to give clear and specific
directions.
2. If followers are unable and willing, the leader needs to display high task orientation to
compensate for the follower’s lack of ability and high relationship orientation to get the
followers to ‘buy into’ the leader’s desires.
3. If followers are able and unwilling, the leader needs to use a supportive and participative style.
4. If followers are both able and willing, the leader doesn’t need to do much.
Internal ambiguities and inconsistencies in the model itself as well as problems with research
methodology in tests of the theory are reasons why the model is disappointing.
Path-goal theory  a theory which states that it is the leader’s job to assist followers in attaining their
goals and to provide the necessary direction and/or support to ensure that their goals are compatible
with the overall objectives of the group or organization. The term path-goal is derived from the belief
that effective leaders clarify the path to help their followers get from where they are to the
achievement of their work goals and to make the journey along the path easier by reducing roadblocks.
House identified four leadership behaviors:
1. Directive leader  lets followers know what is expected of them, schedules work to be done
and gives specific guidance as to how to accomplish tasks.
2. Supportive leader  is friendly and shows concern for the needs of followers.
3. Participative leader  consults with followers and uses their suggestions before making a
decision.
4. Achievement-oriented leader  sets challenging goals and expects followers to perform at
their highest level.
In contrast to Fiedler, House assumes leaders are flexible and that the same leader can display any or
Due to the complexity of the theory, testing
path-goal theory has not proved to be easy.
all of these behaviors depending on the situation.
5. Contrast the interactive theories path-goal and leader-member exchange.
Leader/member exchange (LMX) theory  a theory that supports leaders’ creation of in-groups and
out-groups, subordinates with in-group status will have higher performance ratings, less turnover, and
greater job satisfaction.
Even though it is the leader who is doing the choosing, it is the follower’s characteristics that are
driving the leader’s categorization decision. The positive findings for in-group members shouldn’t be
totally surprising, given our knowledge of self-fulfilling prophecy.
6. Identify the situational variables in the leader-participation model
The way a leader makes decisions is as important as what she or he decides. Victor Vroom and Phillip
Yetton developed a leader-participation model  a leadership theory that provides a set of rules to
determine the form and amount of participative decision making in different situations.
The model is normative – it provides a sequential set of rules that should be followed in determining
the form and amount of participation in decision making, as determine by different types of situations.
It is a decision tree incorporating twelve contingencies and five alternative leadership styles: page 329.
7. Assess the basic similarities and differences of leadership across Europe.
Most studies detect leadership patterns between European countries characterized by similar values
and behavior. One investigation identified three clusters:
•
Cluster 1  The Anglo culture (UK and Ireland) has similar values and expectations to the
US. Leadership is seen as achieving results through empowering and motivating people.
•
Cluster 2  Scandinavian countries share the same values as the Angelo cluster but differ in
one respect that affects their whole approach to leadership. Instead of the competitive
individualism of the Anglos, there is a concern for quality of life in general. For this cluster,
leadership is more about relationships than results.
•
Cluster 3  Mediterranean cluster (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, France). In these
countries, it is claimed, leaders are seen as and expected to be more powerful.
Other studies have clustered Europe into east and west and north and south:
•
East  power differentials are expected or accepted and leaders that, for example, are born
into an influential family are valued. Autocratic style is more accepted.
•
West  equality and achievement is highly prized, so leaders that have humble beginnings
and work their way to the top tend to be respected. Leaders have a participative style.
•
North  leaders favor greater involvement with subordinates. Coaching leader is preferred.
•
South  employees prefer to rely more on supervisors. Direct leader is preferred.
8. Demonstrate the importance of cultural awareness for global leaders.
The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness study found that some traits (e.g.
visionary, intelligent, trustworthy and decisive) are endorsed universally as positive attributes for
leaders, whereas endorsement of other traits is more culturally contingent (e.g. compassionate,
domineering, orderly and risk taker).
