Bachelor of Commerce
in Project Management
FUNDAMENTALS
OF ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
Module Guide
Copyright © 2024
MANCOSA
All rights reserved; no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including photocopying machines,
without the written permission of the publisher. Please report all errors and omissions to the following email address:
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Bachelor of Commerce
in Project Management
FUNDAMENTALS OF ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
Preface.................................................................................................................................................................... 1
Unit 1: Introduction to Organisational Behaviour ................................................................................................... 11
Unit 2: Individual Mechanisms .............................................................................................................................. 38
Unit 3: Individual Characteristics ........................................................................................................................... 82
Unit 4: Group Mechanisms.................................................................................................................................... 96
Unit 5: Organisational Mechanisms .................................................................................................................... 126
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................................ 149
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
Preface
A.
Welcome
Dear Student
It is a great pleasure to welcome you to Fundamentals Organisational Behaviour (FOB6). To make sure that
you share our passion about this area of study, we encourage you to read this overview thoroughly. Refer to it as
often as you need to since it will certainly make studying this module a lot easier. The intention of this module is to
develop both your confidence and proficiency in this module.
The field of Organisational Behaviour is extremely dynamic and challenging. The learning content, activities and
self- study questions contained in this guide will therefore provide you with opportunities to explore the latest
developments in this field and help you to discover the field of Organisational Behaviour as it is practiced today.
This is a distance-learning module. Since you do not have a tutor standing next to you while you study, you need
to apply self-discipline. You will have the opportunity to collaborate with each other via social media tools. Your
study skills will include self-direction and responsibility. However, you will gain a lot from the experience! These
study skills will contribute to your life skills, which will help you to succeed in all areas of life.
We hope you enjoy the module.
MANCOSA does not own or purport to own, unless explicitly stated otherwise, any intellectual property
rights in or to multimedia used or provided in this module guide. Such multimedia is copyrighted by the
respective creators thereto and used by MANCOSA for educational purposes only. Should you wish to use
copyrighted material from this guide for purposes of your own that extend beyond fair dealing/use, you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
B.
Module Overview
The purpose of this module is to give the student an in-depth look at the way today’s business firms use
organisation behaviour techniques to achieve the business objectives. Knowledge from this module enables the
integration of other modules in the MANCOSA Bachelor of Commerce in Project Management to solve complex
problems in an organisation. You will understand why different mechanisms are used to make an organisation
function more effectively. Regardless of which career path you have chosen, this module will provide you with
ample information and knowledge on the value of Organisational Behaviour. This module will introduce you to the
various new theories and scientific methods for managing and organizing a business. You will see various trends
in the business environment and learn how to effectively apply techniques to allow the business to run smoothly.
This a 15-credit module at NQF 6.
The order suggested for learning: Read the introduction first, followed by the text, then the additional recommended
readings, if any, and finally complete activities.
C.
Exit Level Outcomes and Associated Assessment Criteria of the Programme
Exit Level Outcomes (ELOs)
• Know and understand the tools,
Associated Assessment Criteria (AACs)
• Foundational knowledge of Project Management is
techniques, principles, practices and
explored and understanding is reflected through the correct
methodologies of Project Management;
use of terminology
• Fundamental concepts in Project Management are
acquired and knowledge of appropriate application of
methodologies in managing projects reflects understanding
• Gain an understanding of the
• Similarities of Project Management and generic
interrelationship among the various tools,
management methodologies are investigated and
techniques, practices and methodologies
familiarity is shown by the ability to distinguish between the
of commerce and project management;
two disciplines
• Correlations between Project Management and
Management methodologies are analysed and knowledge
is reflected by proper integration of various tools and
techniques from both disciplines to successfully manage
projects
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
• Develop the practical skills to apply
• The Theory of Constraints and other theories are examined
theory to the processes of project
and knowledge is demonstrated through the ability to strike
management to achieve project success
a balance between constraints and successful-delivery of
within project constraints;
projects within the specified schedule, budget and scope
without compromising quality
• The determinants of project success are investigated and
knowledge is reflected by an understanding of factors and
criteria that most significantly enable Project Managers to
replicate successful outcomes
• Acquire the skills to undertake research
in project management;
• Research Methodology is examined and familiarity is
reflected through an understanding of the research process
in Project Management
• Fundamental concepts in research are evaluated and
knowledge is reflected by the ability to apply basic
concepts and strategies and analysing the study's findings
• Acquire the competencies to satisfactorily • The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is
complete the Project Management
understood and applied by ensuring a discernible
Professional Examination;
knowledge of all the PMBOK knowledge areas
• The correlation of knowledge areas and process groups
are examined and an understanding of how to implement
the approaches in the project environment prepares the
student to satisfactorily complete the Project Management
Profession (PMP) exam
• Demonstrate an understanding to act
• Ethics and Governance in Project Management is probed
ethically and professionally, and justify
and knowledge is reflected through an understanding of
decisions made and actions taken using
the Project Management Institute’s Code of Ethics
relevant ethical values and approaches;
• Correlation between Ethics and Project success is
explored and an understanding of the ethics knowledge,
origins, linkages, and implications in project success
reflects understanding
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
• Communicate ideas, concepts and
• Knowledge of the Project Management Processes is
practical application of the project life
investigated and comprehension is demonstrated by an
cycle, including the stages of initiation,
understanding of tools and techniques used in each
planning, implementation and monitoring
process group
and closing;
• The interrelation between the process groups is examined
and familiarity is reflected by an understanding how
processes overlap, interact and depend on each other
• Apply technology, innovation, people and • The role of technology in Project Management is
systems-thinking concepts which are
investigated and awareness is reflected by an
sometimes in unfamiliar and variable
understanding of the dynamics of managing projects in the
contexts to transform individuals,
global marketplace
organisations and communities;
• The effects of technological advancements are examined
and understanding is shown by knowledge of challenges in
embracing technological change and how to overcome
barriers to change
• Be able to exercise the necessary
• Essential leadership skills for Project Managers are
rational judgment and decision-making
investigated and knowledge is shown by an understanding
skills, in a context of personal
of the roles and responsibility of a Project Manager as well
responsibility and accountability, which
as leadership
will assist in management planning
decisions and judicious use of resources
in a context of ensuring sustainability and
environmental ethics within the project
environment.
• The correlation between leadership and project success in
explored and familiarity is reflected by an understanding of
competencies required to manage teams effectively and
deliver successful projects
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
D.
Learning Outcomes and Associated Assessment Criteria of the Module
LEARNING OUTCOMES OF THE MODULE
ASSOCIATED ASSESSMENT CRITERIA OF THE MODULE
•
•
Interpret the role of management of
Attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups in the
individuals and their interaction within
organisation is explained to understand the impact of
an organisation
organisational behaviour.
•
Effective management is promoted and explained to
enhance profitability in the organisation.
•
Job Performance and organisational commitment as
primary outcomes are analysed to understand the impact
on organisational behaviour.
•
Discuss the concept of managing
•
groups within an organisational context
Communication processes are applied to allow teams to
accomplish their work.
•
Teamwork processes are analysed to understand the
interpersonal
activities,
which
will
facilitate
the
accomplishment of teamwork but do not directly involve
task accomplishment.
•
Teamwork competencies, cross training and team
building are applied as training interventions to help
improve team processes.
•
Develop an organisational plan that
•
ensures effective management of
organisational structure, culture, human
resource and change management
Individuals and groups within the organisation are divided
and coordinated to manage jobs and tasks.
•
Work specialization, chain of command, span of control,
centralization of decision making and formalisation are
classified as five major elements of an organisations
structure
•
Motivation is applied to provide employees with a sense
of control that will help them learn to navigate in the new
work environment.
•
Analyse motivation theories in order to
determine the effects it has on
•
Motivation theories are applied to drive employee
performance in the organisation
employee behaviour and performance
in the workplace
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
•
Positive relationships are promoted by the use of
compensation practices to increase job performance and
organisational commitment.
•
Value the things that people consciously or
subconsciously want to seek and attain are analysed to
help promote performance in the workplace.
•
Evaluate the role of leadership to an
•
organisation
Power is applied to influence the direct activities of the
followers towards the goal achievement.
•
Five major types of power are applied in the organisation
to allow leaders to be more effective in the organisation.
•
Leadership styles and behaviours are analysed and
applied to allow trained leaders to be more effective.
E.
Learning Outcomes of the Units
You will find the Unit Learning Outcomes on the introductory pages of each Unit in the Module Guide. The Unit
Learning Outcomes lists an overview of the areas you must demonstrate knowledge in and the practical skills you
must be able to achieve at the end of each Unit lesson in the Module Guide.
F.
Notional Learning Hours
Notional Learning Hour Table for the Programme
Learning time
Types of learning activities
%
Lectures/Workshops (face to face, limited or technologically mediated)
10
Tutorials: individual groups of 30 or less
0
Syndicate groups
0
Practical workplace experience (experiential learning/work-based learning etc.)
0
Independent self-study of standard texts and references (study guides, books, journal articles)
65
Independent self-study of specially prepared materials (case studies, multi-media, etc.)
20
Other: Online
5
TOTAL
100
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
G.
Acronyms
ASA
Attraction Selection Attrition
BARS
Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales
BATNA
Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement
GLOBAL
Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness
HR
Human Resource
IQ
Intelligence Quotient
JIG
Job In General
LMX
Leader Member Exchange
MBO
Management By Objectives
MBTI
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
OB
Organisational Behaviour
PCI
Personal Characteristics Inventory
H.
How to Use this Module
This Module Guide was compiled to help you work through your units and textbook for this module, by breaking
your studies into manageable parts. The Module Guide gives you extra theory and explanations where necessary,
and so enables you to get the most from your module.
The purpose of the Module Guide is to allow you the opportunity to integrate the theoretical concepts from the
prescribed textbook and recommended readings. We suggest that you briefly skim read through the entire guide
to get an overview of its contents. At the beginning of each Unit, you will find a list of Learning Outcomes. This
outlines the main points that you should understand when you have completed the Unit/s. Do not attempt to read
and study everything at once. Each study session should be 90 minutes without a break.
This module should be studied using the prescribed and recommended textbooks/readings and the relevant
sections of this Module Guide. You must read about the topic that you intend to study in the appropriate section
before you start reading the textbook in detail. Ensure that you make your own notes as you work through both the
textbook and this module. In the event that you do not have the prescribed and recommended textbooks/readings,
you must make use of any other source that deals with the sections in this module. If you want to do further reading
and want to obtain publications that were used as source documents when we wrote this guide, you should look
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at the reference list and the bibliography at the end of the Module Guide. In addition, at the end of each Unit there
may be link to the PowerPoint presentation and other useful reading.
I.
Study Material
The study material for this module includes tutorial letters, programme handbook, this Module Guide, a list of
prescribed and recommended textbooks/readings which may be supplemented by additional readings.
J.
Prescribed and Recommended Textbook/Readings
The prescribed and recommended readings/textbooks presents a tremendous amount of material in a simple,
easy-to-learn format. You should read ahead during your course. Make a point of it to re-read the learning content
in your module textbook. This will increase your retention of important concepts and skills. You may wish to read
more widely than just the Module Guide and the prescribed and recommended textbooks/readings, the
Bibliography and Reference list provides you with additional reading.
The prescribed and recommended textbooks/readings for this module are:
Prescribed Reading/Textbook
•
Colquitt, J.A., Lepine, J.A. and Wesson, M.J. (2019) Organisational Behavior - Improving Performance
and Commitment in the Workplace. Sixth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Recommended Readings
•
Jones, G.R., George, J.M. and Hill, C.W.L. (2013) Contemporary Management. Eighth Edition. Boston:
McGraw Hill.
•
Kondalkar, V.G. (2007) Organizational Behaviour. First Edition. New Age International.
•
Cross, C and Carbery, R. (2016) Organisational Behaviour an Introduction. First Edition. Palgrave.
•
Griffin, R.W., Phillips, J.M. and Gully, S.M. (2019) Organizational Behavior: Managing People and
Organizations. Thirteenth Edition. Cengage.
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
K.
Special Features
In the Module Guide, you will find the following icons together with a description. These are designed to help you
study. It is imperative that you work through them as they also provide guidelines for examination purposes.
Special Feature
Icon
Explanation
The Learning Outcomes indicate aspects of the particular Unit you have
LEARNING
to master.
OUTCOMES
ASSOCIATED
ASSESSMENT
CRITERIA
The Associated Assessment Criteria is the evaluation of the students’
understanding which are aligned to the outcomes. The Associated
Assessment Criteria sets the standard for the successful demonstration
of the understanding of a concept or skill.
A Think Point asks you to stop and think about an issue. Sometimes you
THINK POINT
are asked to apply a concept to your own experience or to think of an
example.
You may come across Activities that ask you to carry out specific tasks.
ACTIVITY
In most cases, there are no right or wrong answers to these activities.
The purpose of the activities is to give you an opportunity to apply what
you have learned.
At this point, you should read the references supplied. If you are unable
READINGS
to acquire the suggested readings, then you are welcome to consult any
current source that deals with the subject.
PRACTICAL
Practical Application or Examples will be discussed to enhance
APPLICATION
understanding of this module.
OR EXAMPLES
KNOWLEDGE
You may come across Knowledge Check Questions at the end of each
CHECK
Unit in the form of Knowledge Check Questions (KCQ’s) that will test
QUESTIONS
your knowledge. You should refer to the Module Guide or your
textbook(s) for the answers.
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
You may come across Revision Questions that test your understanding
REVISION
QUESTIONS
of what you have learned so far. These may be attempted with the aid
of your textbooks, journal articles and Module Guide.
Case Studies are included in different sections in this Module Guide.
CASE STUDY
This activity provides students with the opportunity to apply theory to
practice.
You may come across links to Videos Activities as well as instructions
VIDEO ACTIVITY
on activities to attend to after watching the video.
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
Unit
1:
11
Introduction to Organisational
Behaviour
MANCOSA – Bachelor of Commerce in Project Management
Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
Unit Learning Outcomes
CONTENT LIST
LEARNING OUTCOMES OF THIS UNIT:
1.1
Introduction
•
Introduces topic areas for the unit
1.2
What is Organisational Behaviour
•
Define organisational behaviour
1.3
Does Organisational behaviour
•
Understand the two primary outcomes in organisational behaviour
•
Understand the factors that affect the two primary outcomes in
matter
1.4
How do we ‘know’ what we know
organisational
about Organisational Behaviour
behaviour
•
Describe the role of theory in the scientific method
1.5
Job Performance
•
Define job and task performance
1.6
Trends affecting performance
•
Understand citizen behaviour
1.7
Application: Performance
•
Understand counterproductive behaviour
•
Describe the trends, which affect job performance
•
Understand ways of managing employee performance
•
Describe organisational commitment and withdrawal
management
1.8
Organisational Commitment
1.9
What does it mean to be
committed?
behaviour
•
Understand the types of organisational commitment
1.10 Trends that affect commitment
•
Understand the responses to negative events at work
1.11 Application: Commitment
•
Describe the trends affecting organisational commitment
•
Summarises topic areas covered in the unit
initiatives
1.12 Summary
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
Prescribed and Recommended Textbooks/Readings
Prescribed Reading/Textbook
• Colquitt, J.A., Lepine, J.A. and Wesson, M.J. (2019) Organisational
Behavior - Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace.
Sixth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Recommended Readings
• Jones, G.R., George, J.M. and Hill, C.W.L. (2013) Contemporary
Management. Eighth Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill.
• Kondalkar, V.G. (2007) Organizational Behaviour. First Edition. New Age
International.
• Cross, C and Carbery, R. (2016) Organisational Behaviour an Introduction.
First Edition. Palgrave.
• Griffin, R.W., Phillips, J.M. and Gully, S.M. (2019) Organizational
Behavior: Managing People and Organizations. Thirteenth Edition.
Cengage.
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
1.1
Introduction
In this unit, you will understand what organisational behaviour is and focus the employee’s behaviour towards the
Organisation. You will see the purpose of organisational behaviour and understand whether it matters or not. You
will understand about job performance and explore the trends that affect job performance. You will learn of avenues
in managing performance and understand what means to be a good performer is. You will explore the trends in
organisational commitment and understand which trends affect commitment. You will explore the avenues, which
involve commitment initiatives.
1.2
What is Organisational Behaviour?
Organisations are changing in society, which now demands emphasis on the knowledge sharing and collaboration
in organisations. Managers need to adjust the new the new organisational forms such as professional service
model and virtually enabled networks. Wondering about how people act and think them, way that they do is what
organisational behaviour is all about. Studying these concepts and research in OB will allow you to understand the
effects of attitude and behaviour at the workplace (Cross and Carbery, 2016).
Organisational behaviour (OB) is the field of study dedicated to understanding, elaborating and improving the
behaviours of individuals and groups in an organisation. Organisational behaviour can be compared with two other
courses commonly offered when studying management:
•
Human Resources Management, which focuses on the theories and principles, studied in Organisational
Behaviour and the application of these principles in an organisation.
•
Strategic Management on the other hand, focuses on the product choices and industry characteristics
that affects the organisations profits.
In your studies, we will try to link this module with project management.
(Colquitt, Lepine and Wesson, 2019)
Organisational behaviour will involve the integration of studies, related to the behavioural sciences such as
psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, social psychology and political science. The study of OB is to
examine the human behaviour, how it contributes towards the growth of the organisation. The contributions of
psychology to the field of organisational behaviour is an applied science, which is used to examine and explain the
human behaviour in a particular situation and predict the actions of that particular individual. Psychology has
contributed towards the various theories in learning, motivation, personality among many others that bring about
change in attitude and developing a positive approach to the organisational system. There are some modern
management theories such as re-engineering which involves the rethinking and redesign of the business
processes to improve the organisations effectiveness. (Kondalkar, 2007). One cannot understand an employee in
isolation therefore, it is important for individuals to be part of a team. Working in a team can influence that individual
for example if an individual who is part of a team that are grumpy, the influence of the mood is most likely to extend
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
to that individual. Teams are part of departments and departments are parts of organisations. The whole
organisation is part of the global regulations and national cultures (Cross and Carbery, 2016).
1.3
Does Organisational Behaviour Matter?
Many people will question whether a firm’s ability to manage Organisational Behaviour has any bearing on its
ultimate profitability. The use of effective management of Organisational Behaviour has a huge impact on a product
and how well (or bad) it sells; this is very important, as it will determine the viability of the business. For instance,
when a product is good, it sells well, but only for a limited period. The same applies if a product is bad and does
not sell, applying the principles of Organisational Behaviour can make the product better, and for a longer period
of time (Colquitt et al., 2019).
After taking the above into consideration, we should not just agree that Organisational Behaviour is important.
Instead, we should rather look at how Organisational Behaviour affects the profitability of the business. One way
of doing this is by considering the resource-based view of the organisation. This gives us an idea of what makes
certain resources valuable and in turn, what makes them capable of creating long-term profits of the organisation.
The resource-based view shows us that the value of the resources depends on a number of factors, such as the
history of the resource. Resources are also more valuable when it is rare. Good people are rare and thus, hold
great value to an organisation. The resource-based view also shows us that a resource is more valuable when it
is inimitable – Cannot be imitated. History, numerous small decisions and socially complex resources are three
reasons people are inimitable. The effective use of organisational behaviour will allow project management to be
conducted a little more smoothly (Colquitt et al., 2019).
So, the provocative question is, how does Organisational behaviour affect the organisations profitability? We know
that good people are rare and inimitable and as a result, they create a resource that is valuable for creating a
competitive advantage. Good people do have an impact on the profitability of a company. We should now ask,
since Organisational behaviour has a positive influence on profits, why does every company not prioritise the
effective use of Organisational behaviour? How is it that some companies do a terrible job when it comes to
managing their employees? In order to maintain effective management of Organisational behaviour, companies
need to believe that several different practices are important, along with long-term commitment to improving these
practices (Colquitt et al., 2019). The study of organisational behaviour is the application of managerial skills and
knowledge to the people in the organisation. The study of the individual and group behaviour in the field of
organisational behaviour, are aimed at attempting to modify and promote the attitude and skills of people in the
organisation; the leaders must look at the effects of the individual behaviour and of the groups (Kondalkar, 2007).
According to Colquitt, Lepine and Wesson (2019:14-15), One must bear in mind that one-half of organisations will
not believe the connection between how they manage their people and the profits they earn. One half of those who
do see the connection will do what many organisations have done – try to make a single change to solve their
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problems, not realising that the effective management of people requires a more comprehensive and systematic
approach. Of the firms that make comprehensive changes, probably only about one-half will persist with their
practices long enough too actually, derive economic benefits. Because one-half times one-half times one-half
equals one-eighth, at best 12 percent of organisations will actually do what is required to build profits by putting
people first.
Benchmarking is a great technique used to help organisations to compare themselves against the best practices
that are available today. They can use this technique to improve their strategies by learning from others. It can
help the organisation to create a need for change in the work environment (Kondalkar, 2007).
Revision Question 1
What is Organisational Behaviour?
1.4
How do we “Know” What We Know About Organisational Behaviour?
We now ask ourselves, where does the knowledge in this study guide come from? There are several different ways
of knowing things?
•
By experience
•
By intuition
•
By authority
•
By science
Let us look at an example: Publicly praising an employee for a job well done will result in an increase in their
performance and commitment to their work. How can we tell if the above is true? Maybe you “know” it’s true
because you, yourself have always responded well to praise, or it could be that you “know” it’s true because it’s
common logic – who wouldn’t work harder after a few praises? Maybe also, you “know” that it is true because your
previous employer has always applied this theory? On the other hand, experience, intuition and authority might
lead you to have the opposite belief – That public praises have no impact on performance and commitments to the
job. Maybe public praises made you feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. Alternatively, public praises are
considered as the cheaper alternative, as opposed to the company providing financial incentives for a job well
done. According to science, it does not really matter what experience a person has, their intuition or authority, the
prediction must be tested with data. Scientists do not assume that their beliefs are accurate, they acknowledge
that their beliefs must be tested scientifically (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
It is possible for scientists to build a theory explaining why social recognition might influence the performance and
commitment of work units, but from what sources would that theory be built. One source can be introspection.
However, other theories are built from interviewing employees, or mere observations. Alternatively, theories may
be built from research reviews, which examine findings of previous studies to look for general patterns or themes.
Organisational Behaviour (practitioners) once disputed that money was not enough motivation and that the best
way to structure jobs was to keep them as normal and simple as possible (Colquitt et al., 2019). In an organisation,
various components managed for instance people; they are the main component of any organisation. Every
individual will undergo a need spectrum the suitable steps needed for them to perform effectively at their task. The
workers’ relationship is managed; the superiors and subordinates establish a mutual understanding with easy
communication channels to understand each other’s views. Working in teams or groups are very vital in an
organisation individual may have to keep personal interests aside in order to function as a team and achieve the
group goals. There are two types of structures i.e., formal and informal. Formal organisations are built based on
the objectives that are set on it whereas information organisations do not have a specified structure. Technology
is an important factor, which needs to be managed. There could be various systems and sub-systems in place to
support the organisation. Technology is formulated based on the job structure, in order for it to be more effective.
Other components that need good managing are jobs, processes and the external environment. Jobs will have
various tasks built-in in order for an individual to fulfil his function and purpose in the organisation. Processes are
crucial to high productivity and higher job satisfaction. The external environment also plays an important role in
managing the points we have discussed above. Managers will examine the influence of culture and its impact on
an individual. The managers will examine how the individual will cope with changes (Kondalkar, 2007).
Think Point 1
Think about your absolute worse co-worker, the one who made fun of others,
or did not get the job done. What did their boss do to improve their behaviour?
Did their boss take the correct measures? What would you have done
differently?
1.5.
Job Performance
What does it mean to be a “Good Performer?”
Job Performance is defined as the set of employee behaviours that contribute to organisational goal
accomplishment. Job Performance has three parts: Task Performance, Citizenship behaviour, and
counterproductive behaviour (Colquitt et al., 2019). Motivation is a very necessary contributor towards job
performance along with ability, motivation and a combination of knowledge and skills that the individual needs to
complete a task. If a manager wants to improve the level of work in the organisation, attention will need to be given
to motivation (Mullins, 2010).
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According to Colquitt, Lepine and Wesson (2019:31-45), Task Performance is the employee’s behaviours that are
directly involved in the transformation of organisational resources into goods or services that the organisation
produces. Job performances are highlighted when the employer places an advertisement for an available vacancy.
In other words, task performance is the set of specific obligations that the employee must fulfil to receive
remuneration and continued employment.
Examples of Task Performance includes Routine task performance, adaptive task performance and creative task
performance.
•
Routine Task Performance includes well-known responses to demands that occur in a normal and
predictable way. Here, employees react in more or less habitual or programmed ways that vary little from
one instance to another.
•
Adaptive Task Performance, also known as adaptability, shows us how employees respond to task
demands that are novel, unusual or unpredictable.
•
Creative Task Performance is the degree to which employees develop ideas or physical outcomes that
are both novel and useful.
Now that we have explained Task performance, we will look at how organisations identify sets of behaviour’s that
represent “task performance” for different jobs. Most organisations pinpoint task performance behaviour’s by
performing what has called a job analysis. Job analysis involves three steps:
•
The first step involves creating a list of activities involved in the job.
•
Secondly, subject matter experts rate each activity, according to things such as the importance and
frequency of the activity.
•
Finally, the activities are rated in terms of their importance and frequency are retained and used to define
performance. The retained behaviour’s will then find their way into training programs as learning
objectives and into performance evaluation systems as measures to evaluate task performance (Colquitt
et al., 2019).
An individual’s behaviour may show some ambivalence towards control. There are some conditions where certain
people may desire control. The control system will allow feedback about the task performance. It will provide some
degree of structure of the tasks and define how each task will be conducted. This will in turn measure the
performance and if there is a rewards system in place, linking it to performance can be beneficial (Kondalkar,
2007).
Should an Organisation find the need to not use job analysis to identify the set of behaviour’s needed to define
task performance, they can use a database created by government to help with the important activity. The
occupational Information Network (O*net) is an online database which includes the characteristics of most jobs
related to tasks, behaviours and the required knowledge, skills and abilities (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Before ending our topic on Task Performance, it is vital to note that Task Performance behaviours are not simply
performed or not performed, while poor performances may often fail to complete the required behaviour’s, it is just
as true that top performers often exceed all expectations for these behaviour’s. We should further note that
although top performers are much rarer than those who perform poorly, they are often quite visible in their field
(Colquitt et al., 2019). Organisational performance is achieved at the management level of the organisation were
by they exercise control over behaviour that in turn actions the staff to ensure there is a satisfactory level of
performance. The control system will check the progress and determine the objectives of the organisation that
needs to be achieved (Kondalkar, 2007). In additional consideration to task performance within the organisation,
we need to establish the stable and unstable factors that cause behaviour to exhibit attributions for performance.
Stable factors are ability or the ease or difficulty of the task were as unstable factors are the exertion of effort
(Mullins, 2010).
Citizenship Behaviour deals with employees who goes the extra mile by engaging in activities that do not fall
within their job description and therefore do not fall under the broad heading of task performance. Citizenship
behaviour can best be described as voluntary activities performed by the employee that does not guarantee any
incentive but rather contributes to the Organisation by improving the overall quality of the setting or context in which
work takes place. There are two main categories associated with Citizenship Behaviour:
•
Interpersonal Citizenship Behaviour works to the advantage of the co-workers and colleagues and
includes assisting, supporting, and developing other organisational members in a way that goes beyond
normal job expectations. Interpersonal Behaviour consists of three factors:
1. Helping – Includes assisting workers with heavier workloads and guiding new employees when they
just begin the job. While assisting employees may require a lot of time and effort, if often makes a
huge difference in the lives of others.
2. Courtesy – Keeping co-workers up to date and informed about matters that are related to them.
3. Sportsmanship – Maintaining a good attitude with co-workers, even during difficult times.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
While interpersonal citizenship behaviour might be important in many different job contexts, it may be even more
important when employees work in smaller groups or teams. Team members who are helpful, respectful and
courteous are also likely to have a positive team atmosphere in which members trust each other.
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
•
Organisational Citizenship Behaviour are behaviour’s that benefit the larger Organisation by supporting
and defending the company, working to improve its operations and being loyal to it. Below are examples
of Organisational Citizenship Behaviour:
1. Voice – Involves speaking up, interacting and giving suggestions relating to opportunities to
improve the way in which the Organisation functions or to address problems that could lead to
negative consequences of the Organisation.
2. Civic Virtue – Involves attending voluntary meetings, and functions, as well as reading and
keeping up to date with news that affects the Organisation.
3. Boosterism – The employees’ attitude towards the Organisation outside of the office.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
There are three important points about citizenship behaviour that should be emphasized:
1. Citizenship behaviour is relevant in any job, regardless of the nature of its task. Recent studies
show that these behaviours can boost the effectiveness of the Organisation.
2. Since citizenship behaviours are relatively discretionary and influenced by the specific situation
the employee is working in, they can vary substantially overtime.
3. Many employees may be tempted to focus on their own task and not worry about going the extra
mile. After all, citizenship behaviour is voluntary and optional, while task performance requirements
are not.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Activity 1
1.1. Conduct research on what is citizen behaviour.
1.2. Why is citizen behaviour important?
1.3. Explain the advantages of citizen behaviour.
Counterproductive Behaviour – As studied, task performance and citizenship behaviour are the employee’s
activities that assists the Organisation in achieving its goals. We will now move onto the third category of Job
performance, called Counterproductive Behaviour. Counterproductive behaviour can best be defined as the
employee’s actions, which intentionally keeps the Organisation from achieving its goals. We place emphasis on
the word “intentionally” because these are actions that are deliberate, and not caused by accident. The following
are some examples of counterproductive behaviour’s:
1. Property Deviance are damages to the Organisations assets and possessions. A good example of
property deviance is sabotage, which is intended damage of company property. Another example of
property deviance is theft, which could prove to be more expensive than sabotage.
