Final Exam Answers:
1. What are the three components of an attitude and give an example using job satisfaction?
The three components of an attitude are: belief, evaluation, and behavioral intention. Beliefs are statements of
perceptions, for example, “my boss does not pay attention to me.” Evaluations are judgments about those
beliefs (i.e., the attitude itself), for example, “I am dissatisfied with my job.” Behavioral intentions are
intentions to act in a certain way: “I am going to punch him in the face next time I see him.”
2. Which is more enduring? Mood or emotion?
Moods are more enduring…they are not tied to specific environmental inputs (or events). They are probably in
a large part either biological or trait-based in some specific way. Emotions are reactions to environmental
events.
In the organizational context, moods are mostly likely detected at the selection stage. They may also exacerbate
existing organizational problems. For example, a person more attuned or more likely to perceive events in a
negative light may feel far more dissatisfied if they experience the same negative event as a person with a
positive mood. It is likely, that is, that moods and emotions interact with one another, such that moods may
inflate or deflate the intensity of emotional reactions depending on whether the direction (positive or negative)
of the mood and the direction (positive or negative) of the emotion match or are dissimilar.
3. What’s the difference between self esteem, self-efficacy and LOC? Give an example of each.
Self-esteem is one’s view of one’s social value; that is, how accepted and valued you feel by others. Selfefficacy is one’s view of one’s capacity to succeed in a given situation at a given task. Locus of control one’s
perception of where one’s actions and decisions are controlled. That is, usually external or internal: one’s
actions are controlled from outside one’s self (i.e., external LOC) or actions are controlled from the inside of
one’s self (i.e., internal LOC).
These variables are important individual differences in the organizational context. Self-esteem is malleable, but
the degree of it’s movement is slow and quick to bounce back to original levels. Self-efficacy is very important
in the work context, because if workers do not feel like they can accomplish what they set out to do, then they
probably won’t do it. So, a low self-efficacy is a very dangerous thing. LOC is important because people make
different judgments depending on their LOC; that is, I am more apt to blame my boss for bad things and even
for good things if I have an external LOC. In this scenario, outcomes are not likely to be viewed by the worker
as under one’s control, and therefore, the worker will be less motivated to accomplish goals that are apparently
out one’s hand anyway.
4. Which is most important for work motivation, affective, continuance, or normative commitment?
Why?
Affective commitment is the most important for work motivation. Affective commitment refers to one’s feeling
of commitment to the organization. This commitment is not due to feelings of obligation or fear of punishment,
it is because one actually feels attached to the organization, takes responsibility for the organization, and may
perhaps even refer others to the organization.
Continuance commitment is really only avoiding the discomfort of leaving—changing organizations is a costly
process…in continuance commitment, the only reason one is committed is to avoid being without an
organization. This is like the employee who hates coming to work and feels no desire to be at the job, except to
not get fired. They perhaps may be thinking about changing jobs, but the person has not yet found one, so they
are just working to not be without a job.
Normative commitment refers to feelings of obligation toward an organization. In this case, the worker
perceives that he/she is “supposed” to work for the organization. However this feeling is not because of any
personal attachment to the organization, its values, etc.
5. How would you use what is known about the dispositional and situational (job characteristics)
approaches to design an effective employee selection process?
Hackman & Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model suggests that there are several important characteristics of job
that need to be present in order for the job to effectively motivate employess. These characteristics are: skill
variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. While these characteristics provide a
convenient framework from which to view and correct job designs in order to improve worker motivation, they
are not the whole picture. For example, individuals may differ as to the degree of autonomy they want in their
job; also, a person with a limited skill set would not perform well in a job that required as large skill variety.
Therefore, an effective employee selection process entails identifying the applicant’s dispositions and strengths
and matching them to a job that fits those characteristics. A person who wants to learn, grow, be challenged,
and have freedom should be placed in a job that will afford those opportunities and require those skills. A
person who wants a simple job, wants to be told what to do, and is satisfied with their current levels of skills
and abilities should not be put in a job that has been designed to require and/or provide those.