The implication for leadership practice is that when moving from a low-power distance country to a
high-power distance, the leadership style may need to move from democratic to autocratic.
An example that identifies three competencies of effective global leaders:
•
Personal mastery  a high degree of self-awareness to monitor their own behavior, build on
their strengths and fill gaps in their competencies.
•
Provide organizational leadership by creating internal and external networks of influence,
including alliances and partnerships as well as formal acquisitions and mergers.
•
Building organizational and individual competence by seeking and using differences of
thought, style and culture around the globe.
Chapter 12.1: Contemporary issues in leadership
1. Show how framing influences leadership effectiveness.
Traditional approaches to leadership – those we considered in chapter 12 – ignore the importance of
the leader as a communicator. Framing  a way of using language to manage meaning. It is a way
for leaders to influence how others see and understand events. It is especially important to an aspect of
leadership ignored in the traditional theories: the ability of the leader to inspire others to act beyond
their immediate self-interests.
The next two contemporary leadership theories view leaders as individuals who inspire followers
through their words, ideas and behaviors.
2. Define charismatic leadership and show how it influences followers.
Charismatic leadership theory  a leadership theory which states that followers make attributions
of heroic or extraordinary leadership abilities when they observe certain behaviors. The four
characteristics of the charismatic leader are:
1. Change-oriented  They have a vision
2. Role model  They are willing to take personal risks to achieve that vision
3. They are sensitive to follower needs
4. They exhibit behaviors that are out of the ordinary.
It is true that individuals are born with traits that make them charismatic. Research suggests that
personality is also related to charismatic leadership. Charismatic leaders are likely to be extraverted,
self-confident and achievement-oriented.
Most experts believe that individuals also can be trained to exhibit charismatic behaviors and can thus
enjoy the benefits that accompany being labeled as a charismatic leader. A person can learn to become
charismatic by following a three-step process:
1. An individual needs to develop an aura of charisma by maintaining an optimistic view, using
passion as a catalyst for generating enthusiasm, and communicating with the whole body, not
just with words.
2. An individual draws others in by creating a bond that inspires others to follow.
3. The individual brings out the potential in followers by tapping into their emotions.
Charismatic leaders influence followers via a four-step process:
1. Articulating an appealing vision  a long-term strategy for attaining a goal or goals. The
vision provides a sense of continuity for followers by linking the present with a better future
for the organization. A vision is incomplete unless it has an accompanying vision statement
 a formal articulation of an organization’s vision or mission.
2. Communicating high performance expectations and expressing confidence that followers can
attain them. This enhances follower self-esteem and self-confidence.
3. Conveying, through words and actions, a new set of values and, by his or her behavior, setting
an example for followers to imitate.
4. Engaging in emotion-inducing and often unconventional behavior to demonstrate courage and
convictions about the vision. There is an emotional contagion in charismatic leadership
whereby followers catch the emotions their leader is conveying.
A review of various definition finds that a vision differs from other forms of direction setting in
several ways:
A vision has a clear and compelling imagery that offers an innovative way to improve, which
recognizes and draws on traditions, and connects to actions that people can take to realize change.
Vision taps people’s emotions and energy. Properly articulated, a vision creates the enthusiasm that
people have for sporting events and other leisure-time activities, bringing this energy and commitment
to the workplace.
The key properties of a vision seem to be inspirational possibilities that are value centered, realizable,
with superior imagery and articulation.
•
•
Visions should be able to create possibilities that are inspirational and unique and that offer a
new order that can produce organizational distinction.
A vision is likely to fail if it doesn’t offer a view of the future that is clearly and demonstrably
better for the organization and its members.
•
Desirable visions fit the times and circumstances and reflect the uniqueness of the
organization.
•
People in the organization must also believe that the vision is attainable. It should be perceived
as challenging yet doable.
•
Also, visions have that clear articulation and powerful imagery are more easily grasped and
accepted.