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
2. Production Deviance focuses specifically on the decline in work production. An example of production
deviance is wasting resources. This is where employees would use more material than needed or take
up a lot of time to do simple tasks. Substance abuse is another form of production deviance. Employees
will not focus on the task, under the influence of drugs and alcohol and as a result, this would mean a
decline in production.
3. Political Deviance are behaviour that deliberately leave the other employees at a disadvantage, rather
than the Organisation as a whole. A good example is gossiping, which are informal chats between
employees about other employees that have not been proven true. Incivility is communication, which is
rude and impolite. This political form of counterproductive behaviour may not be taken seriously by most
organisations, however, acts of political deviance may form an organisational climate based on distrust
and unhealthy competitiveness. Organisations with this type of climate may not retain good employees.
Evidence also shows that gossip and incivility can get worse and worse until something drastic happens,
which would cause more serious forms of Interpersonal actions to occur (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Serious Interpersonal Actions could involve:
1. Personal Aggression, which is verbal and physical actions, directed towards other employees.
2. Harassment is when employees are exposed to forced physical contact verbal abuse from a fellow
employee.
3. Abuse is assault against an employee, which could result in physical or psychological injuries. Bullying is
a form of abuse aimed at an employee.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Readings
Additional Reading:
Markiz, Y., Margono, S., Wirawan, I.D. and Ainur, R. (2016). The influences
of leadership styles, organizational communication, and job satisfaction
toward employees’ job performance in doing construction jobs: a study on
three
construction
companies
in
Jakarta
Available
at:
https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/the-influences-of-leadership-stylesorganizational-communication-and-job-satisfaction-toward-employees-jobperformance-in-doing
The following are important points pertaining to Counter Productive Behaviour:
1. Studies suggest that if an employee becomes involved in one form of counterproductive behaviour, they
would also be involved in others.
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2. Counterproductive Behaviour is applicable to all types of jobs, regardless of what the job may entail,
resources would still be available to steal and waste.
3. Counterproductive behaviour could be transmissible and its negative results may spread throughout the
Organisation.
4. While we may think that poor performers are the ones who engage in counterproductive behaviours, as
opposed to the otherwise more efficient employees, this may not necessarily be true. Sometimes the best
employees are the ones that are away with counterproductive behaviour’s because they are less likely to
be suspected of blamed.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Activity 2
2.1. What is counterproductive behaviour?
2.2. Does the working environment affect the counterproductive behaviours?
1.6
Trends Affecting Performance.
According to Colquitt, Lepine and Wesson (2019:46-49), in today’s world, there are a number of trends that affect
job performance. These trends include Knowledge work and Service Jobs
•
Knowledge Work
Apart from employees being more aware, knowledge work tends to be more fluid and dynamic. We know that
currently, information is always changing and having access to this information gets easier by the day. Examples
of obtaining such information includes Google and Wikipedia. We should also note that with technology growing
at such a rapid pace, the tools and equipment needed to perform tasks are also changing and having access to
these tools are becoming easier as time goes by.
•
Service Work
Industries that provide service, rather than those that provide goods are proven the largest and fastest growing
sectors in the economy. Service work, also known as work, which provides non-tangible goods to consumers
account for nearly 55% of economic activity.
When a customer service representative performs poorly in their tasks, the customer is usually right in front of
them noticing. Unfortunately, failure cannot be hidden behind closed doors. In addition, service work contexts
usually place a greater premium on higher levels of citizenship behaviours and lower levels of counterproductive
behaviour. Should employees refuse to assist each other or behave in an inappropriate manner by gossiping or
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
insulting each other, negative transmissions would be bound to be transmitted to their customers during the service
encounter. It is therefore vital to maintain a positive attitude in the work environment.
1.7
Application: Performance Management
We will now learn exactly how organisations use job performance information. Good companies should understand
the connection between the employee’s job performance and organisational performance, so that it is managed in
such a way that the Organisation is able to achieve its goals in a more efficient way. The following are ways in
which job performance information can be used to manage the employee’s performance (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Management by Objectives assists managers in assessing whether or not an employee was able to achieve their
specific performance goals. This is usually done when a meeting has been conducted between an employer and
the employee and the employee is given specific tasks and a period in which to achieve these tasks (Colquitt et
al., 2019)
Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales are different to Management by Objectives. Here, employers measure
performance by directly assessing job performance behaviours. This approach uses “Critical Incidents” or short
descriptions of employee behaviour. A system is then created to assess performance. Here, management would
rate a number of performance dimensions using Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales and score the employee’s
job performance by taking the average value across all dimensions (Colquitt et al., 2019).
360 Degree Framework involves collecting the employee’s performance information from management, as well
as other employees. These ratings are done anonymously. While this concept can be used to assess employees
for administrative reasons, like giving the employee an increase or a promotion, this concept can pose a number
of problems. Firstly, there is a question of how accurate these results actually are. While an average might be
worked out using multiple sources, it could still be unclear how the information from various sources could be
weighted. Secondly, jealously may cause the other employees to give terrible reviews, especially if they know that
this information will be used for promoting and compensation, as opposed to just skills development (Colquitt et
al., 2019).
Forced Ranking, also known as “rank and yank” or the “dead man’s curve” involves evaluations that make clear
distinctions among employees in terms of their performance. Moreover, managers are required to rank all
subordinates and these rankings would then be used to place employees in one of three categories:
23
•
Top 20% (A Players)
•
The vital middle 70% (B Players)
•
The bottom 10% (C Players)
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
The A Players were thought to process the four E’s of general electric leadership: Very high energy levels, the
ability to energize others around common goals, the edge to make tough decisions and the ability to execute and
deliver on their promises. The B players were the focus of development and while they may have been the
backbone, unlike players, they lacked passion. The C players are the ones that had to let go because they could
not get the job done (Colquitt et al., 2019). The main objective of performance review is to improve the performance
of an individual and lead the organisational performance as a whole. Performance reviews is an effective scheme
that brings about a benefit in performance management. You can use this technique of performance review to
identify an individual’s strengths and areas of development. It can reveal problem areas that restrict progress
(Mullins, 2010).
Case Study 1
Murray M.K, Duncan N, Pontes H.M, Griffiths M.D, (2015). Organizational
identification, work engagement, and job satisfaction, Journal of Managerial
Psychology, 30(8), 1019-1033. Available at:
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/JMP-11-2013-0359
Questions:
1. Explain how job performance can be used to manage employees.
2. Discuss how organisational identification relates to job satisfaction
Social Networking Systems – This fast-growing system uses social media style systems to evaluate the employee’s
job performance. While this system has not been significantly studied, there are a number of advantages that work
in its favour. For example, these types of systems provide performance that is much timelier, relative to traditional
practices that measure performance quarterly or yearly (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Think Point 2
Think about how you would react to a 360-degree feedback. If you were the
one receiving the feedback, whose view would mean most to you: your
managers or your colleagues? If you were asked to evaluate a colleague, would
you want your opinion to affect their raise or promotions?
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
1.8.
Organisational Commitment
Organisational Commitment can best be defined as the employee’s commitment to being a member of the
Organisation. Organisational Commitment influences whether an employee should stay as a member of the
Organisation or move onto another job. Employees who are not committed to their Organisation engage in
withdrawal behaviour, which is actions performed by the employees that results in them not doing their work –
behaviour’s that may eventually result in leaving the Organisation (Colquitt et al., 2019).
1.9.
What does it Mean to be Committed?
In order to understand Organisational Commitment, let us look at a scenario. Imagine being employed by an
Organisation for nearly a decade, you are doing great at your job, receive increases and incentives and you have
even managed to buy your own place, over and above providing all the luxuries for your family. Suddenly the
opposition, who offers you a similar position in their company, approaches you. How would you react? What would
your thoughts be?
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Readings
Additional Reading:
Hornstein, H.A. (2015). The integration of project management and
organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal
of Project Management. (33) 2, 291-298.
Available
at:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263786314001331
Types of Commitment
There are three types of commitment
1. Affective Commitment refers to emotional reasons for staying with the current company. You would take
into account the friendships formed while working, the atmosphere and culture, the feeling of enjoyment
when you complete the job. Affective commitment is therefore the employees desire to want to remain
within the current Organisation due to emotional attachment.
2. Continuance Commitment refers to the financial concerns that come with moving to a new company.
Financial Commitment is best defined, as the employees need to stay within the current Organisation due
to financial constraints.
3. Normative Commitment is loyalty towards your current employer. Normative Commitment is defined as
the employees’ desire to stay within the Organisation due to a feeling of obligation.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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All three types of Organisational Commitment combined create an overall sense of psychological attachment to
the company. We need to remember two very important points relating to Organisational Commitment:
•
Different employees may react differently towards each type. One may be cautious and rational in nature
and focus mostly on Continuance Commitment when evaluating his or her desire to stay, while another
employee may be more emotional in nature.
•
The importance of the types of commitment may change during an employee’s career. An employee just
starting their career may be influenced by affective commitment, while an employee looking to start a
family may choose continuance commitment.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Employees are often more committed to their managers, or their department, rather than the company itself. Here,
we would use the term focus of commitment to refer to the various people, places and things that can inspire a
desire to want to stay within the Organisation. Now that we have familiarized ourselves with the drivers of
commitment in a general sense, let us look at each type in detail:
1. Affective Commitment
The best way to understand the difference between each type of commitment is to ask yourselves, how you would
feel if you were to leave the Organisation. The answer is simple; you would feel sad! Employees who feel a sense
of affective commitment identify with the Organisation, accept the goals and values of the Organisation and are
willing to put in extra effort on behalf of the Organisation. Identify with the Organisation means that their
membership at the Organisation is important to their sense of self. It is obvious that if managers were to instil a
type of commitment, they would choose affective commitment (Colquitt et al., 2019)
The erosion model implies that employees with fewer bonds are more likely to leave the Organisation, since they
have a weaker bond with their colleagues; the decision to leave becomes an easy one. The social influence model
implies that employees that communicate with other employees that have already left are also more likely to leave.
This is when there is a decline in affective commitment (Colquitt et al., 2019).
2. Continuance Commitment
How would you feel leaving an Organisation where you are due for a promotion? The answer is anxiety; you would
feel a sense of anxiety. Continuance Commitment exists when you stand to gain more by staying than by leaving.
You would think about the penalties associated with moving to a new company. Would you get the same benefits?
You should also consider the amount of time, effort and energy invested in the company. Continuance Commitment
is also influenced by a lack of employment alternatives. The employee’s need to stay within the Organisation if
they have nowhere else to go. Employment alternatives are dependent on a number of factors, such as the
person’s skills and abilities. Continuance Commitment focuses more on personal and family issues compared to
affective commitment and Normative Commitment, because employees often find it necessary to stay for work and
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
personal reasons. One such concept that shows us how work and non-work forces can bind an employee to their
current employer is embeddedness. Embeddedness is the employee’s links to their current Organisation. It
highlights what sacrifices the employee would have to make if they were to change jobs. Embeddedness gives an
employee more reason to stay with their current employer, thereby strengthening continuance commitment
(Colquitt et al., 2019).
3. Normative Commitment
Now think about your employer and the relationship you built with them. What about how good you are Organisation
has been to you? How would you feel if you left them behind and started a new job? You would feel guilty.
Normative Commitment leaves us to believe that staying with our current employer is the moral thing to do. The
sense that people should remain with their current employers may result from personal work philosophies over the
course of their lives. Employees may also be dictated by early experiences within the company. They may be led
to believe that loyalty is the norm and not an exception (Colquitt et al., 2019).
There are two other methods used to make employees feel guilty for leaving the Organisation
1. Employees may feel that they are indebted to the Organisation. An example would be the money the
Organisation spent on training the employee. The employee may feel obliged to repay the Organisation
by means of loyalty.
2. Employers may encourage employees to participate in charitable work, either during working hours or in
their own personal time. This strategy gives the employee the impression that the Organisation is a good
one and at the same time, markets the company and would be excellent for Public Relations.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Many factors contribute towards a healthy organisational climate such as staff members having a sense of
commitment to the organisation. There is a growing acceptance of the notion engagement, attachment or loyalty.
This means there is a bond between the individual and the organisation. It also looks at the job involvement, and
individual’s belief in the values of the organisation (Mullins, 2010).
Knowledge Check Question1
1. List three examples, with brief descriptions of Organisational
Citizenship Behaviour
2. Explain the term embeddedness.
3. What is Continuance Commitment
4. Employees respond to negative work events in four ways – name
them.
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Withdrawal Behaviour
A significant number of employer’s plan to move onto another job once the economy improves, this is where
Organisational Commitment becomes a vital concern, since the Organisation would need to have an adequate
amount of staff when the business picks up and industries become more competitive. Let us look at a scenario:
Imagine being employed by your Organisation for three years. Unfortunately, your team has been struggling lately
and the Organisation had to add in a new member, in an effort to enhance the team’s performance. While the new
member might be extremely knowledgeable, they are horrible to work with. Even though the person is talented,
you find yourself hating every minute of working with them. Considering you will not get the work finished on time,
how would you handle the situation?
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Employees can respond to negative work events in four ways:
1. Firstly, you may try to remove yourself from this situation, either by being absent more frequently or by
choosing to leave work completely. This is known as exit, which is defined as an active destructive
response where an employee either leaves work or stays away from work.
2. The second would be to meet with the member and attempt to resolve all issues. This is known as voice,
which is defined as an individual’s attempt to try to improve on the situation.
3. You may try to just “make do” with the situation and maintain your level of effort, even though you are
unhappy. This is called Loyalty, which is defined as a response that maintains public support for the
situation, while hoping for improvement.
4. The final response is when you allow your working conditions to deteriorate slowly. This is called neglect,
defined as a decline in effort in the job. In some cases, neglect can cost an employer more than exit,
because it can take employer months even years to notice a decline in performance from the employee.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Activity 3
3.1. Describe the types of organisational commitment.
3.2. Describe ways, which will improve organisational commitment.
3.3. Differentiate between job satisfaction and organisational commitment.
You may be wondering where does organisational commitment fit into all of this? Organisational Commitment
decreases the likelihood that an employee will respond to a negative work event with exit or neglect, while, at the
same time, increase the likelihood that negative work event will prompt voice or loyalty. There are two forms of
withdrawals: Psychological (or neglect) and physical (or exit)
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Fundamentals of Organisational Behaviour
Revision Question 2
Briefly explain two examples of Production Deviance.
1. Psychological Withdrawal
The employee mentally withdraws themselves from their work. This type of withdrawal comes in many
forms:
•
Daydreaming – When an employee is distracted by random things
•
Socializing – Casual chats with fellow employees about non-work-related topics
•
Looking busy – Pretending to work
•
Moonlighting – Using company time to perform personal tasks
•
Cyber loafing – Using the internet and social media for personal enjoyment.
2. Physical Withdrawal
The employee physically escapes – Either short term or long term from the company. Physical withdrawal
comes in many forms:
•
Tardiness – Arriving late for work
•
Long Breaks – Longer than normal lunches
•
Missing Meetings – Employees neglect important work functions while away from the office
•
Absenteeism – Intentionally missing an entire day of work
•
Quitting – Voluntarily leaving the company. This is usually because of more money, better career
opportunities, working conditions, family factors and health. Organisations can retain most of
their employees by offering them more money or better opportunities.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Knowledge Check Question2
1. List three examples of physical withdrawal.
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Revision Question 3
What is Task Performance?
1.10 Trends that Affect Commitment
•
Diversity of the work force
As work groups become more diverse with respect to race, age and gender, there is a chance that the minorities,
or the older employees finding themselves on the fringe of such networks, which could reduce their commitment
to the organization.
•
The changing employer – employee relationship
Downsizing is when an employee is forced to leave their job, irrespective of how committed they were. In general,
companies usually downsize to save on costs, particularly during a recession or economic downturn. Downsizing
does not always work, simply because the employees that remain within the organisation are forced to make up
for the lost employees. This causes stress, anxiety and could result in very little production (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Downsizing or de-layering of an organisation can break the psychological contract of the employee towards the
organisation. This happens when the employee no longer is seen committed to by the organisation. This
psychological contract will continue breaking, the more the company downsizes (Mullins, 2010).
Revision Question 4
What is Psychological Withdrawal?
The change in employer – employee relationship, influenced by a generation of downsizing makes it even more
challenging to keep valued employees. The most obvious challenge is finding a way to maintain affective
commitment.
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Case Study 2
Pradhan R.K., Jena L.K. and Kumari I.G. (2016). Effect of Work–Life Balance on
Organizational Citizenship Behaviour: Role of Organizational Commitment,
Global Business Review. Available at:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0972150916631071
Questions:
1. Explain the role of organisational commitment on the relationship
between work-life balance and organisational citizenship behaviour.
2. “In organizational context, a high quality of work–life balance is essential
to continue attracting and retaining its employees.” Is this kind of
practice significant? Justify your answer.
One method of quantifying the change in employer-employee relations is to evaluate how employees
psychologically value these relationships. Studies implies that employees tend to view their employment
relationship in quasi-contractual terms. We focus on three specific contracts:
1. Psychological Contracts – Employees belief about what they owe to the organization and what the
organization owes them.
2. Transactional Contracts – Based on monetary obligations.
3. Relational Contracts – Based on a broader set of open-ended and subjective obligations.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Cutting cost and downsizing can become a concern in a number of growing companies. The employee
engagement is what relates to the core of the business. The full engagement of employees and collective
management approach will bring positive behaviour to the employees; this will be rubbed off on clients, customers
and colleagues and lead to a high staff retention (Mullins, 2010).
Revision Question 5
Define Organisational Commitment.
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1.11 Application: Commitment initiatives
We will now focus on strategies and initiatives, used to maximize commitment. What can companies do to increase
loyalty? Maybe they can be supportive. Perceived organisational support shows the extent to which employees
believe that the organization is concerned about their personal wellbeing. There are a number of ways in which an
organization can be supportive, for example, they could provide rewards, or provide job security. These actions
represent the organisations support.
Apart from being supportive, organisations can engage in specific practices that target the three forms of
commitment:
1. Affective commitment by increasing the bonds that link employees together.
2. Continuance Commitment by creating competitive salaries and benefit packages that make it more
appealing for the employee to stay.
3. Normative Commitment by providing training and skills development opportunities for employees.
The nature of organisational change is inevitable. Change is seen as a pervasive influence. The effects of change
are studied over different time scales. Change at an individual level is not easy, personal transformation change
can occur because some emotional or spiritual happenings having occurred. The transformation can have some
effect on the individual’s behaviour and actions at work or even the relationship with colleagues (Mullins, 2010).
1.12 Summary
In this unit, we were introduced to organisational behaviour. We asked the question: Does Organisational
Behaviour matter? In addition, built a conceptual argument showing its role in the working environment. We also
looked at job performance and what it means to be a good performer. We further studied the trends affecting
performance. As we went further into this unit, we learned about organisational commitment and what it means to
be committed.
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Answers to Activities
Knowledge Check Question 1
1.
List three examples, with brief descriptions of Organisational Citizenship Behaviour
Voice – Involves speaking up, interacting and giving suggestions relating to opportunities to improve the way in
which the organization functions or to address problems that could lead to negative consequences of the
organization.
Civic Virtue – Involves attending voluntary meetings, and functions, as well as reading and keeping up to date
with news that affects the organization.
Boosterism – The employee’s attitude towards the organization outside of the office.
2.
Explain the term embeddedness.
Embeddedness is the employee’s links to their current organization. It highlights what sacrifices the employee
would have to make if they were to change jobs. Embeddedness gives an employee more reason to stay with their
current employer, thereby strengthening continuance commitment.
3.
What is Continuance Commitment?
Continuance Commitment refers to the financial concerns that come with moving to a new company. Financial
Commitment is best defined, as the employees need to stay within the current organization due to financial
constraints.
4.
Employees respond to negative work events in four ways – name them.
Firstly, you may try to remove yourself from this situation, either by being absent more frequently or by choosing
to leave work completely. This is known as exit, which is defined as an active destructive response where an
employee either leaves work or stays away from work.
The second would be to meet with the member and attempt to resolve all issues. This is known as voice, which is
defined as an individual’s attempt to try to improve on the situation.
You may try to just “make do” with the situation and maintain your level of effort, even though you are unhappy.
This is called Loyalty, which is defined as a response that maintains public support for the situation, while hoping
for improvement.
The final response is when you allow your working conditions to deteriorate slowly. This is called neglect, defined
as a decline in effort in the job. In some cases, neglect can cost an employer more than exit, because it can take
employer months even years to notice a decline in performance from the employee.
Knowledge Check Question 2
1. List three examples of physical withdrawal.
Tardiness – Arriving late for work
Long Breaks – Longer than normal lunches
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Missing Meetings – Employees neglect important work functions while away from the office
Absenteeism – Intentionally missing an entire day of work
Quitting – Voluntarily leaving the company. This is usually because of more money, better career opportunities,
working conditions, family factors and health.
Activity 1
1.1. Conduct research on what is citizen behaviour.
The actual answer is not important, what is important is the research that has been conducted. You will find that
answers may vary depending on how the research was conducted but to basically summarise the answer:
Organizational citizenship behaviour deals with the actions and behaviours that are not required by workers.
They are not critical to the job, but benefit the team and encourage even greater organizational functioning and
efficiency.
1.2. Why is citizen behaviour important?
Organizational citizenship behaviour means going the extra mile at work. Basically, it means doing anything that
is not in your formal job description. We typically think of organizational citizenship behaviour (or OCB) as
something we do to help benefit our organization or the people we work with. In that sense, we might think of OCB
as selfless giving that is actually to our own detriment. It makes sense, right? We only have a limited amount of
time and resources during the day. If we do more than we need to do, we run the risk of burnout, fatigue, and
stress. This is also supported by past research. However, new research shows that OCB can actually provide
some advantages for the people performing it.
1.3. Explain the advantages of citizen behaviour.
Researchers conducted a multi-part study over the course of a whole work week. They found that people who
engaged in more OCB during the day had higher levels of work meaningfulness at the end of the day. Work
meaningfulness is the extent to which employees feel that their job is useful or significant. The researchers also
found that employees who experience work meaningfulness at the end of the day also experienced more vigor,
which basically means feeling more energized. There is an association between more OCB and more work
meaningfulness is even stronger when something called role ambiguity occurs. Role ambiguity is when employees
are unsure about what they are supposed to do at work or what the expectations are.
Activity 2
2.1. What is counterproductive behaviour?
The actual answer is not important, what is important is the research that has been conducted. You will find that
answers may vary depending on how the research was conducted but to basically summarise the answer: A
counterproductive work behaviour, or CWB, is any employee behaviour that undermines the goals and interests
of a business. Counterproductive work behaviours come in many different forms, but can include tardiness, theft,
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fraud, sexual harassment, workplace bullying, absenteeism, substance abuse, workplace aggression, or
sabotage.
2.2. Does the working environment affect the counterproductive behaviours?
Ineffective job performance means the result or outcomes of the employees does not satisfied, not efficiency, does
not reach the goal of the job. There are several reasons that ineffective job performance occur. Not satisfied with
the company policy, some employees feels that the company policies are too harsh or requirement of achievement
for each employees are too high, they do their work perfunctory as the silent protest to the company. Absenteeism
of employees may also because poor working environment and employees not committed to their works. If
absenteeism occurs often in a company, it will bring impact to the business operation and its profitability. Voluntary
job turnover employees might not be satisfied with the company compensation and having an unhappy working
environment. A comfortable working environment will motivate employees and increase the job performance, but
if the employees often expose in the dangerous working environment it will bring negative effect to the company.
Activity 3
1.1.
Describe the types of organisational commitment.
The actual answer is not important, what is important is the research that has been conducted. You will find that
answers may vary depending on how the research was conducted but to basically summarise the answer:
Affective commitment
Affective commitment relates to how much employees want to stay at their organisation. If an employee is
affectively committed to their organisation, it means that they want to stay at their organisation. They typically
identify with the organisational goals, feel that they fit into the organisation and are satisfied with their work.
Employees who are affectively committed feel valued, act as ambassadors for their organisation and are generally
great assets for organisations.
Continuance commitment
Continuance commitment relates to how much employees feel the need to stay at their organisation. In employees
that are continuance committed, the underlying reason for their commitment lies in their need to stay with the
organisation. Possible reasons for needing to stay with organisations vary, but the main reasons relate to a lack of
work alternatives, and remuneration.
A good example of continuance commitment is when employees feel the need to stay with their organisation
because their salary and fringe benefits won’t improve if they move to another organisation. Such examples can
become an issue for organisations as employees that are continuance committed may become dissatisfied (and
disengaged) with their work and yet, are unwilling to leave the organisation.
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Normative commitment
Normative commitment relates to how much employees feel they should stay at their organisation. Employees that
are normatively committed generally feel that they should stay at their organisations. Normatively committed
employees feel that leaving their organisation would have disastrous consequences, and feel a sense of guilt about
the possibility of leaving.
Reasons for such guilt vary, but are often concerned with employees feeling that in leaving the organisation they
would create a void in knowledge/skills, which would subsequently increase the pressure on their colleagues. Such
feelings can, and do, negatively influence the performance of employees working in organisations.
1.2.
Describe ways, which will improve organisational commitment.
1.3.
•
Create a strong teamwork culture. ...
•
Be transparent and encourage open communication. ...
•
Develop Trust. ...
•
Encourage innovation. ...
•
Provide constructive feedback and not criticism. ...
•
Efficiently delegate tasks. ...
•
Offer Incentives.
Differentiate between job satisfaction and organisational commitment.
The main difference between organizational commitment and job satisfaction is that while organisational
commitment can be defined as the emotional responses which an employee has towards his organisation. Job
satisfaction is the responses that an employee has towards any job.
Case Study 1
1.
2.
Explain how job performance can be used to manage employees.
•
Set Goals Effectively.
•
Begin with Performance Planning.
•
Create an Ongoing Process.
•
Improve Productivity Through Better Goal Management.
•
Gather Information from Multiple Sources.
Discuss how organisational identification relates to job satisfaction?
Organisations desire to hire employees who strive to achieve individual and organisational goals. Therefore
organisations not only expect employees to commit to their works but also identify themselves with the
organisation, because employees, who identify themselves with the organisation tend to internalize image
and values of the organisation.
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Case Study 2
1.
Explain how job satisfaction theories influence job performance?
Almost any job related factor can influence a person's level of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. There are a number
of factors that influence job satisfaction. If the job satisfaction is high, the employees will perform better. On the
other hand if the job satisfaction is low, there will be performance problems.
2.
How does motivation influence job performance?
Intrinsic motivation does not only affect the enjoyment and interests If an employee in an organization is intrinsically
motivated, his satisfaction and performance at work will increase. Managers can use this information about the
effect of intrinsic motivation. Managers need to motivation employees intrinsically
Think Point 1
Think about your absolute worse co-worker, the one who made fun of others, or did not get the job done. What did
their boss do to improve their behaviour? Did their boss take the correct measures? What would you have done
differently?
•
•
Strengthen Your People Skills. Having solid people skills represents the essence of leadership. ...
Motivate and Inspire Others to Achieve.
•
Be Authentic and Genuine.
•
Resolve Difficult Situations
The boss can make use of various measures to try to resolve the problem. Some measures make work and some
will not. Therefore, the boss needs to try a variety of ways to try assisting the employee on the right path.
Think Point 2
Think about how you would react to a 360-degree feedback. If you were the one receiving the feedback, whose
view would mean most to you: your managers or your colleagues? If you were asked to evaluate a colleague,
would you want your opinion to affect their raise or promotions?
•
The manager’s view would mean the most.
•
I would not want my opinion to affect a colleague’s raise or promotion however, I would like the colleague
to take the opinion as constructive criticism.
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Unit
2:
Individual Mechanisms
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Unit Learning Outcomes
CONTENT LIST
LEARNING OUTCOMES OF THIS UNIT:
2.1 Introduction
• Introduces topic areas for the unit
2.2 Job Satisfaction
• Define job satisfaction
• Understand how values affect job satisfaction
• Describe the characteristics that create a sense of
satisfaction with the work itself
• Understand job satisfaction and the effects on job
performance
2.3 Stress
• Define stress
• Describe the types of stressors
• Understand how individuals cope with stress
• Describe how stress affects job performance and
organisational commitment
• Understand how to manage stress
2.4 Motivation
• Define motivation
• Understand the goal setting theory
• Explain psychological empowerment
• Describe the effect of motivation on job performance and
organisational commitment
• Understand how to increase employee motivation
2.5 Trust, Justice, and Ethics
• Define trust and understand the relation to justice and ethics
• Understand the dimensions that can be used to describe
trustworthiness of authority
• Understand the ethical decision-making model
• Describe the effect of trust on job performance and
organisational commitment
• Understand how organisations become more trustworthy
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2.6 Learning and Decision Making
• Define learning and the affect it has on decision-making
• Describe the types of knowledge an employee can gain as
they learn and build expertise
• Describe the methods by which employees learn in the
organisation
• Describe the effects of learning on job performance and
organisational commitment
• Understand how organisations foster learning
• Summarises topic areas covered in the unit
2.7 Summary
Prescribed and Recommended Textbooks/Readings
Prescribed Reading/Textbook
• Colquitt, J.A., Lepine, J.A. and Wesson, M.J. (2019) Organisational
Behavior - Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace.
