Organizational Behavior Notes
CHAPTER 1
What is An Organization?
 A consciously coordinated social unit, composed of a group of people, which functions on a
relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals
 Social inventions, their essential characteristic is the coordinated presence of people, not things
 Examples: Government, Laurier, Family Unit
Organizational Behavior
 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
 Concerned with how organizations can survive and adapt to change
o Certain behaviors are necessary for survival and adaptation:
 Motivation to join and remain in the organization
 Carry out the basic work reliably (in terms of productivity, quality, and service)
 Willingness to continuously learn and upgrade knowledge and skills
 Flexibility and innovation
 Suggests organizations are based on group effort
o Concerned with how to get people to practice effective teamwork
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Micro: The attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups in organizations
Meso: How organizations can be structured more effectively
Macro: How events in the external environment affect organizations
Goals of OB are to predict, explain and manage behaviour and events in organizations
OB As a Science
 Looks at consistencies
o What is common about behavior and helps predictability?
 More than common sense
o Systematic study, based on scientific evidence
 Has a few absolutes
 Takes a contingency approach
o Considers behavior in context
Why Study OB?
 To learn about yourself and how to deal with others
 You are part of an organization and will continue to be part of various organizations
 Organizations are increasingly expecting individuals to be able to work in teams
Good Management Practices
 Flexible work schedules
 Stock options
 Extensive training and development programs
 Mentorship programs
 Family assistance programs
 Fitness facilities, day care, wellness programs
 Staff socials
 Stress-reduction programs
 Workplace diversity programs
 Employee recognition and reward programs
Early Prescriptions Concerning Management
 The Classical View
o
Major advocates were experiences managers who took the time to write down their
thoughts on organizing
o Advocated a very high degree of specialization of labour and coordination
o Centralized decision making from upper management
o Suggests managers have fairly few workers (except lower level jobs that can be managed
by machine pacing)
o Development of written instructions to clearly define work procedures
 Bureaucracy
o Strict chain of command in which each member reports to a single superior
o Criteria for selection and promotion based on impersonal technical skills rather than
nepotism or favouritism
o Set of detailed rules, regulations, and procedures ensuring the job gets done regardless of
who the specific worker is
o Use of strict specialization to match duties with technical competence
o Centralization of power at the top of the organization
 Human Relations Movement
o Began with the Hawthorne Studies
 Concerned with the impact of fatigue, rest pauses, and lighting on productivity
 Noticed effects of psychological and social processes on productivity and work
adjustment
o Advocated more people-oriented styles of management
o Addressed specific problems of bureaucracy
 Strict specialization is incompatible with human needs for growth and
achievement
 Strong centralization and reliance on formal authority fails to take advantage of
creative ideas and knowledge of lower-level members
 Impersonal rules lead members to adopt the minimum acceptable level of
performance that the rules specify
 Strong specialization causes employees to lose sight of the overall goals of the
organization
o Advocated open communication, employee participation in decision making, and more
decentralized forms of control
 Contemporary Management - The Contingency Approach
o Recognizes that there is no one best way to manage
 Appropriate style depends on the demands of the situation
Managerial Roles
 Interpersonal Roles → expected behaviors that have to do with establishing and maintaining
interpersonal relations
o Figurehead: managers serve as symbols of their organization rather than active decision
makers
o Leader: managers select, mentor, reward, and discipline employees
o Liaison: managers maintain horizontal contacts inside and outside the organization
 Informational Roles → concerned with the ways managers receive and transmit information
o Monitor: managers scan the internal and external environments of the firm to follow
current performance and to keep themselves informed of new ideas and trends
o Disseminator: managers send information on facts and preferences to others
o Spokesperson: concerns mainly sending messages into the organization's external
environment
 Decisional Roles
o Entrepreneur: managers turn problems and opportunities into plans for improved changes
o
Disturbance Handler: managers deal with problems stemming from employee conflicts
and address threats to resources and turf
o Resource Allocation: managers decide how to deploy time, money, personnel, and other
critical resources
o Negotiator: managers conduct major negotiations with other organizations and
individuals
Managerial Activities
 Routine Communication
o Includes formal sending and receiving of information and the handling of paperwork
 Traditional Management
o Planning, decision making, and controlling
 Networking
o Consists of interacting with people outside the organization and informal socializing and
politicking with insiders
 Human Resource Management
o Includes motivating and reinforcing, disciplining and punishing, managing conflict,
staffing and training, and developing employees
Managerial Agendas
 John Kotter study
 Agenda Setting
o Managers gradually developed agendas of what they wanted to accomplish for the
organization
o Informal and unwritten
o Much more concerned with people issues
 Networking
o Established a wide network of key people inside and outside of their organizaiton
o Provided managers with information and established cooperative relationships relevant to
their agendas
 Agenda Implementation
o Used networks to implement the agendas
o Employed a wide range of influence tactics
Managerial Minds
 Managers use intuition in several ways:
o To sense that a problem exists
o To perform well-learned mental tasks rapidly
o To synthesize isolated pieces of information and data
o To double check more formal or mechanical analyses
International Managers
 In North America, managers are cultural heroes and are even a distinct social class
 Germany worships engineers and has fewer managerial types
 Japan requires managers to pay obsessive attention to group solidarity rather than star employees
 In the Netherlands, managers are supposed to exhibit modesty and strive for consensus
 Technical requirements for accomplishing goals are the same across cultures
o The behavioral requirements differ
 National culture is an important contingency variable in organizational behavior
Contemporary Management Concerns
 Diversity
o Organizations are beginning to adopt new programs
 Flexible benefit plans, compressed workdays, and part time jobs to attract and
retain older workers
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Employment Equity Act and general social pressure contribute to awareness of equality
for all segments of the population
o Increasing impact as organizations go global
 Multinational expansion, strategic alliances, and joint ventures increasingly
require employees to come into contact with counterparts from other cultures
 Must understand how the workforce and customers are diverse and culturally
different
Employee Health and Well-Being
o Employees have faced increasing concerns over job security, increasing demands, and
work related stress during the past decade
o Organizations are faced with employees who are disengaged, disillusioned, and suffering
from physical and mental sickness
o Absenteeism and employee turnover are on the rise
 Increasing stress levels and poorly designed jobs are major contributors
o Work-life balance is a major stressor for employees
o Increasing awareness of mental health in the workplace
 Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace was introduced to help
organizations create mentally healthy workplaces and support employees with
mental illness
o Workplace Spirituality → found in workplaces that provide employees with meaning,
purpose, sense of community, and a connection to others
 Employees have opportunities for personal growth and development
 Feel valued and supported
o Positive organizational behavior is the study and application of positively oriented
human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed,
and effectively managed for performance improvement in today’s workplace
o Psychological Capital → an individual’s positive psychological state of development
 Self-efficacy → refers to one’s confidence to take on and put in necessary effort
to succeed at challenging tasks
 Optimism → involves making internal attributions about positive events in the
present and future and external attributions about negative events
 Hope → refers to persevering toward one’s goals and making changes to achieve
one’s goals
 Resilience → refers to one’s ability to bounce back or rebound from adversity
and setbacks to attain success
Talent Management and Employee Engagement
o Talent Management → an organization’s processes for attracting, developing, retaining,
and deploying people with the required skills to meet current and future business needs
o Work Engagement → positive work-related state of mind characterized by vigour,
dedication, and absorption
o Only ⅓ of workers are engaged
 Engaged workers have more positive work attitudes and higher job performance
 Can have significant impact on productivity, customer satisfaction, profitability,
and innovation
Corporate Social Responsibility
o CSR → organization taking responsibility for the impact of its decisions and actions on
its stakeholders
 Practices can be external or internal
o Many CSR issues have to do with organizational behavior
 Organization’s treatment of employees, management practices such as promoting
diversity, work-family balance, employment equity
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Positively associated with a firm’s financial performance, positive employee attitudes,
work engagement, and performance
Has implications for the recruitment and retention of employees
APPENDIX
Organizational Behaviour Research
 Based on research that involves objective and systematic information gathering
 Hypothesis → formal statement of the expected relationship between 2 variables
 Variables → measures that can take on 2 or more values
o Independent Variable → a predictor or cause of variation in a dependent variable
o Dependent Variable → a variable that will vary as a result of changes in the independent
variable
o Moderating Variable → a variable that affects the nature/strength of the relationship
between an independent and dependent variable
 Like a contingency variable
 Indicate where an independent variable is most likely to be related to a dependent
variable
 Example: pay satisfaction on absenteeism
o Mediating Variable → a variable that intervenes or explains the relationship between an
independent and dependent variable
 Example: perceived fairness
o Reliability → an index of the consistency of a research subject’s responses
 Low reliability is bad
 Less reliability means more random error
o Validity → an index of the extent to which a measure truly reflects what it is supposed to
measure
 Convergent Validity → when there is a strong relationship between different
measures of the same variable
 Discriminant Validity → when there is a weak relationship between measures of
different variables
 In order for measures to be considered valid, they must first be reliable
Evidence-Based Management
 Whereas many managers rely on
o Obsolete knowledge gained years ago in school
o Long-standing traditions
o Patterns gleaned from experience
o Methods that they believe in
o Information from consultants
 EBM calls for organizational practices that are based on scientific evidence
o Increases predictability
o Increases odds of success
o Increases your value to an organization
 Research → Hypothesis →Design study → Collect Data →Analyze and report
Scientific Method
 Theory → Hypothesis → Data → Verification
o Theory: explains why, how, and when variables are related
o Hypothesis: predictions that specify relationships between variables
Observational Techniques
 Most straightforward ways of finding out about behavior in organizations
 Researcher must approach organizational setting with extensive training concerning nature of
human behaviour and a particular set of questions the observation is designed to answer
o Provides a systematic framework for observation
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Scientist must attempt to keep careful ongoing record of the events observed
o So that there is no excessive reliance on memory
 Scientist is well-informed of the dangers of influencing the behaviour of those under observation
and is trained to draw reasonable conclusions from observations
o Help ensure objectivity
 Outcomes are summarized in a narrative
o Often called a case study
 Participant Observation → the researcher becomes a functioning member of the organizational
unit he or she is studying to conduct the research
o Advantage is the potential for secrecy
o Learn to make sushi from best chefs
 Direct Observation → the researcher observes organizational behaviour without participation in
the activity being observed
o Many situations in which the introduction of a new person into an existing work setting
would disrupt and change the nature of the activities in that setting
o There are many jobs that a trained behavioural scientist could not be expected to learn for
research purposes
o Participant observation places severe limitations on
the observers’ opportunity to record information
o Wtach best chefs make sushi
 Weaknesses of observation
o Lack of control over the environment in which the
study is being conducted
o Small number of observes and situations in the
typical observational study is problematic
Correlation Techniques
 Correlation research attempts to measure variables precisely and examine relationships among
variables without introducing change into the research setting
 Correlation: “x is related to y” or “x and y are associated”
 Causal relationship: “x leads to y” or “y results from x” or “x predicts y”
o Door bell and Amazon, ice cream and shark attacks
 Sacrifices some of the breadth and richness of the observational technique for more precision of
measurement and greater control
 Differs from observational approaches in terms of the nature of the data researchers collect and
the issues they investigate
 Data of correlational studies involve surveys and interviews, as well as existing data
 Variables often measured by surveys and interviews include
o Employees’ perceptions of how their managers behave on the job
o The extent to which employees are satisfied with their jobs
o Employees’ reports about how much autonomy they have on their jobs
 Investigates the correlation between specific, well defined variables
 Correlation does not imply causation
 Typically surveys, interviews, or existing data
Experimental Techniques – cause
 Variable is manipulated or changed under controlled conditions, and the consequence of the
manipulation for some other variable is measured
 If all conditions are truly controlled, we can infer that the first variable has caused the change in
the second variable
 Variable that the researcher manipulates is the independent variable and random
assignment
 The variable that the independent variable is expected to affect is the dependent variable
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Control Group → a group of research participants who have not been exposed to the
experimental treatment
Internal Validity - Extent to which research yields clear causal information (confidence that
changes in the DV are due to the IV) – high in experimental research
External Validity - Extent to which results generalize beyond current sample, setting, etc.
Random assignment of participants to experimental and control conditions are an important
characteristic of experimental research
Random assignment to conditions is one way to improve internal validity
o The extent to which a researcher can be confident that changes in a dependent variable
are due to the independent variable
Factors that are alternative explanations for the results of an experiment are called threats to
internal validity
o Many threats without a control group
Quasi-Experimental Design → a research technique in which the participants are not randomly
assigned to the experimental and control conditions
If differences are found we would try to control for them when we analyze the data because they
might explain differences between the experimental and control conditions on dependant
variables
o Selection of participants
o Testing
o Instrumentation
o Statistical regression
o History
o Maturation
o Mortality
Where Things Go Wrong
 Correlations are often mistaken for cause/effect relationships
 Measurement is sometimes bad (low validity)
 Small sample sizes (or inappropriate samples) could limit external validity
 A single study might not replicate (the findings might be due to random error)
Issues and Concerns in Organizational Behaviour Research
 Sampling
o Usually interested in generalizing the results of research beyond the study
o Extent to which the results of a study generalize to other samples and settings is known as
external validity
o Random sampling means that research participants have been randomly chosen from the
population of interest
 Ensures relevant individuals, groups, or organizations have an equal probability
of being studied
o Well designed observational study that answers important questions is superior to a largesample, randomized correlational study that enables one to generalize about a trivial
