Part 4: Leading
Chapter 8
Foundations of Individual and Group
Behavior
PowerPoint Presentation by Charlie Cook
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All rights reserved.

L E A R N I N G O U T C O M E S
1.
Define the focus and goals of organizational behavior.
2.
Identify and describe the three components of attitudes.
3.
Explain cognitive dissonance.
4.
Describe the Myers-Briggs personality-type framework and its use in organizations.
5.
Define perception and describe the factors that can shape or distort perception.
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8 –2

L E A R N I N G O U T C O M E S (cont’d)
6.
Explain how managers can shape employee behavior.
7.
Contrast formal and informal groups.
8.
Explain why people join groups.
9.
State how roles and norms influence employees’ behavior.
10.
Describe how group size affects group behavior.
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8 –3

• The study of the actions of people at work
• The focus of OB
 Individual behaviors
 Personality, perception, learning, and motivation
 Group behaviors
 Norms, roles, team-and conflict
• The goals of OB
 To explain
 To predict behavior
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8 –4

The Organization as an Iceberg Metaphor
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EXHIBIT 8.1
8 –5

• Employee productivity
 The efficiency and effectiveness of employees
• Absenteeism
 The election by employees to attend work
• Turnover
 The exit of an employee from an organization
• Organizational citizenship
 Employee behaviors that promote the welfare of the organization
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8 –6

• Attitudes
 Valuative statements concerning objects, people, or events
 Cognitive component
– The beliefs, opinions, knowledge, and information held by a person
 Affective component
– The emotional, or feeling, segment of an attitude
 Behavioral component
– An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something
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8 –7

• Job satisfaction
 An employee’s general attitude toward his or her job.
• Job involvement
 The degree to which an employee identifies with his or her job, actively participates in it, and considers his or her job performance important for self-worth.
• Organizational commitment
 An employee’s orientation toward the organization in terms of his or her loyalty to, identification with, and involvement in the organization.
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8 –8

• Cognitive dissonance
 Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes
 Inconsistency is uncomfortable and individuals will seek a stable state with a minimum of dissonance.
 The desire to reduce dissonance is determined by:
– The importance of the elements creating the dissonance
– The degree of influence the individual believes he or she has over the elements
– The rewards that may be involved.
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8 –9

• Personality is the combination of the psychological traits that characterize that person.
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
 A method of identifying personality types uses four dimensions of personality to identify 16 different personality types
• Big Five model
 Five-factor model of personality that includes extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience
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8 –10

• Extroversion versus introversion (EI)
 An individual’s orientation toward the inner world of ideas (I) or the external world of the environment (E).
• Sensing versus intuitive (SN)
 An individual’s reliance on information gathered from the external world (S) or from the world of ideas (N).
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8 –11

• Thinking versus feeling (TF)
 One’s preference for evaluating information in an analytical manner (T) or on the basis of values and beliefs (F).
• Judging versus perceiving (JP).
 Reflects an attitude toward the external world that is either task completion oriented (J) or information seeking (P).
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8 –12

Characteristics Frequently Associated with Myers-Briggs Types
Source: Modified and reproduced by special permission of the publisher, Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., Palo Alto, CA 94303, from
Introduction to Type , 6th ed., by Isabel Myers-Briggs, and Katherine C. Briggs. Copyright 1998 by Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without publisher’s written consent. Introduction to Type is a trademark of Consulting Psychologists
Press, Inc. (The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and MBTI are registered trademarks of Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.)
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EXHIBIT 8.2
8 –13

• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
• Emotional stability
• Openness to experience
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8 –14

Extroversion
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Emotional stability
A personality dimension that describes the degree to which someone is sociable, talkative, and assertive.
A personality dimension that describes the degree to which someone is good-natured, cooperative, and trusting.
A personality dimension that describes the degree to which someone is responsible, dependable, persistent, and achievement oriented.
A personality dimension that describes the degree to which someone is calm, enthusiastic, and secure
(positive) or tense, nervous, depressed, and insecure
(negative).
Openness to experience A personality dimension that describes the degree to which someone is imaginative, artistically sensitive, and intellectual.
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8 –15

• An assortment of noncognitive skills, capabilities, and competencies that influence a person’s ability to cope with environmental demands and pressures
 Dimensions of EI
 Self-awareness own feelings
 Self-management of own emotions
 Self-motivation in face of setbacks

Empathy for others’ feelings

Social skills to handle others’ emotions
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8 –16

• Locus of control
 A personality attribute that measures the degree to which people believe that they are masters of their own fate
• Machiavellianism (“Mach”)
 A measure of the degree to which people are pragmatic, maintain emotional distance, and believe that ends can justify means
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8 –17

• Self-esteem (SE)
 An individual’s degree of life dislike for him- or herself
• Self-monitoring
 A measure of an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors
• Propensity for risk taking
 The willingness to take chances —a preference to assume or avoid risk
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8 –18