Charisma may not always be generalizable, its effectiveness may depend on the situation. Charisma
appears to be most successful when the follower’s task has an ideological component and the
environment involves a high degree of stress and uncertainty.
Another situational factor limiting charisma appears to be the level in the organization. It probably
has more direct relevance to explaining the success and failures of chief executives than of lower-level
management, because the visions tend to be created by top executives. Lower-level managers can
create visions to lead their units, but it is just harder to define such visions and align them with the
larger goals of the organization as a whole.
Charismatic leadership may affect some more followers than others. People are especially receptive to
charismatic leadership when they sense a crisis, when they are under stress or when they fear for their
lives. Some people’s personalities are especially susceptible to charismatic leadership.
Unfortunately, charismatic leaders who are larger-than-life don’t necessarily act in the best interest of
their organization. Many of these leaders used their power to remake their companies in their own
image. The perils of this ego-driven charisma at is worst are leaders who allow their self-interest and
personal goals to override the goals of the organization.
Level-5 leaders  leaders who are fiercely ambitious and driven but whose ambition is directed
toward their company rather than themselves. They have four basic leadership qualities:
1. Individual capability
2. Team skills
3. Managerial competence
4. Ability to stimulate others to high performance
5. Plus a fifth dimension: a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
Leaders don’t necessarily need to be charismatic to be effective, especially where charisma is
enmeshed with an outsized ego.
3. Contrast transformational leadership and transactional leadership and discuss how
transformational leadership works.
Most of the leadership theories presented in Chapter 12, for instance the Ohio State studies, Fiedler’s
model and path-goal theory have concerned transactional leaders  leaders who guide or motivate
their followers in the direction of established goals by clarifying role and task requirement.
Transformational leaders  leaders who inspire followers to transcend their own self-interests and
who are capable of having a profound and extraordinary effect on followers. They pay attention to the
concerns and defines the characteristics that differentiate these two types of leaders.
Transformational and transactional leadership complement each other, they’re not equally important.
Transformational leadership builds on top of transactional leadership and produces levels of follower
effort and performance that go beyond what would occur with transactional approach alone.
Transformational leaders
encourage their followers to
be more innovative and
creative. Followers of
transformational leaders are
more likely to pursue
ambitious goals, be familiar
with and agree on the
strategic goals of the
organization and believe
that the goals they are
pursuing are personally
important. Vision also
explains part of the effect
of transformational
leadership, because one
study found that vision was
even more important than
charismatic (effusive,
dynamic, lively)
communication style in explaining the success of entrepreneurial firms. Finally, it also engenders
commitment on the part of followers and instills in them a greater sense of trust in the leader.
In summary, the overall evidence indicates that transformational leadership is more strongly correlated
than transactional leadership with lower turnover rates, higher productivity, lower employee stress and
burnout and higher employee satisfaction. Like charisma, it appears that transformational leadership
can be learned.
Measures of charisma and transformational leadership may be roughly equivalent.
4. Define authentic leadership and show why ethics and trust are vital to effective leadership.
Although charismatic leadership theories and transformational leadership theories have added greatly
to our understanding of effective leadership, they do not explicitly deal with the role of ethics and
trust.
Authentic leaders  leaders who know who they are, know what they believe in and value, and act
on those values and beliefs openly and candidly. Their followers would consider them to be ethical
people. The primary quality, therefore, produced by authentic leadership is trust. They share
information, encourage open communication and stick to their ideals.
It is a promising way to think about ethics and trust in leadership because it focuses on the moral
aspects of being a leader. Transformational or charismatic leaders can have a vision, and communicate
it persuasively, but sometimes the vision is wrong, or the leader is more concerned with his own needs
or pleasures.
Unethical leaders are more likely to use their charisma to enhance power over followers, directed
toward self-serving ends. Ethical leaders are considered to use their charisma in a socially constructive
way to serve others.