hypothesis
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Hawthorne Effect
o Refers to a favourable response of participants in an organizational experiment to a factor
other than the independent variable that is formally being manipulated
 The other factor is psychological in nature
 Candidates likely include participants’ reactions to special attention, including
feelings of prestige, heightened morale, etc
o Studies examined the effects of independent variables on the productivity of assemblers
of electrical components
o In a human relations training experiment, Hawthorne effect might occur if experimental
participants are grateful to management for selecting for selecting them for special
training and work harder back on the job
 Researcher could conclude that the human relations training improved
productivity
o To prevent Hawthorne effects investigators establish a second experimental group that
receives special treatment and attention but is not exposed to they key independent
variable
 If productivity increases equally within groups, the Hawthorne effect is present
 Ethics
o Researchers have an ethical obligation to do rigorous research and report it accurately
o Psychological and physical well-being of research participants is of prime importance
o Ethical researchers:
 Avoid necessary deception
 Inform participants about the general purpose of the research
 Protect the anonymity of research participants
o Ethical research has a practical side and a moral side
o Good cooperation from participants is necessary for good research
 Easier to obtain when people are confident that ethical procedures are the rule
CHAPTER 2
What is Personality?
 Relatively stable set of psychological characteristics that influences the way an individual
interacts with their environment, how they feel, think, and behave
 Summarized personal style of dealing with the world
 Part genetic and part learning history
 Relatively stable but susceptible to change through adult learning experiences
 Predicts behaviour/performance
o Characteristic pattern of behaviour or a disposition to feel and act in a certain way
o Reactions to people, situations, problems, etc.
Why Do We Care About Personality?
 Personality helps predict behaviour
 Can match people to the job
Personality in Organizational Behavior
 Important factor in many areas including motivation, attitudes, performance, and leadership
 Dispositional Approach → individuals possess stable traits or characteristics that influence their
attitudes and behaviors
o Predisposed to behave in certain ways
 Situational Approach → characteristics of the organizational setting, such as rewards and
punishment, influence people’s feelings, attitudes, and behavior, predict job satisfaction
 Interactionist Approach → organizational behaviour is a function of both dispositions and the
situation
o
To predict and understand organizational behaviour, we need to know something about
an individual’s personality and the work setting
 Weak Situation → not always clear how a person should behave, loosely defined roles and rules,
few external constrains on individuals
o Personality has a strong effect
o Example: drinks after work
 Strong Situation → clear expectations for appropriate behaviour, : clearly defined roles, strong
behavioural norms, high predictability due to few appropriate behaviours
o Example: accounting role
o Personality has less of an impact
 Trait Activation Theory → personality traits lead to certain behaviours only when the situation
makes the need for that trait salient
o Personality influences people’s behaviour when the situation calls for a particular
personality characteristic
o Person-Job fit
 Associated with higher satisfaction and decreased turnover
o Person-Organization fit
 People leave organizations that are not compatible with their personalities
OCEAN
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Replicates across cultures
Each of the “Big Five” dimensions is related to job performance
Best predictors of job performance depends on the occupation
Conscientiousness is the strongest predictor of overall job performance across all
occupations
 Job performance
 Best predictors of job performance depends on the occupation
 C – important for most jobs, strongest predictor of overall job
performance across all occupations
 E & N – good predictors of overall job performance, especially influential
in social interactions
 O – jobs involving learning and creativity
 A – jobs requiring cooperative interactions
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Openness to Experience
o Extent to which a person thinks flexibly and is receptive to new ideas
o High: creative and innovative, curious, intellectual, imaginative, broad interests
o Low: favour the status quo
o inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious
Conscientiousness
o The degree to which a person is responsible and achievement oriented
o High: dependable and positively motivated, orderly, self-disciplined, hard-working,
perform well on most jobs
o Low: irresponsible, lazy, impulsive
o efficient/organized vs. impulsive
Extraversion
o Extent to which a person is outgoing versus shy
o High: sociable, outgoing, energetic, joyful, assertive
o Low: introverted, avoid social situations
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Especially important for jobs that require interpersonal interaction (sales and
management)
 Agreeableness
o Extent to which a person is friendly and approachable
o High: warm, considerate, friendly, sympathetic, cooperative, eager to help
o Low: argumentative, inflexible, intolerant, disagreeable
o Important for jobs that require interaction and involve helping, cooperating, and nurturing
others
 Neuroticism
o Degree to which a person has appropriate emotional control
o High: anxious, hostile, impulsive, insecure, more prone to stress
o Low: self-confident, higher self-esteem
Locus of Control
 Refers to individuals’ beliefs about the location of the factors that control their behaviour
 High internals believe the opportunity to control their own behaviour resides within themselves
o Believe that work behaviour will influence rewards they achieve
o More satisfied with their jobs and committed to the organization
o Earn more money and achieve higher organizational positions
o Perceive less stress, cope with stress better, engage in more careful career planning
 High externals believe that external forces determine their behaviour
o See the world as unpredictable, where luck, fate, or powerful people control their
destinies
Self Monitoring
 The extent to which people observe and regulate how they appear and behave in social settings
and relationships
 Low self monitors “wear their heart on their sleeve”
o Not concerned with scoping out and fitting in with those around them
 High self monitors take great care to observe the thoughts, actions, and feelings of those around
them
o Control the images they project
o Somewhat like actors
o Tend to gravitate towards sales, law, public relations, politics, etc
o Perform well in occupations that call for flexibility and adaptiveness
o Tend to perform at a higher level, and more likely to emerge as leaders
o More likely to experience work stress and show less commitment to the organization
Self-Esteem
 The degree to which a person has a positive self-evaluation
 People will low self esteem tend to be uncertain about the correctness of their opinions, attitudes,
and behaviours
o Tend to react badly to negative feedback
o Managers should be cautious when using punishment
o Should direct criticism at the performance difficulty and not the person
o Model the correct behaviour
o Avoid jobs such as life insurance sales that inherently provide a lot of negative feedback
 Organizations will generally benefit from a workforce with high self-esteem
o Exhibit higher job satisfaction and performance, and are generally more resilient to
strains of everyday work-life
 To bolster self esteem, offer opportunities for participation in decision making, autonomy, and
interesting work
o Avoid creating a culture with excessive rules
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Behavioural Plasticity Theory → people with low self esteem are more susceptible to external
and social influences (more pliable)
Advances in Personality and Organizational Behaviour
 Positive and Negative Affectivity
o People who are high on positive affectivity experience positive emotions and moods like
joy and excitement and view the world in a positive light
 Tend to be cheerful, enthusiastic, lively, sociable, and energetic
 Higher job satisfaction and job performance
 More creative at work
 The strongest predictor of employee engagement
o People who are high on negative affectivity experience negative emotions and moods
like fear and anxiety and view the world in a negative light
 Tend to be distressed, depressed, and unhappy
 Experience more stressful work conditions and report higher level of workplace
stress and strain
 Found to be associated with harassment and physical aggression, absenteeism,
and occupational injury
o Both emotional dispositions
o Predict people’s general emotional tendencies
 Proactive Personality
o Taking initative to improve one’s current circumstances or creating new ones
o Involves challenging the status quo rather than adapting to the present conditions
o Those with a proactive personality are relatively unconstrained by situational forces and
act to change and influence their environment
o Stable personal disposition
o Related to job satisfaction, employee engagement, job performance, tolerance for stress
in demanding jobs, leadership effectiveness, entrepreneurship, etc
 General Self-Efficacy
o Refers to an individual’s belief in his or her ability to perform successfully in a variety of
challenging situations
o Considered a motivational trait rather than an affective trait
o Believed to develop over your lifespan
o Individuals high on GSE are better able to adapt to uncertain situations and have higher
job satisfaction and job performance
 Core Self-Evaluations
o Multidimensional trait and a broad personality concept that consists of several more
specific traits
o Individuals hold evaluations about themselves and their worthiness, competence, and
capability
o Four traits are thought to make up a person’s core self-evaluation
 Self-esteem
 General self-efficacy
 Locus of control
 Neuroticism
o People with more positive CSEs have higher levels of job satisfaction, organizational
commitment, and job performance
 Experience fewer stressors and experience less stress and conflict at work
What is Learning?
 Occurs when practice or experience leads to a relatively permanent change in behaviour potential
 Does not include changes caused by factors like drug intake or biological maturation
 Why do we care about learning?
o
All about increasing desired behaviours (task performance, citizenship behaviours, etc)
and decreasing undesirable behaviours (counterproductive work, unsafe workplace
behaviours, etc)
 People repeat behaviours that bring them satisfaction and pleasure
o Antecedents: my manager shows me how to do a new task
o Behaviours: I do it right
o Consequences: my manager praises me
 Practical Skills
o Job specific skills, knowledge, technical competence
o Frequently learned to improve performance and keep organizations competitive
 Intrapersonal Skills
o Problem solving, critical thinking, learning about alternative work processes, and risk
taking
 Interpersonal Skills
o Interactive skills such as communicating, teamwork, conflict resolution
 Cultural Awareness
o Involves learning the social norms of organizations and understanding company goals,
business operations, and company expectations and priorities
Operant Learning Theory
 Subject learns to operate on the environment in order to achieve certain consequences
 Can be used to increase the probability of desired behaviours and reduce the probability of
undesired behaviours
 i.e., to get the desired feedback
 Operantly learned behaviour is controlled by the consequences that follow it
 It is the connection between the behaviour and the consequence that is learned
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Law of effect: People repeat behaviours that bring them satisfaction and pleasure, and stop those
that bring them dissatisfaction and pain
Reinforcement → the process by which stimuli strengthen behaviours
A reinforcer is a stimulus that follows some behaviour and increases or maintains the probability
of that behaviour
Positive reinforcement: addition of a pleasant stimulus
Negative reinforcement: removal of an unpleasant stimulus
Positive Reinforcement
o Increases or maintains the probability of some behaviour by the application or addition of
a stimulus to the situation in question
Negative Reinforcement
o Increases or maintains the probability of some behaviour by the removal of a stimulus
from the situation in question
o Occurs when a response prevents some event from occurring
o Example: child cannot leave the house until all of their work is done
 Once the work is done, stimulus withdrawn, they can leave the house
Organizational Errors Involving Reinforcement
o Consuming rewards with reinforcers
 Organizations do not make rewards contingent on specific behaviours that are of
interest to the organization
o Neglecting diversity in preferences for reinforcers
 Organizations often fail to appreciate individual differences in preferences for
reinforcers
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Managers should carefully explore the possible stimuli under their control to use
for particular employees
Neglecting important sources of reinforcement
 Performance feedback involves providing information on past performance for
the purpose of changing or maintaining performance in specific ways
 Most effective when it is:
 Conveyed in a positive manner
 Delivered immediately after the performance is observed
 Represented visually
 Specific to the behaviour being targeted for feedback
 Social recognition involves informal acknowledgement, attention, praise,
approval, or genuine appreciation for work well done
 Can be a very effective means for performance improvement
Reinforcement Strategies
o For fast acquisition of some response, continuous and immediate reinforcement should be
used
 Reinforcer applied every time the behaviour of interest occurs, without delay
 Important in training employees for emergency operations or dealing with unsafe
work behaviors
o Behaviour tends to be persistent when it is learned under conditions of partial and
delayed reinforcement
o Impossible to maximize speed and persistence with a single reinforcement strategy
Reducing the Probability of Behaviour
o Extinction involves terminating the reinforcement that is maintaining some unwanted
behaviour
o Punishment involves following an unwanted behaviour with some unpleasant, aversive
stimulus
 While punishment provides a clear signal as to which activities are inappropriate,
it does not demonstrate which activities should replace the punished response
 Only temporarily suppresses the unwanted response
 Must provide an acceptable alternative for the punished response
 Punishment has a tendency to provoke a strong emotional reaction from the
punished individual
 Managers must be sure their emotions are under control before punishing
 Should avoid punishment in front of observers
 Punish immediately
 Do not reward unwanted behaviours before or after punishment
 Do not inadvertently punish desirable behaviour
o Reinforcement going wrong
 Confusing rewards with reinforcement
 Rewards are not made contingent on specific behaviour
 Accidentally reinforcing the wrong behaviour
 Reinforcement not tied to desired behaviour
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Neglecting diversity in preferences for reinforcers
Reinforcement is not preferred by the individual
Neglecting important sources of reinforcement
When to use a carrot…
o (carrot is a reward for compliance)
o Make sure the reward is reinforcing to that specific individual
o Identify the correct behaviours to reinforce
o Administer rewards so that high performers receive more than low performers
o Don’t reward wanted behaviours just before/after punishing someone
o For new behaviours, use continuous reinforcement, for established behaviours use partial
o Make sure the reward is directly tied to the behaviour
 When you just have to use a stick…
o (Stick is a consequence for non compliance)
o Deliver discipline immediately
o Go easy with the stick, but make sure punishment is truly aversive
o Punish the behaviour, not the person
o Be consistent
o Communicate the reasons
o Provide an acceptable alternative
Effective Training
 Describing to trainees a set of well-defined behaviours to be learned
 Providing a model displaying the effective use of those behaviours
 Providing opportunities for trainees to practice using those behaviours
 Providing feedback and social reinforcement to trainees following practice
 Taking steps to maximize the transfer of those behaviours to the job
How Could Personality Affect Learning? Choice of Rewards? Choice of Reinforcement Strategy?
Social Cognitive Theory
 Emphasizes the role of cognitive processes in regulating people’s behaviour
 According to the theory, people learn by observing the behaviour of others
 Also manage their own behaviour by thinking about the consequences of their actions, setting
performance goals, monitoring performance and comparing it to goals, and rewarding themselves
for a goal accomplishment
 Bidirectional
 People’s behaviour also influences personal factors and the environment.
 People develop beliefs about their abilities through interaction with the environment
o These beliefs influence their thoughts and behaviour
 Human behaviour can best be explained through a system of triadic reciprocal causation
o Personal and environmental factors work together and interact to influence behaviour
o Person/personality, thinking feeling, behaviours
 Observational Learning
o Process of observing and imitating the behaviour of others
o