Sixth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Recommended Readings
• Jones, G.R., George, J.M. and Hill, C.W.L. (2013) Contemporary
Management. Eighth Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill.
• Kondalkar, V.G. (2007) Organizational Behaviour. First Edition. New Age
International.
• Cross, C and Carbery, R. (2016) Organisational Behaviour an Introduction.
First Edition. Palgrave.
• Griffin, R.W., Phillips, J.M. and Gully, S.M. (2019) Organizational
Behavior: Managing People and Organizations. Thirteenth Edition.
Cengage.
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2.1
Introduction
In this unit, we will explore the terms and concepts regarding job satisfaction, stress, motivation, trust, justice and
ethics. We will also look at decision-making steps and problem-solving steps. We understand the importance of
job satisfaction. We look at stress and the reasons why some individuals are more stressed than others do. We
explore the different types of trust and dimensions of justice. We look at the steps involved in decision-making.
2.2
Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is a representation of how an employee feels about their job and what they think about their job.
Job satisfaction is formally defined as a pleasurable, emotional state, which results in appraisal of one’s job or job
experience. Employees who are more satisfied with their jobs are happier when they think about performing their
duties. Employees who are not as satisfied have bad thoughts and negative feelings when they think about their
duties. Many workplace surveys suggest that employees who are more satisfied in their jobs are becoming fewer
by the day (Colquitt et al., 2019). We can also measure job satisfaction by emotional response to a particular job
situation. The positive attitude of an individual sometimes depends on the actual reward and expectation of the
individual in their job situation. There are job dimensions which relate to job satisfaction are expressed in the terms
of content, remuneration, attitude of the co-workers and the opportunity for an individual to grow (Kondalkar, 2007).
Why are some employees more satisfied than others are?
Employees are satisfied when they are able to afford things they value. Values are possessions that an individual
wants and acquires. What do you want from your job? A good salary? Do you want friends? Promotions? (Colquitt
et al., 2019). We sometimes wonder what factors effect job satisfaction and we can see that work content, pay and
promotion policy, supportive working conditions, work group and supervision are some of the factors, which affect
job satisfaction (Kondalkar, 2007).
Value Fulfilment
Value plays a very important role when defining job satisfaction. The value-percept theory states that job
satisfaction is dependent on whether or not you perceive that your job is able to supply the things that you value
most. This theory can be summarized using the following equation:
Dissatisfaction = (V want – V have) X (V Importance)
▪
V want is how much of a certain value an employee wants
▪
V have is the value that the job supplies
▪
V importance is how important the value is to the employee
There is a huge difference between needs and wants and this difference often creates dissatisfaction, especially
when the value in question is important.
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The value percept theory also states that employees assess job satisfaction according to specific “facets” of the
job. Remember, the job is not just one thing, but also rather a collection of tasks, relationships and incentives.
Figure 1: The Value-Percept Theory of Job Satisfaction.
(Paywant - Payhave)
X Pay importance
(Promotionwant - Promotionhave)
X Promotion importance
(Supervision want - Supervision have)
X Supervision importance
Pay
Satisfaction
Promotion
Satisfaction
Supervision
Satisfaction
Overall job
Satisfaction
(Co-worker want - Co-worker have)
Co-worker
X Co-worker importance
Satisfaction
(Work want - Work have)
Satisfaction
X Work importance
with the
Work itself
(Reference: Colquitt, J.A., Lepine, J.A. and Wesson, M.J. 2019, p. 96).
The figure above shows us the wants vs. the have’s calculations that encourages satisfaction with pay, promotions,
supervision, co-workers and the work. This figure also highlights how satisfaction with these facets come together
to ultimately create “overall job satisfaction”. While employee may be satisfied with a good salary, another may be
satisfied just by having good co-workers (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Employees consider a number of facets when accessing their job satisfaction. Based on the figure above, we will
now look at each facet in detail:
1. Pay Satisfaction is the employee’s feelings about their pay. They know that it is as much as they deserve
and is enough to afford the employee a normal and luxurious life. Pay satisfaction is based on the
comparison of the pay that the employee wants and the pay that they receive. While more money may
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always seem like the way to go; many employees set their desired pay on careful examination of their
duties and compares this to other employees in a similar position.
2. Promotion Satisfaction is how the employee feels towards the company’s promotion policies and how it
is executed. They question whether the promotions are frequent, fair and based on the employees’
abilities. Since promotions come with greater responsibilities and longer working hours, some employees
would rather choose pay. However, there are a few employees who value promotions simply because
they open the doors for personal growth and more prestige.
3. Supervision Satisfaction is the employee’s feelings towards their boss. They consider whether their boss
is competent, polite and a good communicator because let us face it, none of us would want to work for
someone that is annoying and lazy. Generally, when thinking about the perfect boss, employees usually
ask two questions:
•
Can they assist me in achieving the things I value? This question is performance dependant,
meaning, would the employer provide incentives for good performance? Is the employer able to
obtain necessary resources to protect the employee from disturbances?
•
Are they generally likeable? This depends on the employer’s personality and their values and
beliefs.
4. Co-worker Satisfaction is the employees feeling towards other employees. Are the other employees
helpful and kind towards each other or are they lazy and mean? Employees ask the same question about
their co-workers as they do about their employers.
•
Can they help me do my job? This is a very important question because most of us depend on
our co-workers when performing our duties.
•
Do I enjoy being around them? This question is just as important, considering we spend a good
amount of time at work. Co-workers who are easy going and fun makes the job a whole lot better
to perform, as opposed to co-workers who are uptight and annoying.
5. Satisfaction with the work itself is the employee’s feelings towards the actual task. They question whether
these tasks are challenging, interesting and makes use of their skills, instead of being dull and boring.
While the first four facets describe the outcome that resulted from work and the people linked to the work,
this facet places emphasis on what employees actually do.
Simply put, the value-percept theory states that employees are satisfied when they know that their job offers
those good salaries, promotions, supervisors, co-workers and tasks that they value.
(Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Case Study 1
Ilyas, M. and Abdullah, T, (2016). The Effect of Leadership, Organizational
Culture, Emotional Intelligence, and Job Satisfaction on Performance.
International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE), 5(2),
158-164. Available at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1108557.pdf
Questions:
1. Is leadership and emotional intelligence associated with job
satisfaction?
2. How does job satisfaction affect job performance?
3. What other factors does job satisfaction influence?
Satisfaction with the work itself
Considering how important enjoyable work tasks are to job satisfaction, it may be worth our while to describe the
various types of tasks that employees find enjoyable. Between the years 1950 and 1960, researchers began asking
one important question: What are the various types of tasks that people find most enjoyable. We base this question
in reaction to the “scientific Management” perspective. Scientific Management shows how the efficiency of job
tasks are increased by making them simpler and specialized, by using time and motion. By doing this, the employer
has hopes of these steps increasing worker productivity and reduces the breadth of skills needed to complete a
job, which would ultimately increase the organisations profits. This method proved a waste of time and resources
because simplifying the job lowered job satisfaction, which resulted in an increase in absenteeism and turnover.
While boring jobs might be easier, they are not always better (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Taking the above into consideration, how do we know what types of work tasks are satisfying? Studies suggest
that there are three critical psychological states, which makes work more satisfying.
•
The first psychological state is where the employee believes in the meaningfulness of work. This shows
how work tasks are viewed as something that counts in the employee’s system of philosophies and
beliefs. Smaller tasks are less satisfying, compared to tasks, which makes an employee feel like they are
assisting the organisation in a meaningful way.
•
The second state is recognising responsibilities for outcomes. Here, the employees believe that they are
key drivers of the quality of the unit work. It is not unusual for employees to feel as though their efforts
are meaningless because effective procedures, up to date technology and efficient colleagues influence
work results.
•
The final psychological state is knowledge of results, which is the employee’s awareness; of how well (or
poorly) they are performing.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Let us now consider a scenario: Think back to a time when you felt proud of yourself for a job well done. At that
very moment, you would have experienced all three types of psychological states. Firstly, you knew the results and
you knew that you did well at some job. You knew that you were responsible for the results; after all, why else
would you be proud? Finally, you felt that the results of your work were meaningful. The next question we should
ask is; what work creates these psychological states? The job characteristics theory explains the central
characteristics of satisfying jobs, attempts to answer this question. The job characteristics theory states that there
are five core job characteristics which results in high levels of three psychological states, which makes work tasks
even more satisfying.
•
Variety is the first core job characteristic, which shows us that different jobs require a different number of
activities, which involve a different number of skills and talents. Higher levels of variety would mean that
each workday is different, which prevents employees from feeling a sense of repetition.
•
Identity is the second core job characteristic. Here, the employee is expected to complete the entire job
tasks, from start to finish, with a visible outcome. Jobs with higher levels of identity enables the employee
to proudly point to something and say, “I did that”. The transformation from raw materials to a final product
is visible, which results in the employee feeling a sense of closure.
•
Significance, being the third job characteristic, shows how the job influences the lives of others and, in
particular, the world at large. Significance shows the employee that the job they perform really matters.
Employees who believe that their jobs are significant are aware that others appreciate their work and that
they know that their job has a positive impact on the people around them. They believe that the conditions
of the society would worsen if their job were taken away from them.
•
The fourth core job characteristic is autonomy, which is the extent to which the job provides freedom,
independence and discretion to the individual performing the work. Autonomy means that the employee
considers the outcome of the job as a product if their efforts and not the result of careful instructions from
their employer. Autonomy comes in a number of forms, one being the freedom to control the timing and
scheduling of work activities and the methods used to carry out the tasks.
•
The last job characteristic is feedback, which is the extent to which performing the activities required by
the job provides employees with proper information on their performance.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
It should be noted, however, that not every employee would want more variety or more autonomy. There are two
other variables: Knowledge, skill, and growth needs strength, which states whether employee’s needs for personal
accomplishments are strong. These variables are known as moderators. Moderators influence the strength of the
relationship between variables, for example, if an employee lacks the knowledge and skills required to complete
the tasks, more variety and more autonomy would not increase their satisfaction. However, the core job
characteristics become powerful when the employee is talented and goal driven (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Many organisations use the core job characteristics to help improve job satisfaction among employees.
•
Firstly, the employer would need to assess the current level of characteristic to get a satisfaction level
score.
•
The organisation would then try to redesign the specs of the job in an attempt to increase core job
characteristics levels. This step often results in job enrichment, as the duties and responsibilities
associated with the job are expanded to accommodate for more variety, autonomy, identity and so forth.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Studies suggest that enrichment efforts boost the job satisfaction levels, however, employees do not necessary
wait for enrichment efforts to improve levels of the core job characteristics. Many employees engage in job crafting,
which shapes, moulds and redefines their job in a positive way (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Moods and Emotions
Say for example, you are a satisfied employee, either because you get a good salary, work for a good boss or
because your work tasks provide you with variety and autonomy. Does this mean you will always be satisfied? No,
it does not. An employee’s satisfaction level changes with time, sometimes they are satisfied and other times, not
so much. This change can seem a little strange, considering the employees pay or boss does not change every
hour. The key is to remember that job satisfaction reflects what you think and feel about your job. Therefore, part
of this feeling is rational, based on the appraisal that comes with your job and the things it supplies. However,
another part of it is emotions and is based on what you feel “in your gut” while you work or thinking about work. On
average, employees are satisfied with their work, unless something happens during the day, which causes them
to feel better or worse (Colquitt et al., 2019).
What kind of mood are you in now? Are you happy? Sad? Do you even know? Moods are states of feelings, which
are usually mild in intensity, which lasts for an extended period and are not explicitly directed at or caused by
anything. People who are in a good mood do not always know whom or what deserves the credit or blame. It will
be over simplifying things to call all moods either good or bad. Sometimes we are in a neutral mood and sometimes
we are enthusiastic. Both kinds are good but would feel different. Likewise, sometimes we are bored and
sometimes we are in a hostile mood, but again, feel different (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Positives moods are usually a result of feeling either excited, elated or enthusiastic. When an employee feels this
way, co-workers usually react by asking questions like “Wow! What has gotten you so excited? “Negative moods
are when a person feels hostile, nervous and annoyed. Co-workers respond by asking questions like “What got
you in such a bad mood?” Various factors influence our moods during the course of the day. For example, we
would feel happier responding to emails but we would also probably feel annoyed during long, endless meetings
(Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Even though novel and unusual benefits may be valuable, activities from work are the most intense form of positive
moods. According to research, two conditions influence intense positive moods:
•
The activity has to be challenging
•
The employee has to have the necessary skills needed to complete the task.
High skills can result in flow. Flow is when an employee is so focused on the task that they lose track of time. Flow
is usually described by employees as being “in the zone” and involves deep clarity, control and concentration. This
also comes with them feeling enjoyment, interest and a loss of self-consciousness. While it is not unusual for
employees to experience flow during leisure activities, for example, playing sports, studies suggest that we
experience it more at work. Work tasks, compared to leisure activities involves high level of variety, significance
and autonomy (Colquitt et al., 2019).
The affective events theory states that workplace events result in affective reactions. These actions influence the
employee’s behaviour – Their work attitudes and the task. Examples of workplace events include an irritating email
from your boss or a funny joke from a colleague. These events often trigger emotions, which are directed at
someone or some circumstances. The best way to describe the difference between moods and emotions is through
the manner in which they describe them to others. Saying “I’m feeling grouchy” is an example of a mood. Saying
“I’m angry at my boss” is an example of an emotion (Colquitt et al., 2019).
A person either experiences positive or negative emotions. Examples of positive emotions include joy, love, pride
and hope. Negative emotions include anger, anxiety, guilt and disgust. It is normal for employees to go through
various emotions during the day; however, this does not mean that they need to show these emotions. Service
jobs, which requires an employee to make direct contact with customers usually, requires an employee to hide
their anger, anxiety and sadness. These jobs are high emotional labour, otherwise known as the employee’s
management towards their emotions, in order to successfully complete their tasks successfully (Colquitt et al.,
2019).
Emotional Contagion shows that one person can be infected by emotions of another person. For example, if an
employee is angry or sad, these negative emotions are transferred to the customer. If this happens, the customer
may not want to spend and invest their money in the business, which has a negative impact on profits. This is why
emotional labour plays a very important role of good customer services. Emotional behaviour may, however, place
huge strain on the employee because they are forced to bottle up their emotions, which could result in anger
outbursts against the customers or emotional exhaustion (Colquitt et al., 2019).
How important is Job Satisfaction?
A number of factors influences an employee’s job satisfaction. However, we often ask the question: Does job
satisfaction matter? In addition, does job satisfaction influence job performance and organisational commitment?
Evidence suggest that job satisfaction does influence job performance. This is because satisfaction is moderately
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correlated with task performance. Employees who are satisfied work better and fulfil their duties, as per their job
description. Evidence further suggest that positive emotions have a number of benefits:
•
They foster creativity
•
Assists in problem solving and decision making
•
Enhances memory and recall certain kinds of information
•
Improves task persistence and motivates other employees to want to assist.
The benefits of job satisfaction for task performance are best explained on an hour-by-hour basis. Employees can
easily switch from being focused on their task to moving focus onto off task things, such as daydreaming and
interruptions. Having positive feelings when completing tasks eliminates any chance of being distracted or
interrupted. We should, however, remember that the relationship between satisfaction and task performance could,
to a certain extent work in reverse (Colquitt et al., 2019). There effects of job satisfaction on performance for
example, satisfaction and productivity is based Hawthorne’s study that indicates that managers begin to make
efforts to ensure their employees are happier. By improving working conditions, there is a relationship formed with
productivity. The happier the employees, the productivity increases. When satisfaction is low, there is a high
absenteeism rate but not necessary does high satisfaction lead to low absenteeism (Kondalkar, 2007).
Job satisfaction also corresponds with citizenship behaviour. Employees who are more satisfied tend to go the
extra mile when it comes to helping a fellow employee or the organisation. Positive feelings result in the employee
wanting to interact with other members of the organisation and influences them to want to try their level best to
help other people. Job satisfaction also has a negative correlation with counterproductive behaviour. Employees
who are satisfied are less likely to engage in activities that could bring harm to the organisation. Events that trigger
negative emotions could cause the employee to lash out against the organisation. Examples of these include theft
and sabotage (Colquitt et al., 2019).
There are two reasons why job satisfaction influences organisational commitment:
•
If an employee is satisfied, they are most likely to remain with the organisation. It does not make sense
to want to leave a place that their happy in.
•
Job satisfaction is also strongly connected to normative commitment. Employees who are satisfied would
not feel obliged to stay with the organisation. They would also not feel the need to repay the organisation
for providing them with a satisfied lifestyle that makes them feel satisfied.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Activity 1
1.1. Conduct research on characteristics that create a sense of satisfaction with
the work itself.
1.2. Do you think skill variety is important? Explain why.
Job Satisfaction is, however, not connected to continuance commitment, since the organisation does not find the
need to create a cost-based need to stay with the organisation. Taking the above into account, these commitment
effects become more apparent when you consider the type of people who choose to leave the company. It is
usually the dissatisfied employees who day cream at their desks, come in late and ultimately resign from their job
(Colquitt et al., 2019).
Life Satisfaction
Apart from job performance and organisational commitment, job satisfaction is strongly connected to life
satisfaction. Life satisfaction is when an employee is happy with their life. According to research, job satisfaction
is one of the strongest predictors of life satisfaction. People are generally happier about their lives when they are
happy about their jobs. Remember, we are defined by our jobs. Generally, when being introduced to someone,
one of the first questions they ask is “What do you do? “If this question leaves you feeling bad, it makes feeling
good about life even more difficult (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Application: Tracking Satisfaction
Since job satisfaction is the key driver of job performance, organisational commitment and life satisfaction, it is
extremely important for managers to understand how satisfied their employers are. A number of methods assesses
job satisfaction. Examples of these methods include focus groups, interviews and attitude surveys. Attitude surveys
are popular and has proven to be the most effective and accurate method (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Revision Questions 1
1.1. Explain what job satisfaction is?
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2.3
Stress
Imagine being at the end of your semester and you need to study all the work you did during the year, while, at the
same time, applying for jobs or planning a party. Some people will handle this pressure well, while others would
say that this situation is “Stressing them out”. Stress is usually accompanied by headaches, backaches and
insomnia. Stress is defined as a person’s psychological response to demands that possess certain stakes for the
person that exceeds a person’s capacity or resources. Stressors are demands that causes a person to feel
stressed. Strains are the negative results that occur when demands exceed a person’s capacity or resources.
These definitions show us that stress is dependent on the nature of the demand and the person who confronts it.
Different people have different ways of dealing with stress (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Why are some employees more stressed than others are?
Workplace stress appears to be a very popular topic when it comes to research. There are a number of theories
that explain the causes and consequences of stress. The transactional theory of stress, however, explains what it
means to feel stressed. This theory further explains how stressors are perceived and appraised and how to react
to these perceptions and appraisals. The primary appraisal process is triggered when a person first encounters
stressor. Primary appraisals happen when people question their significance and meaning of the stressor they are
confronting. During the primary appraisal process, a person first considers whether or not the demand causes
them to feel stressed. If it does, they consider the implications of the stressor in terms of their personal goals and
wellbeing. Imagine being a cashier at a convenience store. Your job description would require you to engage in
sales transactions with customers. Customers would want to come into the store, take what they want and you are
expected to handle the sale and collect the money. If you were well trained at your job, you would not feel as
though these transactions exceed your capacity. You would most likely not appraise these job demands as
stressful. Benign job demands are jobs that are not stressful (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Now imagine being a cashier in another store where cash registers and credit card machines are always faulty and
stops working without a warning. You would begin to feel stressed doing your job because it is up to you to diagnose
and fix the problem with a customer right in front of you, who is now beginning to feel very impatient. You might
even consider this stressful situation as a means of preventing you from achieving your foals as an efficient cashier
in the eyes of your employer and the customer (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Now imagine being a cashier at a convenience store where, due to additional requirements, your workload is higher
and includes tasks such as getting stock from the supplier, taking physical inventory and training new employees.
Due to the higher workload and trying to balance different priorities, you may appraise your job as being stressful.
You could, also consider this as an opportunity to portray your skills and capabilities to your superiors and perhaps
be incentivised (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Types of Stressors
There are two types of stressors:
•
Hindrance Stressors are considered as hurdles to goal achievements
•
Challenge Stressors are considered as opportunities for growth and achievement
We would now look at each type in detail:
Work Hindrance Stressor
Each role we fill at work are the sources of various types of work-related hindrance stressors.
•
Role Conflict – Is referred to as the conflicting expectations that other employees may have for us.
•
Role Ambiguity – Is referred to as lack on information about what is needed to be done and assuming the
consequences of performance in that role.
•
Role Overload – When an employee takes on too many roles and responsibilities and is unable to carry
out each one effectively
•
Daily Hassles – Referred to as the minor day-to-day activities that prevents us from achieving our goals.
Work Challenge Stressors
•
Time pressure – The feeling of not having enough time to accomplish our goals.
•
Work Complexity – Refers to the degree to which the requirements of the work, meaning the knowledge,
skills and abilities exceeds the capabilities of the employee carrying out the work.
•
Work Responsibility – The nature of the obligations that an employee has towards other employees
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Non-work Hindrance Stressor
Even though majority of people spend most of their time at work than anywhere else, there are other stressful
demands outside of work that have implications of managing behaviours in organisations. There are instances
where stress outside of work affects work performance. Let us look at a few types of non-work hindrance stressors:
•
Family Conflict – A type of conflict where the demands of a work role effect the demands of a family role
and vice versa. Work-family conflict is something that upsets the balance of home and non-work lives.
•
Negative life events – A type of stressor that prevents a person from achieving their goals due to negative
emotions. For example, a divorce.
•
Financial Uncertainty – Stressing about our financial status, relating to the loss of livelihood, savings or
the ability to pay expenses.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Knowledge Check Question1
1. List two types of stressors.
Non-work Challenge Stressors
•
Family time demands – Time set aside to participate in family activities and responsibilities.
•
Personal Development – When a person takes on tasks that help them grow as a person.
•
Positive Life Events – Activities that have a positive influence in a person’s life. For example, marriage.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
How do people cope with Stressors?
The transactional theory of stress states that once people appraise a stressful demand, the next question they ask
is “What should I do? “In addition, “What can I do? “To handle this situation. These questions lead us to secondary
appraisals. Coping is known as thoughts and behaviours that people use in order to manage the stressful demands
they face and the emotions that come with these stressful demands. When we define coping, the first half explains
the idea that methods of coping can be categorized based on whether they involve behaviours or thoughts.
•
Behavioural Coping is the set if physical activities that a person performs, in order to deal with a stressful
situation.
•
Cognitive Coping is the thoughts a person has while trying to deal with the situation.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
The first part of the definition focused on the method of coping. We will now look at the second part, which deals
with the focus of coping, meaning does this method of coping address the stressful demand or the emotions caused
by the demand.
•
Problem Focused Coping is behaviours and cognitions meant to manage a stressful situation.
•
Emotion focused coping is the various ways in which people manage their own emotional reactions to
stressful demands.
The coping strategy used by an individual has very important consequences for how effectively people meet of
adapt to the different stressors that they may face. Does a person choose a particular strategy? One important
factor that influences this choice is the person’s beliefs about how well different coping strategies addresses
different demands. In general, people choose the coping strategy they believe has the highest likelihood of meeting
the demand they face. A person’s choice is also dependant on the degree to which people think that they have
what it takes to deal with the coping strategy effectively (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Activity 2
2.1. Conduct research on what stress is.
2.2. Describe some of the causes of stress.
2.3. How is stressors and strains related to stress?
2.4. How does one go about managing stress?
Another factor that determines the coping strategy choice is the extent to which people think that a particular
strategy gives them come form of control over the stressor. If a person believes that a demand can be addressed
with a problem focused coping strategy and are confident that they can use that problem-focused strategy
effectively, then they will have some control over the situation and will most probably use a problem-focused
strategy. If a person believes that a demand cannot be addressed with, a problem focused strategy or does not
think they can effectively execute that strategy, they will feel a lack of control over the situation and will use the
emotion focused coping strategy. The nature of the stressful demands is essentially, what determines the manner
in which people develop a sense of control. People feel less control over a stressor when they appraise it as a
hindrance instead of a challenge (Colquitt et al., 2019).
The experience of strain
As defined earlier in this chapter, strain is the negative consequences associated with stress, but how does stress
cause strain? Different people react differently to stress. Some symptoms of stress include feeling exhausted,
irritable and achy. What is surprising, however, is that the mechanism within our body that gives us the ability to
function effectively in the face of stressful demand, is the same mechanism that ends up causing a person problem.
So, what are these mechanisms? The body has a set of responses that gives it the ability to adopt and function
effectively when dealing with stressful demands. However, if these stressful demands do not ramp down or the
demands happen too frequently, the body’s adaptive response would then be toxic. When a person is confronted
with a stressor, their bodies release a chemical compound, which increases their heart rate and blood pressure,
as blood is redirected away from the vital organs, such as the spleen, to the brain and skeletal muscles.
Unfortunately, if the chemicals in the blood remain elevated due to prolonged or repeated exposure to the stressor,
the body begins to break down and a number of negative consequences are set into motion. Negative
consequences can be broken down into three parts:
•
Physiological strains are because of stressors that happen in at least four systems of the human body.
Firstly, stressors reduce the functionality of the body’s immune system, which makes it difficult for the
body to fight off sicknesses. Secondly, stressors have the ability to harm the body’s cardiovascular
system. It causes the heart to beat faster, increases blood pressure and causes coronary artery diseases.
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Thirdly, stressors have the ability to cause problems in the body’s musculoskeletal system. A few
symptoms include tension, headache, tight shoulders and back pain.
Lastly, stressors cause
gastrointestinal problems. Symptoms include stomach indigestion and diarrhoea.
Many people
underestimate the power of physiological strains since the chances of contracting a serious illness or
disease is slim for people in their 20’s and 30’s. Evidence suggest that this might not be true. For example,
high-pressure work deadlines increase the chances of a heart attack within the next 24 hours by a factor
of six. How scary is that! In addition, negative physiological effects of stress grow over time and may only
appear years into the future, lastly, studies indicate higher mortality rate for employees in stressful jobs.
•
Psychological strains include, for example, depression, anxiety, anger, inability to think clearly, memory
loss and a loss of sense of humour. While we may think of these problems as isolated incidents, they
tend to reflect a general psychological condition known as burnout, which is defined as the emotional,
mental and physical exhaustion that come from having to deal with stressful events.
•
Behavioural strains are unhealthy behaviours, such as grinding our teeth at night, alcohol abuse,
compulsive eating and excessive smoking.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Accounting for individuals in the stress process
People react to stress in a number of different ways. One particular way depends on whether they exhibit the type
a behaviour pattern. Examples of type A people are people who are impatient, competitive, controlling and hostile.
Type A behaviour pattern is important because it influences stressors, strains, and stress in the following manner:
Personality is a unique combination of patterns that will influence behaviour, thought, motivation, and emotion in a
human being. An individual's personality is the combination of traits and patterns that influence their behaviour,
thought, motivation, and emotion. You will learn more about personalities in Unit Three.
•
Type A behaviour pattern has a direct influence on the level of stressors that a person deals with. Let us
think about a type a person that is hard driven and competitive. These traits are what organisations look
for in a person. A type a person would therefore be rewarded in the form of increases and higher levels
in the workplace. Since Type A people are aggressive and competitive, they might be more prone to
interpersonal conflict. It is evident that conflict with fellow colleagues are an important stressor.
•
Type A behaviour patterns influence the stress process. In other to better understand this concept, let us
consider that hard driving competitiveness makes people hypersensitive to demands that could prevent
them from achieving their goals. People are more likely to appraise demands as being stressful, instead
of being benign.
•
Evidence proves that Type A behaviour patterns are directly linked to coronary heart diseases and other
physiological, psychological and behavioural strains.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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An individual factor that influences the way people deal with stress is the degree of social support, which they
receive. Social support can be defined as the help given to people when they deal with stressful demands. There
are two major types of social support:
•
Instrumental support – The assistance that a person receives which is used to directly deal with the
stressful demand.
•
Emotional Support – The assistance people receive to address the emotional stress that comes with
stressful demands.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Type A behaviour pattern is very much similar to social support because they both have the potential to influence
the stress process in various ways. However, much research on social support focuses on the ways that social
support buffers the relationship between stressors and strains. For example, a supervisor who encourages support
behaviours might make the same level of stressful demands seem fairer. Therefore, employees working under this
supervisor would feel less strain than working under a supervisor who is against supportive behaviours. High levels
of social support give a person the emotional resources needed to cope with the stressors, which would then
reduce the harmful consequences of the stressor to that individual. People with lower levels of social support is
not provided with extra coping resources so the stressor has effects that are more harmful. This perspective labels
social support as a “Moderator” of the relationship between the stressor and the strain. Remember, moderators
are known as variables, which affect the strength of the relationship between two other variables. In this instance,
the relationship between the stressor and the strain would be weaker at higher levels of social support and stronger
at lower levels of social support (Colquitt et al., 2019).
How important is stress?
Now that we have studied how stressors and stress influence strain and a person’s health and wellbeing, we will
now look at the impact stressors have on job performance and organisational commitment.