Leadership effectiveness needs to address the means a leader uses in trying to achieve goals, as well as
the moral content of those goals. Socialized charismatic leadership  a leadership concept that
states that leaders convey values that are other-centered versus self-centered and who role model
ethical conduct.
Trust  a positive expectation that another will not act opportunistically. The two most important
elements of this definition are that it implies familiarity and risk.
The term opportunistic refers to the inherent risk and vulnerability in any trusting relationship. Trust
involves making oneself vulnerable as when, for example, we disclose intimate information or rely on
another’s promises. By its very nature, trust provides the opportunity for disappointment or to be taken
advantage of. But trust is not taking risk per se, rather it is a willingness to take risk.
The five key dimensions that underlie the concept of trust are:
1. Integrity  honesty and truthfulness.
2. Competence  encompasses an individual’s technical and interpersonal knowledge and skills.
3. Consistency  relates to an individual’s reliability, predictability and good judgment in
handling situations.
4. Loyalty  the willingness to protect and save face for another person.
5. Openness
Part of leader’s task has been, and continues to be, working with people to find and solve problems,
but whether leaders gain access to the knowledge and creative thinking they need to solve problems
depends on how much people trust them. Trust and trust-worthiness modulate the leader’s access to
knowledge and cooperation.
There are three types of trust in organizational relationships:
Deterrence-based trust  trust based on fear of reprisal if the trust is violated. It will work only to
the degree that punishment is possible, consequences are clear, and the punishment is actually imposed
if the trust is violated. Inconsistent behavior is likely to irrevocably break the trust.
Knowledge-based trust  trust based on behavioral predictability that comes from a history of
interaction. It exists when you have adequate information about someone to understand them well
enough to be able to accurately predict is or her behavior. Trust is not necessarily broken by
inconsistent behavior.
Identification-based trust  trust based on a mutual understanding of each other’s intentions and
appreciation of each other’s wants and desires. Trust exists because the parties understand each other’s
intentions and appreciate each other’s wants and desires. This mutual understanding is developed to
the point that each can effectively act for the other. Controls are minimal at this level.
Some principles for better understanding the creation of both trust and mistrust:
•
Mistrust drives out trust
•
Trust begets trust
•
Trust can be regained
•
Mistrusting groups self-destruct
•
Mistrust generally reduces productivity
6. Demonstrate the importance of mentoring, self-leadership and virtual leadership to our
understanding of leadership.
Many leaders create mentoring relationships. A mentor is a senior employee who sponsors and
supports a less-experienced employee, called a protégé. Successful mentors are good teachers.
Mentoring relationships have been described in terms of two broad categories of functions, namely
career functions and psychosocial functions, see page 354. It does not appear that having a mentor is
important to one’s career.
Self-leadership  a set of processes through which individuals control their own behavior. And
effective leaders help their followers to lead themselves. They do this by developing leadership
capacity in others and nurturing followers so they no longer need to depend on formal leaders for
direction and motivation.
In face-to-face communications, harsh words can be softened by nonverbal action. A smile and
comforting gesture, for instance, can lessen the blow behind strong words like disappointed,
unsatisfactory, inadequate or below expectations. That nonverbal component doesn’t exist with online
interactions. The structure of words in a digital communication also has the power to motivate or
demotivate the receiver. Online leaders confront unique challenges, the greatest of which appears to be
developing and maintaining trust.
7. Identify when leadership may not be necessary.
There are two perspectives that challenge the widely accepted belief in the importance of leadership.
The first argument proposes that leadership is more about appearances than reality. You don’t have to
be an effective leader as long as you look like one. The second argument directly attacks the notion
that some leadership will always be effective, regardless of the situation. This argument contends that
in many situations, whatever actions leaders exhibit are irrelevant.
Attribution theory of leadership  a leadership theory which says that leadership is merely an
attribution that people make about other individuals. So what is important in being characterized as an
effective leader is projecting the appearance of being a leader rather than focusing on actual
accomplishments.