Learning occurs by observing or imagining the behavior of others rather than through
direct personal experience
o Self reinforcement occurs
Self-Efficacy Beliefs
o Beliefs people have about their ability to successfully perform a specific task
o Task-specific cognitive appraisal of one’s ability to perform a specific task
o Can be changed and modified in response to different sources of information
o Influenced by:
 Performance mastery
 Observation
 Verbal persuasion and social influence
 Physiological state
o Influences the activities people choose to perform, amount of effort and persistence they
devote, affective and stress reactions, and job performance
Self Regulation
o Employees can use learning principles to manage their own behaviour, making external
control less necessary
o When a discrepancy exists between one’s goals and performance, individuals are
motivated to modify their behaviour in the pursuit of goal attainment
 Known as discrepancy reduction
o When individuals attain their goals, they are likely to set even higher and more
challenging goals
 Known as discrepancy production
o Discrepancy reduction – Reduce gap between ideal performance (goal) and current
performance by modifying behaviour
o Discrepancy production – after attaining goals, set higher and more challenging goals
o
Some specific self-regulation techniques:
 Collect self-observation data
 Observe models
 Set goals
 Rehearse
 Reinforce oneself
o Determinants – Performance, observation, social influence, and physiological state
Organizational Learning Practices
 Organizational Behaviour Modification
o Involves systematic use of learning principles to influence organizational behaviour
o Has been found to improve safety, attendance, and task performance
 Stronger in manufacturing than service organizations
o Money, feedback, and social recognition have all been found to be effective forms of
positive reinforcement, money is the strongest
 Employee Recognition Programs
o Formal organizational programs that publicly recognize and reward employees for
specific behaviours
o To be effective, a program must specify:
 How a person will be recognized
 The type of behaviour being encouraged
 The manner of the public acknowledgement
 A token or icon of the event for the recipient
o Peer recognition programs are formal programs in which employees can recognize and
reward their co-workers for exceptional work and performance
o Results in higher job satisfaction, performance and productivity, and lower turnover
Training and Development Programs
o Among the most common types of formal learning in organizations
o Training refers to planned organizational activities that are designed to facilitate
knowledge and skill acquisition to change behaviour and improve performance
o Development focuses on future job responsibilities
o Also teaches employees non-technical skills like working in teams, providing excellent
customer service, and how to understand and appreciate cultural diversity
o Effective programs include positive reinforcement, feedback, observational learning,
strengthening self-efficacy beliefs, and self-regulation
o Most widely used and effective methods is behaviour modelling training
 Method in which trainees observe a model performing a task followed by
opportunities to practice the observed behaviours
 Involves following steps:
 Describe to trainees a set of well-defined behaviours to be learned
 Provide a model displaying the effective use of those behaviours
 Provide opportunities for trainees to practice using those behaviours
 Provide feedback and social reinforcement to trainees following practice
 Take steps to maximize transfer of those behaviours to the job
CHAPTER 3
What is Perception?
 The process of interpreting the messages of our senses to provide order and meaning to the
environment
 Helps us sort out and organize the complex and varied input received by our senses
Why Do We Care About Perception?
 Our perception is the basis for understanding others and their behaviour
 Perception drives all of our behaviour
 Perception is often biased/flawed
o Not the same as reality
o People’s behaviour is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself
Components of Perception
 The Perceiver
o Experience, needs, and emotions can affect their perceptions of a target
o Our needs frequently unconsciously influence our perceptions by causing us to perceive
what we wish to perceive
o Our perceptual system defends us against unpleasant emotions
 Known as perceptual defence
 The Target
o Involves interpretation and the addition of meaning to the target
o Ambiguous targets are especially susceptible
o Size, background, proximity, similarity, motion
 The Situation/Context
o Context can affect what one perceives
o Most important effect situation can have is to add information about the target
o Time, work setting, social setting
Social Identity Theory
 People form perceptions of themselves based on their personal characteristics and memberships
in social categories
 Our sense of self is composed of a personal identity and a social identity
o Personal identity is based on our unique personal characteristics (interests, abilities, and
traits)