Hindrance stressors have a negative and weak relationship with job performance, since hindrance stressors result
in strains and negative emotions, which reduces the level of physical, cognitive and emotional energy that people
bring to work. The detrimental effect that strains have on job performance is very easy to understand. When you
remember the nature of the individual strains that we studied earlier in this unit. It is obvious that physiological,
psychological and behavioural strains in the form of sickness, exhaustion and drunkenness would prevent an
employee from effectively performing their duties. It should also be noted that their strains might be associated
with negative thoughts and emotions, which triggers counterproductive work behaviours. Hindrance stressors has
a strong negative relationship with organisational commitment. This is because hindrance stressors evoke strains,
which are unappealing to people. Satisfaction has a strong influence on the degree to which people feel committed
to the organisation. If a person has a job that causes them to feel sick and miserable all the time, they would feel
dissatisfied with their job and would not want to stay with the organisation (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Challenge stressors have a weak relationship with job performance and a moderate relationship with organisational
commitment. However, unlike the results for hindrance stressors, the relationships here are positive and not
negative, meaning, employees who experience higher levels of challenge stressors would have higher levels of
job performance and organisational commitment. These relationships stand in sharp contrast with lower levels of
job performance and organisational commitment, which happens when employees confront higher levels of
hindrance stressors. So, how do we explain this difference? Even though challenge stressors result in strain, which
prevents performance and commitment, it also triggers a type of positive emotion and problem-focused coping
strategies that are characteristics of an employee who is strongly committed to their job. The benefits of positive
emotions outweigh the costs of the added strain, which results in challenge stressors being beneficial to employee
performance and commitment, when the positives and negatives are considered (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Readings
Additional Reading:
Jang, W., Zhao, T. and Ni, J. (2017). Impact of Transformational
Leadership on Employee Sustainable Performance: The Mediating Role of
Organizational Citizenship Behavior. 9, 1567. Available at:
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/9/1567
Application: Stress Management
Many organisations provide their employees with healthcare insurance and a handful of them pay for workers
compensation insurance. Here, the rates are determined by the nature of the job and the history of claims that the
organisation has. The relationship between stress and healthcare costs indicates that there could be huge
dividends for organisations that properly manage their employee’s stress. Many organisations use the following
steps when dealing with employee stress:
•
The first step is to address the level of stress and its source in the workplace. There may be a number of
ways to accomplish this type of evaluation, referred to as a stress audit. Managers begin by asking
themselves questions relating to the job, to determine whether high stress levels could be a problem.
There are three categories of questions.
▪
The first could involve the extent to which the organisation is going through changes that could cause
uncertainty among employees.
▪
The second category of questions is related to the work itself. These questions focus on the type of
stressors that the employee experiences.
▪
The third category of questions involves the relationship between the employee and the organisation
and the employee with other employees.
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•
Reducing Stressors – If the audit shows that stress could be a problem, the manager would need to
consider an alternative course of action. One particular course of action involves managing stressors,
which can be accomplished in one of two ways:
▪
The organisation could try to eliminate, or, at the very least, reduce stress demands.
▪
A company could attempt to reduce stress by introducing sabbaticals. A sabbatical affords the
employee the opportunity to take time off work to take part in an alternative activity.
•
Providing resources – Even though stressors could reduce the overall level of stress, this approach is
mostly beneficial when we place focus on hindrance stressors instead of challenge stressors. Ambiguity,
conflict and overload are examples of hindrance stressors that not only causes strain, but also decreases
commitment and job performance. On the other hand, while challenge stressors, like time pressure and
responsibility cause strain, they’ve also proven to be motivating and satisfying and, as a result, they are
positively related to commitment and performance.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
In an attempt to reduce stress, organisations can give employees resources, which would assist them with coping
with stressful demands. This can be done in one of two ways:
•
The first way is through training interventions, which increases job related competencies and skills.
Employees who are more competent and possess the necessary skills can better manage demands
before they appraise these demands as exceeding their capacity.
•
The second way is through supportive practices, which assist employees in managing and balancing
demands that come with their jobs.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Training interventions to improve team processes, teamwork competencies, cross training and team building: there
are various training methods used in order to target the team performance. Some of which are:
•
Preparation
•
Execution
•
Reflection
Team interventions will help increase team effectiveness by using competencies and processes. Working
collaboratively will bring about great benefits associated with effective teamwork. There is one way to improve
teamwork and that is with implementing team development interventions. In team development interventions, we
use a systematic activity to help improve team competencies, processes and overall effectiveness. There are
multiple types of development interventions used in organisations across industries.
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There are some team development interventions, which may differ from content focus, which will be used to
improve team effectiveness. In team training, we find it to be formalised and structured in such a way to that will
enhance the learning experience of the specific team’s competencies. This intervention will help improve the team
processes by improving the competencies and help promote teamwork. The teamwork skills are linked to the team
performance. There are many team training programs which can be used to create and facilitate the team so they
can be effective. Companies organise retreat or team building programs which they use as part of staff
engagement. Some of these programs include:
•
Ice breakers- this can be very useful when we have new people that have joined the company. The
icebreakers. Icebreakers are great ways to starting training sessions or team building events.
•
Problem solving- these activities are designed using fabricated scenarios which staff will use to work
together to solve. This can become quite tricky as some activities could actually break your employee.
•
Outdoor activities- are great as not everyone would like to be indoors all the time. The team building
activities are designed closer to nature. The activities are designed to encourage staff to work as a team
and at the same time promote a healthy lifestyle.
•
Reaching out to society- team building is not only about the company itself but there are some positive
outcomes for both the employee and company when it comes to volunteering to reach out to the
community. Many companies would encourage volunteering as it helps the credentials of the company
and the individual employee itself.
Cross training helps managers to become more flexible in managing the workforce. This way it will help in getting
the job done. The good employees will learn about new skills which helps them increase their value to the
organisation. Cross training helps the employees to gain more skills and responsibilities of another position in the
company. This way, the effectiveness of the individual is increased.
(Lacerenza, Marlow, Tannenbaum and Salas , 2018)
Revision Questions 2
2.1. Define stress.
2.2. Describe the different types of stressors.
2.3. How would an individual cope with stress?
2.4. How does stress affect job performance and organisational commitment?
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2.4
Motivation
Did you ever ask yourself “why can’t I get myself going today?” or how many times did you ask other employees
“Why are you working so slow right now? “Both of these questions relate to motivation. Motivation is defined as
the set of energetic forces that originates both within and outside an employee, and initiates work related efforts
and determines it direction, intensity and persistence. Motivation is extremely important because effective job
performance requires high levels of ability and motion. The first half of our definition of motivation shows us that
motivation is a set of distinct forces and is not just a single thing. These forces can be either internal or external.
An example of internal forces includes confidence and external forces includes incentives given to the employee.
The second half of our definition shows us that motivation determines a number of facets of an employee work
effort. An employee’s action is determined by motivation. Organisations are always looking for ways to motivate
their employees. The focus is usually on a topic called engagement. Employees who are engaged devote their
time and energy to their jobs. Outwardly, engaged employees dedicate a lot of their time and energy on their tasks,
striving to take initiative and get the job done. Inwardly, engaged employees focus a great deal of attention and
concentration on their tasks and sometimes, becomes so obsessed in what they are doing, that they lose track of
time (Colquitt et al., 2019).
There are some theories out there such as money as a motivator. In this theory, workers are motivated by obtaining
the highest possible salary for their working. This way, workers are more efficient and are more productive in a
way. The performance was limited by the individual’s fatigue. Motivation was just a simple issue. This theory has
a continuing debate about financial rewards as a motivator to productivity. Where there is little pleasure in the work
itself, the job will offer little opportunity for career advancements, money will appear to be motivated primarily
(Mullins, 2010).
Why are some employees more motivated than others are?
There are four theories that explain why some employees are more motivated than others are:
•
The Expectancy Theory
•
The Goal Setting Theory
•
The Equity Theory
•
Psychological Empowerment
There are some other motivation theories such as Maslow’s Theory of Need Hierarchy, McGregor’s Theory of
Motivation and Hygiene Two Factor Theory, Theory X and Theory Y, Vroom’s Theory of Motivation (Performance
Satisfaction) and Porter-Lawler Theory, which can be used to understand motivation (Kondalkar, 2007).
It is the duty of the manager to ensure his employees have a high degree of motivation because highly motivated
workers would be regular and high-level performers. The quality of the product will be improved resulting in
minimum wastage. Employees who are not motivated enough will result in staff turnover and a high level of
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absenteeism. This lack of motivation puts a financial strain on the organisations therefore motivation is an important
tool for organisations (Kondalkar, 2007). Looking for someone new in the organisation, the organisation will have
to search for an individual who is motivated for wanting to work at the organisation (Cross and Carbery, 2016).
Think Point 1
Job characteristics are important. Do you think that one can be more important
than the others can and why?
Expectancy Theory
The Expectancy Theory explains the cognitive processes that an employee goes through, in order to make choices
between different voluntary responses. The Expectancy Theory states that employee behaviour is directed towards
pleasure and away from pain. We should now be asking, “How do employees make the choice that takes them in
the right direction? “According to this theory, our choices are based on three specific beliefs that are based on our
past learning and experiences: Expectancy, Instrumentally and Valence.
•
Expectancy- Putting in a high level of effort will result in the tasks being completed successfully. There
are a number of factors that influence the expectancy of a particular task:
▪
Self-efficacy is when a person believes that they have the capabilities needed to execute the
behaviours required in order to achieve success. An employee who feels more “efficacious” for a
specific task would perceive higher levels of expectancy, which would result in them, being given a
choice to exert higher levels of effort. Did you ever wonder why some employees have higher levels
of self-efficacy than others do? Let us consider the following points.
-
Accomplishments – When an employee considers the efficacy levels of a task, they first think
about their accomplishments. Accomplishments are both the failure and success of a similar
task that was completed in the past.
-
Vicarious experiences – When an employee considers their observations and discussions with
other employees who have successfully completed similar tasks
-
Verbal persuasion – Other members of an organisation can influence the employee to
successfully complete the task.
-
Emotional Cues – The feeling of fear and anxiety that creates doubts about task
accomplishment, while pride and enthusiasm can boost confidence levels.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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When combined, the above efficacy sources analyse how difficult task requirements are and just how adequate
an employee’s personal and situational resources will prove to be.
▪
Instrumentality is the belief that successful performance will result in some outcome. Technically
speaking, instrumentality can be defined as the set of subjective probabilities ranging from 0 to 1,
where 0 indicates no chance and 1 indicates a mortal lock that successful performance will result in
a set of outcomes.
▪
Valence is the anticipated value of the outcome associated with performance. Valences can be either
positive or negative or 0. Examples of positive valence are bonuses and salary increase. Disciplinary
actions and demotions are examples of negative valence. Therefore, what is it that makes some
outcomes more positively valence than others? Outcomes become more attractive when they help
satisfy needs. Needs are defined as cognitive groupings of outcomes that have critical psychological
or physiological consequences.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Goal Setting Theory
In order to best explain the goal setting theory, let us look at a scenario. Imagine feeling confident about an
assignment given to you, by your boss. You believe that successful performance will result in valued outcomes.
Once you have chosen to direct your effort to that assignment, you need to ask two very important questions: How
hard will you have to work and for how long? You then go to your boss and ask him when’s the assignment due.
He responds by saying, “Just do your best!” Unfortunately, this does not give you much information and you still
do not know what is expected of you. The goal setting theory considers goals as the primary drivers of the intensity
and persistence of effort. Goals can be defined as the aim of an action and usually refers to attaining a particular
standard of proficiency, and within a specified period. The goal setting theory further states that assigning
employees to specific and different goals could result in higher levels of job performance, instead of assigning no
goals, or easy goals, or “do your best” goals, because “your best” usually means the highest possible level of effort.
After all, can you safely say you know what your best is? Assigning specific and difficult goals gives people a
number to shoot for – a “measuring stick” that can assist them in finding out how had they need to work and for
how long. So, what is a difficult goal? A person does not need to put in much of an effort if the goal is easy. When
a goal shifts from moderate to difficult, the intensity and persistence of effort becomes maximized. However, a
person’s self-efficacy starts to diminish once they have reached their limit. It is also possible for goals to move from
being difficult to impossible, resulting in the employee feeling helpless in an attempt to achieve them. Simply put,
a difficult goal is one that forces an employee to perform at their maximum level, while staying within the boundaries
of their abilities (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Case Study 2
Dugguh, S.I and Dennis, A., (2014). Job satisfaction theories: Traceability to employee
performance in organizations. Journal of Business and Management, 16(5), 11-18.
Available at:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bb50/91f61cbd4a024add34d032b4bb0951015de2.pdf
Questions:
1. Explain how job satisfaction theories influence job performance?
2. How does motivation influence job performance?
The next obvious question we should be asking is: “Why does specific and difficult goals have such positive
effects?” Firstly, the assignment of a specific and difficult goal shapes persons’ own self-set goals. Self-set goals
are goals that people use to monitor their own task progress. If there are no goals assigned to an employee, they
may not even think about their own goals or they may set goals that is easy to achieve. When a self-test goal
becomes more difficult, the intensity of efforts increases and the persistence of efforts are extended. Another effect
of goals is that they influence the creation of task strategies, which is defined as learning plans and problem-solving
approaches used to achieve successful performance. When there is no goal in place, a person often relies on trial
and error to best do the task (Colquitt et al., 2019).
In general, three variables indicate when assigned goals will have stronger or weaker effects on task performance:
•
Feedback – Updates on the employee’s progress towards achieving the goal.
•
Task complexity – Explains how complicated the information and actions in a task are, and how much the
task has changed.
•
Goal Commitment – The extent to which a person accepts the goal and their determination to achieve it.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Equity Theory
In order to explain the equity theory, let us look at a scenario: Imagine being dedicated to accomplishing your goal,
by being so focused, that you lose track of time. A colleague comes to your office and you tell him what you are
working on. His response is “Yes, I have a similar assignment that’s just as tough, but the boss has decided to
reward me with a shopping voucher if I complete the task on time”. Unlike the expectancy theory and the goal
setting theory, the equity theory states that motivation should not just depend on one’s own belief and
circumstances, but also, what happens to other people. The equity theory suggests that people create a “mental
ledger” of the outcomes (rewards) they receive from their job duties. The equity theory further states that employees
create a mental ledger of the inputs (contributions and investments) they put into their jobs (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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What would employees do with the mental notes of outcomes and inputs? According to the equity theory, the
employee would compare their ratio of outcomes and inputs to a fellow employee. There are three possibilities that
could result from this cognitive calculus:
•
The ratio of outcomes to inputs is the balance between the employee and their comparison other. They
would feel equal and would likely maintain the intensity and persistence of their effort.
•
The ration of outcomes to inputs is less than the employee’s comparison other. The equity theory states
that any imbalance in rations causes equity distress, which is otherwise known as internal tension that
can only be fixed by balancing the ratios. Equity distress brings many negative emptions, such as anger
and envy. There are two ways to restore the balance:
•
▪
Talking to your boss and explaining why you deserve better outcomes
▪
Lowering your intensity and persistence efforts.
The ratio of outcomes to inputs is greater than your comparison other. Again, they will experience equity
distress and the tension would cause negative emotions, such as stress, guilt and anxiety. Here, the
balance can be restored by sharing the outcomes (sharing the rewards), but this is very unlikely to happen.
Rather, a more likely solution would be to increase inputs in some way. For example, the employee could
increase the intensity and persistence of their tasks. However, there may not be enough time to increase
these inputs. An alternative would be simply rethinking them. To re-examine the mental ledger and make
sure that they have understood true contributions. An additional way to restore the balance would be to
change the comparison other.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Physiological Empowerment
With reference to our previous scenario, after finding out that your colleague will be rewarded a shopping voucher,
you would be too annoyed to work and would rather browse Facebook. While browsing through your timeline, you
begin to think about all the reasons you hate working on this assignment. Even with the incentives, you tell yourself
that you would have never taken on this assignment by choice. These feelings are signs of low level of
psychological empowerment. Psychological empowerment represents a form of intrinsic motivation; meaning,
merely performing a job is a reward on its own. There are four important concepts of physiological empowerment:
•
Meaningfulness – Captures the value of a work goal or purpose, relating to a person’s own ideas or
passion. A task that is relevant to a meaningful purpose is easier to concentrate on because a person is
excited about it. Employees often find themselves cutting other tasks shorter to allow more time for the
meaningful one. On some occasions, employees even think about the task after hours. Tasks that are not
meaningful often brings with it a feeling of emptiness and detachment, resulting in the employee mentally
forcing themselves to work on the task. Managers can encourage meaningfulness by developing an
exciting vision and purpose and fostering a non-cynical environment where employees are able to express
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their ideas and passions without criticism. In return, employees are able to build their own sense of
meaningfulness by identifying and clarifying their own passion.
•
Self-determination – An employee’s sense of choice in the initiation and continuation of work activities.
Employees who have high levels of self-determination are able to choose what tasks they want to work
on, the manner in which they are going to structure the task and the time it would take to pursue those
tasks. Self-determination has a strong influence on intrinsic motivation because it enables employees to
choose their own activities that they find meaningful and interesting. Managers encourage selfdetermination by delegating work tasks instead of micromanaging them and by trusting employees to
come up with their own ideas. In return, employees gain more self-determination by earning their
superior’s trust.
•
Competence – A person’s belief in their own capacity that they can successfully complete the task.
Competence is identical to self-efficacy. Employees who have a strong sense of competence know that
they can execute particular behaviours required to achieve success. With competence, comes pride and
mastery that is itself intrinsically motivating. Managers can encourage competence by providing their
employees with the necessary training and knowledge gain, and by providing the employee with
challenges that match their capabilities. In return, employees build their own competence by engaging in
self-directing learning and managing their own work loads.
•
Impact – A feeling that a person’s actions make a difference, that progress is being made towards
completing an important purpose. Phrases like “moving forward” and “being on track” displays a sense of
impact. Managers encourage impact by celebrating milestones along the journey. In return, employees
acquire a deeper sense of impact by forming the necessary relationships required to speed task progress.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
How important is motivation?
With reference to job performance, a number of studies encourage the relationship between various motivating
forces and task performance. A motivating force that has the strongest performance effect is self-efficacy
(competent) because people with internal self-confidence perform better than those who question their capabilities.
The second most powerful motivating force is difficult goals, because people who get such goals work better than
those with easier goals do. The third most powerful motivational force are those created by high levels of valence,
instrumentality and expectancy. Lastly, the perception of equality has a weaker effect on task performance (Colquitt
et al., 2019). Not much attention had been given to the linkage between motivation variables and citizenship and
counterproductive behaviours. About the former, employees who engage in more work-related efforts are likely to
perform “extra mile” actions, since these actions require a little extra effort. In relation to citizenship behaviour, the
relationship between motivation and organisational commitment is straightforward, since psychological and
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physical forms of withdrawal, which characterises less committed employees, are themselves evident of low levels
of motivation. There are a series of levels, which are important to humans; these levels influence the motivation of
an individual. The more the series of levels are achieved by the individuals, the more the individuals will progress
(Mullins, 2010).
Application: Compensation System
The most important area in which motivation concepts are applied in organisations is the design of compensation
systems. A good compensation system typically includes a number of elements. The term element is used to
acknowledge that most organisations use a combination of multiple elements to compensate their employees.
There are two ways of judging the motivational impact of compensation plan elements:
•
The first is to decide whether the elements provide difficult and specific goals for channelling work effort.
•
The second is to consider the correspondence between individual performance levels and individual
monetary outcomes. Since those correspondences influence perceptions of both instrumentality and
equity.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Revision Questions 3
3.1. What is motivation?
3.2. What is the effect of motivation on job performance and organisational
commitment?
2.5
Trust, Justice, and Ethics
The reputation of any organisation is one of its most prized possessions, which is why companies care a great
deal about ethical issues. An organisations reputation is the prominence of its brand in the eyes of the public and
the perceived quality of its goods and services. The reputation of an organisation is an intangible asset, which can
take years to build, but only seconds to destroy. Currently, a bad experience with a certain company is posted on
social media almost immediately. It is normal to assume that only the reputation of a company influences a
customer, however, this is not entirely true. It matters to potential employees as well. Research suggests that top
performers would prefer working for a company with a clean reputation, mostly because they would want to protect
their own image (Colquitt et al., 2019). The reputation of a company is dependent on a number of factors. One of
them being trust, which is defined as voluntarily being vulnerable to a trustee, because of positive expectations
relating to the trustee’s actions and intentions. For example, when a customer trusts the quality of goods or services
offered by the company, they would not mind spending their hard-earned money on that company, or, if a potential
recruit trusts the words of the manager, they would not mind becoming a member of the organisation. From these
examples, one thing we learn is that trust means the willingness to “put yourself out there”, even though you could
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face disappointment. The example also shows us the difference between trust and risk. Buying the product or
accepting the job is considered a risk. Trust is the willingness to take that risk. Unfortunately, due to corporate
scandals, and economic shifts, trust in many companies have declined. Ethical behaviour is very important,
especially when the workers are loyal to their superiors. Managers practice the right values so that the employees
on the lower levels of the hierarchy practice the same values (Kondalkar, 2007).
Think Point 2
Imagine you were offered several jobs just after graduating. Do you think the
level of challenge stressors will influence the choice of job you will take and
why?
This chapter particularly focuses on trust in organisational authorities. For example, the CEO, top managers,
supervisors and managers within the organisation. These individuals are known as the face of the company and
gives employees and customers a means of judging a company’s reputation. These members also have a
significant influence on the employee’s performance and commitment. Trust in authorities are dependent on two
factors:
•
Justice – The fairness of the authorities’ decision. When an employee perceives high levels of justice,
they think that the decisions outcomes are fair and that the decision-making processes are formed and
implemented in a fair a manner. Justice concepts are the reason behind employees judging the
trustworthiness of an authority.
•
Ethics – The extent to which the behaviours of an authority are in accordance with generally accepted
moral norms. When an employee perceives high levels of ethics, they think that things are done the way
it should be. Ethic concepts are used to explain why authorities’ act in a trustworthy or untrustworthy
manner.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Activity 3
3.1. How can one increase employee motivation?
3.2. Explain the benefits of motivation.
3.3. Discuss the ethical decision-making model.
3.4. What can you do to ensure you make ethical decisions at all times?
3.5. How does an organisation become more trustworthy?
3.6. How would effective leaders build trust?
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Why some authorities more trusted than others are?
Trust
There are three different types of trust:
•
Disposition based trust – A person’s personality traits includes propensity to trust others. Disposition trust
does not include the authority as much as it includes the trusted. Some trustees are high in trust
propensity, which is the belief that their words and promises are true. Many people believe that propensity
represents a form of “faith in human nature” because people trust honest people more than they do
suspicious people. Trust propensity is extremely important when interacting with strangers because any
acceptance of vulnerability could amount to “blind trust”, while those individuals with high trust propensity
are at the risk of trusting others who may not be worthy of it. Individuals with lower trust propensity could
be penalized for not trusting someone who is deserving of it.
•
Cognition Based Trust – is used as a guide when we do not have much information about a particular
authority. However, at some stage, we would have gathered enough information to gauge the authorities’
trustworthiness, which is defined as the characteristics of a trustee that inspires trust. Initially, we base
our trust on the perception we develop about the authority, and not on our own personality. In this way,
Cognition based trust is based on the authorities record of accomplishment. If the record of
accomplishment shows the authority is trustworthy, then vulnerability to the authority could be accepted.
If the record of accomplishment shows the authority as being untrustworthy, the trust may not be
warranted. Research suggests that we measure the track record of a particular authority based on three
dimensions:
o
Ability – Defined as the skills and competencies that allows an authority to be successful in some
specific area.
o
Benevolence – Defined as the confidence that the authority wants only the best for the trusted
without any selfish, profit-centred motives. Benevolent authorities are those individuals who
genuinely care for their employees and feel a sense of loyalty towards them.
o
Integrity – Defined as the perception that the authority follows a set of values and principles that
the trusted finds acceptable. Having integrity means having good intentions and strong moral
discipline.
•
Affect Based Trust - While ability, benevolence and integrity provide us with three very good reasons to
trust an authority, the third form of trust is not really rooted in reason. Affect based trust is less rational
and more emotional. Here, an individual trusts another, simply because they have strong feelings for that
person. These feelings cause us to accept vulnerability to another person. Affect based trust is considered
a supplement to the other types of trust discussed. When new relations are formed, the trust is solely
dependent on a person’s own trust propensity. Propensity then is supplemented by knowledge about
ability, benevolence and integrity. At this point, cognition-based trust develops.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Knowledge Check Question2
1. List three types of Trust.
Justice
Assessing the ability, benevolence and integrity of a particular authority is often difficult, especially in a working
environment. Under these circumstances, an employee would need some sort of observable behavioural evidence
that the authority might be trusted. Justice provides this type of behavioural evidence because authorities who treat
employees fairly are considered more trustworthy. Employees can judge the fairness of an authority’s decisionmaking along four dimensions:
•
Distributive Justice – The fairness of decision-making outcomes. Employees measure distributive
justice by assessing whether decision outcomes are allocated using proper norms. Examples of decision
outcomes include pay, rewards, promotions and work assignment. Equity is the proper norm in most
businesses, where outcomes are allocated to those who contribute more inputs. The equity norm is
considered the fairest choice in situations where the main goal is to maximize the productivity of
employees.
•
Procedural Justice – Reflects the fairness of the decision-making process. Procedural justice happens
when authorities follow the rules of a fair process. One such rule is voice, which gives the employees a
chance to air their opinions and views during decision-making. A related rule is correctability, which allows
the employee a chance to request an appeal when a procedure seems to have worked ineffectively.
These rules help improve an employee’s reaction to decisions because they leave the employee feeling
a sense of ownership over these decisions. Apart from voice and correctability, procedural justice
happens when authorities follow four rules that assist in creating equal employment opportunities. The
consistency, bias suppression, representatives and accuracy rules ensure that procedures are natural
and objective and not biased and discriminatory.
•
Interpersonal Justice – Reflects how fairly the authorities treat the employee. Interpersonal justice
happens when employees follow two rules:
▪
The respect rule – Determines whether the authorities dealt with the employee in a dignified and
sincere manner.
▪
The propriety rule – Determines whether the authorities refrained from making offensive remarks.
Interpersonal Justice only happens when authorities are caught being rude or disrespectful to other
employees. In extreme cases, unjust actions create abusive supervision, which is defined as the
display of hostile verbal and nonverbal actions, excluding physical contact. Employees who are
abused by their supervisors suffer more from anxiety, burnout and strain and are less satisfied with
their lives in general.
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•
Informal Justice- Reflects the fairness of the communication provided to employees from authorities.
Informal justice happens when authorities follow two particular rules:
▪
The justification rule allows authorities to discuss the decision-making process and outcomes in a
detailed and reasonable manner.
▪
The truthfulness rule means that communication needs to be honest and candid.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
While it may be standard procedure for organisations to explain decisions in a comprehensive and adequate
manner, this is not always the case. One of the worst parts of being a manager has to share bad news, causing
them to distance themselves when it is time to play messenger. Another factor manager’s fear is a lawsuit filed
against him or her, should they comprehensively and honestly explain the reason for a layoff, a poor evaluation or
even a missed promotion. Ironically, this defence mechanism is usually counterproductive because honest and
adequate explanations are considered a powerful strategy for reducing retaliation responses against the
organisation (Colquitt et al., 2019). It should be noted, however, that with low levels of information, justice could
have horrible consequences for the organisation if a wrongful termination claim is actually filled, because the
organisation would need to prove that the employee was terminated for a valid reason. For example, poor
performance. The organisation would not be in a position to offer anything to justify the termination if managers
did not provide an employee with candid and honest information (Mullins, 2010).
Ethics
Research on ethics explain why people behave in a manner consistent with generally accepted norms of morality
and why they violate these norms. There are two primary threads associated with the study of business ethics:
•
One thread is prescriptive in nature, where scholars in philosophy discuss how people ought to behave
using various codes and principles.
•
The second thread is descriptive in nature, where scholars rely on scientific studies to determine how
people tend to act.
Some studies of business ethics are dedicated to unethical behaviour, which is defined as behaviour that violates
the accepted norms of morality. In a working environment, unethical behaviour can be directed at just about anyone
– employees, customers or society as a whole. Other studies of business ethics are dedicated to merely ethical
behaviour, which is defined as behaviour that adheres to some minimally accepted standard of morality. Examples
of merely ethical behaviours include obeying labour laws and complying with formal rules and contracts. Finally,
other studies focus on especially ethical behaviours, which are defined as behaviours that exceed the minimally
accepted standard of morality. How is it that some authorities behave ethically while others don’t? The fourcomponent model of ethical decisions states that ethical behaviours are a result of a multistage sequence, starting
with moral awareness, going onto moral judgment, then moral intent and finally, ethical behaviour.
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•
Moral awareness – When the authority is aware that moral issues exist in a situation or that an ethical
code is irrelevant to the circumstance. Not all ethical issues come with a red flag that mark them as morally
sensitive. Authorities sometimes behave in an unethical manner because they don’t consider the moral
issue relevant, so the ethical merits are sometimes never debated. Moral awareness is dependent on the
characteristics of the issue itself, since some issues have more salience than others do. A concept known
as moral intensity is the extent to which an issue has ethical urgency. Moral intensity is driven by two
general concerns:
▪
An issue is high in moral intensity if the potential for danger is considered high.
▪
An issue is high in moral intensity if there is social pressure surrounding it.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Moral awareness is also dependant on the manner in which authorities observe and perceive the events that
happen around them. Moral attentiveness is known as the degree in which people chronically perceive and
consider issues of morality during their experiences. According to research, people are more interested when the
matter at hand is recognizable (Mullins, 2010).