Performanc e
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8 –19

Holland’s Typology of Personality and Sample
Occupations
• Realistic
 Prefers physical activities that require skill, strength, and coordination
• Conventional
 Prefers rule-regulated, orderly and unambiguous activities
• Investigative
 Prefers activities involving thinking, organizing, and understanding
• Social
 Prefers activities that involve helping and developing others
• Enterprising
 Prefers verbal activities where there are opportunities to influence others and attain power
• Artistic
 Prefers ambiguous and unsystematic activities that allow creative expression
Source: Reproduced by special permission of the publisher,
Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc., Making Vocational
Choices, 3rd ed., copyright 1973, 1985, 1992, 1997 by
Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. All rights reserved.
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EXHIBIT 8.3
8 –20

Relationship Among Occupational Personality Types
Source: Reproduced by special permission of the publisher, Psychological
Assessment Resources, Inc.,
Making Vocational Choices,
3rd ed., copyright 1973, 1985,
1992, 1997 by Psychological
Assessment Resources, Inc.
All rights reserved.
EXHIBIT 8.4
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8 –21

• There do appear to be intrinsic differences in personality among individuals;
• There are different types of jobs
• People in job environments congruent with their personality types should be more satisfied and less likely to resign voluntarily than people in incongruent jobs.
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8 –22

• Perception
 A process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.
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8 –23

• Personal characteristics
 Attitudes
 Personality
 Motives
 Interests
 Past experiences
 Expectations
• Target characteristics
 Relationship of a target to its background
 Closeness and/or similarity to other things
 The context in objects is seen
 Other situational factors.
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8 –24

Perceptual Challenges: What Do You See?
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EXHIBIT 8.5
8 –25

• Attribution theory
 A theory based on the premise that we judge people differently depending on the meaning we attribute to a given behavior
 Internally caused behavior is believed to be under the control of the individual.
 Externally caused behavior results from outside causes; that is, the person is seen as having been forced into the behavior by the situation.
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8 –26

• Distinctiveness
 Whether an individual displays a behavior in many situations or whether it is particular to one situation.
• Consensus
 If the individual responds in the same way as everyone else faced with a similar situation responds.
• Consistency
 The individual engages in the same behaviors regularly and consistently over time.
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8 –27

The Process of Attribution Theory
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EXHIBIT 8.6
8 –28

• Fundamental attribution error
 The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others.
• Self-serving bias
 The tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors while putting the blame for failures on external factors.
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8 –29

Distortions in Shortcut Methods in Judging
Others
Selectivity
Assumed similarity
Stereotyping
Halo effect
Self-fulfilling prophecy
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EXHIBIT 8.7
8 –30

• Learning defined
 Any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience
• Operant conditioning (B. F. Skinner)
 A behavioral theory that argues that voluntary, or learned, behavior is a function of its consequences
 Reinforcement increases the likelihood that behavior will be repeated; behavior that is not rewarded or is punished is less likely to be repeated.
 Rewards are most effective if they immediately follow the desired response.
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8 –31

• Social learning theory
 The theory that people can learn through observation and direct experience; by modeling the behavior of others
• Modeling processes
 Attentional processes.
 Retention processes
 Motor reproduction processes
 Reinforcement processes
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8 –32

• Shaping behavior
 Systematically reinforcing each successive step that moves an individual closer to a desired behavior
• Four ways in which to shape behavior:
 Positive reinforcement
 Negative reinforcement
 Punishment
 Extinction.
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8 –33

• Group
 Two or more interacting and interdependent individuals who come together to achieve particular objectives
• Role
 A set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone in a given position in a social unit
• Norms
 Acceptable standards (e.g., effort and performance, dress, and loyalty) shared and enforced by the members of a group
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8 –34

• Status
 A prestige grading, position, or rank within a group
 May be informally conferred by characteristics such as education, age, skill, or experience.
 Anything can have status value if others in the group admire it.
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8 –35

Reasons Why People Join Groups
Security
Status
Self-esteem
Affiliation
Power
Goal achievement
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EXHIBIT 8.8
8 –36

Examples of Cards Used in Asch Study
Solomon Asch and Group Conformity:
Does the desire to be accepted as a part of a group leave one susceptible to conforming to the group’s norms? Will the group exert pressure that is strong enough to change a member’s attitude and behavior? According to the research by Solomon Asch, the answer appears to be yes.
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EXHIBIT 8.9
8 –37

• Social loafing
 The tendency of an individual in a group to decrease his or her effort because responsibility and individual achievement cannot be measured
• Group cohesiveness
 The degree to which members of a group are attracted to each other and share goals
 Size, work environment, length of time in existence, and group-organization goal congruency affect the degree of group cohesiveness.
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8 –38

The Relationship Between Group
Cohesiveness and Productivity
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EXHIBIT 8.10
8 –39