o
Social identity is based on our perception that we belong to various social groups
(gender, nationality, religion, occupation, etc)
 Categorize to make sense of and understand the social environment
 Form perceptions of others based on their memberships in social categories
o Due to the fact that social identities are relational and comparative
A Model of the Perceptual Process
1. Unfamiliar target encountered
2. Openness to target cues
3. Familiar cues encountered
4. Target categorized
5. Cue selectivity
6. Categorization strengthened

Characteristics of the perceptual process include:
o Selective
o Constancy
o Consistency
Basic Biases in Person Perception
 Primacy Effect
o Reliance on early cues or first impressions
 Recency Effect
o Give undue weight to the cues encountered most recently
 Reliance on Central Straights
o Rely on personal characteristics of the target that are of special interest to the perceiver
o Depends on the perceiver’s interests and the situation
o Physical appearance is a common central trait
 Implicit Personality Theories
o Expectations of which personality characteristics go together
 Projection
o Tendency to attribute one’s own thoughts and feelings to others
 Selective Perception
o Tendency to “see things” based on our own frame of reference
 Stereotyping
o Assuming an individual has certain characteristics by virtue of some category they fall
into as suggested by social identity theory
o Tendency to generalize about people in a social category and ignore variations among
them
o Common implicit bias
o Categories on which stereotyping might be based include:
 Race
 Age
 Gender
 Ethnic background
 Religion
 Social class
 Occupation
o Specific aspects to stereotyping
 We distinguish some category of people
 We assume that the individuals in this category have certain traits
 We perceive that everyone in this category possesses these traits
o
Consequences of stereotyping
 Can result in unfairness for individuals
 Fewer opportunities
 Unfair allocation of resources
 Can negatively affect how we treat individuals
 Can result in decreased organizational performance
 Interferes with accurate selection/hiring decisions
 Interferes with accurate assessment of performance
 Interferes with performance management
 Can decrease diversity
 Pros:
 Save cognitive energy
 Reduce uncertainty in social interactions
 Cons:
 Overgeneralization
 Selective perception/confirmation bias
 Stigmatized identities


Stereotyping Process
o Perceive category of people
o Assume individuals in this category have certain traits
o Perceive everyone in this category to possess these traits
o Potentially constrain behaviours of individuals in this category
Racial and ethnic stereotyping – whitening names and experience with job interviews
Fast Vs. Slow Thinking
 We constantly categorize things we sense into concepts
o Happens quickly, outside of our awareness
o Concepts automatically activate other concepts
 Allows us to quickly make sense of our environment
 We make many errors
o Implicit biases
Perceiving Causes and Motives
 Attribution → the process by which we assign causes or motives to explain people’s behaviour
 In making attributions about behaviour, we must determine whether the behaviour is caused by
dispositional or situational factors
o Dispositional attributions suggest some personality or intellectual characteristic unique to
the person is responsible for the behaviour
 Examples: behaviour as a function of intelligence, greed, friendliness, laziness
o Situational attributions suggest the external situation or environment in which the target
person exists was responsible for the behaviour
 Examples: behaviour as a function of bad weather, good luck, proper tools, poor
advice
o Three questions guide or decision as to whether to attribute the behaviour to dispositional
or situational causes
 Does the person engage in the behaviour regularly and consistently? (consistency
cues)
 Do most people engage in the behaviour, or is it unique to this person?
(consensus cues)
 Does the person engage in the behaviour in many situations, or is it distinctive to
one situation (distinctiveness cue)
 Consistency Cues
o
o
Reflect how consistently a person engages in a behaviour over time
High consistency leads to dispositional attributions
 Consensus Cues
o Reflect how a person’s behaviour compares with that of others
o Acts that deviate from social expectations provide us with more information about the
actor’s motives
o Unusual behaviour leads to more dispositional attributions than typical, high consensus
behaviour
 Distinctiveness Cues
o Reflect the extent to which a person engages in some behaviour across a variety of
situations
o When a behavior occurs across a variety of situations it lacks distinctiveness
 The observer is prone to provide a dispositional attribution
Biases in Attribution
 Fundamental Attribution Error
o When we make judgements about the behaviour of others, we tend to overemphasize
dispositional explanations as opposed to situational explanations
 Actor-Observer Effect
o Actors and observers often view the causes for the actor’s behaviour very differently
o As actors, we are often particularly sensitive to environmental events
o Observers are more likely to invoke dispositional causes
o More likely under conditions explaining negative events
 Self-Serving Bias
o People have a tendency to take credit for successful outcomes of their behaviour and
deny credit for failures
o People will explain the same behaviour differently on the basis of events that happened
after the behaviour occurred
 Confirmation Bias
o Tendency to only seek out confirmatory information, not disconfirming information
How to Avoid Perception and Attribution Bias/Errors?
 Knowledge/awareness programs
 Slow down and use rational thought
 Check assumptions
 Increase personal interaction
 Focus on unique attributes of individuals
 Consider situational influences
 Increase opportunity to witness behaviour
 Use processes/systems which decrease the change of implicit biases manifesting
 Use objective and valid measures, behaviourally anchored rating scales, structured interviews, etc
Person Perception and Workforce Diversity
 Workforce diversity → refers to difference among employees or potential recruits in
characteristics such as gender, race, age, religion, cultural background, physical ability, or secual
orientation
o Organizations should value diversity, not just tolerate it
o Increasing awareness that diversity and proper management can yield strategic and
competitive advantages
 Cost argument
 Resource-acquisition argument
 Marketing argument
 Creativity argument
 Problem-solving argument
 System flexibility argument
Stereotypes and Workforce Diversity
 Tendency to generalize about people in a certain social category and ignore variations among
them
 Stereotype threat occurs when members of a social group feel that they might be judged or treated
according to a stereotype and that their behaviour will confirm the stereotype
 Racial, ethnic, and religious stereotypes are persistent, frequently negative, and often selfcontradictory
o Personal experience is unnecessary for stereotype formation
 Gender stereotypes are problematic for organizations
o Women are severely under-represented in managerial and administrative jobs
 Age stereotypes
o Tendency to make certain assumptions about the person’s physical, psychological, and
intellectual capabilities
o Older workers are seen as having less capacity for performance and less potential for
development
o Older workers are also perceived to be more honest, dependable, and trustworthy
 LGBTQ Stereotypes
o Face discrimination at work
o Many do not come out at work for fear of potential repercussions and negative
consequences to their career and personal safety
Managing Workforce Diversity
 Select enough minority members to get them beyond token status
 Develop an employment equity plan to ensure that members of designated groups are represented
throughout the organization
 Provide a flexible work environment that can accommodate the needs of all employees and
fosters work-life balance and an inclusive workplace
 Encourage teamwork that brings minority and majority members together
 Ensure those making career decisions about employees have accurate information rather than
relying on second-hand opinion
 Train people to be aware of stereotypes and value diversity
Perceptions of Trust
 Trust has been defined as a willingness to be vulnerable and to take risks with respect to the
actions of another party
o Psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive
expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another
 Trust perceptions toward management are based on:
o Ability: employee perceptions regarding management’s competence and skills
o Benevolence: extent that employees perceive management as caring and concerned for
their interests
o Integrity: employee perceptions that management adheres to and behaves according to a
set of values and principles that the employee finds acceptable
 Perceptions of fairness are associated with trust perceptions
o Employees who perceive their supervisor as more fair report higher levels of trust
 Study found that higher levels of trust towards co-workers was related to fewer physical
symptoms and less thoughts of being absent
Perceived Organizational Support
 Refers to employees’ general belief that their organization values their contribution and cares
about their well being

According to organizational support theory, employees who have strong perceptions of
organizational support feel an obligation to care about the organization and help achieve its
objectives
o Feel greater sense of purpose and meaning
o Stronger sense of belonging to the organization
o Employees incorporate their membership and role within the organization into their
social identity
Person Perception in Human Resources Management
 Recruitment and Selection
o According to Signalling Theory, job applicants have incomplete information about jobs
and organizations, so they interpret recruitment and selection experiences as cues or
signals about unknown characteristics
 Employment Interview
o Validity of an interview improves when interviewers conduct a more structured interview
o Interviewers compare applicants to a stereotype of the ideal applicant
 Ideal stereotype must be accurate
o Interviewers have a tendency to exhibit primacy reactions
 Information the interviewer obtains before the interview can have an exaggerated
influence on the interview outcome
o Focus on negative information about the applicant
o Contrast effects → applicants who have been interviewed earlier affect the interviewer’s
perception of a current applicant
o Study suggests interview structure involves four dimensions:
 Evaluation standardization
 Question sophistication
 Question consistency
 Rapport building
 Performance Appraisal
o Organizations must rely on subjective measures of effectiveness, usually provided by
managers
 Manager is confronted by a number of perceptual roadblocks
o Subjective performance appraisal is susceptible to perceptual biases
o Rater errors (other perceptual tendencies) occur in performance evaluations
 Leniency → the tendency to perceive the performance of one’s rates as especially
good
 Harshness → the tendency to see their performance as especially ineffective
 Central tendency → involves assignment most rates to a middle-range
performance category
o Halo effect occurs when the observer allows the rating of an individual on one trait to
colour the ratings on other traits
o Similar-to-me effect gives more favourable evaluations to people who are similar to the
rater in terms of background or attitudes
CHAPTER 4
What are Values?
 A broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others
 Values have to do with what we consider good and bad
 Motivational, since they signal attractive aspects of our environment and unattractive aspects that
we try to avoid or change
 Signal how we believe we should and should not behave
 Values are very general
o Do not predict behaviour in specific situations very well