Certain individual, job and organizational variables can act as substitutes for leadership or neutralize
the leader’s influence on their followers. Neutralizers make it impossible for leader behavior to make
any difference to follower outcomes. They negate the leader’s influence. Substitutes, however, make a
leader’s influence not only impossible but also unnecessary. They act as a replacement for the leaders
influence.
It is important to recognize explicitly that leadership is just another independent variable in our overall
OB model. The validity of substitutes and neutralizers is controversial.
8. Explain how to find and create effective leaders.
9. Assess whether charismatic and transformational leadership generalize across cultures.
A number of the elements making up transformational leadership appear to be associated with
effective leadership, regardless of what country the leader is in. This conclusion is very important
because it flies in the face of the contingency view that leadership style needs to adapt to cultural
differences.
Vision, foresight, providing encouragement, trustworthiness, dynamism, positiveness and
proactiveness are the elements of transformational leadership that appear universal. The result led two
members of the GLOBE team conclude that effective business leaders in any country are expected by
their subordinates to provide a powerful and proactive vision to guide the company into the future,
strong motivational skills to stimulate all employees to fulfill the vision, and excellent planning skills
to assist in implementing the vision.
Chapter 13: Power and politics
1. Define power and contrast leadership and power.
Power  a capacity that A has to influence the behavior of B so that B acts in accordance with A’s
wishes. This definition implies a potential that need not be actualized to be effective, and a
dependency relationship.
Probably the most important aspect of power is that it is a function of dependency  B’s relationship
to A when A possesses something that B requires.
Leaders use power as a means of attaining group goals. Leaders achieve goals, and power is a means
of facilitating their achievement.
Differences between power and leadership:
•
Goal compatibility  power does not require goal compatibility, merely dependence.
Leadership, on the other hand, requires some congruence between the goals of the leader and
those being led.
•
Direction of influence  Leadership focuses on the downward influence on one’s followers.
It minimizes the importance of lateral and upward influence patterns. Power does not.
•
Research emphasis  Leadership research, for the most part, emphasizes style. In contrast,
the research on power has tended to encompass a broader area and to focus on tactics for
gaining compliance. It has gone beyond the individual as the exerciser of power because
power can be used by groups as well as by individuals to control other individuals or groups.
2. Contrast the five bases of power.
We can divide the bases or sources of power into two general groupings – formal and personal – and
then break each of these down into more specific categories.
•
Formal power is based on an individual’s position in an organization. It can come from the
ability to coerce or reward, or it can come from formal authority.
Coercive power  a power base that is dependent on fear. If you can remove
something of positive value from another or inflict something of negative value, you
have coercive power over that person.
Reward power  compliance achieved based on the ability to distribute rewards that
others view as valuable. If you can give someone something of positive value or
remove something of negative value, you have reward power over that person.
Legitimate power  the power a person receives as a result of his or her position in
the formal hierarchy of an organization. Positions of authority include coercive and
reward powers. Legitimate power, however, is broader than the power of coerce and
reward. Specifically, it includes acceptance by members in an organization of the
authority of a position.
•
Personal power is power that comes from an individual’s unique characteristics.
Expert power  influence based on special skills or knowledge.
Referent power  influence based on possession by an individual of desirable
resources or personal traits. It develops out of admiration of another and a desire to be
like that person.
The personal sources of power are most effective. Both expert and referent power are positively
related to employees’ satisfaction with supervision, their organizational commitment and their
performance, whereas reward and legitimate power seem to be unrelated to these outcomes. Moreover,
one source of formal power, coercive power, actually can backfire in that it is negatively related to
employee satisfaction and commitment.
The greater B’s dependency on A, the greater the power A has over B. If you an create a monopoly by
controlling information, prestige, or anything else that others crave, they become dependent on you.
Conversely, the more that you can expand your options, the less power you place in the hands of
others.