6. Why has job satisfaction not been shown to be highly related to absenteeism and turnover?
Past research have found a consistent, yet relatively small correlation between job satisfaction and absenteeism
and turnover. This is for several reasons. First, the research on job satisfaction has, by and large, revealed that
most employees are satisfied. There is not a wide range of satisfaction levels among employees.
In addition, absenteeism and turnover are work-behaviors, that, while may be related to job attitudes, they are
not attitudes… While attitudes are often thought to be predictive of behaviors, they are often not (especially not
as predictors of immediate and short-term actions).
Also, job satisfactions comes in many different forms (i.e., facets). They may be particular components of job
satisfaction that are more related to turnover and absenteeism than overall or general job satisfaction. Finally,
employees often have reasons to stay on a job even when they are dissatisfied. For example…individuals may
be affectively committed to an organization, may fear switching jobs, or may feel obligated to stay at the
organization. These commitments moderate the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover/absenteeism.
1. How did Cropanzano get interested in studying “justice”?
Cropanzano recalled the story of Ludlow, CO; a mining town that underwent a strike that ended by the National
Guard killing miners, women, and children in a face-off. He was convinced the miners were willing to risk
death and injury because they were seeking justice.
2. Give an example of a situation where justice was a problem at work.
First, it is important to understand that there is more than one type of justice. The commonly noted facets of
justice are procedural (i.e., the way things are done, the procedure for carrying out business and
rewarding/punishing, etc.), distributive (i.e., who gets what—are the “desserts” received given out fairly?), and
interactional justice (how employees are treated—are they respected, is the treatment sensitive to employees’
feelings, etc.).
At my work place, there was a problem with procedural justice that also resulted in a a problem with
distributive justice. Our tutoring center had just changed ownership from a francise to being a corporate-run
center. This intitially resulted in no problems that may usually come with such a transition—new management
seemed relatively competent, and current employees were at least amenable to her direction. However, after a
few paychecks, several of use began to realize that we were being paid $10 an hour for part of the week instead
of our usual rates. When we confronted our management about it, she didn’t actually know why this was
happening, so she contacted another center to get their explanation. Our manager then notified us that it was
company policy to pay the $10/hour rate for time when we weren’t tutoring kids. While all of use basically
accepted the fact that the company was justified for paying us less in this circumstance, the fact that we hadn’t
been told, and the fact that even the new management wasn’t aware of this policy made the whole dealing
appear quite unfair and underhanded.
3. Is it better to ‘distance’ oneself from the negative outcome? Or not?
4. Equity, need, equality; what’s the difference?
Equity refers to the distribution of rewards in accordance to performance, effort, or merit “to each according
to his ability”. Need refers to the distribution of rewards in accordance to the degree of need  “to each
according to his need.” Equality referes to the equal distribution of goods/rewards (i.e., everyone receives the
same amount).
5. How does a defined comp package (e.g. for Dick Grasso), differ from traditional retirement and what
are implications for the effects of each on the employer/employee “contract”?
When a CEO or other top company leader has a huge no-fail retirement package, it is usually seen as an
injustice. Everyday employees who work and toil to build and maintain their retirement packages may feel a
violation of distributive justice when the big-cheese retires with enough nest eggs to keep him alive for 40
lifetimes.
1. What is leadership? How does it differ from management?
The main distinction is mostly semantic. That is, leader refers to the person who is directing a group of people
in order to accomplish or obtain some goal or task. Manager is, semantically, a job title—it is the position of
being in leadership. However, the behaviors that are emitted by “managers” and “leaders” are quite the same. In
the words of Day (2001), The manager seeks to bring order and consistency to work; the leader seeks change. It
seems that the distinction may be necessary to make in order to have a comprehensive theory of leadership. One
can be possess the title of “manager” without truly being a leader. Or one could be in leadership position, but
not be able to manage. The two concepts are intimately intertwined.