People hold values structured around achievement, power, autonomy, conformity, tradition, and
social welfare
Generational Differences in Values
 Traditionalists: hard working, stable, loyal, thorough, detail-oriented, focused, emotional maturity
o Leadership Style Preference: fair, consistent, clear, direct, respectful
 Baby Boomers: team perspective, delicate, experienced, knowledgeable, service oriented
o Leadership Style Preference: treat as equals, warm and caring, mission driven,
democratic approach
 Generation X: independent, adaptable, creative, techno-literate, willing to challenge the status
quo
o Leadership Style Preference: direct, competent, genuine, informal, flexible, resultsoriented, supportive of learning opportunities
 Millennials: optimistic, able to multitask, tenacious, technologically savvy, driven to learn and
grow, team oriented
o Leadership Style Preference: motivational, collaborative, positive, educational,
organized, achievement oriented, able to coach
 Organizations may have to tailor job designs, leadership styles, and benefits to the generational
mix of their workforce
Cultural Differences in Values
 Work Centrality
o Work itself is valued differently across cultures
o Those for whom work was a central life interest tended to work more hours
 Hofstede’s Study
o Discovered 5 basic dimensions along which work-related values differed across cultures
 Power distance: extent to which society members accept an unequal distribution
of power
 Uncertainty avoidance: the extent to which people are uncomfortable with
uncertain ambiguous situations
 Masculinity/femininity: more masculine cultures clearly differentiate gender
roles, support the dominance of men, and stress economic performance
 Individualism/collectivism: more individualistic societies tend to stress
independence, individual initiative, and privacy
 Long-term/short-term orientation: cultures with a long-term orientation tend to
stress persistence, perseverance, thirst, and close attention to status differences
 Cultures with a short-term orientation stress personal steadiness and
stability, face saving, and social niceties
o Cultural distance: the extent to which cultures differ in values
o Cultural tightness versus looseness
 Tight cultures tend to have strong, clear standards for behaviour and strong
sanctions for deviation from these standards
 Loose cultures are more flexible in terms of how people are expected to behave
and more forgiving of violations of expected behaviour
Implications of Cultural Variation
 Appreciation of cross-cultural differences in value is essential to understanding the needs and
tastes of customers or clients around the world
 Companies need to select, train, and develop employees to have an appreciation of differences in
cultural values
o Foster cultural intelligence, the capability to function and manage well in culturally
diverse environments
o Encompasses knowledge, motivation, and behaviour that contribute to good crosscultural functioning
What are Attitudes?
 Fairly stable evaluative tendency to respond consistently to some specific object, situation,
person, or category of people
 Attitudes involve evaluations direct towards specific targets
 Less stable than values
 Often influence behaviour towards something
 A function of what we think and what we feel
o Product of a related belief and value
o BELIEF + VALUE = ATTITUDE → BEHAVIOUR
What is Job Satisfaction?
 Refers to a collection of attitudes that people have about their jobs
 Two aspects of satisfaction
o Facet satisfaction: the tendency for an employee to be more or less satisfied with various
facets of the job
 Facets include nature of the work itself, compensation, career opportunities,
recognition, benefits, working conditions, supervision, coworkers, organizational
policies
o Overall satisfaction: overall or summary indicator of a person's attitude towards his or her
job that cuts across the various facets
 Well developed measures include the Job Descriptive Index and the Minnesota Satisfaction
Questionnaire
 Affective Assessment: about positive feelings toward the job
 Cognitive Assessment: more of a rational assessment
What Determines Job Satisfaction?
 Large percentage of overall satisfaction is attributable to genes
 Discrepancy
o Attitudes are the product of associated beliefs and values
o Causes differences in job satisfaction even when jobs are identical
o People might differ in their perceptions concerning the nature of the job
o Discrepancy theory of job satisfaction asserts that satisfaction is a function of the
discrepancy between the job outcomes people want and the outcomes they perceive they
obtain
 Fairness
o Issues of fairness affect both what people want from their jobs and how they react to the
inevitable discrepancies
 Distributive fairness occurs when people receive the outcomes they think they
deserve from their jobs
 Involves the distribution of work rewards and resources
 My Outcomes / My Inputs = Other’s Outcomes / Other’s Inputs
 Some responses to inequity
 Change inputs
 Change outcomes
 Adjust perceptions of self
 Adjust perceptions of others
 Choose a different referent
 Leave the field
 Procedural fairness occurs when individuals see the process used to determine
outcomes as reasonable
 The allocator:
 Follows consistent procedures over time and across people
 Uses accurate information and appears unbiased




Allows 2 way communication during the allocation process
Welcomes appeals of the procedure or allocation
Interactional fairness occurs when people feel that they received respectful and
informative communication about some outcome
 Interpersonal: respect & dignity
 Informational: adequacy and appropriateness of explanation
Disposition
o Some people are predisposed by virtue of their personalities to be more or less satisfied
despite changes in discrepancy or fairness
 Mood and Emotion
o Affect is simply a broad label for feelings
o These feelings include emotions
o Emotions are intense, short-lived, and caused by a particular event such as a bad
performance appraisal
o Moods are less intense, longer lived, and more diffuse feelings
o Can influence job satisfaction through emotional contagion
 Tendency for moods and emotions to spread between people or throughout a
group
o Emotional labour is the requirement for people to conform to certain emotional “display
rules” in their job behaviour
 Despite true mood or emotions
Theory of Planned Behaviour
 Attitude toward behaviour, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, and actual behavioral
control contribute to difference between intention and behaviour
Self Perception Theory
 People make reasonable inferences about their attitudes based on perceptions of their behaviour
Cognitive Dissonance:
 When behaviour and attitudes are inconsistent
 Can lead to anxiety and a change in attitude
Key Contributors to Job Satisfaction
 Mentally Challenging Work
o Work that tests employees’ skills and allows them to set their own working pace
o Work is perceived as personally involving
o Some types of work can be too challenging, resulting in feelings of failure and reduced
satisfaction
 Meaningful Work
o Work that has a positive and substantial impact on other people
o Greatly contributes to job satisfaction and performance
 Adequate Compensation
o Pay and satisfaction are positively related
o Some people are willing to accept less responsibility or fewer working hours for lower
pay
 Career Opportunities
o Opportunity for promotion is an important contributor to job satisfaction
o Promotions contain a number of valued signals about a person’s self-worth
 Signals may be material (accompanying raise) or of a social nature (recognition)
 People
o Friendly, considerate, good-natured superiors and co-workers contribute to job
satisfaction
 Via positive moods and emotions
Consequences of Job Satisfaction

Absence from Work
o Less satisfied employees are more likely to be absent
o Not a very strong connection
o Some absence is unavoidable because of illness, weather, or child-care issues
o Some organizations have attendance control policies that influence absence more than
satisfaction does
o It may be unclear to employees how much absenteeism is reasonable or sensible
 Turnover
o Refers to resignation from an organization
o Moderately strong connection to job satisfaction
o Relationship between the attitude (satisfaction) and behaviour (turnover) is far from
perfect
 Certain shocks might stimulate turnover (martial breakup, birth of a child,
unsolicited job offer in an attractive location)
 Employee’s dissatisfaction with their job might be offset by a strong commitment
to the overall organization
 Employee might be so embedded in the community that they are willing to
endure a dissatisfying job rather than move
 Weak job market might result in limited employment alternatives
 Performance
o Connection between job satisfaction and performance is complicated
o Many factors besides job satisfaction influence motivation and performance
o Most important facet has to do with the content of the work itself
 Interesting, challenging, meaningful jobs are more likely to stimulate high
performance
o Issue of which is the cause and which is the effect
 When good performance is followed by rewards, employees are more likely to be
satisfied
 However, if organizations do not reward good performance sufficiently,
satisfaction is more likely to affect performance
 Organizational Citizenship Behaviour
o Voluntary, informal behaviour that contributes to organizational effectiveness
o Formal performance evaluation system does not detect and reward it
o Can be in the form of helping behaviour, conscientiousness, being a good sport, or
courtesy and cooperation
 Customer Satisfaction and Profit
o Employee job satisfaction is translated into customer satisfaction and organizational
profitability
o Reduced absenteeism and turnover contribute to seamless delivery of service
What is Organizational Commitment?
 An attitude that reflects the strength of the linkage between an employee and an organization
 Has implications for whether someone tends to remain in an organization
 Three different types of organizational commitment
o Affective commitment: based on a person’s identification and involvement with an
organization
 People with high affective commitment stay within an organization because they
want to
o Continuance commitment: based on either the costs that would be incurred in leaving an
organization or a lack of suitable job alternatives
 People with high continuance commitment stay with an organization because
they have to
o
Normative commitment: based on ideology or a feeling of obligation to an organization
 People with high normative commitment stay within an organization because
they think that they should do so
Key Contributors to Organizational Commitment
 Best predictor of strong affective commitment is interesting, satisfying work
 Continuance commitment occurs when people feel leaving will result in personal sacrifice, or
they perceive that good alternative employment is lacking
 Normative commitment can be fostered by benefits that build a sense of obligation
Consequences of Organizational Commitment
 High affective commitment is associated with elevated job satisfaction and lower work stress
 High continuance commitment due to lack of alternatives provokes dissatisfaction and stress
o Negatively related to performance
 All commitments reduce turnover intentions and actual turnover
 Especially bad combination is high continuance commitment and low affective commitment
(locked into an organization you detest)
Changes in the Workplace and Employee Commitment
 Organizations are experiencing unprecedented change as a result of shifts in workforce
demographics, technological innovations, and global competition
 Impact of these changes on employee commitment:
o Changes in the nature of employees’ commitment to the organization
o Changes in the focus of employees’ commitment
o Multiplicity of the employer-employee relationships within organizations
CHAPTER 5
What is motivation?
 Human diversity: The same type of motivation will not work on everyone
 Some people at the same company could be self-motivated where others need external motivation
 People’s motivation is often affected by how they see others being treated
 Motivation  the extent to which persistent effort is directed toward a goal
o Requires
o Effort – strength of the person’s work-related behaviour
o Persistence
o Direction – is the work quality in the direction that helps the organization
o Goals – very goal oriented for the company
 Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
o Intrinsic motivation – direct relationship between the worker and the task, self-applied
 Internal motivation
 Interest in the job is a great motivator
 Is a predictor of performance even when extrinsic rewards are present
 More beneficial for complex tasks
o Extrinsic motivation – work environment external to the task and is usually applied by
someone other than the person being motivated
 Pay, fringe benefits, policies,
 Extrinsic motivation is more strongly related to the quantity of performance
 More beneficial for mundane tasks
o The availability of extrinsic motivators can reduce intrinsic motivation
o The notion is that when extrinsic rewards depend on performance, then the motivating
potential of intrinsic rewards decreases
 Performance – extent to which an organizational member contributes to achieving the objectives
of the organization
o