Dependency is increased when the resource you control is important, scarce and non-substitutable.
3. Identify nine power or influence tactics and their contingencies.
Power tactics  ways in which individuals translate power bases into specific actions. Research has
identified nine distinct influence tactics:
•
Legitimacy  relying on one’s authority position or stressing that a request is in accordance
with organizational policies or rules
•
Rational persuasion  presenting logical arguments and factual evidence to demonstrate that
a request is reasonable.
•
Inspirational appeals  developing emotional commitment by appealing to a target’s values,
needs, hopes and aspirations.
•
Consultation  increasing the target’s motivation and support by involving him or her in
deciding how the plan or change will be accomplished.
•
Exchange  rewarding the target with benefits or favors in exchange for following a request.
•
Personal appeals  asking for compliance based on friendship or loyalty.
•
Ingratiation  using flattery, praise, or friendly behavior prior to making a request.
•
Pressure  using warnings, repeated demands and threats.
•
Coalitions  enlisting the aid of other people to persuade the target or using support of others
as a reason for the target to agree.
Some tactics are more effective than others. Specifically, evidence indicates that rational persuasion,
inspirational appeals and consultation tend to be the most effective. On the other hand, pressure tends
to frequently backfire and is typically the least effective of the nine tactics. See page 378 for the
preferred power tactics by influence direction.
It has been found that using a single soft tactic is more effective than using a single hard tactic and that
combining two soft tactics or a soft tactic and rational persuasion is more effective than any single
tactic or a combination of hard tactics.
Political skill  the ability to influence others in such a way as to enhance one’s objectives.
•
Politically skilled are more effective in their use of influence tactics, regardless of the tactics
they’re using.
•
More effective when the stakes are high.
•
Politically skilled are able to exert their influence without others detecting it, which is a key
element in being effective.
4. Distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate political behavior.
When employees in organizations convert their power into action, we describe them as being engaged
in politics. Those with good political skills have the ability to use their bases of power effectively.
Political behavior  activities that are not required as a part of a person’s formal role in the
organization but that influence, or attempt to influence, the distribution of advantages and
disadvantages within the organization.
Legitimate political behavior  normal everyday politics – complaining, bypassing.
Illegitimate political behavior  extreme political behavior that violates the implied rules of the
game – sabotage, whistleblowing, and symbolic protest.
It is possible for an organization to be politics free, if all members of that organization hold the same
goals and interests, if organizational resources are not scarce, and if performance outcomes are
completely clear and objective. But that doesn’t describe the organizational world most of us live in.
5. Identify the causes and consequences of political behavior.
There are factors that influence political behavior and provide favorable outcomes  increased
rewards and averted punishments.
Individual factors
High self-monitors
Internal locus of control  are more prone to take a proactive stance and attempt to
manipulate situations in their favor.
High Mach personality  is comfortable using politics as a means to further his or her selfinterest.
Organizational investment  the more a person has invested in the organization in terms of
expectations of increased future benefits, the more that person has to lose if forced out and the
less likely he or she is to use illegitimate means.
Perceived job alternatives  the more alternative job opportunities an individual has, the ore
likely that individual is to risk illegitimate political actions.
Expectations of success  if an individual has a low expectation of success in using
illegitimate means, it is unlikely that he or she will attempts to do so.
Organizational
factors
Reallocation of resources  decline of resources results in employees to engage in political
actions to safeguard what they have.
Promotion opportunities
Low trust
Role ambiguity
Unclear performance evaluation system  the greater the likelihood that an employee can get
away with politicking.
Zero-sum reward practices
Democratic decision making
High performance pressures  employees will do whatever is necessary to make sure the
numbers come out favorably.
Self-serving senior managers
Chapter 14: Conflict and negotiation
1. Define conflict.
Conflict  a process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected,
or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about. The point in an ongoing
activity when an interaction crosses over to become an interparty conflict.