Some specific behaviors that are jointly part of effective leadership as well as management are: “guiding,
directing, motivating subordinates, training, coaching, and developing subordinates, maintaining good working
relationships, coordinating subordinates and other resources to get the job done, delgating, and
settling/influencing.” Perhaps effective leadership is a more general concept that can apply to a wide variety of
situations, while effective management is often very context-specific—that is, in different situations and
business types, management may take many different, specific forms that are all influence by good leadership.
Leadership deals with how it is to be done; management deals with WHAT is to be done.
2. How has trait theory evolved over the past half century and where does it stand now?
In the past, trait theory of leadership dominated the discussion. Then, when results were repeatedly mixed, the
trait theory began to dwindle. In the current day, trait theory is beginning to take hold once again. This is mostly
because research has repeatedly demonstrated that a 5-factor model of personality is empirically sound and
scientifically adequate. Because much research is being done to accurately measure the Big-5 traits, this
research can inform that relating traits to leadership. In fact, some research has found a consistent relationship
between the traits of extraversion, emotional stability, and openness; other resarch has found that
conscientiousness was a predictor of leader effectiveness.
There is also some research linking elements of the Big 5 with transformational effectiveness, but the evidence
is currently mixed. In total, all the Big 5 traits are implicated (either directly or indirectly) in the aggregated
extant leadership theories. Also, an emerging area of research on this topic is find out which personality traits
may predict leader ineffectiveness.
3. What duties (dimensions) distinguish leadership duties from those of a manager (Borman & Brush,
'93)?
Borman & Brush created a list of 18 dimensions of managerial responsibility. This list also contains 6 areas that
are also leadership responsibilities (according to Landy & Conte). While there is a great deal of overlap between
the duties, there are a few duties that are more leadership than manager bxs. These include those that are
uniquely interpersonal in nature (e.g., motivating subordinates, coaching, coordinating, delegating, and
influencing).
4. In what way does House/Mitchell's Path-Goal Theory rely on Expectancy theory notions?
Path-Goal Theory assumes that “the leader’s responsibility is to show the subordinate the path to valued
subordinate goals.” Expectancy of VIE theory postulates that people are motivated by the valence associated
with outcomes, the instumentality of the behavior to obtain the outcome, and the degree to which the person
expects to receive the outcome if the behavior succeeds.
To put it simply, Expectancy theory postulates that the person must want the outcome, must associate the
behavior with the outcome, and must expect the outcome to occur. This is the underlying assumption of pathgoal theory. In that, the leader’s behavior will be viewed by suboridinates in the way consistent with
expectancy. If the leader’s behavior is provides immediate desired outcomes or will provide desired outcomes
in the future, that behavior will be looked upon positively.
They also postulated that there are four different leadership styles, each of which work best in different
situations (depending on the subordinate characteristics and the situational characteristics). For example,
directive leadership (i.e., specific task-relevant scheduling of the activities of subordinates…) works best in
situations that where the job is not clearly defined or the I-e relationship is not clear to subordinates. The
leader’s job is to show subordinates the way to achieve desired outcomes. Specifically, the leader should reduce
role ambiguity so that the effort-performance (expectancy) relationship is strengthened, the performance—
reward relationship is strengthened by making reward contingencies clearer (instrumentality), and the
subordinates have increased desire to obtain the outcomes (valence) by the leader increasing the strength or size
of the incentives. This should all result in increased employee effort.
Supportive leadership works best in situations when the job is boring and the subordinate lacks self-confidence.
In this case, the subordinate needs the job to me less boring (this will increase intrinsic valence of work) and the
leader should make the subordinate more confidence of their effort-performance expectancy (expectancy). This
should result in increased effort.
5. How are LMX (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, '75) and Path -Goal (House, '71) similar and dissimilar?