Factors contributing to individual job performance
General Cognitive Ability – basic information processing capacities and cognitive resources
o Process, understand, learn
o Verbal, numerical, spatial, and reasoning abilities
o Predicts success and
o Motivation is just as important as cognitive ability
o It is additive in nature
 They are independent to each other
Emotional Intelligence - individuals ability to understand and manage his or her own and other
feelings and emotions
EI Model (from 1-4)
o Perceiving emotions accurately in oneself and others (using verbal and non-verbal
behaviour)
o Using emotions to facilitate thinking – use and assimilate emotions and emotional
experiences to guide and facilitate one’s thinking and reasoning (make decisions and shift
perspectives)
o Understanding emotion, emotional language and the signals conveyed by emotions –
people understand how different situations generate emotions and how they are
influenced by various emotions
o Managing emotions so as to attain specific goals – ability to manage ones own and
others feelings and emotions and emotional relationships (can change and regulate your
own emotions and others’ emotions too)
EI is positively related to job performance
Predicts job performance above and beyond cognitive ability and the big 5 personality traits
EI is most important for people of lower cognitive ability
The Motivation Performance Relationship
o We cannot consider motivation in isolation
o High motivation will not result in high performance if employees have low cognitive
ability and emotional intelligence
Need Theories of Work Motivation
o Specify the kinds of needs people have and the conditions under which they will be
motivated to satisfy these needs in a way that contributes to performance
o Needs are physiological and psychological wants or desires satisfied by achieving goals
o Needs  Behaviour  Incentives and goals
o Need theory focuses on what motivates workers
o Process theories focus on how various factors motivate people
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
o Physiological needs → needs that must be satisfied for the person to survive (enough
pay)
o Safety needs → needs for safety, security, stability, and freedom from anxiety
o Belongingness needs → needs for social interaction, love, affection, companionship, and
friendship
Esteem needs → needs for feelings of adequacy, competence, independence, strength,
and confidence (awards or promotion)
o Self-actualization needs → involve the desire to develop one’s true potential as an
individual to the fullest extent (express talents and emotions in a manner that is
personally fulfilling) (jobs that have creativity and growth potential)
Alderfer’s ERG Theory
o Existence needs → satisfied by some material substance or condition
o Relatedness needs → satisfied by open communication and the exchange of thoughts
and feelings with other organizational members
o Growth needs → fulfilled by strong personal involvement in the work setting
o The more lower-level needs are gratified, the more higher level need satisfaction is
desired
o The less higher-level needs are gratified, the more lower-level need satisfaction is desired
o




McClelland’s Theory of Needs
o Needs reflect relatively stable personality characteristics that one acquires through early
life experiences and exposure to selected aspects of one’s society
o Focuses on the behavioural consequences of needs
 Need for achievement (n Ach) strong desire to perform challenging tasks well
 A preference for situations in which personal responsibility can be taken
for outcomes
 A tendency to set moderately difficult goals that provide for calculated
risks
 A desire for performance feedback
 Concerned with bettering their performance or others, intrinsic
motivation, an example of growth or self actualization
 Need for affiliation (n Aff)  desire to establish and maintain friendly,
compatible interpersonal relationships
 Learn social networking quickly, avoid conflict, an example of
belongingness or relatedness
 Need for Power (n Pow)  strong desire to have influence over others
 Make a significant impact on someone
 High-profile attention getting manner
 Maslows self esteem need
o Most effective mangers have a low need for affiliation, a high need for power, and the
ability to direct power toward organizational goals
Research Support for Need Theories
o The simpler ERG theory captures the human need structure better than Maslow’s
Managerial Implications of Need Theories
o Appreciate diversity of needs
o Appreciate intrinsic motivation
Self Determination Theory
 Relates the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs to autonomous or controlled
motivation
 Considers needs to be universal necessities for psychological health and well-being
 All individuals have 3 innate basic psychological needs that are important for psychological
growth and well-being:
o Competence → feeling a sense of mastery and being effective in one’s environment
o Autonomy → having choice and feeling volitional in one’s behaviour
o Relatedness → has to do with feeling connected to others
 Makes a distinction between autonomous motivation (self-determined) or controlled motivation
(not self-determined)
 The focus of the theory is on quality rather than quantity of the motivation
 Managerial Implications of Self-Determination Theory
o Autonomy support → involves providing employees with choice and encouragement for
personal initiative
 Positively related to the satisfaction of the needs for competence, relatedness, and
autonomy
o Autonomous motivation – intrinsic motivation
o is related to more effective job performance, especially on complex tasks
 Associated with more positive job attitudes
o Controlled motivation is associated with negative outcomes (psychological distress and
turnover intentions)
o Organizations need to create work environments that will satisfy employees’ basic
psychological needs
o Structuring work to allow interdependence among employees can also facilitate
autonomous motivation by satisfying the need for relatedness
Process Theories of Work Motivation
 Process Theories - Concentrate on how motivation occurs
 Expectancy Theory → belief that motivation is determined by the outcomes that people expect
to occur as a result of their actions on the job
o Outcomes are the consequences that may follow certain work behaviours
 First level outcomes: high productivity versus average productivity, good
attendance versus poor attendance
 Concerned with specifying how an employee might attempt to choose
one first level outcome instead of another
 Second level outcomes: consequences that follow the attainment of a particular
first-level outcome
 Most personally relevant to the individual worker
o Instrumentality is the probability that a particular first-level outcome will be followed
by a particular second-level outcome
 Known as the performance outcome link
o Valence is the expected value of outcomes, the extent to which they are attractive or
unattractive to the individual
 Valence of a particular first-level outcome = sum of instrumentalities x secondlevel valances
o



Expectancy is the probability that the worker can actually achieve a particular first-level
outcome (effort  performance link)
o Force is the end product of the other components of the theory
 Represents the relative degree of effort that will be directed toward various first
level outcomes
 Force = first-level valence x expectancy
o JIST:
 People will be motivated to perform in those work activities that they find
attractive and feel they can accomplish
 The attractiveness of various work activities depends on the extent to which they
lead to favourable personal consequences
Managerial Implications of Expectancy Theory
o Boost expectancies
 Ensure employees expect to be able to achieve first level outcomes that are of
interest to the organization
 Can usually be enhanced by providing proper equipment and training,
demonstrating correct work procedures, carefully explaining how performance is
evaluated, and listening to employee performance problems
o Clarify reward contingencies
 Managers should attempt to ensure paths between first and second-level
outcomes are clear
 Should attempt to provide stimulating, challenging tasks for workers who appear
to be interested in such work
o Appreciate diverse needs
 Managers would do well to analyze the diverse preferences of particular
employees and attempt to design individualized motivational packages to meet
their needs
Equity Theory
o Individuals are motivated to maintain an equitable exchange relationship
o How to reduce inequality
 Perceptually distort ones own inputs or outcomes
 Perceptually distort the inputs or outcomes of the comparison person or group
 Choose another comparison person or group
 Alter ones inputs or alter ones outcomes
 Leave the exchange relationship
o Gender wage gap – women compare themselves to other women
Goal Setting Theory
o A goal is the object or aim of an action
o If employees are to achieve acceptable performance, some method of translating
organizational goals into individual goals must be implemented
o Goals are most motivational when they are specific and challenging and when
organizational members are committed to them
o Feedback about progress toward goal attainment should be provided
o Positive effects of goals are due to 4 mechanisms
 They direct attention toward goal-relevant activities
 They lead to greater effort
 They increase and prolong persistence
 They lead to the discovery and use of task-relevant strategies for goal
attainment
o Goal Commitment