•
Moral Judgment – Sometimes authorities recognize that a moral issue exists but are unable to determine
the correct course of action. Moral Judgment is the second step that explains why an authority acts
ethically. Moral judgment is the process people follow to determine whether a particular course of action
is ethical or unethical. Moral judgement is strongly influenced by Kohlberg’s theory of cognitive moral
development, which states that a person goes through the various stages of moral development, as they
get older and more mature, with each stage being more sophisticated than the other is. An authority that
operates at a more mature stage of moral development demonstrates better moral judgment. The moral
development of a person is measured by giving a person a number of ethical dilemmas and observing
how they make decisions. There are three stages involved in moral development:
▪
Pre-conventional Stage – Right versus wrong is considered in terms of consequences or various
actions for the individual.
▪
As a person gets more mature, they reach the conventional stage. Here, right versus wrong is
referred to the expectations of a person’s family and society.
▪
The sophisticated, moral thinkers reach the principled stage. Here, right versus wrong is referenced
to a set of defined, established, moral principles.
•
Moral Intent – Assuming an authority is aware that a moral issue exists and has the cognitive moral
development to choose the right course of action, the final stage remains: The desire to want to be ethical.
Moral intent is the authority’s degree of commitment to the moral course of action. The difference between
awareness and intent is important, since many unethical people are aware that their actions are wrong,
but they still choose to do it, simply because situational factors influence a person’s desire to go against
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their moral judgement. How is it that some people are able to stay true to their moral judgement? One
factor is moral identity, which is defined as the degree to which a person self identifies as a moral person.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
How important is trust
Trust affects job performance in the following manner:
•
Trust is moderately correlated with task performance.
•
Trust influences citizenship and counterproductive behaviours
•
Trust affects organisational commitment because trusting an authority leads to the development of an
emotional bond, especially if that trust is based on positive feelings for the authority.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Application: Social Responsibility
The next question we should be asking is: How can an organisation become more trustworthy? One particular way
is for the organisation to focus its attention on corporate social responsibility, the organisations acknowledgment
of economic, legal, ethical and citizenship expectations of society. Here, it is believed that the foundation of any
business is profitability, because the organisation must fulfil their economic responsibilities to their employees and
shareholders. However, proponents of social responsibilities argue that a company’s obligation does not end with
profit maximization (Colquitt et al., 2019). The legal component of social responsibility states that the law represents
society’s codification of right and wrong and should be obeyed. Obeying these laws says a lot about the
organisation’s integrity. The ethical component of corporate social responsibility states that the organisation is
obliged to do what is right. The citizenship component of corporate social responsibility states that an organisation
should give the employees resources to improve their quality of life (Mullins, 2010).
Revision Questions 4
4.1. What is the relation of trust between justice and ethics?
4.2. Describe the dimensions of trustworthiness of authority.
4.3. What are the effects of trust on job performance and organisational
commitment?
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2.6
Learning and Decision Making
How are employees able to turn explicit and tacit knowledge into effective decision making? The process is usually
very straightforward. Programmed decisions are automatic decisions because people’s knowledge enables them
to identify a situation and take the relevant course of action. Experts respond to identified problems by realizing
that they have dealt with it in the past. This realization triggers a programmed decision that has implemented and
then evaluated in accordance with its ability to deliver the expected outcome. Experts often regard programmed
decisions as intuition or “gut feeling”. Intuition is the emotionally charged judgments that arise through quick, nonconscious and holistic associations. Tacit knowledge gained through reinforcement, observation and experience
allows a decision maker to decide more quickly and confidently. Due to their high levels of tacit knowledge, experts
are unable to explain how they know that a problem exists, why a solution would work or how they accomplish a
task. They just know. However, it can be difficult deciding when to trust that gut instinct and when not to. When
faced with this problem, you should always ask yourself how much expertise you have about the subject of the
judgment. Intuition is proven very effective when making decisions, but only when those making the decisions have
a high level of domain expertise. Intuitive decisions play a very important role when an organisation is faced with
a crisis (Colquitt et al., 2019).
A crisis is a change that results in an urgent problem that must be addressed immediately. One very important
key factor of almost all crisis is that a decision needs to be made almost immediately. Unless there is preplanning
for the crises, managers must be able to use their intuition and not take their time to consider all other options
(Mullins, 2010).
Managers are often misunderstood when it comes to making decisions in crises because they are often unable to
explain their reasoning behind their decision. As a result, the implementation of their plan suffers. Managers
therefore face two major questions:
•
What assurance do they have that others will follow their lead?
•
How can they confirm that their intuition is correct?
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Individual decision-making occurs when managers will have to take decisions and communicate with the
subordinates for implementation. Some decisions can be of routine nature while others will have strategic
consequences. Individuals will make use of their judgment to arrive at a solution/decision. When decisions are
made, they are based on available facts and future expectations of the user. Decisions need to be rational, as you
would need to study various alternatives to select the best alternative to a particular problem (Kondalkar, 2007).
There are five steps for communicating intent to others when using intuition:
•
Here’s what I think we face (the manager’s assumption of the situation)
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•
Here’s what I think we should do (what the manager expects will happen)
•
Here’s why (the reasoning behind the situation)
•
Here’s what we should keep our eyes on (what the staff should look for to ensure the intuition is correct)
•
Now, talk to me (Confirmation that everyone understands their responsibility)
The above communication steps are extremely important for managers making intuitive decisions, since they help,
others follow directives more easily, while, at the same time, providing a check on the manager to make sure they
observe the crisis environment correctly (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Non-programmed decisions are decisions made when the situation is new, complex and not recognized. Many
organisations are complex, with employees facing uncertainty on a daily basis. In these circumstances, it is up to
the employee to make sense of the environment, to understand their problems and to come up with solutions
(Mullins, 2010).
The rational decision-making model provides employees with a systematic approach to making decisions that
maximize outcomes by examining all available alternatives. The rational decision-making model can be broken
down into four steps:
•
The first step is to identify the criteria that is important in making the decision, keeping in mind all parties
involved.
•
The second step is generating a list of all alternatives that could potentially be solutions to the problems.
•
The third step is evaluating the alternatives against the criteria laid out in step one.
•
The fourth step is selecting the alternatives that result in the best outcome.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Of-course, as the name suggests, the rational decision-making model assumes that people are rational. However,
problems come up when we examine some of the assumptions the model makes about human decision makers.
•
The model assumes there is clear and definite problems and that people are able to identify the exact
problem.
•
The model assumes that the person making the decisions have accurate information.
•
The model assumes that time and money is not a problem when it comes to making decisions.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Decision making problems
Since employees do not always make rational decisions, it is often easy to second-guess decisions after the fact.
Often, decisions made by the organisations looks good and were made with excellent justifications to support them,
but in the end, the results are bad. Below are a few common reasons for bad decision making:
•
Limited Information – Even though employees consider themselves as being rational decision makers, in
reality, they are all subject to a bounded rationality. Bounded rationality can be defined as the notion that
decision makers do not have the ability or resources to process all available information ad alternatives
to make proper decisions. Bound rationality results in two major problems for making decisions:
▪
People need to filter and simplify information to make sense of their complex environment and the
myriad of potential choices they may face.
▪
Since people cannot possibly consider every single alternative when making a decision, they
satisfice. Satisficing happens when decision makers select the first acceptable alternative
considered.
•
Faulty Perceptions – Managers are often forced to rely on their perceptions to make decisions. Perception
can be described as the process of selecting, organizing, storing and retrieving information about the
environment. While perception can be useful, they often become distorted versions of reality. Perceptions can
be very dangerous when it comes to decision making because people make more assumptions based on
them. Selective perception is a person’s habit of seeing the environment only as it affects them and is in line
with their expectations. Selective perception influences a person’s ability to identify problems, generate and
evaluate alternatives and judge outcomes.
•
Faulty Attributions – One specific category of decision-making problems focus on how we explain the actions
and events that happen around us. According to research, when a person witnesses an outcome, they make
a judgment about whether it was internally or externally caused. The fundamental attribution error states that
people have the habit of judging another person’s behaviour due to internal factors. The self-serving bias
occurs when a person’s attributes his or her own failures for external factors and their own success to internal
factors.
•
Escalation of commitment – focuses on what happens as decisions begin to go wrong. Escalation of
commitment is known as the decisions to continue to follow a failing course of action. Studies show that when
presented with a number of decisions, people tend to escalate their commitment to previous decisions, even
in the face of obvious failures.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Adequate information must be available for the decision maker. Computers can store a lot of information in a
certain format or quality, which the decision maker can use for making a decision. When making decisions, the
individual’s decision is highly affected by attitudes and beliefs. Decisions will have to be made with an open mind
and without any prejudice. Even if though some decisions may be made rigid even though it is wrong, this is due
to personal habits. A solution provided within a specified time impacts on the decision-making. Time constraints
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are applied to ensure the organisation is fast moving into an era. There are various factors, which are related to
risk. A manager’s risk is dependent on the personal characteristics. There are some managers who are
conservative and do not take bold steps (Kondalkar, 2007).
Activity 4
4.1. How does learning affect decision-making?
4.2. Does the work environment affect decision-making? Explain why.
How important is learning?
Learning influences job performance, since it is moderately correlated with task performance. It becomes difficult
to perform tasks if the employee does not have the basic knowledge of the job. It is difficult to measure tacit
knowledge because of its unspoken nature, but it is obvious that such knowledge is relevant to task performance
(Colquitt et al., 2019).
Learning seems less relevant to citizenship behaviour and counterproductive behaviour, since these behaviours
are less dependent on knowledge and expertise. Learning is weakly related to organisational commitment. Having
high levels of job knowledge is often associated with slight increases in emotional attachments to the firm (Mullins,
2010).
Revision Questions 5
5.1. How do employees learn in the organisation?
5.2. Discuss the effects of learning on job performance and organisational
commitment.
5.3. Discuss the steps to make an organisation foster learning.
Application: Training
Organisations can improve learning in an attempt to boost employee’s expertise and improve decision making in
the following ways:
•
Training – The systematic effort by organisations to facilitate the learning of jobs related knowledge and
behaviour.
•
Knowledge transfer from the older more experienced workers to the younger ones.
•
Communities of practice – Group of employees working together and learning from each other by
collaborating over an extended period.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Knowledge Check Question3
1. Describe three ways an organisation can use to boost an employee’s
expertise and improve decision making.
2.7
Summary
In this unit, we have looked at job satisfaction and the reasons why individuals would be much happier than others
have; we explore the needs versus the wants. We have seen why some individuals are more stress than others
are. We looked at motivation and motivational theories. We understood more about trust, justice and ethics of the
individuals. We explored the different types of trust and dimensions involved in justice. We looked at steps which
managers will find important to help in decision-making.
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Answers to Activity questions:
Activity 1
1.1. Conduct research on characteristics that create a sense of satisfaction with the work itself.
The actual answer is not important, what is important is the research that has been conducted. You will find that
answers may vary depending on how the research was conducted but to basically summarise the answer: Skill
variety, autonomy, task significance, task identity and feedback, and the outcomes of high job performance, high
job satisfaction, high intrinsic motivation, and low absenteeism or turnover.
1.2. Do you think skill variety is important? Explain why.
Yes, when we look at the theory behind providing skill variety in job design, this will reduce boredom, hence
increasing job satisfaction and motivation.
Activity 2
2.1. Conduct research on what stress is.
The actual answer is not important, what is important is the research that has been conducted. You will find that
answers may vary depending on how the research was conducted but to basically summarise the answer: refers
to a situation that causes discomfort and distress for a person and can lead to other mental health problems, such
as anxiety and depression.
2.2. Describe some of the causes of stress.
The death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job, increase in financial obligations, moving to a new home, chronic
illness or injury, emotional problems (depression, anxiety, anger, grief, guilt, low self-esteem).
2.3. How is stressors and strains related to stress?
The physical, mental and emotional human response to a particular stimulus is the physical, mental and emotional
human response to a particular stimulus is referred to as a stressor. The excessive amount of stress and pressure
will lead to strain which then leads to bodily harm.
2.4. How does one go about managing stress?
There are different ways and techniques one can use to manage stress. You can take a break from the stressor.
It may seem difficult to get away from a big work project, a crying baby or a growing credit card bill. Try exercising.
You can even get social support to help you with dealing with stress.
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Activity 3
3.1. How can one increase employee motivation?
There are many ways to increase employee motivation such as making expectations clear from the start. An
employee without goals will be naturally aimless. Make sure continuous feedback is provided.
It is better to make corrections privately with individuals instead of publicly. Believe in your employees and try to
praise publicly. Make rewards achievable.
3.2. Explain the benefits of motivation.
This will improve the levels of efficiency in the workplace/ workforce. This chain effect will also help in increasing
the overall productivity levels, reduce costs and ensure the company efficiency is high.
3.3. Discuss the ethical decision-making model.
This model will help in resolving dilemma, which may seem to be complex. You can use this model to evaluate the
dilemma, plan and think ahead about information, which can be used to help calculate risk and check which will
be the best course of action.
3.4. What can you do to ensure you make ethical decisions at all times?
One can use a six-step process which can help make a more thoughtful and responsible decision. The following
steps can help:
1. Establish the facts in a situation.
2. Decide whether the situation involves legal or ethical issues.
3. Identify your options and possible consequences.
4. Evaluate your options.
5. Choose the best option.
6. Implement your decision.
3.5. How does an organisation become more trustworthy?
There are many ways to make an organisation more trustworthy such as not lying repeatedly, following through on
commitments, showing fairness to all, demonstrating transparency, being constructive and objective in the
performance reviews.
3.6. How would effective leaders build trust?
Actions matter most if you want to earn employees' trust and engage them in the organization. Starting with the
leader, it takes involvement at every level to create a deep bond of believability that motivates employees to put
forth effort needed to make their organization successful.
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Activity 4
4.1. How does learning affect decision-making?
There are several important factors that influence decision making. Significant factors include past experiences, a
variety of cognitive biases, an escalation of commitment and sunk outcomes, individual differences, including age
and socioeconomic status, and a belief in personal relevance. Accept the Facts: Every decision that affects our
lives will be made by the person who has the power to make that decision, not the "right" person or the "smartest"
person or the "best" person.
4.2. Does the work environment affect decision-making? Explain why.
Yes it can such as exhaustion, lack of resources and job demands impair them and affect performance. Both
factors are presumed to involve self-regulatory mechanisms connected to decision processes by influencing
performance in relation to work environment conditions.
Knowledge Check Question1
1. List two types of stressors.
•
Hindrance Stressors are considered as hurdles to goal achievements
•
Challenge Stressors are considered as opportunities for growth and achievement
Knowledge Check Question2
1. List three types of Trust.
•
Disposition based trust
•
Cognition Based Trust
•
Affect Based Trust
Knowledge Check Question3
1.Describe three ways an organisation can use to boost an employee’s expertise and improve decision making.
•
Training – The systematic effort by organisations to facilitate the learning of jobs related knowledge and
behaviour.
•
Knowledge transfer from the older more experienced workers to the younger ones.
•
Communities of practice – Group of employees working together and learning from each other by
collaborating over an extended period.
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Case Study 1
1.
Is leadership and emotional intelligence associated with job satisfaction?
Job satisfaction and emotional intelligence are two important variables in organisational behavioural studies, and
are key factors in promoting the efficiency of organisations. Authorities are to explore the reasons for job
dissatisfaction to prevent job burnout.
2.
How does job satisfaction affect job performance?
The influence of job satisfaction on behaviour. Job satisfaction can affect a person's level of commitment to the
organisation, absenteeism, and job turnover rate. When people are satisfied with the work they are doing, then
their job feels less like work and is a more enjoyable experience.
3.
What other factors does job satisfaction influence?
•
Working Environment.
•
Fair Policies and Practice.
•
Caring Organization.
•
Appreciation.
•
Pay.
Case Study 2
1.
Explain how job satisfaction theories influence job performance?
Job satisfaction is one of the most researched variables in the area of workplace psychology , and has been
associated with numerous psychosocial issues ranging from leadership to job design. This article seeks to outline
the key definitions relating to job satisfaction, the main theories associated with explaining job satisfaction, as well
as the types of and issues surrounding the measurement of job satisfaction.
2.
How does motivation influence job performance?
Effects of achievement motivation on behaviour. Motivation can be defined as the driving force behind all the
actions of an individual. The influence of an individual's needs and desires both have a strong impact on the
direction of their behaviour. Motivation is based on your emotions and achievement-related goals.
Think Point 1
Job characteristics are important. Do you think that one can be more important than the others can and why?
Some may say yes and some may say no. What is important to know is that one or two chracteristics may be
enough or it could take a combination. A Good Attitude. Even dependable and responsible employees may not
have the most cheerful dispositions. A smile alone won't get the job done, but a positive outlook and a pleasant
disposition – combined with fundamentals such as work ethic and discipline – make for a well-rounded employee.
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Think Point 2
Imagine you were offered several jobs just after graduating. Do you think the level of challenge stressors will
influence the choice of job you will take and why?
I think it will be but some may disagree. Depending on the personality of an individual. Some people function better
under pressure while others won’t. some may handle stress until a certain point and some may not handle it well
at all.
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Unit
3:
Individual Characteristics
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Unit Learning Outcomes
CONTENT LIST
LEARNING OUTCOMES OF THIS UNIT:
3.1 Introduction
•
Introduces topic areas for the unit
3.2 Personality and cultural values
•
Define personality and cultural values
•
Understand taxonomies and know which will describe
personality
•
Understand which taxonomies describe cultural values
•
Describe the effects of personality on job performance and
organisational commitment
3.3 Ability
•
Define ability
•
Describe the types of cognitive ability
•
Describe the types of emotional ability
•
Describe the types of physical ability
•
Describe how the cognitive ability effect job performance and
organisational commitment
•
Understand the steps organisations can take to hire people
with high levels of cognitive ability
3.4 Summary
•
Summarises topic areas covered in the unit
Prescribed and Recommended Textbooks/Readings
Prescribed Reading/Textbook
• Colquitt, J.A., Lepine, J.A. and Wesson, M.J. (2019) Organisational
Behavior - Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace.
Sixth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Recommended Readings
• Jones, G.R., George, J.M. and Hill, C.W.L. (2013) Contemporary
Management. Eighth Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill.
• Kondalkar, V.G. (2007) Organizational Behaviour. First Edition. New Age
International.
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• Cross, C and Carbery, R. (2016) Organisational Behaviour an Introduction.
First Edition. Palgrave.
• Griffin, R.W., Phillips, J.M. and Gully, S.M. (2019) Organizational
Behavior: Managing People and Organizations. Thirteenth Edition.
Cengage.
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3.1
Introduction
In this unit, we will learn more about individuals and their personalities. We explore the cultural values of individuals
and see the importance of personalities and cultural values. We understand the employee’s ability and explore the
different categories of ability. Lastly, we look at the importance of ability and the process of selecting high cognitive
ability employees.
3.2
Personality and Cultural Values
A company gains a lot by paying close attention to the personalities of its employees when making decisions about
hiring and development. Personality can be defined as the structures and propensities inside a person that explains
their characteristic patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour. Personality is what creates a person’s social
reputation. It describes what a person is like. The personality of a person is based on a number of traits. Traits are
defined as recurring regularities or trends in a person’s response to the environment (Colquitt et al., 2019). Cultural
values are defined as shared beliefs about desirable end states or moods of conduct in a given culture. Cultural
values influence the development of a person’s personality traits and how well these traits are expressed in daily
life. The personality of an individual is determined by the attitude and behaviour of one’s value. Attitude also
indicates one’s feelings towards the person or event. Value is considered the strongest element of an individual’s
personality (Kondalkar, 2007).
Activity 1
1.1. Does personality affect job performance? Why?
1.2. What would make you say that personality will influence behaviour?
How can we describe what employees are like?
Personality traits and cultural values are used to describe what employees are like. There are five broad
dimensions that can be used to summarize personalities, also referred to as the big five taxonomies:
•
Conscientiousness
•
Agreeableness
•
Neuroticism
•
Openness to experience
•
Extraversion
•
Conscientiousness – People, who are dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking and
preserving. It is close to impossible to think of a job that would not require these traits. Why is
conscientiousness so valuable? Conscientiousness employees prioritize accomplishment striving, which
is a person’s desire to accomplish task related goals as a way of expressing personality. People who are
“accomplished strivers” have a desire to finish their work tasks, put in a lot of effort into their work and
work harder and longer on tasks.
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•
Agreeableness – People who are warm, kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful and courteous.
Agreeable people prioritize common striving, which is a person’s desire to obtain acceptance in personal
relationships, as a means of expressing personality. Agreeable people would rather get along with a
person and not get ahead. Agreeableness is different to conscientiousness because it is not related to
performance across all jobs or occupants, since conscientiousness, striving is beneficial in some
instances but detrimental in others.
•
Extraversion – People who are talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold and dominant.
Extraversion is the easiest way to judge in zero acquaintance situations, which are situations where two
people have only just met. Similar to agreeableness, extraversion is not related to performance across all
occupations; however, extraverted individuals prioritize status of striving, which is a strong desire for
power and influence by means of expressing personality. An extravert person is one who is usually happy
with their jobs; they tend to have high levels of positive affectivity, which is defined as a dispositional
tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods, like enthusiasm and excitement.
•
Neuroticism – People who are nervous, moody, emotional, insecure and jealous. While extraversion is
synonymous with positive activity, neuroticism is synonymous with nervousness and annoyance. An
employee’s negative emptions explains why neurotic experience lower levels of job satisfaction. The
negative affectivity that comes with neuroticism influences life satisfaction, since neurotic people are less
happy with their lives in general. Neuroticism also influences the manner in which people handle stressful
situations. Neuroticism is associated with a differential exposure to stressors. In other words, neurotic
people appraise daily situations as stressful. Neuroticism is also associated with a differential reactivity to
stressors, which means that neurotic people know that they cannot cope with the stressor they
experience. Finally, neuroticism is related to locus of control, which determines whether people attribute
the cause of events to themselves or to the external environment. Neurotic people are those who believe
that events, which happen around them, and are driven by luck, chance or fate.
•
Openness to experience – People who are curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined and
sophisticated. Similar to agreeableness and extraversion, the traits associated with openness are
beneficial on some jobs but not to others. Jobs that are fluid and dynamic are the kinds of jobs that benefits
from high levels of openness. Open employees perform exceptionally well when it comes to learning and
training environments, because their curiosity gives them a desire to want to learn new things.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Readings
Additional Reading:
Maqbool, R., Sudong, Y., Manzoor, N., and Rashid, Y. (2017). The Impact of
Emotional Intelligence, Project Managers’ Competencies, and Transformational
Leadership on Project Success: An Empirical Perspective. Project Management
Journal, (48)3, 58–75.Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1177/875697281704800304
Other Taxonomies of Personality
The Myers-Briggs type indicator is one of the most widely administered personality measures, which was originally
created to test a theory of psychological types. The Myers-Briggs type indicator evaluates individuals based on
four types of preferences:
•
Extraversion versus Introversion
•
Sensing versus intuition
•
Thinking versus feeling
•
Judging versus perceiving
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Revision Questions 1
1.1. What do you understand by the term personality and cultural values?
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator categorizes people into one of sixteen different types, based on their preferences.
Different personality types approach decision-making tasks with differing emphasis on facts, logic and plans.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is widely used because there is no “bad type”, meaning no one who gets his or her
profile receives bad news. Another alternative to the big five is offered research on vocational interests. Interests
are described as expressions of personality that influence behaviour through preferences for certain environments
and activities. Holland’s RIASEC model suggests that six different personality types can summarize interests:
•
Realistic - people who are frank, practical, determined and rugged.
•
Investigative – People who are analytic, intellectual, reserved and scholarly.
•
Artistic – People who are original, independent, impulsive and creative.
•
Social – People who are helpful, inspiring, informative and empathic.
•
Enterprising – People who are energetic, sociable, ambitious and risk taking.
•
Conventional – People who are careful, observing, self-controlled and structured.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Knowledge Check Question1
1. List five broad dimensions that can be used to summarize
personalities.
2. Summarise six different personality types in Holland’s RIASEC
model.
The RIASEC model further states that personality types can be broken down into two dimensions:
•
The degree to which employees prefer to work with data versus ideas.
•
The degree to which they prefer to work with people versus things.
Cultural Values
Personalities are influenced by two factors: a person’s genes and the environment. One aspect of the environment
is the society in which they were raised. One of the most important aspects of society is culture. Culture is defined
as the shared values, beliefs, motives, identities and interpretations that result from common experiences of
members of a society and are transmitted across generations (Colquitt et al., 2019). Culture is described as
patterns resulting from social traditions and has the collective programming of the mind that separates one society
from another (Kondalkar, 2007).
How important are personality and cultural values?
Conscientiousness has the strongest effect on task performance since conscientious employees have higher levels
of motivation, compared to other employees. They are also more self-confident and perceive a clearer linkage
between their efforts and performance and are likely to set goals and follow through with them. Conscientiousness
is the key driver of typical performance, which is performance in the routine conditions that surround daily job tasks.
The employee’s capabilities, on the other hand, is the key driver of maximum performance, which is the
performance and special circumstances that demand a person’s best effort. Conscientious employees also engage
in citizenship behaviours, since conscientious employees are punctual and always available to assist others. They
also have the energy to devote themselves to citizenship behaviours. Another reason is that they have higher
levels of job satisfaction and positive feelings, which foster spontaneous instances of citizenship. Lastly,
conscientious employees would rather not engage in counterproductive behaviours for two reasons:
•
There is no need to retaliate against the organisation, since they have high levels of job satisfaction.
•
If they perceive injustice, their dependable and reliable nature prevents them from engaging in negative
actions. Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Application: Personality Traits
Many organisations try to gauge personality through interviews by looking for cues that an applicant is
conscientious or agreeable or has high levels of some other relevant personality trait. The problem with this
approach is that many people pretend to be someone they are not and give the interviewer the impression that
they have certain traits when they do not (Colquitt et al., 2019). Many companies rely on the “paper and pencil”
personality tests. These tests were designed by Kronos and comprises of fifty questions, many of which are clearly
tapping the big five. Within minutes of completing this test, the hiring manager receives a report that identifies the
applicant with a “green light”, “yellow light” or “red light”. Green lights indicate a follow up interview, yellow lights
require managerial discretion and red lights are removed from the hiring process (Mullins, 2010).
3.3
Ability
Ability is defined as the relatively stable capabilities people have, to perform a particular range of different but
related activities. Unlike skills, which can be improved over time with training and experience, ability is more stable.
However, abilities do change over time, with instruction, repeated practice and repetition. The level of a given
ability limits how much a person can improve, even with the best training (Colquitt et al., 2019). One major reason
for this stability relates to the “nature versus nurture” question. Taking the above into account, the next question
we should be asking is: Are abilities a function of our genes, or are they something we develop over time? Abilities
are a function of both genes and the environment and the amount attributable to each source depends on the
nature of the ability (Mullins, 2010).
Activity 2
2.1. Cognitive ability effects job performance. Why would you say cognitive
ability testing is important?
2.2. What would you consider signs of cognitive impairment?
What does it mean for an employee to be Able?
Abilities can be grouped into three general categories: Cognitive, Emotional and Physical. We will now discuss
each type in detail.
•
Cognitive Ability – Defined as the capabilities associated with the acquisition and application of
knowledge in problem solving. Cognitive abilities apply to a number of jobs that we do on a daily basis –
Its work involving the use of information to make decisions and solve problems. There are five types of
cognitive abilities:
▪
Verbal Ability – A number of abilities related to the understanding and expressing oral and written
communication. Oral comprehension is a person’s ability to understand spoken words and
sentences. Written comprehension is the person’s ability to understand written words and sentences.
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The other two verbal abilities are Oral expression, which is the ability to communicate by speaking,
and written expression, which is the ability to communicate by writing. Verbal abilities are important
in jobs where effectiveness is dependent on understanding and communicating ideas and information
to others. Examples of these jobs include business executives, police, fire and ambulance dispatches
and clinical psychologists.
▪
Quantitative Abilities – Example of jobs that require quantitative abilities include treasurers,
financial managers and mathematical technicians. Quantitative Abilities refers to two types of
mathematical capabilities:
-
Mathematical reasoning which is the ability to choose and apply formulas to solve problems that
involve numbers.
▪
Number Facility, which is the ability to do simple maths.
Reasoning Ability – A diverse set of abilities associated with sensing and solving problems using
insight, rules and logic. Examples of jobs that require reasoning ability include surgeons, business
executives, forensic scientists and cartoonists. Reasoning ability is broken up into four categories:
▪
-
Problem sensitivity understands when there is a problem or when something may go wrong.
-
Deductive reasoning is applying general rules to specific problems.
-
Inductive reasoning is combining specific information to form general conclusions.
-
Originality is developing new ideas.
Spatial Ability – Capabilities associated with visual and mental representation and manipulation of
objects in space. Examples of jobs that require spatial ability include pilots, drivers, photographers
and sketch artists. There are two types of spatial abilities:
▪
-
Spatial orientation – Knowing where one is relative to objects in the environment
-
Visualization – Imagining how something will look once it has been rearranged.
Perceptual Abilities – The ability to perceive, understand and recall patterns of information. Jobs
that require perceptual abilities include musicians, fire fighters, police officers and inspectors. There
are two types of perceptual abilities:
-
Speed and flexibility of closure – The ability to quickly pick a pattern of information in the
presence of distracting information, even though some information may be missing.