LMX is short for leader-member exchange theory, which suggests that leaders adopt different behaviors with
different subordinates. And that the particular bx pattern that the leader develops over time is due to (largely)
the quality of the leader-subordinate relationship. LMX proposes that subordinates fall into two distinct groups
(i.e., in-group and out-group). The in-group are those subordinates with whom the leader develops high-quality
relationships; the leader is able to affect member bx without resorting to formal authority or punishments. Outgroup members have low-quality relationships with the leader—they have little lattitude for negotiating their
work roles.
Path-Goal theory suggests that leaders behave differently with different subordinates and in different situations.
The leader’s job in PG is to show the Sub how to attain the desired outcomes/rewards. They postulated that
there are four different leadership styles that work best in different situations (e.g., directive, supportive,
participative, and achievement-oriented).
These two theories are similar in the assumption that the leader-sub relationship is not necessarily static and
fixed, and that leaders are not soley defined by their own personal styles, but tend to change their behaviors
depending on what they encounter. In this way, both theories are contextual to a very large degree. Also, both
theories suggest that a positive, supportive relationship often results in increase job satisfaction, motivation, and
performance.
The two theories also agree that the relationship between a leader and sub may change over time. LMX calls
this the “life-cycle” of the relationship—all relationships start out the same, but, over time, in-group
relationships develop; all others are left as out-group. PG states that this change in relationship style is because
of an increase in follower maturity.
The two theories are also different in that LMX is not based on an instrumental or behavioristic approach to
motivation. It characterizes the l-m relationship as motivating in and of itself, without the need for desired
outcomes/rewards, etc. PG suggests that the leaders behaviors should be geared at showing subs how to obtian
the goals that they want (show them the path to the goal).
Also, PG does not distinguish between two levels of quality in lm relationships. It seems that PG is a largely
behavioristic theory, while LMX is a largely social theory. LMX postulates that high-quality relationships (ingroup)  org comm, engagement… high-quality relationship are not context-specific, where in PG, the context
determines which relationship types works best.
6. What is the difference between transactional and transformational leadership style?
While transactional leadership is not a completely bad way to lead, it is not the most effective in many
situations. Transactional leaders tend to use rewards/punishments as the means to motivate their subordinates.
Transactional leaders may show their subordinates what bxs have to be executed for them to obtain their desired
outcomes (this is quite similar to House/Mitchell’s PG theory).
The transformational leadership style is instead characterized by one of four main strategies: 1) idealized
influence, 2) inspirational motivation, 3) intellectual stimulation, and 4) individualized consideration. The
leader uses these behaviors to lead and motivate his/her employees.
Transformational leadership is the “interplay” b/w leaders and followers to bring each other to a higher moral
and motivational level. The relationship is transforming. Transactional leadership does not discuss the
importance of a relationship—the relationship is simply a means to an end—reward.
7. What are the relationships between the transformational characteristics and French and Raven's Bases
of Power?
French and Raven’s bases of power are: 1) reward power (mediate or dispense rewards), 2) coercive power
(punishments), 3) legitimate power (the “right” of the supervisor), 4) referent power (sub wants to act/be like
super), and 5) expert power (the super have the knowledge).
Transformatinal leadership has mostly to do with what French and Raven call “referent power.” The
characteristics of referent power are quite simliar to transformational leadership. Referent power can best be
increased and maintained by showing acceptance, acting supportive, defending, keeping promises, and making
self-sacrifices to show concern. It also involves being a role model and indicating how important requests are.
It is especially similar to transformational leadeship’s idealized influence, which is defined as displaying
conviction, emphasizing trust, taking stands on difficult issues, emphasizing importance of commitment, and
being aware of ethical consequences. Also, individualized consideration: deal with others as individuals,
consider individual needs, etc.
8. How are transformational leadership characteristics related to intrinsic motivation constructs?
The characteristic of individualized consideration is parallel to the intrinsic motivation construct of autonomy.