It encompasses a wide range of conflicts that people experience in organizations:
•
Incompatibility of goals
•
Differences over interpretations of facts
•
Disagreements based on behavioral expectations
2. Differentiate between the traditional, human relations and interactionist views of conflict.
Traditional view of conflict  the belief that all conflict is harmful and must be avoided. It was seen
as a dysfunctional outcome resulting from poor communication, a lack of openness and trust between
people and the failure of managers to be responsive to the needs and aspirations of their employees.
Human relations view of conflict  the belief that conflict is a natural and inevitable outcome in any
group.
Interactionist view of conflict  the belief that conflict is not only a positive force in a group but that
it is also an absolute necessity for a group to perform effectively.
The interactionist view does not propose that all conflicts are good.
•
Functional conflict  conflict that supports the goals of the group and improves its
performance.
•
Dysfunctional conflict  conflict that hinders group performance.
There are three types of conflict that differentiate functional conflict from dysfunctional conflict:
1. Task conflict  conflict over content and goals of the work.
2. Relationship conflict  conflict based on interpersonal relationships.
3. Process conflict  conflict over how work gets done.
Relationship conflict is almost always dysfunctional, because it increases personality clashes and
decreases mutual understanding, which hinders the completion of organizational tasks.
Low levels of process conflict and low to moderate levels of task conflict are functional, because it
stimulates discussion of ideas that helps groups perform better.
Minority dissent  a minority disagrees with a majority  task conflict. This has positive effects for
decision quality, because it stimulates independent thinking.
•
Less polarization
•
Less confirmation bias
•
Divergent thinking and higher complexity
Majority dissent  convergent thinking
•
Being confronted with majority leads to tension, because on average people don’t prefer being
a minority.
•
Try to verify point of view of majority.
•
Try to justify point of view of majority.
•
Confirming to point of view with majority (even without
fully understanding it)
3. Outline the conflict process.
Conflict process  a process that has five stages: potential opposition or incompatibility, cognition
and personalization, intensions, behavior and outcomes.
1. Stage I: Potential opposition or incompatibility.
The first step in the conflict process is the presence of conditions that create opportunities for conflict
to arise. These conditions have been condensed into three general categories:
Communication  represent the opposing forces that arise from semantic difficulties,
misunderstandings and noise in the communication channels.
Structure  size, degree of specialization in the tasks assigned to group members,
jurisdictional clarity, member-goal compatibility, leadership styles, reward systems and the
degree of dependence between groups.
Personal variables  personality, emotions and values.
2. Stage II: Cognition and personalization.
If the conditions cited in Stage I negatively affect something that one party cares about, then the
potential for opposition or incompatibility becomes actualized in the second stage.
Perceived conflict  awareness by one or more parties of the existence of conditions that create
opportunities for conflict to arise.
Felt conflict  emotional involvement in a conflict that creates anxiety, tenseness, frustration or
hostility.
3.
Stage III: intentions
Intentions  decisions to act in a given way. Behavior does not always accurately reflect a person’s
intentions.
Using two dimensions – cooperativeness (the degree to which one party attempts to satisfy the other
party’s concerns) and assertiveness (the degree to which one party attempts to satisfy their own
concerns) – five conflict-handling intentions can be identified:
Competing  a desire to satisfy one’s interests, regardless of the impact on other party to the conflict.
Collaborating  a situation in which the parties to a conflict each desire to satisfy fully the concerns
of all parties.
Avoiding  the desire to withdraw from or suppress a conflict.
Accommodating  the willingness of one party in a conflict to place the opponent’s interests above
their own.
Compromising  a situation in which each party to a conflict is willing to give up something.
Intentions are not fixed. During the course of a conflict, they might change because of
reconceptualization or because of an emotional reaction to the behavior of the other party. However,
people have an underlying disposition to handle conflicts in certain ways.