-
Perceptual speed – The ability to compare information or objects with remembered information
or objects.
•
Emotional Intelligence – Includes four specific types of emotional skills:
▪
Self-awareness – An individual’s ability to understand the emotions that they feel, the willingness to
acknowledge them and the ability to naturally express them.
▪
Other awareness – An individual’s ability to understand the emotions of other people. Individuals
with high levels of emotional intelligence are not only sensitive to other people’s feelings but can also
anticipate the emotions that people experience in different situations.
▪
Emotional regulation– The ability to quickly recover from emotional experiences.
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▪
Use of emotions – The degree to which people can harness emotions and employ them to improve
their chances of being successful in whatever they’re seeking to do.
•
Physical Ability – Can be broken up into five categories:
▪
Strength – generally speaking, strength is the body’s capability of exerting force. However, there are
other forms of strength:
-
Static strength – The ability to lift, push or pull heavy objects using hands, arms, legs, shoulder
or back.
-
Explosive strength – People exert short bursts of energy to move an object.
-
Dynamic strength – A person’s ability to exert force for a prolonged period without being too
tired.
▪
Stamina – The ability of a person’s lungs and circulatory systems to work efficiently while they are
taking part in prolonged physical activity.
▪
Flexibility and Coordination – The ability to bend, stretch, twist or reach.
-
Extent flexibility – The degree of bending, stretching and twisting of body, arms and legs.
-
Dynamic flexibility – The speed of bending, stretching and twisting of body, arms and legs.
-
Gross body coordination – Coordinating movement of the body, arms and legs in activities that
involve all three together.
▪
Gross body equilibrium – The ability to regain balance in contexts, where the balance is upset.
Psychomotor Abilities – The ability to manipulate and control objects.
-
Fine manipulative abilities – Keeping hands and arms steady while grasping, manipulating and
assembling small objects.
-
Control Movement Abilities – Making quick and precise adjustments to a machine while
operating it.
▪
-
Response orientation – Quickly choosing among appropriate alternative movements.
-
Response time – Quickly responding to signals with body movements.
Sensory Abilities – Capabilities associated with vision and hearing.
-
Near and far vision – Seeing an object near and prom a distance
-
Night vision – Seeing well at night
-
Visual colour discrimination – Detecting differences in colours and shades
-
Depth perception – Judging relative distances
-
Hearing sensitivity – Hearing differences in sounds that vary in terms of pitch and loudness
-
Auditory attention – Focusing on the source of sound
-
Speech recognition – Identifying and understanding the speech of others
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Think Point 1
Imagine a job that will require you to have a high level of cognitive abilities. Can
you think of a way to redesign your job so that people who lack the abilities
would be able to perform the job effectively?
How important is Ability
In general, cognitive ability has a strong positive effect on task performance. However, the correlation is higher for
jobs that are more complex than average, and lower for jobs that are less complex than the average. The effects
for general cognitive ability are near zero for citizenship behaviours and counterproductive behaviours. Cognitive
ability has a weak effect on affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. The
desire to remain a member of the organisation is not influenced by much by cognitive ability (Colquitt et al., 2019).
An individual’s ability to performance their duties are very important. If an individual cannot perform their duties,
then it will cause harm to the organisation in some way for example lack of productivity leading to a loss in revenue
(Mullins, 2010).
Knowledge Check Question2
1. How important is ability?
Case Study 1
Kulkarni, M., Lengnick-Hall, M.L. and Martinez, P.G. (2015). Over-qualification,
mismatched qualification, and hiring decisions: Perceptions of employers. Personnel
Review, (44) 4, pp.529-549, https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-11-2013-0204
Questions:
1. Do you think categorizing applicant qualification levels for hiring decisions is
a good idea? Why?
2. Do you think that job search strategies will become more difficult if the
requirements list is a lot? Why?
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Application: Selecting High Cognitive Ability Employees
As we have seen, previously, there is a strong relationship between the general cognitive ability and job
performance. As an example, Google is a company that believes in hiring the best and brightest people for the job.
Google used a brainteaser to evaluate and determine whom they will ask for their resume. The Cognitive Ability
Test is a 12-minute test made up of 50 questions, which has been used for several decades by thousands of
organisations. Each correct answer will earn a point, which will determine the different jobs people will be eligible
for. The cognitive ability test may unintentionally discriminate against groups of individuals who tend to score lower
(Colquitt et al., 2019). By using a combination of hiring tests for testing the cognitive ability, the organisation will
be able to create a diverse workforce. Using these tests for cognitive ability testing is very important to the
organisation. The choice of employees will determine whether the organisation will perform effectively (Mullins,
2010).
Revision Questions 2
2.1. Define Ability.
2.2. Discuss the three types of ability.
3.4
Summary
In this unit, we have looked at the different types of personalities an individual may possess. We explored the types
of cultural beliefs that an individual may possess. We looked at the different category types of ability and the
importance of ability. We explored the process of selecting high cognitive ability employees.
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Answers to Activties
Activity 1
1.1. Does personality affect job performance? Why?
Yes, there does exist a relationship between career success which in return leads to employee performance. To
some extent, it can be arguded that employee perfomance can be predicted by personality. The personality of the
employee can predict the performance and career success.
1.2. What would make you say that personality will influence behaviour?
There are situations which may influence the way people act. By examing examing how personality affects
behaviour, we can understand the encounters people go through by understanding their influence of personality
characteristics.
There has been a lot of work examining how personality affects behaviour, and also how situations influence the
way people act. The situations that people encounter influence their behaviour, but personality characteristics also
matter.
Activity 2
2.1. Cognitive ability effects job performance. Why would you say cognitive ability testing is important?
Yes, it is, when we look at ability, it is important because it deals with learning, adapting and understanding what
is required in life. When we look at cognitive ability, the means having more effectiveness and efficiency in certain
areas and having much greater success.
2.2. What would you consider signs of cognitive impairment?
There are many signs such as delusions, personality changes, depression, hallucinations and getting lost.
Knowledge Check Question 1
1. List five broad dimensions that can be used to summarize personalities.
•
Agreeableness
•
Neuroticism
•
Openness to experience
•
Extraversion
2. Summarise six different personality types in Holland’s RIASEC model.
Conscientiousness
•
Realistic - people who are frank, practical, determined and rugged.
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•
Investigative – People who are analytic, intellectual, reserved and scholarly.
•
Artistic – People who are original, independent, impulsive and creative.
•
Social – People who are helpful, inspiring, informative and empathic.
•
Enterprising – People who are energetic, sociable, ambitious and risk taking.
•
Conventional – People who are careful, observative, self-controlled and structured.
Knowledge Check Question 2
1. How important is ability?
Ability is a very important component in an employee’s life. Ability will allow one to learn new things quickly which
could proof to be critical for future work.a person with ability can perform work almost immediately and demonstrate
the necessary knowledge and skills.
Case Study 1
1. Do you think categorizing applicant qualification levels for hiring decisions is a good idea? Why?
Yes it would be a good idea. It will be best to assess the individuals accordingly as it would judge whether the
individual is the best fit for the job.
2. Do you think that job search strategies will become more difficult if the requirements list is a lot? Why ?
I would disagree but some may agree. Searching for a job maybe easy for some and difficult for others. A job
requirment list will be used to identify the traits that an individual would need in order to fullfill that particular job
function. There are some individuals who look at the requirements list and identifies a percentage of items which
they can perform. If the percentage is above 50% then they are mostly likely have found their search.
Think Point 1
Imagine a job that will require you to have a high level of cognitive abilities. Can you think of a way to redesign
your job so that people who lack the abilities would be able to perform the job effectively?.
There are various ways an individual can use to improvement themselves such as:
•
Using basic technology. There's no way around it: You must be computer literate in today's professional
workplace.
•
Collaboration and communication. You must be able to communicate effectively, which means talking,
listening and writing, and woking with other team mates.
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•
Adaptability- find a way to adjust to the new environemnt.
•
Multitasking.- try and fiind a way in which you can perform more functions at once effectively.
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Unit
4:
Group Mechanisms
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Unit Learning Outcomes
CONTENT LIST
LEARNING OUTCOMES OF THIS UNIT:
4.1
Introduction
•
Introduces topic areas for the unit
4.2
Teams: Characteristics and
•
Describe five general team types
Diversity
•
Understand three general types of team interdependence
•
Describe the factors involved in team composition
•
Understand the types of team diversity
•
Examine how team compensation is used to manage team
effectiveness
4.3
Teams: Processes and
•
Describe task work processes
Communication
•
Describe teamwork processes
•
Understand the factors, which influence the communication
process
•
Explain the effect of team processes on team performance
and team commitment
•
Explore the steps an organisation can take to improve team
processes
4.4
Leadership: Power and
•
Define leadership
Negotiation
•
Understand the different types of powers that leaders
possess
•
Explain organisational politics
•
Understand how leaders negotiate in the workplace
•
Describe the effect of power on job performance and
organisational commitment
4.5
Leadership: Styles and
•
Describe the traits and characteristics related to leader
emergence
Behaviour’s
•
Understand the styles for leaders to make decisions
•
Understand the difference between transformational and
transactional leadership
4.6
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Summary
•
Summarises topic areas covered in the unit
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Prescribed and Recommended Textbooks/Readings
Prescribed Reading/Textbook
• Colquitt, J.A., Lepine, J.A. and Wesson, M.J. (2019) Organisational
Behavior - Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace.
Sixth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Recommended Readings
• Jones, G.R., George, J.M. and Hill, C.W.L. (2013) Contemporary
Management. Eighth Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill.
• Kondalkar, V.G. (2007) Organizational Behaviour. First Edition. New Age
International.
• Cross, C and Carbery, R. (2016) Organisational Behaviour an Introduction.
First Edition. Palgrave.
• Griffin, R.W., Phillips, J.M. and Gully, S.M. (2019) Organizational
Behavior: Managing People and Organizations. Thirteenth Edition.
Cengage.
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4.1
Introduction
In this unit, we will look at the characteristics and diversity found in teams. We look at the different types of teams
and look at the factors that involve team composition. We look at the processes and communication work
processes and explore the factors, which influence the communication process. We look at the steps involved in
improving team processes. We will understand leadership and explore the different types of leadership. We will
understand the effect of power on job performance and understand how leaders negotiate in the workplace. We
will explore the different leadership styles and differentiate between transformational and transactional leadership.
4.2
Teams: Characteristics and Diversity
A team is defined as two or more people who work interdependently for a period to accomplish common goals,
related to some task-oriented purpose. Teams are important for two reasons:
•
The interactions between team members revolve around a deeper dependence on one and other, when
compared to interactions within groups.
•
The interactions within teams happen with a specific task related purpose in mind.
The main difference between members of a friendship and members of a team is the mere fact that members of a
friendship engage in small talk or in-depth conversations on a regular basis, while members of a team rely on each
other for critical information, materials and actions needed to accomplish goals.
(Colquitt et al., 2019). When you are a manager, the responsibility is difficult when it comes to managing people
with different backgrounds from your own. The way you communicate maybe interpreted differently from your
intentions. The same will apply for ideas for motivating and recognising others. Miscommunication can happen
among the team members (Cross and Carbery, 2016).
Activity 1
1.1. What factors are involved in team composition?
1.2. What would you consider key elements of a successful team?
1.3. What make a team effective?
What characteristics can be used to describe teams?
Team characteristics is a means of categorizing and examining teams, which is vital, since teams comes in many
shapes and sizes. Team characteristics play a major role when it comes to determining what a team is capable of
achieving and could influence the methods the team uses to achieve its goals (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Team types
There are five general types of teams:
•
Work teams – Usually designed to be permanent. The purpose of work teams is to provide goods and
services, which requires 100% commitment from its members.
•
Management teams – Similar to work teams, management teams are relatively permanent. However,
they are distinct in a number of ways: While work teams focus on accomplishing core operational-level
production and service tasks, management tasks focus on managerial-level tasks that affect the entire
organisational.
•
Parallel teams – Members from other job types who provide recommendations to managers, relating to
important issues that run parallel to the organisations production process. Parallel teams often require
part time commitment from members and, depending on the aim, they can be either permanent or
temporary.
•
Project teams – Formed to tackle “one time” tasks that are complex and generally requires a lot of advice
from members with various types of training and expertise.
•
Action teams – Perform tasks that are time limited. However, these tasks are usually very complex and
tales place in contexts that are either highly visible to an audience or highly challenging in nature.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Knowledge Check Question1
1. Briefly describe the characteristics of five team types.
Variations within team types
Just knowing the type of team often is not enough information to go by. In fact, there are a number of important
variations within the above categories that are required to understand a team is functioning. For example, teams
can vary about the degree in which they have autonomy and are self-managed. Imagine being a part of a team
where members have the freedom of working together to accomplish a common goal. This type of team has high
levels of autonomy and self-management. However, you do get level of instances where the levels of autonomy
and self-management are relatively low (Colquitt et al., 2019).
These teams have strict rules and managers make most of the decisions. Another way that teams can vary relates
to how these members communicate with each other. Virtual teams are defined as teams that consists of members
who are geographically dispersed and interdependent happens by means of electronic communication. In addition
to varying in their virtuality, teams can differ for experience they have working together (Mullins, 2010).
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One way of understanding this aspect is to consider what happens in teams at different stages of their development
as they progress from a newly formed team to one that is well established. Teams go through a progression of five
steps:
•
The first stage is forming. Members orient themselves by trying to understand their boundaries within the
team. Members understand what is expected of them, what behaviours are out of bounds and who is in
charge.
•
The second stage is storming, where members remain committed to their ideas. The unwillingness to
accommodate other ideas could cause conflict and negative feelings that harms the team’s progress.
•
Norming is the third stage. Here, members agree that that they need to work together to accomplish team
goals and begin to cooperate with one and other.
•
The fourth stage is performing. Members are comfortable with their roles and the team makes progress
towards reaching their goals.
•
The final stage is adjourning. Members experience anxiety and other emotions as they disengage and go
their own ways.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Case Study 1
Bushman, R.M., Dai, Z. and Zhang, W. (2016) Management Team Incentive: Dispersion and
Firm Performance. The Accounting Review. (91)1, 21-45. Available at:
https://www.aaajournals.org/doi/abs/10.2308/accr-51112
Questions:
1. Explain how compensation influenced job satisfaction?
Team Interdependence
Interdependence is the manner in which the members of a team are linked to one and other. This linkage between
members is generally thought of in terms of the interactions that occurs as the team accomplishes its tasks. There
are three types of team interdependence.
•
Task Interdependence – When members interact with and depend on each other for information,
resources and materials needed to accomplish the work. There are four main types of task
interdependence:
▪
Pooled Interdependence – Members of the team independently complete tasks assigned to them.
These tasks are then “piled up” to represent the groups output.
▪
Sequential Interdependence – Team members complete their tasks in a prescribed order and the
group is structured in such a way that members specialize in these tasks. Even though members of
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this group interact to complete their tasks, the interaction only occurs between members carrying out
the tasks that are next to each other in the sequence.
▪
Reciprocal Interdependence – Members are specialized to perform specific tasks. However, unlike
sequential interdependence, members interact with a subset of other members to complete the teams
work.
▪
Comprehensive Interdependence – Requires high level of interaction and coordination among
members as they try to accomplish their tasks. Here, members have a great deal of discretion in
terms of what they do and whom they interact with.
•
Goal Interdependence – When team members have a shared vision of their team goals and align their
individual goals with that vision. High levels of goal interdependence can be created by ensuring the team
has a formalized mission statement that members buy into. A good mission statement clearly explains
what the team is trying to accomplish in a way that creates a sense of commitment and urgency among
team members.
•
Outcome Interdependence – Relates to how members are linked to each other in terms of the feedback
and outcomes they receive because of working in a team. Outcome Interdependence is when team
members share the rewards that the entire team has earned.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Team Composition
Team effectiveness hinges on team composition, also known as the mix of people who make up the team. An
effective team is one with the right amount of knowledge, skills, abilities and personalities. It consists of members
who are not only capable of performing their role responsibilities effectively; they also get along with each other.
Below are the most important characteristics to consider in team composition.
•
Member Roles – Defined as the pattern of behaviour that a person is expected to display in a given
context. One way of distinguishing roles is by considering the specific set of tasks-focused activities that
define what each members are expected to do for them. Another way to distinguish roles is to consider
what leaders and members do. In leader-staff teams, the leader makes all the decisions and provides
direction and control over members who perform assigned tasks. It is clear that the responsibilities of the
leader and the rest of the team are distinct. However, team members have some latitude with respect to
the behaviours they exhibit. In these situations, team roles can be described in terms of categories that
are more general than the task focused rules described earlier. These rules include:
▪
Team task rules – The behaviours that directly facilitate the accomplishment of team tasks.
▪
Team building roles – The behaviours that influence the quality of the team’s social climate.
▪
Individualistic roles – behaviours that benefit the individual at the expense of the team.
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•
Member Ability – team members possess a wide variety of abilities. Depending on the nature of the task
involved in the team’s work, some of these tasks may be important to consider in team design. It might
also be a good idea to consider cognitive abilities when designing teams. Cognitive abilities are important
to many different types of teams. However, not all members require high levels of these cognitive abilities.
In tasks with an objectively verifiable best solution, the member who possesses the highest level of the
ability relevant to the task will have the most influence on the effectiveness of the team.
•
Member Personality – Team members also possess a huge variety of personality traits. These traits
influence the role a person takes on, the norms that develop on the team and the team’s performance.
Another factor to consider the members conscientiousness. After-all, any team would benefit by having
members who are dependable and work hard to achieve team goals. One final aspect to consider is the
personality of an extraversion person. An extraverted person would perform more effectively in
interpersonal contexts and are generally more positive and optimistic.
•
Diversity – The degree to which members are different from each other in terms of any attribute that
might be used by someone based on categorizing people. These differences are known as team diversity.
There are two different theories about team diversity:
▪
Value in diversity problem solving approach – This theory explains why diversity has positive effects.
According to this approach, diversity in a team is beneficial because it provides for a larger pool of
knowledge and perspectives, which assists the team in accomplishing its goals. A team with greater
diversity in knowledge perspectives stimulates the exchange of information, which fosters learning
among team members.
▪
Similarity attraction approach – This theory explains why diversity has detrimental effects on teams.
According to this approach, people are generally attracted to others who are similar to them. In an
effort to avoid uncomfortable arguments, people tend to avoid others who are dissimilar to them.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Revision Questions 1
1.1. Describe the three different types of team interdependence.
1.2. Describe the different types of team diversity.
1.3. What characteristics are considered important in team composition?
There are two different theories about diversity effects that are relevant to teams, with relevant evidence to support
these theories. In order to determine which, one is correct, you would need to consider the general type of diversity
and the length of time the team has been in existence.
•
Surface-level diversity – Diversities that can be seen, for example, race, sex and age. Even though
this type of diversity has a negative impact on teams in its initial, stages, due to similarity-attraction
issues, those negative effects disappear as members learn more about each other. One complication
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here is that fault lines often occur in diverse groups, where informal subgroups are developed, based
on similarity in surface-level attributes, such as gender. The problem with fault lines is that knowledge
and information passed by one subgroup may not be communicated to other subgroups, which could
prevent the team from working more effectively.
•
Deep-level diversity – Diversity with respect to attributes that are not necessarily easy to observe but
can be inferred after more direct experience. Examples of deep level diversity are values, attitudes
and personalities. Unlike the effects of surface-level diversity, time increases the negative effects of
deep-level diversity on team functioning and effectiveness. As a team, members learn more about
each other, differences that relate to underlying values and goals become increasing apparent. These
differences create problems within the team, which results in reduced effectiveness. It should be
noted, however, that the negative effects of deep-level diversity could be managed. Deep level
diversity also shows positive effects on team capacity when members are instructed to take the
perspective of their teammates.
•
Team size – Having a large number of team members may be beneficial fir management and project
teams but not for teams engaged in production tasks. Management and project teams are involved
in work that is very complex and requires a great deal of knowledge, therefore, these teams benefit
from having additional members. However, production teams are involved in routine tasks that are
not as complex. Having unnecessary members result in unnecessary coordination and
communication problems.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
How important are team characteristics?
Task interdependence has a moderate positive effect on team performance. However, the correlation is often
higher in teams involved in none-complex knowledge work, instead of less complex work.
Application: team Compensation
While team characteristics have implications for managerial practices, outcome interdependence is important for
two reasons:
•
Interdependence is linked to compensation practices in the organisation and many of us would be
interested in knowing what determines how much we are paid.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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It presents managers with a tough dilemma. Outcome interdependence encourages higher levels of cooperation
since members know that they share the same fate. At the same time, high outcome interdependence may result
in reduced motivation, especially among high performing members, since they would feel that they are not being
paid in accordance with their contribution. The Hybrid outcome interdependence is designed to solve this dilemma.
Here, members receive rewards based on their team performance and other individual performance (Mullins,
2010).
4.3
Teams: Processes and Communication
Team process is defined as the different types of communication activities and interactions that occur within teams
that contribute to their ultimate goal. Team characteristics, such as member diversity and team size, influence team
processes and communication. As a result, these processes have a strong impact on team effectiveness. Team
processes involve interactions between members that occur behaviourally and hard to see feelings or thoughts
that coalesce because of member interaction (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Readings
Additional Reading:
Hoegl, M., and Muethel, M. (2016). Enabling Shared Leadership in Virtual
Project Teams: A Practitioners’ Guide. Project Management Journal, (47)1,
7–12. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.21564
Why are some teams more than the sum of their parts?
Think of team that was successful. It could be that the success of that team was guaranteed because the team
had members who are talented and skilled. The success of other teams may be difficult to understand just by
looking at their rosters. These teams could have members who are less talented and skilled, but as they work
together, they somehow become “more than the sum of their parts”. Process gain is defined as getting more from
the team than anticipated, based on their capabilities. Process gain is important because it results in useful
resources and capabilities that did not exist. Process loss is getting less from the team as anticipated, based on
their individual capabilities. The following factors create process loss:
•
Coordination loss – Members working to accomplish their own task and, at the same time, coordinate
their activities with those of their teammates.
•
Production booking – Members have to wait for each other before they can do their part of the work.
•
Motivational loss – Members do not work as hard as they should.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Task work processes
Task work processes are defined as the activities of team members that relate directly to the accomplishment of
team tasks. Task work occurs when team members interact with the tools or technologies that are used to complete
their work. There are three types of task work processes:
•
Creative Behaviour – The activities of teams who engage in creative behaviours focused on generating
useful ideas and solutions. As discussed previously, creative behaviour is driven by the creativity of the
employee, since some employees are more original than others are. Creativity in teams is usually
influenced by conformity and attention to detail.
Knowledge Check Question2
1. Explain which factors create process loss.
Brainstorming is one of the best-known activities that teams use to encourage creative behaviour. Brainstorming
involves face-to-face interactions between members, where they share ideas about a problem or issue. Generally,
brainstorming sessions include the following rules:
▪
Share all ideas, irrespective of how weird they may sound.
▪
Go for quantity of ideas and not quality.
▪
Do not criticize the ideas of others.
▪
Build on the ideas of others.
Following the above rules will result in a large pool of ideas that can be used to address certain ideas. While
brainstorming may seem ideal, this is not always the case. Research suggests that team members are often better
off developing their own ideas, as individuals, before sharing them with others. There are at least three reasons
why brainstorming does not work as well as individual idea generation:
▪
Members may not work as hard in a group, as they would individually.
▪
Members could be hesitant to share ideas that sound weird.
▪
Brainstorming results in production blocking, since members have to wait for their turn to share their
ideas.
•
Decision-making – From a team perspective, decisions result from interactions between team members.
Information that is shared between team members is synthesized into collective knowledge, which is used
as a basis for different types of team’s decisions. Decision making usually involves multiple members
gathering and considering information that is relevant to their idea of specialization and then making
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recommendations to the team leader, who has the final say. There are three factors that determine the
team’s ability to make accurate and effective decisions:
▪
Decision infirmity – reflects whether members possess enough information about their own task
responsibility.
▪
Staff validity – The degree to which members make good recommendations to their leaders.
▪
Hierarchical sensitivity – Reflects the degree to which the leader effectively weighs the
recommendations of the members.
•
Boundary spanning – Involves three activities with individuals and groups:
▪
Ambassador activities – communications that are intended to protect the team, encourage others to
join the team or gather resources for the team.
▪
Task coordinator activities – Includes communications that are meant to coordinate task-related
issues with people or groups in other functional areas.
▪
Scout activities – Activities performed by team members to obtain information relating to technology,
competitors or the broader marketplace.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Teamwork processes
Teamwork processes are defined as the interpersonal activities that assist in the accomplishment of team tasks
but does not directly involve task accomplishment itself. There are four types of teamwork processes:
•
Transition process – Teamwork activities that focus on preparation for future work, for example:
▪
Mission analysis is the analysis of the team’s tasks, the challenges faced and the available resources
needed to complete the task.
▪
Strategy formulation is developing courses of action and contingency plans and finally, adapting
those plans in light of changes that occur in the team’s environment.
▪
Goal specification – The development and prioritization of goals related to the teams’ mission and
strategy.
•
Action processes - Becomes important as the task work is being accomplished. There are four types of
action processes:
▪
Monitoring progress towards goals – Teams that pay attention to goal related information are in a
better position to realize when they need to make changes.
▪
Systems monitoring – Includes keeping track of things that the team needs in order to accomplish its
work.
▪
Helping behaviour – Members going the extra mile to help each other.
▪
Coordination – Synchronizing team member’s activities in a way that makes them mesh effectively
and seamlessly.
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•
Interpersonal Processes – There are three types of interpersonal processes:
▪
Motivating and confidence building – Actions of some team members that affect the motivation of
others.
▪
Affect management – Activities that encourage emotional balance and unity.
▪
Conflict management – The manner in which the team manages conflict during the course of its work.
There are two types of conflict:
-
Relationship conflict – Disagreements between team members in interpersonal relationships or
incompatibilities about personal values. While relationship conflict is not only dissatisfying to
most employees, but it also results in reduced team performance.
-
Task conflict – Disagreement between members about the team tasks. Task conflict can be very
beneficial to teams if it stimulates conversions that result in the development of new ideas.
Research suggests, however, that task conflict could result in reduced team effectiveness,
unless a number of conditions are present.
1. Members need to trust each other and feel confident enough to express their opinions.
2. Members should engage in effective conflict management practices.
3. Conflict may benefit teams when they are composed in a particular way.
4. The benefit of task conflict mat be most evident when the majority of the members of
the team do not know about the conflict between them and other members.
Effective conflict management involves the following:
1. It’s important for members to remain focused on the teams’ mission, when dealing with
conflict
2. The benefits of task conflict disappear once the level of conflict gets too heated.
3. In-order to effectively manage task conflict, members need to openly discuss their
positions and be willing to exchange information in a way that encourages problem
solving.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Communication
Communication is defined as the transfer of information from the sender to the receiver. Effective communication
plays a very important role in determining whether there is a process gain or process loss. There are a number of
factors that result in communication errors:
•
Communicator issues – In-order for effective communication, communicators need to encode and
interpret messages.
•
Noise – The second factor that causes communication issues is the presence of noise that interferes with
the message being transmitted.
•
Information richness – The amount and depth of information that is transmitted in a message.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Team states
Team states are specific types of feelings and thoughts that coalesce in the minds of team members because of
their experience working together. There are many different types of team states, let us look at a few:
•
Cohesion – When members develop strong emotional bonds to other members and the team itself.
Cohesion encourages high levels of motivation and commitment to the team, which results in higher levels
of task performance. However, a cohesive team is not always a good team, since members try to maintain
harmony by striving towards consensus on issues without offering, seeking or seriously considering
alternative viewpoints and perspectives.
•
Potency – Team member’s belief that the team can be effective across a variety of situations and tasks.
Team members with high levels of potency are confident that their team can perform well, which results
in them focusing their energy on tasks with the hopes of achieving their goals.
•
Mental models – The common understanding between team members with regard to important aspects
of the team and its tasks.
•
Transactive memory – How specialized knowledge is distributed among members in a manner that
results in an effective system of memory for the team.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
How important is team processes?
Teamwork processes have a moderate positive effect on team performance; this aspect of team process has a
stronger effect on performance for teams that involve more complex knowledge work, instead of work that is less
complex. Teamwork processes have a strong positive effect on team commitment. This aspect of team process
has a stronger effect on commitment for teams involved in more complex knowledge work, instead of work that is
less complex (Colquitt et al., 2019). Team processes are used to allow the team to perform more effectively
together. Without these processes in place, the organisation can face issues, which can result in an unpleasant
working environment (Mullins, 2010).
Revision Questions 2
2.1. Explain teamwork processes.
2.2. Describe the factors, which will influence the communication process.
2.3. Does team processes affect team performance and team commitment? Explain
why.
2.4. Discuss the steps an organisation can take to improve team processes.
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Application: Training Teams
There are a number of different approaches that organisations use to train team processes:
•
Transportable teamwork competencies – One approach to training teams is to help individual team
members develop basic competencies related to teamwork activities. Transportable teamwork
competencies are the combination of knowledge, skills and ability. Trainees are able to transport their
knowledge about teamwork from one team context and apply it to another.
•
Cross training – Training members in the duties and responsibilities of their teammates. The purpose of
cross training is to allow members to develop shared mental models of what is involved in each role and
how these roles fit together to form a system. Cross training involves instructions at three different levels
of depth:
▪
Personal Clarifications – Members receive information regarding the roles of other team members.