A leader that exercises IC is appealing to subs’ needs to feel autonomous by considering the subs feelings,
abilities, needs, etc.
1. What do groups have in common with teams?
Groups and teams are basically the same thing. However, teams almost always have a specific function or task
around with the team functions. Groups may just be collections of individuals, without a coherent purpose, etc.
2. What are some reasons why it is so difficult to conduct good experimental research with teams?
(creative thought question)
One of the major reasons is that, when a group is the unit of analysis, then the sample size decreases
dramatically, making it difficult to obtain the nesessary statistical power as well as the sample size needed to be
representative of the population of work groups.
Another reason is its very difficult to measure not only the group outcomes, but also the group processes. For
example, how does one define group effectiveness? Products sold? Goals met? Member satisfaction? Or
possible others?
3. Describe, in terms of autonomy, how self-managed teams differs from a self-directed team.
Self-managed teams can use their own discretion within certain boundaries. Self-directed teams are basically
completely
5. What are the most important KSAs and personality attributes for successful team composition?
(Guzzo & Dickson, '96; Barrick et al., '98)
According to Barrick, et al., (1998), teams composed of members high in COG ABILITY,
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS, AGREEABLENESS, EXTRAVERSION, AND EMOTIONAL STABILITY were
rated as more effective.
Stevens & Campion (1999) created the Teamwork Test. This test assesses Interpersonal KSAs and SelfManagement KSAs. The interpersonal KSAs are composed of (1) conflict resolution, (2) collaborative problem
solving, (3) communication. The self-management KSAs are composed of (1) goal-setting and perf
management, and (2) planning and task coordination.
They found that these KSAs predict team-work performance even when controlling for cognitive ability. Also
of note, is the finding that having too much extraversion may not be a good thing, because even though the
quantitity of intra-group communication is increase, the quality of that communication is not neccesarily any
better.
6. How can group level rewards be used to reduce social loafing?
The the reward is group-level, and the task requires the participation of all group members, then the social
pressue to work hard and not loaf will override the social loafing tendency. Everyone in the group is responsible
to obtain the group-level reward, this increases the inner drive of the group and heightens the norm to work to
the goal of the group.
8. Most experts believe that for groups to be effective they must be rewarded. But how would you reward
them?
Because of the nature of the team the threat of conflict, social loafing, and various other social-psychological
phenomena, it is imperative that teams be rewarded as a team.
Drawing on VIE theory, the leader must identify a reward that holds significant positive valence for the team.
The leader must also make plain that the desired outcome can be obtained, and only obtained if the group works
together to meet its objective. And, the leader also have to make clear that the effort team members put in to the
task will improve the performance of the group to a level that can obtain the desired outcome. With these
characteristics in place, the team is most likely to function well AS A TEAM in order to reach its goal and
obtain the desired team outcome. If one rewards individuals, then many different problems may emerge. First,
perceptions of injustice (most likely distributive) may occur. Also, a team member who does not desire the
reward as much as some other member may not work as hard, and since other team members are not necessary
to obtain an individual reward, there is no social pressure on the loafing individual to perform for the team.
9. Does intrinsic motivation theory apply to groups, and if so, how?
Yes, it does. Intrinsic motivation theory has two main components: first, individuals have different dispositional
levels of intrinsic motivation, and second, the environment can affect our level of intrinsic motivation.
In the context of a group, these factors come into play at the individual level. That is, individuals in the team
need to feel autonomous, competent, and related.
The relatedness need is rather easiliy taken care of, especially if the cohesion of the goup is high. Autononmy is
more difficult to come by—group members and the group leader have to continually respect the opinions of and
directions of everyone else. Competantcy can be either supported or undermined by group or leader behavior. In
the context of a group, there are many different variables that could affect individual member’s feelings of
competance. In fact, the group itself may function as an organic whole, with all members identifying with the
group feeling. If the leader treats the group without autonomy support, and without facilitating competence, the
entire group may lose intrinsic motivation.