Employee participation, rewards, and management support are useful to
encourage goal commitment
o Goal orientation refers to an individual’s goal preferences in achievement situations
 Some individuals have a preference for learning goals while others have a
preference for performance goals
 Individuals with learning goal orientation are most concerned about learning
something new and developing their competence (best for learning)
 Individuals with a performance-prove goal orientation are concerned about
demonstrating their competence in performing a task by seeking favourable
judgements about the outcome of their performance
 Individuals with a performance-avoid goal orientation are concerned about
avoiding negative judgements about the outcome of their performance (worst for
learning)
o Goal Proximity
 Distal goal is a long term or end goal
 Proximal goal is a short-term goal or sub-goal instrumental to achieving a distal
goal
 The dark side to goal setting
o High performance goals can lead to unethical behaviour, depleted self regulation and
Do Motivation Theories Translate Across Cultures?
 In individualistic societies (Canada, US, GB, Australia) people tend to value individual initiative,
privacy, and taking care of oneself
o In more collective societies (Mexico, Singapore, and Pakistan) more closely knit social
bonds are observed, in which members of one’s in-group are expected to take care of
eachother in exchange for strong loyalty to the group
 Cultures differ in the extent to which they value achievement
 Concept of intrinsic motivation might be more relevant to wealthy societies than to developing
societies
 SDT works across cultures
 Individualistic cultures focus on equity and collective culture focus on equality
 Expectancy theory works for all cultures
 For setting goals, take into consideration the different culture characteristics (power distance and
stuff)
Integrating Theories of Work Motivation
 For individuals to obtain rewards, they must achieve designated levels of performance
 We are concerned with the amount, persistence, and direction of effort as well as whether it is
autonomous or controlled motivation
 Perceptions of expectancy and instrumentality relate to all 3 components of motivation
o Individuals direct their effort toward a particular first-level outcome and increase the
amount and persistence of effort to the extent they believe it will result in second-level
outcomes
 Motivation will be translated into good performance if the worker has the levels of general
cognitive ability and emotional intelligence relevant to the job, and if the worker understands the
task
 The connection between performance and occurrence of intrinsic rewards should be strong and
reliable
 Connection between performance and extrinsic rewards might be much less reliable (occurrence
of rewards depend on actions of management)
CHAPTER 6
Money as a Motivator
 According to the expectancy theory, if pay can satisfy needs, it should be highly valent, and good
motivator – clearly tied to performance
Linking Pay to Performance on Production Jobs
 Piece-rate is set up so that individual workers are paid a certain sum of money for each unit of
production they complete
 Various to schemes to link pay to performance on production jobs are called wage incentive
plans
 Introduction of wage incentives usually lead to substantial increases in productivity
Potential Problems with Wage Incentives
 Lowered quality of work
 Differential opportunity – different opportunities to produce at a high level
 Reduced cooperation among workers – if work incentives are individual
 Incompatible job design – people in an assembly line can’t be held accountable individually but
there are team incentives too
 Restriction of productivity – even if there is a wage incentive, people still cap their output to what
they seem fair
Linking Pay to Performance on White-Collar Jobs
 Frequently offer fewer objective performance criteria to which pay can be tied
 Attempts to link pay to performance on white-collar jobs are often called merit pay plans
o Periodically, managers are required to evaluate the performance of employees on some
form of rating scale or by means of a written description of performance
o Managers then recommended amount of merit pay to be awarded over and above basic
salaries
o Plans are employed with greater frequency than wage incentive plans
o Used by organizations to attract and retain employees and as an alternative to wage
increases
o People who see a strong link between rewards and performance tend to perform better
(line of sight)
o Many individuals who work under such plans do not perceive a link between their job
performance and their pay
o Seniority, employees, job level account for more variation in pay
Potential Problems with Merit Pay Plans
 Managers may be unable to discriminate between good and bad performers
 Merit increases may be too small to be effective motivators, instead managers do lump bonuses
so it looks like a greater amount of money
 Pay secrecy, reduces trust and people could stay ignorant about their pay
Using Pay to Motivate Teamwork
 Profit sharing is one of the most commonly used group-oriented incentive systems
o In years that the firm marks profit, some of it is returned to employees in the form of a
bonus
o Likely not highly motivational
 In a large firm it is difficult to see the impact of one’s own actions on profits
 Employee stock ownership plans allow employees to own a set amount of company’s shares
they can purchase at a fixed price
o Attract and retain talent, motivate employee performance, focus employee attention on
organizational performance, create a culture of ownership, educate employees about the
business, conserve cash by substituting options for cash
o Increase employee’s loyalty and motivation
o Works best in small organizations that regularly turn a profit
 Gainsharing plans are group incentive plans based on improved productivity or performance
over which the workforce has some control
o Include reductions in the cost of labour, material, or supplies
o Usually installed using committees that include extensive workforce participation
 Skill-based pay motivates employees to learn a wide variety of work tasks
o The more skills acquired, the higher the person’s pay
o Especially useful on self-managed teams
Job Design as a Motivator
 Job design refers to the structure, content, and configuration of a person’s work tasks and roles to
increase job motivation
 Many workers are motivated more by stimulating, challenging, and meaningful work than by
money
 Traditional Views of Job Design
o Prevailing philosophy was job simplification
o A division of labour within society occurred
o Organizations recognized that specialization was the key to efficient productivity
 Job scope → the breadth and depth of a job
o Breadth → number of different activities performed on the job
o Depth → the degree of discretion or control the worker has over how these tasks are
performed
o Jobs with high breadth and depth are called high-scope jobs
 Example: professor
o High-scope jobs should provide more intrinsic motivation than low-scope jobs
o Maslow, ERG, and expectancy theory all work for high scope jobs
o One way to increase the scope of a job is to assign employees stretch assignments
 Stretch assignments offer employees opportunities to broaden their skills by
working on a variety of challenging assignments
o Another approach is job rotation
 Involves rotating employees to different tasks and jobs in an organization
Job Characteristics Model
 Core Job Characteristics
o Skill variety → opportunity to do a variety of job activities using various skills
o Task identity → the extent to which a job involves doing a complete piece of work
o Task significance → the impact that a job has on others
o Autonomy → the freedom to schedule one’s own work activities
o Job feedback → information about one’s performance effectiveness
o
Motivating Potential Score = skill variety + task identity + task significance3 autonomy
feedback
 Critical Psychological States
o Work will be intrinsically motivating when it is perceived as meaningful
o Core characteristics affect meaningfulness, responsibility, and knowledge of results in a
systematic manner
 Outcomes
o Presence of the critical psychological states leads to a number of outcomes
o Most prominent is high intrinsic motivation
o Reduced absenteeism and turnover
Job Enrichment
 The design of jobs to enhance intrinsic motivation, quality of working life, and job involvement
o Job involvement refers to a cognitive state of psychological identification with one’s job
and the importance of work to one’s total self image
o All core job characteristics have been found to be positively related to job involvement
 Job enrichment procedures
o Combining tasks
o Establishing external client relationships
o Establishing internal client relationships
o Reducing supervision or reliance on others
o Forming work teams
o Making feedback more direct
 Potential Problems with Job Enrichment
o Poor diagnosis

o
o
o
o
Increasing job breadth by giving employees more tasks to perform while leaving
other crucial core characteristics unchanged (job enlargement)
Lack of desire or skill
Demand for rewards
Union resistance
Supervisory resistance
Work Design
 Work design characteristics refer to the attributes of the task, job, social, and organizational
environment
o Consists of 3 categories
 Motivational characteristics
 Includes task characteristics and knowledge characteristics
 Social characteristics
 Have to do with interpersonal and social aspects of work
 Includes social support, interdependence, interaction outside of the
organization, and feedback from others
 Work context characteristics
 Context within which work is performed
 Consists of ergonomics, physical demands, work conditions, and
equipment use
Relational Job Design
 Relational architecture of jobs
o Focuses on the structural properties of of work that shape employees’ opportunities to
connect and interact with people
o Motivate employees to make a difference in other people’s lives
o Prosocial motivation → the desire to expend effort to benefit other people
Job Crafting
 Involves self-initiated changes that employees make in their job demands and job resources to
improve the fit or match between characteristics of their job and their personal abilities and needs
o Involves proactive behaviours by employees to change the characteristics of their jobs
o Consists of four dimensions:
 Increasing social job resources
 Involves asking for feedback, advice, and support from supervisors and
colleagues
 Increasing structural job resources
 Involves behaviours to increase job characteristics such as autonomy and
skill variety
 Increasing challenging job demands
 Involves behaviours such as asking for more responsibilities and
volunteering for special projects
 Decreasing hindering job demands
 Involves behaviours to minimize physical, cognitive, and emotional
demands such as reducing one’s workload or work-family conflict
Management by Objectives
 An elaborate, systematics, ongoing management program designed to facilitate goal
establishment, goal accomplishment, and employee development
 Primary focus is with the nature of the interaction between managers and individual workers
 Most interactions share the following similarities:
o Manager meets with individual workers to develop and agree on employee objectives for
the coming months
o There are periodic meetings to monitor employee progress in achieving objectives
o
An appraisal meeting is held to evaluate the extent to which the agreed-upon objectives
have been achieved
o MBO cycle is repeated
Flexible Work Arrangements as Motivators for a Diverse Workforce
 Flexible work arrangements are work options that permit flexibility in terms of where or when
work is completed
o The purpose it to meet diverse workforce needs, promote job satisfaction, help employees
manage work and non-work responsibilities and achieve a better work-life balance
 Flex-time → an alternative work schedule with flexible arrival and departure times
o Should reduce absenteeism
o Signal degree of prestige and trust
o Most frequently implemented in office environments
o Work attitudes generally become more positive and employers report minimal abuse of
the arrangement
o Slight productivity gains are often reported
 Compressed workweek → an alternative work schedule in which employees work fewer than 5
days a week but put in a normal number of hours per week
o Technical roadblocks include the possibility of reduced customer service and negative
effects of fatigue that accompany longer working days
o Has a positive effect on job satisfaction and satisfaction with work schedule but no effect
on absenteeism or productivity
 Job sharing → when 2 part-time employees divide the work of a full-time job
o Can enable organizations to attract or retain capable employees who might otherwise
decide against full-time employment
o Can create problems with performance appraisal
 Work sharing → reducing the number of hours employees work in order to avoid layoffs
 Telecommuting → offering employees flexibility in terms of where they perform their job
o Employees are able to work at remote locations but stay in touch with their offices
o Provides workers with flexibility in their work schedules
o Can result in considerable financial savings for the organizations
o Leads to lower costs as a result of reduced turnover and need for office space and
equipment
o Can improve work-life balance and increase productivity
o Positive effects on perceived autonomy, job satisfaction and job performance
o Results in lower stress and turnover intentions
o Negatively affects relationships with coworkers
o Could have distractions in the home environment, feelings of isolation, and overwork
o May not be appropriate in organizations where customers are frequently at the office or
co-workers need to collaborate on rush projects
Motivational Practices in Perspective
 Choice of motivational practices requires a thorough diagnosis of the organization and the needs
and desires of employees
 Most effective approach will depend on a combination of contingency factors
o Including employee needs, nature of the job, characteristics of the organization, outcome
the organization wants to achieve
 Motivational systems that make use of a variety of motivators used in conjunction are most likely
to be effective
CHAPTER 7
What is a Group?
 A group consists of 2 or more people interacting interdependently to achieve a common goal
o Interaction is the most basic aspect of a group
Formal work groups → groups that organizations establish to facilitate the achievement of
organizational goals
o Intentionally designed to channel individual effort in an appropriate direction
o Includes task forces, project teams, and committees
 Informal groups → groups that emerge naturally in response to the common interests of
organizational members
Typical Stages of Group Development
 Forming
 Storming
o Conflict emerges
o Sorting out roles and responsibilities
 Norming
o Members resolve the issues and develop social consensus
 Performing
o Devotes energy towards task accomplishment
 Adjourning
Punctuated Equilibrium
 Punctuated equilibrium model → model of group development that describes how groups with
deadlines are affected by their first meetings and crucial midpoint transactions
 Phase 1
o Begins with the first meeting and continues until the midpoint in the group’s existence
o First meeting is critical in setting the agenda
o Group makes little visible progress toward the goal
 Midpoint Transition
o Occurs at almost exactly the halfway point towards the group’s deadline
o Marks a change in the group’s approach
 Phase 2
o Decisions and approaches adopted at the midpoint get played out in phase 2
o Concludes with a final meeting that reveals a burst of activity and concern for how
outsiders will evaluate the product
 Advice
o Prepare carefully for the first meeting
o As long as people are working, don’t look for radical progress during phase 1
o Manage the midpoint transition carefully
o Be sure that adequate resources are available to actually execute the phase 2 plan
o Resist deadline changes
Group Structure and Its Consequences
 Group structure → the characteristics of the stable social organization of a group
 Group Size
o Most groups have been 3 and 20 members
o Members of larger groups consistently report less satisfaction with group membership
 Larger groups may have more conflict
 As group size increases, time available for verbal participation by each member
decreases
 Individual members identify less easily with the success and accomplishments of
the group
o Some tasks are additive tasks (predict potential performance by adding performances of
individual group members together)
 Potential performance of the group increases with group size
 Example: building a house