▪
Positional modelling – Members observe how other team members perform their role.
▪
Positional rotation – Members have the experience of performing their teammates duties.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Think Point 1
What do you think the communication process in student teams will be like?
Would you say the communication process was of an appropriate level of
information richness?
4.4
Leadership: Power and Negotiation
Leadership is defined as a person’s use of power and influence to direct the activities of followers towards achieving
their goals. This direction can influence the follower’s interpretation of events, the organisation of their work
activities, their commitment to key goals, the relationship with other followers and their access to cooperation and
support from other work units (Colquitt et al., 2019). There has been a change in workplace demographics where
there has been an increase in women in the workplace. The rise of globalisation, emigration and global careers
has created a new diverse workforce and leaders coming from different backgrounds, come with different
leadership styles (Cross and Carbery, 2016). When studying human behaviour in an organisation, leadership is
seen as one of the most important aspects. The organisations success is influenced by the approach of a leader.
Leaders should always motivate their employees and all mangers of leading different sectors should lead each
sector efficiently (Kondalkar, 2007).
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Readings
Additional Reading:
Navimipour, N.J. and Charband, Y. (2016). Knowledge sharing mechanisms and
techniques in project teams: Literature review, classification, and current trends.
Computers
in
Human
Behavior,
62,
730-742.
Available
at:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563216303211
Why some leaders are more powerful than others are?
Power is defined as the ability to influence the actions of others and resist unwanted influence in return. This
definition of power gives us some key points to consider:
•
Just because a person is able to influence others does not mean that they would want to do it.
•
Along with influencing others, power can be viewed as the ability to resist the influence attempts of
others.
Acquiring Power
There are five types of power that can be broken down into two dimensions:
•
Organisational Power – There are three types of organisational power that is obtained from a person’s
power in the organisation:
▪
Legitimate power – often referred to as formal authority, legitimate power derives from a position of
authority within the organisation. Managers exercise legitimate power by instructing the employee to
work faster or to work harder. The amount of power a person has is dependent on how up high their
position is in the organisation. Legitimate power does, however, have its limits. Just because
managers have, this power does not mean that they are entitled to ask employees to do tasks that is
out of their job description.
▪
Reward power – A persons control over the resources or rewards that another person wants. For
example, a manager’s control over the employees pay increase.
▪
•
Coercive power – A persons control over punishments in an organisation.
Personal power –Divided into two dimensions:
▪
Expert power – Derives from an individual’s skills, knowledge or expertise, which others are
dependent on.
▪
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Referent power – A person’s desire to be associated with a particular person.
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•
Contingency factors – There are four factors that influence the strength of a person’s ability to use their
power to influence others:
▪
Substitutability – There are no substitutes for the rewards or resources the leader controls.
▪
Centrality – The leader’s role is important and interdependent with others in the organisation.
▪
Discretion – The leader has the freedom to make his or her own decisions without being restrained
by organisational rules.
▪
Visibility – Others know about the leader and the resources he or she can provide.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
An individual in an organisation who holds an official position is where power is derived from. Resources are used
in a certain way that will help the organisation in achieving the goals. A leader will make use of their power to
ensure the job assigned to them is compliant (Kondalkar, 2007).
Knowledge Check Question3
1. Define leadership.
2. Define power.
Using Influence
We will now discuss what strategies the leaders use to translate power into actual influence. Remember, having
power increases the ability to influence behaviour. This does not mean that they will not exert that power. Influence
is the use of an actual behaviour that causes behavioural or attitudinal changes in others. We should remember
two very factors related to influence. Firstly, Influence is considered directional. It mostly occurs downwards but
can also be seen as lateral.
Second, Influence is relative. The absolute power of the “influencer” and the “influencee” is not as important as the
disparity between them.
•
Influence Tactics – leaders rely on many forms of tactics to bring about a change in behaviours or
attitudes in others. The most effective tactics are:
▪
Rational Persuasion – Using logical arguments and facts to show the target that the request is a valid
one.
▪
Inspirational appeal – Appeals to the target’s values and ideas, which creates an emotional reaction.
▪
Consultation – When a target is allowed to take part in discussions that decide how to carry out or
implement a request.
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▪
Ingratiation – Making use of favours, compliments or friendly behaviour, which makes the target feel
better about the influencer.
▪
Personal appeals – When the requestor asks for something based on personal friendship or loyalty.
▪
Appraising – When the requestor explains why performing the request will be beneficial to the target.
▪
Pressure - The use of coercive power through threats or demands.
▪
Coalitions – When the influencer asks other people to help influence the target.
▪
Exchange tactic – rewarding the target for performing the request.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Case Study 2
Kang, S.K., Galinsky, A.D. and Kray, L.J. (2015). Power affects performance when the
pressure is on Evidence for Low-Power Threat and High-Power Lift. (41)5, 726-735.
Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167215577365
Questions:
1. Identify the relationship between job satisfaction and work.
2. Does Power influence or affect job satisfaction?
3. Does the influence of power affect organisational commitment?
We should, however, take note of the very important points about leader’s use of influence tactics:
•
▪
Influence tactics are mostly successful when used in combinations.
▪
Influence tactics that are “softer” in nature has greater success than those that are not.
Responses to influence tactics – There are three possible responses people have to influence tactics:
▪
Internalization – When the target of influence agrees with and becomes committed to the influence
request.
▪
Compliance – When the targets of influence are willing to do what the leader asks but they have to
do it with a degree of ambivalence
▪
Resistance – When the target refuses to perform the influence request and avoids every effort to do
it.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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Activity 2
2.1. Explain briefly, what organisational politics is?
2.2. Why do you think we have organisational politics?
2.3. How can one stay out of organisational politics?
Power and influence in action
If there was ever one term that had a more negative connotation than power, its politics. Leaders have the ability
to use power to influence others in two major areas:
•
Organisational Politics – An individual’s actions that are directed towards the goal of furthering their
own self-interests. While people have many negative perceptions of politics, we should emphasize that
our definition does not imply that furthering one’s self-interests is necessarily the opposite of the
company’s interests.
•
Political skill – The ability to properly understand others at work and use that knowledge to influence
others in ways that enhance personal and organisational objectives. There are four categories of political
skills which provide a distinct advantage when navigating the political environments in organisations:
▪
Networking ability – An adeptness of identifying and developing contracts
▪
Social astuteness – Observing others and accurately interpreting their behaviours.
▪
Interpersonal influence – Having an unassuming and convincing personal style that allows a person
to adapt to different situations.
▪
Apparent sincerity – Appearing to others to as having high levels of honesty and genuineness.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
When work is divided in the organisation based on technical and functional requirements; this is done on allocation
of power. All jobs are very important to an organisation but you can get some jobs, which are more important than
others are (Kondalkar, 2007).
While organisational politics may lead to positive outcomes, people’s perception of politics is generally negative.
We can understand this perception, since anytime someone acts in a self-benefitting manner; it is potentially to the
detriment of others. In a highly charged political environment where people try to capture resources and influence
each other towards potentially opposing goals, it is natural for employees to feel stressed about the uncertainty
they face at work. Political environments have been proven to lower job satisfaction, increased strain, lower job
performance, higher turnover intentions and lower organisational commitment between employees.
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•
Conflict Resolution – two or more individuals who believe that their goals are in opposition cause
Conflict. Conflict and politics are intertwined because the pursuit of a person’s self-interest often breed
conflicts in others. Organisation leaders have the ability to resolve these conflicts by using their influence
and power. There are five different ways to handle conflict:
▪
Competing – A persons attempt to achieve their own goals without worrying about the other persons
results.
▪
Avoiding – When one party wants to stay neutral, stay away from conflict or postpone the conflict to
gather information or allow things to cool down.
▪
Accommodating – When one party agrees with the other and acts in a completely unselfish way.
▪
Collaboration – Both parties working together to maximize outcomes.
▪
Compromise – When conflict is resolved through give and take concessions.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Access to power is about politics. The structure of the organisation will promote opportunities and enhance the
access to power. Politics involve the activities or behaviours of which power will develop the organisations settings.
There is a varying degree of dependency in organisations and each degree is dependent between the departments.
The power relationship is expressed and can be collaborative depending on the variables; the mutual task
dependence is the chief among the variables (Kondalkar, 2007).
Negotiations
Negotiations are defined as a process in which two or more interdependent individuals discuss and attempt to
come to an agreement about their different preferences. An example of negotiations includes settling a contract
dispute between labour and management.
•
Negotiation strategies – Leaders can choose one of two general strategies when it comes to
negotiations:
▪
Distributive bargaining – Win or lose negotiations over a “fixed pie” of resources. Meaning, when one
person wins, the other loses.
▪
Integrative bargaining – Aimed at accomplishing a win-win scenario. It encourages the use of problem
solving and mutual respect to achieve results that is satisfying for both parties.
•
Negotiation stages – Irrespective of what strategy is used, the negotiation process is generally as
follows:
▪
Preparation – The goals for the negotiations are determined. It is also determined whether the other
party has anything to offer.
▪
Exchanging information – Each party makes a case for its position and attempts to put all favourable
information on the table.
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▪
Bargaining – Both parties must make concessions and give up something to get something else in
return.
▪
Closing and commitment – This stage entails the process of formalizing an agreement reached during
the previous stage.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
How important are power and influence?
Power and influence have a moderate positive effect on performance. When used effectively, they can increase
internalization and compliance, which facilitates task performance. The internalization and compliance facilitated
by power and influence can also increase citizenship behaviour and decrease counterproductive behaviour
(Colquitt et al., 2019). Power and influence can also have a moderate positive effect on commitment. The use of
personal forms of power, such as expert and referent is associated with increased affective commitment. It should
be noted, however, that more organisational forms of power or hard influence tactics could decrease that form of
commitment. Not much is known about the impact of power and influence on continuance commitment or normative
commitment (Mullins, 2010).
Application: Alternative Dispute Resolution
Even with the leader’s best efforts, there is always the possibility that negotiation and/or conflict may result in an
impasse between the two parties. In many organisations, disputes that might escalate into actual legal battles are
settled through alternative dispute resolutions, which is defined as the process by which two parties resolve conflict
with a specially trained, neutral third party. The two main forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution are:
•
Mediation – A third party is needed to facilitate the dispute resolution process. This third party, however,
has no formal authority to determine the solution.
•
Arbitration – A third party determines a binding settlement to a dispute. The arbitrator can either be an
individual or a group of people who listens to various arguments and then make a decision about a solution
to the conflict
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Revision Questions 3
3.1. Define Leadership.
3.2. Describe the different types of powers that leaders possess.
3.3. Explain how would leaders negotiate in the workplace?
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4.5
Leadership: Styles and Behaviours
Leader effectiveness can be gauged in a number of ways. Leaders might be judged by objective evaluations of
unit performance. For example, profit margins, market shares, returns on investments, productivity and so forth. If
these indices are not available, leader’s performance is judged on a more subjective basis. Another method used
to judge leaders focuses more on followers, including indices such as absenteeism, retention of talented
employees, grievances filed and so forth. These indices are completed by employee surveys that examines the
perceived performance of the leader, the respect and legitimacy of the leader and the employee commitment,
satisfaction and psychological wellbeing. A source of complexity when judging leader effectiveness, particularly
with a more subjective employee, employee-centred approach is “Whom do you ask? “. Often at times, the
members of a given unit disagrees about how effective the leader is. The leader-member theory tells us how leadermember relationships develop over time. It also explains why these differences exist. According to this theory, new
leader-member relationships are marked by a role-making phase, where the manager explains the expectations
of the employee and the employee tries to fulfil these expectations (Colquitt et al., 2019). In an organisation, every
group/department will need a leader. To be a successful leader, one will need to have the ability to use their power
effectively. Leaders inherit power upon appointment. The leader who is also known as the line authority influences
the sub-ordinates. The ability for a leader to comprehend will allow the leader to understand and relate to the
different motivational needs at different times and situations. The leader must be able to comprehend and
understand the people, their needs and expectations (Kondalkar, 2007).
Why some leaders are more effective than others are?
Leader effectiveness is defined as the leader’s actions, which results in the team goals, the continued commitment
of the team’s employees and the development of mutual trusts, respect and commitment (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Not all leaders can be effective leaders and it can be difficult to identify effective managers and leaders. Some of
the characteristics a good leader should have will help in holding their supervisory position. Leaders should have
a high degree of intelligence and a tendency to exhibit a broad range of interests. Every leader will accomplish
things by having that inner motivation and achievement drives (Kondalkar, 2007).
Leader Decision making styles
Decision-making is one of the most important tasks a leader has to do. An important element of any leader’s
decision-making style is; does the leader make decisions on his/her own, or do they involve other members?
•
Defining the style – There are four different types of styles:
▪
Autocratic style – The leader makes the decisions alone, without the help of other members.
Employees may provide the leader with the necessary information but are not asked to generate or
evaluate potential solutions.
▪
Consultative styles – The leader asks the members for their opinion first, before making the final
decision.
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▪
Facilitative style – The leader presents the problem to the members and seeks their opinion, making
sure that their own opinion receives no more weight than anyone else’s does.
▪
•
Delegative style – The leader allows members to make the decision, but with some limitation.
When are the styles most effective? How do we determine which decision-making style is best? There is
no decision-making style that is effective across all situations and all styles have their own pros and cons.
There are many factors to take into consideration when leaders choose a decision-making style. One of
the considerations is the quality of the resulting decision, since making the correct decisions is the ultimate
means of judging the leader. Leaders should also consider the employees reaction towards the decisions;
will they accept and commit to the decision? Studies show that giving an employee the opportunity to
contribute towards decision-making increases their job satisfaction. These opportunities also assist the
members in developing their own decision-making skills.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
How are leaders able to effectively manage their choice of decision-making styles? The time driven model of
leadership helps answer this question. This model suggests that the focus should shift away from autocratic,
consultative, facilitative and delegative leaders to autocratic, consultative, facilitative and delegative situations. The
model further suggests that seven factors combine to make some decision-making styles more effective in a given
situation and other styles less effective. These factors include:
•
Decision significance
•
Importance of commitment
•
Leader expertise
•
Likelihood of commitment
•
Shared Objectives
•
Employee Expertise
•
Teamwork skills
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Knowledge Check Question 4
1. Describe the four different leadership styles.
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Day-to-day leadership behaviours
What are the activities of a leader on a day-to-day basis? Let us look at a few:
•
Initiating Structure – The extent to which the leader defines and structures the roles of employees in
pursuit of goal achievement.
•
Consideration – The extent to which leaders create job relationships characterised by mutual trust,
respect and consideration.
•
While initiating structure and considerations may be beneficial for many situations, there are
circumstances where they become less important. The life cycle theory of leadership states that optimal
combinations of initiating structure and considerations is dependent on the readiness of the employees
in the work unit.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Transformational Leadership Behaviours
Transformational leadership is inspiring followers to commit to a shared vision that provides meaning to their work,
while serving as a role model who assists followers in developing their own potential and view problems from their
perspective (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Transactional Leadership
In this type of leadership style, the leaders will promote rewards and punishments to the followers. This punishment
system is used to keep the followers motivated for a short-term (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Activity 3
3.1. Conduct research on leadership styles for leaders to make decisions.
3.2. Why are leadership styles important?
3.3. Explain the advantages of knowing your leadership style.
How important is leadership?
Transformational leadership has a moderate positive effective on performance. Employees with transformational
leaders tend to have higher levels of task performance. They are also more likely to engage in citizenship
behaviour. Less is known about the effects of transformational leadership on counterproductive behaviours.
Transformational leadership also has a strong positive effect on commitment. Employees with transformational
leaders tend to have higher levels of affective commitment and higher levels of normative commitment.
Transformational leaderships also have no effect on continuance commitment (Colquitt et al., 2019).
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Application: Leadership Trading
Leaders can be trained to be effective. In fact, such training can be used to increase transformational leadership
behaviours, despite the fact that charisma is somewhat dependent on personality and genetic factors (Colquitt et
al., 2019).
Revision Questions 4
4.1. Describe the characteristic related to a leader.
4.2. Differentiate between transformational and transactional leadership.
4.6
Summary
In this unit, you have seen the different types of teams and the factors involved in team composition. We explore
the characteristics and diversity of teams and understand the factors that influence the communication process.
We looked at the different types of leadership styles and see how leaders can negotiate in the workplace.
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Answers to Activities
Activity 1
1.1. What factors are involved in team composition?
•
Member Roles – Defined as the pattern of behaviour that a person is expected to display in a given
context. One way of distinguishing roles is by considering the specific set of tasks-focused activities that
define what each member are expected to do for them. Another way to distinguish roles is to consider
what leaders and members do. In leader-staff teams, the leader makes all the decisions and provides
direction and control over members who perform assigned tasks. It is clear that the responsibilities of the
leader and the rest of the team are distinct. However, team members have some latitude with respect to
the behaviours they exhibit. In these situations, team roles can be described in terms of categories that
are more general than the task focused rules described earlier. These rules include:
•
Member Ability – team members possess a wide variety of abilities. Depending on the nature of the task
involved in the team’s work, some of these tasks may be important to consider in team design. It might
also be a good idea to consider cognitive abilities when designing teams. Cognitive abilities are important
to many different types of teams. However, not all members require high levels of these cognitive abilities.
In tasks with an objectively verifiable best solution, the member who possesses the highest level of the
ability relevant to the task will have the most influence on the effectiveness of the team.
•
Member Personality – Team members also possess a huge variety of personality traits. These traits
influence the role a person takes on, the norms that develop on the team and the team’s performance.
Another factor to consider the members conscientiousness. After-all, any team would benefit by having
members who are dependable and work hard to achieve team goals. One final aspect to consider is the
personality of an extraversion person. An extraverted person would perform more effectively in
interpersonal contexts and are generally more positive and optimistic.
•
Diversity – The degree to which members are different from each other in terms of any attribute that might
be used by someone based on categorizing people. These differences are known as team diversity. There
are two different theories about team diversity:
1.2. What would you consider key elements of a successful team?
Some of the major elements are: Trust between team memebers, a healthy debate, commitment from team
members, accountability, focussing on results.
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1.3. What makes a team effective?
Teams come in different forms and structures. Communication is vital for team members. Teams need the
information to do their work. The communication forms a collaboration between the team memebrs. The use of
technology also helps the teams collaborate. The internet allows for team memebers to share information with
others. By using online collaborative tools, teams can share process improvements and innovations.
Activity 2
2.1. Explain briefly, what organisational politics is?
This is seen as the self-interest of an individual of the organisation who does not regard the effect his/her agenda
has on the organisations efforts to achieve its goals.
2.2. Why do you think we have organisational politics?
Politics exists almost in everywhere, whether personal or organisational exists solely for the purpose of influence.
Politics occur when there are greater numbers of members, which then results in a greater amount of influence.
2.3. How can one stay out of organisational politics?
There are different ways one can stay out of organisational politics especially the office politics such as:
•
Be socratic if you by any chance get drawn in.
•
Try avoid talking any smack talk.
•
When decisions are made, try and be transparent and consistent.
•
In your professional realtionships, its best to not be exclusion
•
There will be ways in which you can identify the source of the politics, stay away as much as you can.
Activity 3
3.1. Conduct research on leadership styles for leaders to make decisions.
•
Authoritarian or Autocratic - the leader tells his or her employees what to do and how to do it, without getting
their advice
•
Participative or Democratic - the leader includes one or more employees in the decision-making process, but
the leader normally maintains the final decision-making authority
•
Delegative or laissez-fair (free-rein) - the leader allows the employees to make the decisions, however, the
leader is still responsible for the decisions that are made
3.2. Why are leadership styles important?
Some leaders use one general style in almost all situations while other leaders may vary their style to meet the
particular needs of each situation encountered. It is important for the leaders to know what their main style
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preferences are so that they can evaluate the likely effectiveness of that style in a given set of circumstances (or
know how far they may need to change their style in order to get a better result).
3.3. Explain the advantages of knowing your leadership style.
One of the main advantages of understanding your leadership style is that you understand your strengths and
weaknesses. This will allow you to be a more proactive and more effective leader by strategically using your
strengths and counteracting your weaker areas. The style you use will define your values and perspective, and
being aware of it will aid your communication those you work with. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. This
way you can empower yourself and move forward in your career interest by exercising this knowledge you have
gained.
Knowledge Check Question1
1. Briefly describe the characteristics of five team types.
•
Work teams – Usually designed to be permanent. The purpose of work teams is to provide goods and
services, which requires 100% commitment from its members.
•
Management teams – Similar to work teams, management teams are relatively permanent. However,
they are distinct in a number of ways: While work teams focus on accomplishing core operational-level
production and service tasks, management tasks focus on managerial-level tasks that affect the entire
organisational.
•
Parallel teams – Members from other job types who provide recommendations to managers, relating to
important issues that run parallel to the organisations production process. Parallel teams often require
part time commitment from members and, depending on the aim, they can be either permanent or
temporary.
•
Project teams – Formed to tackle “one time” tasks that are complex and generally requires a lot of advice
from members with various types of training and expertise.
•
Action teams – Perform tasks that are time limited. However, these tasks are usually very complex and
tales place in contexts that are either highly visible to an audience or highly challenging in nature.
Knowledge Check Question2
1.Explain which factors create process loss.
•
•
Coordination loss – Members working to accomplish their own task and, at the same time, coordinate
their activities with those of their teammates.
Production booking – Members have to wait for each other before they can do their part of the work.
•
Motivational loss – Members do not work as hard as they should.
Knowledge Check Question3
1. Define leadership.
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Leadership is defined as a person’s use of power and influence to direct the activities of followers towards achieving
their goals.
2. Define power.
Power is defined as the ability to influence the actions of others and resist unwanted influence in return.
Knowledge Check Question4
1.
Describe the four different leadership styles.
•
Autocratic style – The leader makes the decisions alone, without the help of other members. Employees
may provide the leader with the necessary information but are not asked to generate or evaluate potential
solutions.
•
Consultative styles – The leader asks the members for their opinion first, before making the final decision.
•
Facilitative style – The leader presents the problem to the members and seeks their opinion, making sure
that their own opinion receives no more weight than anyone else’s does.
•
Delegative style – The leader allows members to make the decision, but with some limitation.
Case Study 1
1.
Explain how compensation influenced job satisfaction?
The results showed that the wage on positive impact on employee productivity among companies. One of the
purposes of someone being the employee or a labor of a company is to earn an income in the form of wages or
compensation. Wages are earned can fulfi ll basic necessities such as food, clothing and housing.
Case Study 2
1.
Identify the relationship between job satisfaction and work.
Almost any job related factor can influence a person's level of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. There are a number
of factors that influence job satisfaction. If the job satisfaction is high, the employees will perform better. On the
other hand if the job satisfaction is low, there will be performance problems.
2. Does Power influence or affect job satisfaction?
Some may say yes and some may say no. Coercive power is the ability of a manager to force an employee to
follow an order by threatening the employee with punishment if the employee does not comply with the order. In
order to be effective, the manager must be able to follow through on the threat
3.
Does the influence of power affect organisational commitment?
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Power is important in an organization because it helps to accomplish one's objectives. The more power an
individual or group of individuals within any particular organisation wields, the more influence it will have and the
more it will achieve.
Think Point 1
What do you think the communication process in student teams will be like? Would you say the communication
process was of an appropriate level of information richness?
Students at first would take time to collaborate. There are various ways the students can use to imporve the
communication process such as:
•
Watch films that model conversation skills.
•
Use technology.
•
Reinforce active listening.
•
Offer group presentations and assignments.
•
Ask open-ended questions.
•
Use tasks and activities that foster critical thinking
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Unit
5:
Organisational Mechanisms
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Unit Learning Outcomes
CONTENT LIST
LEARNING OUTCOMES OF THIS UNIT:
5.1 Introduction
•
5.2 Organisational Structure
• Describe organisational structure
Introduces topic areas for the unit
• Describe the major elements of an organisational structure
• Understand the effects of restructuring
•
Describe the steps the organisation can take to reduce the
negative effects of restructuring efforts
5.3 Organisational Culture
• Define organisational culture
• Understand what makes culture strong
•
Understand how to maintain culture
•
Describe the steps an organisation will take to make
newcomers fit with their culture
5.4 Summary
•
Summarises topic areas covered in the unit
Prescribed and Recommended Textbooks/Readings
Prescribed Reading/Textbook
• Colquitt, J.A., Lepine, J.A. and Wesson, M.J. (2019) Organisational
Behavior - Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace.
Sixth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Recommended Readings
• Jones, G.R., George, J.M. and Hill, C.W.L. (2013) Contemporary
Management. Eighth Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill.
• Kondalkar, V.G. (2007) Organizational Behaviour. First Edition. New Age
International.
• Cross, C and Carbery, R. (2016) Organisational Behaviour an Introduction.
First Edition. Palgrave.
• Griffin, R.W., Phillips, J.M. and Gully, S.M. (2019) Organizational
Behavior: Managing People and Organizations. Thirteenth Edition.
Cengage.
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5.1
Introduction
In this unit, we understand organisational structures and the major elements, which make these structures. We will
see the effects of restructuring and the steps, which the organisation will take to reduce negative effects of
restructuring. We look at defining organisational culture and understand what makes culture strong. We will explore
the steps for the organisation to take to make newcomers fit into their culture.
5.2
Organisational Structure
An organisational structure formally dictates how jobs and tasks are divided and coordinated between individuals
and groups within the company. Organisational structure is simple when a company has 5 – 20 employees but
becomes very complex when an organisation has hundreds of employees (Colquitt et al., 2019). A good
organisational structure will have a down formal reporting structure. Departments are grouped together so that the
machines, equipment processes and expertise can be handled by the guidance of one departmental head
(Kondalkar, 2007).
Think Point 1
What would you say that the ability to be efficient or the ability to adapt to its
environment is more important for the organisation? What do you think this will
say about the organisations structure and how it should be set up?
Why do some organisations have different structures than others?
An organisational chart is a drawing that represents every job in the organisation and the formal reporting
relationships between these jobs.
Elements of Organisational Structure
There are five key elements of an organisational structure:
•
Work Specialization – The degree to which job tasks in an organisation are divided into separate jobs.
•
Chain of Command – Answers the question of “Who represents whom” and signifies formal authority
relationships.
•
Span of control – Represents how many employees each manager in the organisation has responsibility
for.
•
Centralisation – Refers to where decisions are formally made in organisations.
•
Formalisation – The degree to which rules and procedures are used to standardise behaviours and
decisions in an organisation.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
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In organisations, which are not influenced by technological, and are more formalised and rigid in nature. The form
of authority will be more centralised where the top-level management form the rigid hierarchy of authority. The form
of the organisation is subject to change due to organisational factors such as technology (Kondalkar, 2007).
Readings
Additional Reading:
Hambrick, D. C., Humphrey, S. E. and Gupta, A. (2015), Structural
interdependence within top management teams: A key moderator of upper
echelons predictions, 36, 449-461.Available at:10.1002/smj.2230
Organisational Design
Organisational design is defined as the process of creating, selecting or changing the structure of an organisation.
Organisations proactively design structures to match their specific circumstances and needs. In some instances,
organisations that are not proactive find themselves with a structure that has unintentionally developed on its own,
without proper planning. The organisation is then forced to change their structure to become more effective. The
following factors influence the process of organisational design:
•
Business environment – Includes customers, competitors, suppliers, distributors and other factors outside
the organisation, which has an impact on organisational design.
•
Company Strategy – The organisations goals and objectives and how it uses its assets to make a profit.
•
Technology – Methods, which transform outputs into inputs.
•
Company size – There is a specific relationship between the company size and structure. As an
organisation becomes bigger, they rely on some combination of specialization, formalization and
centralization to control their activities, which causes it to become more mechanistic in nature.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
There are different structures that an organisation can utilise in order to function effectively for example using a
centralisation and decentralisation structure. In the centralisation structure, the authority for decision-making is at
the top management level. The lower levels will be responsible for implementing decisions, which have been made
by the management. Any hurdles experienced will be directed to the correct power to take appropriate action. In
the decentralisation approach, the authority is invested in appropriate levels dependent on the ability of an
individual (Kondalkar, 2007).
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Knowledge Check Question1
1. Describe five key elements of an organisational structure.
Common organisational forms
What structures do most organisations utilize? The following are two common forms:
•
Simple Structure – Possibly the most common form of organisational design, mainly because there are
more small organisations than larger ones. A simple structure is a flat organisation with one person being
the central decision-making figure.
•
Bureaucratic Structures – An organisational form that exhibits many of the facets of the mechanistic
organisation.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Revision Questions 1
1.1. Explain organisational structure.
How important is Structure?
Restructuring has a weak negative effective on performance. Task performance tends to be somewhat lower in
organisations that restructure. Not much is known about the impact of restructuring on citizenship behaviour or
counterproductive behaviours. Restructuring has a moderate negative effect on commitment. Affective
commitment tends to be lower in organisations that restructure. Not much is known about the impact of
restructuring on continuance commitment or normative commitment (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Case Study 1
Harney, B., Fu, N. and Freeney, Y. (2017). Balancing tensions: buffering the
impact of organisational restructuring and downsizing on employee well-being.
Human Resource Management Journal, 28(2), 235-254. Available at:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1748-8583.12175
Questions:
1. What impact does restructuring have on organisation?
2. Discuss the negative experience of downsizing.
3. Explain the role of consultation in downsizing.
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Application: Restructuring
It is extremely important for organisations to adapt to their environment. This is done in two steps:
•
The first step is recognising the need to change.