4. Stage IV: Behavior
The behavior state includes the statements, actions and reactions made by the conflicting parties.
Conflict management  the use of resolution and stimulation techniques to achieve the desired level
of conflict, see page 407.
5. Stage V: Outcomes
The action-reaction interplay between the conflicting parties results in consequences.
Conflict is constructive when it improves the quality of decisions, stimulates creativity and innovation,
encourages interest and curiosity among group members, provides the medium through which
problems can be aired and tensions released, and fosters an environment of self-evaluation and change.
The destructive consequences of conflict on a group’s or an organization’s performance: uncontrolled
opposition breeds discontent, which acts to dissolve common ties and eventually leads to the
destruction of the group.
4. Define negotiation.
Negotiation  a process in which two or more parties exchange goods or services and attempt to
agree on the exchange rate for them.
5. Contrast distributive and integrative bargaining.
Distributive bargaining  negotiation that seeks to divide up a fixed amount of resources: a win/lose
situation. The essence of distributive bargaining is negotiating over who gets what share of a fixed pie.
Fixed pie  the belief that there is only a set amount of goods or services to be divvied up between
the parties.
Each negotiator has a target point that defines what he or she would like to achieve. Each also has a
resistance point, which marks the lowest outcome that is acceptable – the point below which they
would break off negotiations rather than accept a less-favorable settlement. There are between these
two points makes up each one’s aspiration range. As long as there is some overlap between both
negotiator’s aspiration range, there exists a settlement range in which each one’s aspirations can be
met.
Dawson’s Gambits:
•
Always flinch at the first offer
•
•
Give your largest concession first
Deferring responsibility
•
Make deliberate mistake
Integrative bargaining  negotiation that seeks one or more settlements that can create a win/win
solution. The conditions include two parties who are open with information and candid about their
concerns, a sensitivity by both parties to the other’s needs, the ability to trust one another, and a
willingness by both parties to maintain flexibility. Problem-solving:
•
Expanding the pie
•
Log-rolling: issues of higher or lower importance
•
Cost-cutting: taking care of risks and costs for other
Requires honest exchange of information about underlying concerns!
Bias in negotiation
•
Rigid thinking  cognitive flexibility is crucial for integrative solutions.
•
Fixed-pie assumptions  assumption of incompatibility and identical priority of interest, so a
perceived zero-sum or win-lose situation. It is more common in inexperienced negotiators. It
hinders the development of an integrative solution.
Many negotiations are a mix of the two approaches.
6. Apply the five steps of the negotiation process.
The negotiation process is made up of five steps:
1. Preparation and planning  as part of you strategy, you should determine yours and the other
side’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA).
2. Definition of ground rules
3. Clarification and justification
4. Bargaining and problem solving
5. Closure and implementation
7. Show how individual differences influence negotiations.
There are three factors that influence how effectively individuals negotiate:
•
Personality  it appears that several of the Big Five traits are related to negotiation outcomes.
•
Mood/emotions  in distributive negotiations it appears that negotiators who show anger
negotiate better outcomes, because their anger induces concessions from their opponents. In
integrative negotiations positive moods and emotions appear to lead to more integrative
agreements, because positive moods are related to creativity.
•
Gender  men and women do not negotiate differently, but gender does affect negotiation
outcomes.
8. Assess the roles and functions of third-party negotiations.
Occasionally, individuals or group representatives reach a stalemate and are unable to resolve their
differences through direct negotiations. In such cases, they may turn to a third party to help them.
Mediator  a neutral third party who facilitates a negotiated solution by using reasoning, persuasion
and suggestions for alternatives.
Arbitrator  a third party to a negotiation who has the authority to dictate an agreement.
Conciliator  a trusted third party who provides an informal communication link between the
negotiator and the opponent.
Consultant  an impartial third party, skilled in conflict management, who attempts to facilitate
creative problem solving through communication and analysis.
9. Describe cultural differences in conflict and negotiation.