o



Some tasks are disjunctive tasks (potential performance of the group depends on the
performance of its best member)
 Potential performance of groups increases with group size (higher probability the
group includes a superior performer)
 Example: research team looking for single error in computer code
o As groups performing tasks get bigger, they tend to suffer form process losses
 Performance difficulties that stem from the problems of motivating and
coordinating larger groups
 Problems of communication and decision making increase with size
o Average performance of group members decreases as size gets bigger
 Larger groups might perform better as groups, but their individual members tend
to be less efficient
o Conjunctive tasks are those in which the performance of the group is limited by its
poorest performer
 Potential and actual performance of conjunctive tasks would decrease as group
size increases (higher probability of a weak link)
Diversity of Group Membership
o More diverse groups have a more difficult time communicating effectively and becoming
cohesive
 Diverse groups might take longer to do their forming, storming, and norming
 Once developed can be equally as cohesive and productive
o Diverse groups sometimes perform better on certain tasks
 Increases team creativity and innovation
o Negative effects of surface diversity (age, gender, or race) wear off overtime
o Deep diversity in attitudes toward work or how to accomplish a goal can badly damage
cohesiveness
 Provide employees with training on working in diverse settings
Group Norms
o Social norms → collective expectations that members of social units have regarding the
behaviour of each other
 Codes of conduct specify standards against which we evaluate the
appropriateness of behaviour
o Norms provide regularity and predictability to behaviour
o Develop to regulate behaviours that are considered at least marginally important to their
supporters
o When the members of a group share related beliefs and values, we can expect them to
share consequent attitudes, which becomes the basis for norms
o Compliance occurs because the norm corresponds to privately held attitudes
 Save time and prevent social confusion
o Some typical norms
 Dress norms
 Reward allocation norms
 Equity → reward according to inputs, such as effort, performance, or
seniority
 Equality → reward everyone equally
 Reciprocity → reward people the way they reward you
 Social responsibility → reward those who truly need the reward
 Performance norms
Roles
o Positions in a group that have a set of expected behaviours attached to them
o Roles represent packages of norms that apply to particular group members
o
o
o
o

Designated/assigned roles are formally prescribed by an organization
 Means of dividing labour and responsibility to facilitate task achievement
Emergent roles develop naturally to meet the social-emotional needs of group members
or to assist in formal job accomplishment
Role ambiguity exists when the goals of one’s job or the methods of performing it are
unclear
 Variety of factors can lead to ambiguity
 Organizational factors
 The role sender (example: manager)
 The focal person (example: employee)
Role conflict exists when an individual is faced with incompatible role expectations
 Distinguished from ambiguity in that role expectations may be crystal clear but
incompatible in the sense they are mutually exclusive, cannot be fulfilled
simultaneously, or do not suit the role occupant
 Intrasender role conflict → occurs when a single role sender provides
incompatible role expectations to the role occupant
 Intersender role conflict → if 2 or more role senders differ in their expectations
for a role occupant
 Interrole conflict → when organizational members play several roles at one time
 Person-role conflict → roles are incompatible with the personality or skills of the
role occupant
 Most consistent consequences are job dissatisfaction, stress reactions, lowered
commitment, and turnover intentions
 Managers can prevent employee role conflict by avoiding self-contradictory
messages, conferring with other role senders, being sensitive to multiple role
demands, and fitting the right person to the right role
Status
o
The rank of social position accorded to group members in terms of prominence, prestige,
and respect
o Represents the group’s evaluation of a member
o Formal status system → represents management’s attempt to publicly identify those who
have higher status than others
 Status symbols might include titles, working relationships, pay packages, work
schedules, and physical working environment
 Status induces members to aspire to higher organizational positions
 Differentiation reinforces the authority hierarchy in work groups since people
pay attention to high status individuals
o Informal status systems can be detected within an organization
 Job performance can be a basis for the acquisition of informal status
o Status differences can limit communication
 Do not like to communicate with those at a lower status to you
o People pay attention to and respect status
 Higher status members do more talking and have more influence
 No guarantee that the highest status person is the most knowledgeable about the
problem at hand
Group Cohesiveness
 A critical emergent property of groups
 Cohesive groups are especially attractive to their members
 Factors influencing cohesiveness:
o Threat and competition


o
Groups feel a need to improve communication and coordination so they can
better cope with the situation at hand
Members now perceive a group as more attractive because it is seen as capable of
doing what has to be done to ward off threat
Success

Group becomes more attractive to its members when it has successfully
accomplished some important goal
o Member diversity
 If a group agrees about how to accomplish some particular task, its success in
performing the task will outweigh surface dissimilarity in determining
cohesiveness
o Group size
 Bigger groups have more difficult time becoming and staying cohesive
o Toughness of initiation
 Groups that are tough to get into are more attractive than those that are easy to
join
 Consequences of cohesiveness:
o More participation in group activities
o More conformity
o More success
Social Loafing
 The tendency that people have to withhold physical or intellectual effort when they are
performing a group task
o They would work harder if they were alone rather than part of the group
o Motivation problem
 Free rider effect → people lower their effort to get a free ride at the expense of their fellow group
members
 Sucker effect → people lower their effort because of the feeling that others are free riding, in an
attempt to restore equity in the group
 Some ways to counteract social loafing:
o Make individual performance more visible
o Make sure that the work is interesting
o Increase feelings of indispensability
o Increase performance feedback
o Reward group performance
What is a Team?
 Research shows improvements in organizational performance in terms of both efficiency and
quality as a result of team-based work arrangements
 Collective efficacy → consists of shared beliefs that a team can successfully perform a given task
o Self-efficacy does not necessarily translate into collective efficacy
o Team reflexivity → the extent to which teams deliberately discuss team processes and
goals and adapt their behaviour accordingly
 A work group is effective when:
o Its physical or intellectual output is acceptable to management and to the other parts of
the organization that use this output
o Group members’ needs are satisfied rather than frustrated by the group
o The group experience enables members to continue to work together
 Self managed work teams provide their members the opportunity to do challenging work under
reduced supervision
o General idea is that groups regulate much of their own members’ behaviour
o Tasks should be complex and challenging, requiring high interdependence

Composition of self-managed teams
o Stability → requires understanding and trust, group membership must be fairly stable
o Size → should be as small as is feasible
o Expertise → members should have a high level of expertise about the task at hand
o Diversity → members should be diverse enough to bring a variety of perspectives and
skills to the task

How to support self-managed teams:
o Training
 Technical training → math, computer use, any tasks that a supervisor formerly
handled
 Social skills → assertiveness, problem solving, routine dispute resolution
 Language skills → good communication is critical
 Business training
o Rewards
 Skill based pay is especially attractive
 Rewards the acquisition of multiple skills that can support the team
o Management
Cross-functional teams bring people with different functional specialities together to better
invent, design, or deliver
o Might be self-managed and permanent if it is doing a recurrent task that is not too
complex
o If task is complex and unique, typically requires formal leadership
o General goals include some combination of innovation, spead, and quality
o Principles for effectiveness:
 Composition → all relevant specialties are necessary
 Superordinate goals → attractive outcomes that can be achieved only by
collaboration
 Physical proximity → team members have to be located close to each other to
facilitate informal contact
 Autonomy → need some autonomy from the larger organization
 Rules and procedures → basic procedures must be laid down to prevent anarchy
 Leadership → leaders need especially strong people skills in addition to task
expertise

o
Shared mental models mean that team members share identical information about how
they should interact and what their task is
 Enhances coordination and contributes to effective team performance
Virtual Teams
 Work groups that use technology to communicate and collaborate across space, time, and
organizational boundaries
o Primary feature is the lack of face-to-face contact between team members
o Often cross-functional teams
 Advantages:
o Around the clock work
o Reduced travel time and cost
o Larger talent pool
 Challenges:
o Trust
o Miscommunication
o Isolation
o Management issues
 Lessons concerning virtual teams
o Recruitment
 Choose team members carefully in terms of attitude and personality so they can
handle the independence and isolation
 Find people with good interpersonal and intercultural skills
o Training
 Invest in training for both technical and interpersonal skills
o Personalization
 Encourage team members to get to know each other
 Encourage informal communication using technology or by arranging face-toface meetings
o Leadership
 Leaders should define goals clearly
 Set rules for communication standards and responses
 Provide feedback to keep team members informed of progress and the big picture
 Resolve conflict
 Evoke shared mental models