•
The second step is adapting through organisations.
Organisations attempt to restructure all the time. Restructuring efforts come in a number of shapes and sizes. It is
possible for organisations to change from a product-based structure to a functional structure, and so forth. The
most common form if restructure is “flattening”. Many Organisations do this to show investors that they are reducing
costs to become more profitable (Colquitt et al., 2019).
Activity 1
1.1. Describe the steps the organisation can take to reduce the negative effects of
restructuring.
1.2. Explain the advantages of organisational structure.
1.3. What are the major elements of an organisational structure?
5.3
Organisational Culture
Organisational culture is defined as the shared social knowledge within an organisation relating to the rules, norms
and values that mould the attitudes and behaviours of its employees. This definition helps us highlight a number
of facets of an organisations culture:
•
Firstly, culture is considered as social knowledge between members of the organisation.
•
Culture shows the employees what the rules, norms and values are within an organisation.
•
Organisational culture moulds and reinforces certain employee attitudes and behaviours by developing a
system of control over employees
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Readings
Additional Reading:
Zahidul, I., Jasimuddin, M.D and Hasan, I. (2015). Organizational culture,
structure, technology infrastructure and knowledge sharing: Empirical evidence
from MNCs based in Malaysia, (45) 1, 67-88. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1108/VINE-05-2014-0037
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Why do some organisations have different cultures than others?
Often at times, when people ask the question: Where are you employed? it is usually followed by another question:
What is it like working there? Your response is likely to have a lot to do with what the organisations culture is about
(Colquitt et al., 2019). Organisations have policies, rules or procedures, which set the tone for the culture in the
organisation. The polices are general guidelines which employees will use to perform their work. There are rules,
which the employee can use which dictates the code of conduct. The procedures are written in such a way to guide
the employee on how the work should be done (Kondalkar, 2007).
Culture components
There are three major components to an organisations culture:
•
Observable Artefacts – Are defined as the manifestation of an organisations culture that employees can
easily see or talk about. Observable artefacts provide the signals that employees interpret to gauge how
they should behave during the day. Artefacts also provide the basic means of transmitting an
organisations culture to its workforce. There are six major types of artefacts:
▪
Symbols – Are found throughout the organisation. Examples include the company logo; images
placed on the website and the employee’s uniforms.
▪
Physical Structure – Says a lot about culture. IS the workplace open? Are employees able to express
their personalities?
▪
Language – Reflect the jargon, slang and slogans used within the walls of the organisation.
▪
Stories – Includes anecdotes, accounts, legends and myths that are passed down from cohort to
cohort within the organisation.
•
▪
Rituals – Daily or weekly planned routines that happen in an organisation.
▪
Ceremonies – Formal events generally formed in front of an audience or organisational members.
Espoused Values – Defined as the beliefs, philosophies and norms that a company explicitly states.
Espoused values can be anything from published documents to verbal statements.
•
Basic underlying assumptions – Considered as being the “taken-for-granted belief and philosophies
that are so ingrained that employees choose to act on them, instead of questioning the validity of their
behaviour in a given situation.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Some organisations create a culture where it is standardized; this will involve repetitive and routine jobs, which are
formalized based on the individual’s specialisation. Activities which are related are put together to form a
department, thereafter, there will be a division of work for the individuals to perform the same job repeatedly again
(Kondalkar, 2007).
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Activity 2
2.1. Conduct research on organisational culture.
2.2. Why is organisational culture important?
2.3. What makes culture strong?
2.4. Explain how you would develop culture?
2.5. What is the advantage of having a strong organisational culture?
General Culture types
Taking the combinations of the organisation’s observable artefacts, espoused values and underlying assumptions
into account, it becomes easy to classify culture along various dimensions: There are a number of organisational
cultures:
•
Fragmented culture – Organisations that are low on solidarity and sociability. Solidarity is when group
members think and act alike. Sociability represents the friendliness between employees.
•
Mercenary Cultures - Organisations that have cultures in which employees think alike but are not friendly
towards each other.
•
Networked Culture – Cultures in which employees are friendly towards each other but everyone thinks
and behaves differently.
•
Communal Cultures – Organisations with friendly employees where everyone thinks alike.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
Case Study 2
Hitkaa, M., Vetrákováb, M., Balážováa, Z. and Danihelováa, Z. (2015). Corporate
Culture as a Tool for Competitiveness Improvement, Business Economics and
Management, 27-34. Slovakia. Available at: www.sciencedirect.com
Questions:
1. Do you think organisations who possess a good corporate culture are
successful? Why?
2. Would culture influence productivity in an organisation? Why?
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Culture Strength
High levels of cultural strength exist when employees definitely agree about the manner in which things are
supposed to be done within the organisation and when their subsequent behaviours are in line with those
expectations. The purpose of a strong culture is to unite and direct employees. Weak culture exists when
employees disagree about the way things are supposed to be done or what is expected of them. At the same time,
strong cultures are not always good either. Although strong cultures may guide employee’s attitudes and
behaviours, it does not always mean that they guide them towards the most successful organisational outcomes.
In some instances, the culture of an organisation is neither weak nor strong. Instead, they are subcultures that
unite a smaller subset of the organisation’s employees. Subcultures exist when the overall organisational culture
is supplemented by another culture governing a more specific set of employees (Colquitt et al., 2019)
.
Knowledge Check Question2
1. Describe the different types of organisational cultures.
2. Discuss the two common types of organisational structures.
Maintaining an organisational culture
An organisations culture can be maintained by means of the following:
•
Attraction-selection-attrition – When employees are attracted to an organisation because its cultures
match their own personality. In other words, an individual would not apply for a certain position due to a
perceived lack of fit. Organisations will only select candidates based on whether their personalities fit the
culture. Those individuals who take the job but still do not fit in will be either unhappy or ineffective, which
leads to attrition.
•
Socialization – Organisations can also maintain an organisational culture by shaping and moulding new
employees. Socialization is defined as the basic process by which employees study the social knowledge
that allows them to understand and adapt to the organisations culture. Socialization begins before an
employee starts work and only leaves when the employee leaves the organisation.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
How important is organisational culture?
Person-organisation fit has a weak positive effect on performance. Employees who fit with their organisation tend
to have slightly higher levels of task performance, with effects on citizenship behaviour slightly stronger. Not much
is known about their impact of fit on counterproductive behaviour. Person-organisation fit has a strong positive
effect on commitment. Employees who fit with their organisation tend to have higher levels of affective commitment.
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Not much is known about the impact of fit on continuance or normative commitment (Colquitt et al., 2019) it is
important to ensure the employee’s positivity is high, as this will affect the organisational commitment. Creating a
culture, which allows a new employee to blend in, will create a sense of harmony in the organisation. Creating a
sense of harmony will allow for the smooth operations within the organisation (Kondalkar, 2007).
Revision Questions 2
2.1. Describe the steps an organisation will take to make newcomers fit with
their culture.
.
Application: Managing Socialization
Organisations routinely and effectively help speed up the socialization process in three major ways:
•
Realistic job previews – Occurs during the recruitment process. This ensures the potential employee
has an accurate picture of what working for the organisation will be like, highlighting the positive and
negative aspects of the job.
•
Organisational programs – New employees attending some form of newcomer training orientation.
Orientation programs have been proven to show effective transmitters of socialization content, such that
those employees who complete orientation have higher levels of job satisfaction, commitment and
performance than those who do not.
•
Mentoring – A process by which a junior level employee develops a deep and lasting relationship with a
senior level employee, a mentor, within the organisation.
(Colquitt et al., 2019)
5.4
Summary
In this unit, we have looked at organisational structures and their major elements, which make these structures.
We have seen the effects of restructuring and the steps, which the organisation will take to reduce negative effects
of restructuring. We defined organisational culture and understood what makes culture strong. We explored the
steps for the organisation to take to make newcomers fit into their culture.
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Answers to Activities
Activity 1
1.1. Describe the steps the organisation can take to reduce the negative effects of restructuring.
There are different ways organisations can use to reduce the negative effects of restructuring such as:
•
Clearly define the change and aligning it to the business goals.
•
Establish the entities impacted by the change.
•
Create a communication strategy which will effectively distribute information.
•
Provide training if required.
•
Create a support structure, which will complement the structure.
•
Measure the change process.
1.2. Explain the advantages of organisational structure.
A company structure can benefit the organisation such as making it easier to delegate responsibility throughout
the workplace in several ways. Qualified employees can be promoted for management. Employee training can be
improved and easier to be administered.
1.3. What are the major elements of an organisational structure?
Work specialisation, Departmentalization, chain of command, span of control, centralisation and formalization of
elements. There are much more elements which could be considered to be major.
Activity 2
2.1. Conduct research on organisational culture.
Organisational culture is defined as the underlying beliefs, assumptions, values and ways of interacting that
contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organisation.
2.2. Why is organisational culture important?
Looking at the beliefs, ideologies, principles and values of an organisation form its culture. Culture helps with
workplace control and the way employees will behave amongst themselves as well as with people outside the
organisation. The culture shows how employees interact at their workplace.
2.3. What makes culture strong?
When we look at strong cultures, it typically features their beliefs, behavioural rules, traditions, and rituals in public
displays so that employees can use these cultural elements for decision making throughout the organisation.
Organisational commitment is influenced by the culture of the organisation.
2.4. Explain how you would develop culture?
There are steps in place, which can help in developing culture:
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Step 1: Establish what you would want your company culture and values to look like.
Step 2: Examine the culture and check if there are any changes to be made.
Step 3: Hire the individual who will be the people’s person.
Step 4: Invest in talent and branding.
2.5. What is the advantage of having a strong organisational culture?
Culture in an organsation wil impact on the values and norms of the organisation. The culture will create and
support the mission, vision and values of the organisation. The type of culture you have will influence the
organisation’s financial growth, internal communication, level of risk-taking, and innovation.
Knowledge Check Question1
1. Describe five key elements of an organisational structure.
•
Work Specialization – The degree to which job tasks in an organisation are divided into separate jobs.
•
Chain of Command – Answers the question of “Who represents whom” and signifies formal authority
relationships.
•
Span of control – Represents how many employees each manager in the organisation has responsibility
for.
•
Centralization – Refers to where decisions are formally made in organisations.
•
Formalization – The degree to which rules and procedures are used to standardise behaviours and
decisions in an organisation.
Knowledge Check Question2
1. Describe the different types of organisational cultures.
•
Fragmented culture – Organisations that are low on solidarity and sociability. Solidarity is when group
members think and act alike. Sociability represents the friendliness between employees.
•
Mercenary Cultures - Organisations that have cultures in which employees think alike but are not friendly
towards each other.
•
Networked Culture – Cultures in which employees are friendly towards each other but everyone thinks
and behaves differently.
•
Communal Cultures – Organisations with friendly employees where everyone thinks alike.
2. Discuss the two common types of organisational structures.
•
Simple Structure – Possibly the most common form of organisational design, mainly because there are
more small organisations than larger ones. A simple structure is a flat organisation with one person being
the central decision-making figure.
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•
Bureaucratic Structures – An organisational form that exhibits many of the facets of the mechanistic
organisation.
Case Study 1
1.
What impact does restructuring have on organisation?
The researchers found not all employees were negatively affected by the restructuring, with a few of the studies
saying some restructures had a positive impact on employees. The higher the physical demand and less control
the employee had over their job, the worse off they were, the researchers found.
2.
Discuss the negative experience of downsizing.
The results show that the more severe the extent of downsizing, the lower employees' affective commitment to the
organisation. Moreover, downsizing has an impact on employees' affective commitment to the organisation through
several of the daily work experiences of employees. Thus, downsizing affects employees' affective commitment to
the organisation both directly and indirectly. However, its indirect impact is much stronger.
3.
Explain the role of consultation in downsizing.
This is not an easy task but by consultation, we can identify opportunities, assist decision making and help ensure
any new ideas work effectively in practice. Consultation may take the form of: establishment of employer/employee
(and employee representative) committees. Regular staff meetings and communication with employees.
Case Study 2
1.
Do you think organisations who possess a good corporate culture are successful? Why?
Some say yes and some say no. Company culture is important to employees because workers are more likely to
enjoy their time in the workplace when they fit in with the company culture. Company culture is important to
employers too because workers who fit in with the company culture are likely to not only be happier, but more
productive.
2.
Would culture influence productivity in an organisation? Why?
Some say yes and some say no. Culture represents the beliefs, ideologies, policies, practices of an organisation.
It gives the employees a sense of direction and also controls the way they behave with each other. The employees
in their own way contribute to the culture of the workplace.
Think Point 1
What would you say that the ability to be efficient or the ability to adapt to its environment is more important for the
organisation? What do you think this will say about the organisations structure and how it should be set up?
Adapting to the new environment would be priority number one. Thereafter, one can find ways to improve efficiency.
Companies that grow rapidly are those that make the best use of their resources, including management talent. A
sound organisation structure ensures that the company has the right people in the right positions. As the company
grows, the organisation structure must evolve with it.
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Answers to Revision Questions
Answers to Revision Question 1:
1. What is Organisational Behaviour?
Organisational behaviour can be defined as the field of study dedicated to understanding, elaborating and
improving the behaviours of individuals and groups in an organisation.
2. Briefly explain two examples of Production Deviance.
Wastage - This is where employees would use more material than needed or take up a lot of time to do simple
tasks. Substance abuse is another form of production deviance. Employees will not focus on the task, under the
influence of drugs and alcohol and as a result, this would mean a decline in production.
3. What is Task Performance?
Employee’s behaviours that are directly involved in the transformation of organisational resources into the goods
or services that the organisation produces.
4. What is Psychological Withdrawal?
The employee mentally withdraws themselves from their work. This type of withdrawal comes in many forms:
Daydreaming – when random things distract an employee
Socializing – Casual chats with fellow employees about non-work-related topics
Looking busy – Pretending to work
Moonlighting – Using company time to perform personal tasks
Cyber loafing – Using the internet and social media for personal enjoyment.
5. Define Organisational Commitment.
Organisational Commitment can best be defined as the employee’s commitment to being a member of the
organization. Organisational Commitment influences whether an employee should stay as a member of the
organization or move onto another job.
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Revision Question 2:
Revision Questions 1
1.1. Explain what job satisfaction is?
Job satisfaction is a representation of how an employee feels about their job and what they think about their job.
Job satisfaction is formally defined as a pleasurable, emotional state, which results in appraisal of one’s job or job
experience.
Revision Questions 2
2.1. Define stress.
Stress is defined as a person’s psychological response to demands that possess certain stakes for the person that
exceeds a person’s capacity or resources. Stressors are demands that causes a person to feel stressed. Strains
are the negative results that occur when demands exceed a person’s capacity or resources.
2.2. Describe the different types of stressors.
There are two types of stressors:
•
Hindrance Stressors are considered as hurdles to goal achievements
o
Role Conflict – Is referred to as the conflicting expectations that other employees may have for us.
o
Role Ambiguity – Is referred to as lack on information about what is needed to be done and assuming
the consequences of performance in that role.
Role Overload – When an employee takes on too many roles and responsibilities and is unable to
o
carry out each one effectively
Daily Hassles – Referred to as the minor day-to-day activities that prevents us from achieving our
o
goals.
Challenge Stressors are considered as opportunities for growth and achievement
o
•
Work Challenge Stressors
o
Time pressure – The feeling of not having enough time to accomplish our goals.
o
Work Complexity – Refers to the degree to which the requirements of the work, meaning the
knowledge, skills and abilities exceeds the capabilities of the employee carrying out the work.
o
Work Responsibility – The nature of the obligations that an employee has towards other employees
2.3. How would an individual cope with stress?
Coping is known as thoughts and behaviours that people use in order to manage the stressful demands they face
and the emotions that come with these stressful demands. When we define coping, the first half explains the idea
that methods of coping can be categorized based on whether they involve behaviours or thoughts.
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•
Behavioural Coping is the set if physical activities that a person performs, in order to deal with a
stressful situation.
•
Cognitive Coping is the thoughts a person has while trying to deal with the situation.
•
Problem Focused Coping is behaviours and cognitions meant to manage a stressful situation
•
Emotion focused coping is the various ways in which people manage their own emotional reactions to
stressful demands.
2.4. How does stress affect job performance and organisational commitment?
Hindrance stressors have a negative and weak relationship with job performance, since hindrance stressors result
in strains and negative emotions, which reduces the level of physical, cognitive and emotional energy that people
bring to work. Hindrance stressors has a strong negative relationship with organisational commitment. This is
because hindrance stressors evoke strains, which are unappealing to people. Satisfaction has a strong influence
on the degree to which people feel committed to the organisation. If a person has a job that causes them to feel
sick and miserable all the time, they would feel dissatisfied with their job and would not want to stay with the
organisation. Challenge stressors have a weak relationship with job performance and a moderate relationship with
organisational commitment. However, unlike the results for hindrance stressors, the relationships here are positive
and not negative, meaning, employees who experience higher levels of challenge stressors would have higher
levels of job performance and organisational commitment. These relationships stand in sharp contrast with lower
levels of job performance and organisational commitment, which happens when employees confront higher levels
of hindrance stressors.
Revision Questions 3
3.1. What is motivation?
Motivation is defined as the set of energetic forces that originates both within and outside an employee, and initiates
work related efforts and determines it direction, intensity and persistence. Motivation is extremely important
because effective job performance requires high levels of ability and motion.
3.2. What is the effect of motivation on job performance and organisational commitment?
With reference to job performance, a number of studies encourage the relationship between various motivating
forces and task performance. A motivating force that has the strongest performance effect is self-efficacy
(competent) because people with internal self-confidence perform better than those who question their capabilities.
The second most powerful motivating force is difficult goals, because people who get such goals work better than
those with easier goals do. The third most powerful motivational force are those created by high levels of valence,
instrumentally and expectancy.
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Revision Questions 4
4.1. What is the relation of trust between justice and ethics?
•
Justice – The fairness of the authorities’ decision. When an employee perceives high levels of justice,
they think that the decisions outcomes are fair and that the decision-making processes are formed and
implemented in a fair a manner. Justice concepts are the reason behind employees judging the
trustworthiness of an authority.
•
Ethics – The extent to which the behaviours of an authority are in accordance with generally accepted
moral norms. When an employee perceives high levels of ethics, they think that things are done the way
it should be. Ethic concepts are used to explain why authorities’ act in a trustworthy or untrustworthy
manner.
4.2. Describe the dimensions of trustworthiness of authority.
o
Ability – Defined as the skills and competencies that allows an authority to be successful in some
specific area.
o
Benevolence – Defined as the confidence that the authority wants only the best for the trusted
without any selfish, profit-centred motives. Benevolent authorities are those individuals who
genuinely care for their employees and feel a sense of loyalty towards them.
o
Integrity – Defined as the perception that the authority follows a set of values and principles that
the trusted finds acceptable. Having integrity means having good intentions and strong moral
discipline.
4.3. What are the effects of trust on job performance and organisational commitment?
•
Trust is moderately correlated with task performance.
•
Trust influences citizenship and counterproductive behaviours
•
Trust affects organisational commitment because trusting an authority leads to the development of an
emotional bond, especially if that trust is based on positive feelings for the authority.
Revision Questions 5
5.1. How do employees learn in the organisation?
Tacit knowledge gained through reinforcement, observation and experience allows a decision maker to decide
more quickly and confidently. Due to their high levels of tacit knowledge, experts are unable to explain how they
know that a problem exists, why a solution would work or how they accomplish a task.
5.2. Discuss the effects of learning on job performance and organisational commitment.
Learning influences job performance, since it is moderately correlated with task performance. It becomes difficult
to perform tasks if the employee does not have the basic knowledge of the job. It is difficult to measure tacit
knowledge because of its unspoken nature, but it is obvious that such knowledge is relevant to task performance.
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Learning seems less relevant to citizenship behaviour and counterproductive behaviour, since these behaviours
are less dependent on knowledge and expertise. Learning is weakly related to organisational commitment. Having
high levels of job knowledge is often associated with slight increases in emotional attachments to the firm.
5.3. Discuss the steps to make an organisation foster learning.
•
Training – The systematic effort by organisations to facilitate the learning of jobs related knowledge and
behaviour.
•
Knowledge transfer from the older more experienced workers to the younger ones.
•
Communities of practice – Group of employees working together and learning from each other by
collaborating over an extended period.
Answers to Revision Question 3:
Revision Questions 1
1.1. What do you understand by the term personality and cultural values?
Personality can be defined as the structures and propensities inside a person that explains their characteristic
patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour. Personality is what creates a person’s social reputation. It describes
what a person is like. The personality of a person is based on a number of traits. Traits are defined as recurring
regularities or trends in a person’s response to the environment. Cultural values are defined as shared beliefs
about desirable end states or moods of conduct in a given culture. Cultural values influence the development of a
person’s personality traits and how well these traits are expressed in daily life.
Revision Questions 2
2.1. Define Ability.
Ability is defined as the relatively stable capabilities people have to perform a particular range of different but
related activities. Unlike skills, which can be improved over time with training and experience, ability is more stable.
2.2. Discuss the three types of ability.
•
Cognitive Ability – Defined as the capabilities associated with the acquisition and application of knowledge
in problem solving. Cognitive abilities apply to a number of jobs that we do on a daily basis – Its work
involving the use of information to make decisions and solve problems.
•
Emotional Intelligence – Includes four specific types of emotional skills: this is made up of Self-awareness,
other awareness, emotional regulation and the use of emotions.
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Answer to Revision Question 4:
Revision questions 1
1.1. Describe the three different types of team interdependence.
Task Interdependence – When members interact with and depend on each other for information, resources and
materials needed to accomplish the work.
Goal Interdependence – When team members have a shared vision of their team goals and align their individual
goals with that vision. High levels of goal interdependence can be created by ensuring the team has a formalized
mission statement that members buy into. A good mission statement clearly explains what the team is trying to
accomplish in a way that creates a sense of commitment and urgency among team members.
Outcome Interdependence – Relates to how members are linked to each other in terms of the feedback and
outcomes they receive because of working in a team. Outcome Interdependence is when team members share
the rewards that the entire team has earned.
1.2. Describe the different types of team diversity.
•
Surface-level diversity – Diversities that can be seen, for example, race, sex and age. Even though
this type of diversity has a negative impact on teams in its initial, stages, due to similarity-attraction
issues, those negative effects disappear as members learn more about each other. One complication
here is that fault lines often occur in diverse groups, where informal subgroups are developed, based
on similarity in surface-level attributes, such as gender. The problem with fault lines is that knowledge
and information passed by one subgroup may not be communicated to other subgroups, which could
prevent the team from working more effectively.
•
Deep-level diversity – Diversity with respect to attributes that are not necessarily easy to observe but
can be inferred after more direct experience. Examples of deep level diversity are values, attitudes
and personalities. Unlike the effects of surface-level diversity, time increases the negative effects of
deep-level diversity on team functioning and effectiveness. As team, members learn more about each
other, differences that relate to underlying values and goals become increasing apparent. These
differences create problems within the team, which results in reduced effectiveness. It should be
noted, however, that the negative effects of deep-level diversity could be managed. Deep level
diversity also shows positive effects on team capacity when members are instructed to take the
perspective of their teammates.
•
Team size – Having a large number of team members may be beneficial fir management and project
teams but not for teams engaged in production tasks. Management and project teams are involved
in work that is very complex and requires a great deal of knowledge, therefore, these teams benefit
from having additional members. However, production teams are involved in routine tasks that are
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not as complex. Having unnecessary members result in unnecessary coordination and
communication problems.
1.3. What characteristics are considered important in team composition?
Member Roles – Defined as the pattern of behaviour that a person is expected to display in a given context. One
way of distinguishing roles is by considering the specific set of tasks-focused activities that define what each
member is expected to do for them. Another way to distinguish roles is to consider what leaders and members do.
In leader-staff teams, the leader makes all the decisions and provides direction and control over members who
perform assigned tasks. It is clear that the responsibilities of the leader and the rest of the team are distinct.
Member Ability – team members possess a wide variety of abilities. Depending on the nature of the task involved
in the team’s work, some of these tasks may be important to consider in team design. It might also be a good idea
to consider cognitive abilities when designing teams. Cognitive abilities are important to many different types of
teams. However, not all members require high levels of these cognitive abilities. In tasks with an objectively
verifiable best solution, the member who possesses the highest level of the ability relevant to the task will have the
most influence on the effectiveness of the team.
Member Personality – Team members also possess a huge variety of personality traits. These traits influence the
role a person takes on, the norms that develop on the team and the team’s performance. Another factor to consider
the member’s conscientiousness. After-all, any team would benefit by having members who are dependable and
work hard to achieve team goals. One final aspect to consider is the personality of an extraversion person. An
extraverted person would perform more effectively in interpersonal contexts and are generally more positive and
optimistic.
Diversity – The degree to which members are different from each other in terms of any attribute that might be used
by someone based on categorizing people. These differences are known as team diversity.
Revision questions 2
2.1. Explain teamwork processes.
Team process is defined as the different types of communication activities and interactions that occur within teams
that contribute to their ultimate goal.
2.2. Describe the factors, which will influence the communication process.
•
Communicator issues – In-order for effective communication, communicators need to encode and
interpret messages.
•
Noise – The second factor that causes communication issues is the presence of noise that interferes with
the message being transmitted.
•
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Information richness – The amount and depth of information that is transmitted in a message.
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2.3. Does team processes affect team performance and team commitment? Explain why.
Yes, it does, teamwork processes have a moderate positive effect on team performance; this aspect of team
process has a stronger effect on performance for teams that involve more complex knowledge work, instead of
work that is less complex. Teamwork processes have a strong positive effect on team commitment. This aspect of
team process has a stronger effect on commitment for teams involved in more complex knowledge work, instead
of work that is less complex.
2.4. Discuss the steps an organisation can take to improve team processes.
•
Coordination loss – Members working to accomplish their own task and, at the same time, coordinate
their activities with those of their teammates.
•
Production booking – Members have to wait for each other before they can do their part of the work.
•
Motivational loss – Members do not work as hard as they should.
Revision questions 3
3.1. Define Leadership.
Leadership is defined as a person’s use of power and influence to direct the activities of followers towards achieving
their goals.
3.2. Describe the different types of powers that leaders possess.
•
Organisational Power – There are three types of organisational power that is obtained from a person’s
power in the organisation:
•
Legitimate power – often referred to as formal authority, legitimate power derives from a position of
authority within the organisation. Managers exercise legitimate power by instructing the employee to work
faster or to work harder. The amount of power a person has is dependent on how up high their position
is in the organisation. Legitimate power does, however, have its limits. Just because managers have, this
power does not mean that they are entitled to ask employees to do tasks that is out of their job description.
•
Reward power – A persons control over the resources or rewards that another person wants. For example,
a manager’s control over the employees pay increase.
•
Coercive power – A persons control over punishments in an organisation.
•
Personal power –Divided into two dimensions:
•
Expert power – Derives from an individual’s skills, knowledge or expertise, which others are dependent
on.
•
Referent power – A person’s desire to be associated with a particular person.
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3.3. Explain how would leaders negotiate in the workplace?
Leaders can use negotiation strategies. Leaders can choose one of two general strategies when it comes to
negotiations:
▪
Distributive bargaining – Win or lose negotiations over a “fixed pie” of resources. Meaning, when one
person wins, the other loses.
▪
Integrative bargaining – Aimed at accomplishing a win-win scenario. It encourages the use of problem
solving and mutual respect to achieve results that is satisfying for both parties.
Revision questions 4
4.1. Describe the characteristic related to a leader.
Leader effectiveness can be gauged in a number of ways. Leaders might be judged by objective evaluations of
unit performance. Another method used to judge leaders focuses more on followers, including indices such as
absenteeism, retention of talented employees, grievances filed and so forth. These indices are completed by
employee surveys that examines the perceived performance of the leader, the respect and legitimacy of the leader
and the employee commitment, satisfaction and psychological wellbeing. A source of complexity when judging
leader effectiveness, particularly with a more subjective employee, employee-centred approach is “Whom do you
ask? “. Often at times, the members of a given unit disagree about how effective the leader is. The leader-member
theory tells us how leader-member relationships develop over time. It also explains why these differences exist.
According to this theory, new leader-member relationships are marked by a role-making phase, where the manager
explains the expectations of the employee and the employee tries to fulfil these expectations.
4.2. Differentiate between transformational and transactional leadership.
Transformational leadership is inspiring followers to commit to a shared vision that provides meaning to their work,
while serving as a role model who assists followers in developing their own potential and view problems from their
perspective whereas in the transactional leadership style, the leaders will promote rewards and punishments to
the followers. This punishment system is used to keep the followers motivated for a short-term
Answer to Revision Question 5:
Revision Questions 1
1.1 Explain organisational structure.
An organisational structure formally dictates how jobs and tasks are divided and coordinated between individuals
and groups within the company. Organisational structure is simple when a company has 5 – 20 employees but
becomes very complex when an organisation has hundreds of employees.
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Revision Questions 2
2.1. Describe the steps an organisation will take to make newcomers fit with their culture.
•
Realistic job previews – Occurs during the recruitment process. This ensures the potential employee has
an accurate picture of what working for the organisation will be like, highlighting the positive and negative
aspects of the job.
•
Organisational programs – New employees attending some form of newcomer training orientation.
Orientation programs have been proven to show effective transmitters of socialization content, such that
those employees who complete orientation have higher levels of job satisfaction, commitment and
performance than those who do not.
•
Mentoring – A process by which a junior level employee develops a deep and lasting relationship with a
senior level employee, a mentor, within the organisation.
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