HROB 2090 MIDTERM NOTES

Chapter 1 - Organizational Management and Behaviour

Organizations: social inventions for accomplishing common goals through group effort
- Essential is the coordinated presence of people, not things

Organization is concerned with how organizations can survive and adapt to change;
Certain behaviours are necessary for survival and adaptation: people have to
- Be motivated to join and remain in organization
- Carry out basic work reliably in terms of productivity, quality and service
- Be willing to continuously learn and upgrade their knowledge and skills
- Be flexible and innovative

Organizational Behaviour: the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups in

organizations studies these attitudes and behaviours and provides insight about effectively
managing and changing them;
- How they can be better structured and how events in their external environment can
affect organizations
- Study how satisfied people are with their jobs and how committed they feel to goals
- Behaviours like cooperation, conflict, innovation, resignation, or ethical lapses

Human Resources Management: programs practices and system to acquire, develop,

motivate and retain employees in organizations

Management: art of getting things accomplished in organizations through others

Evidence Based Management: translating principles based on the best available scientific
evidence from social science and organizational research, rather than personal preference and
unsystematic experience

Classical Viewpoint: an early prescription on management that advocated a high specialization

of labour, intense coordination, and centralized decision making

Scientific Management: Frederick Taylor system for using research to determine the optimum
degree of specialization and standardization of work tasks

Bureaucracy: Max Weber’s ideal type of organization that included a strict chain of command,
detailed rules, high specialization, centralized power and selection and promotion based on
technical competence

Human Relations Movement: a critique of classical management and bureaucracy that

advocated management styles that were more participative and oriented toward employee
needs
Contingency Approach: an approach to management that recognizes that there is no one way
to manage and that an appropriate management style depends on the demands of the situation

Managerial Roles (Mintzbergs)

Interpersonal Roles: expected behaviours that have to do with establishing and maintaining
interpersonal relations
- Figurehead: serve as symbols of their organization rather than active decision makers
- Leadership role: managers select, mentor, reward and discipline employees
- Liaison role: managers maintain horizontal contacts inside and outside organization

Informational roles: concerned with various ways managers receive and transmit information
- Monitor role: managers scan internal and external environments of firm to follow current
performance and keep themselves informed of new ideas and trends
- Disseminator role: managers send info on both facts and preferences to others
- Spokesperson role: concerns mainly sending messages into the organization’s external
environment

Decision Roles: discussed deals with decision making

- Entrepreneur role: managers turn problems and opportunities into plans for improved
changes
- Disturbance Handler role: managers deal with problems stemming from employee
conflicts and other critical resources
- Negotiator role: managers conduct major negotiations with other organizations or
individuals

Workplace Spirituality: workplace that provides employees with meaning, purpose, sense of
community and connection to others

Positive organizational behaviour (POB): study and application of positively oriented human
resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed and
effectively managed for performance improvement

Psychological capital (PsyCap): an individual’s positive psychological state of development

that is categorized by self efficiency, optimism, hope and reliance

Talent Management: an organization processes for attracting, developing, retaining and

utilizing people with the required skills to meet current and future business needs

Work engagement: a positive work related state of mind that is characterized by vigour,
deduction and absorption
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Chapter 2 - Personality and Learning

Interactionist Approach: individual’s attitudes and behaviour are a function of both dispositions
and the situation; this approach is mostly widely accepted perspective within organizational
behaviour

Trait Activation Theory: traits lead to certain behaviours only when the situation makes the
need for the trait

5 Factor Model of Personality:

Extraversion: the extent to which a person is outgoing vs. shy. People who score high tend to
be sociable, outgoing, energetic, joyful, and assertive. (important for jobs that require a lot of
interpersonal interaction, such as sales management) SOCIAL, TALKATIVE VS WITHDRAWN
AND SHY

Emotional Stability: a person has appropriate emotional control. People with high emotional
stability are self confident and have high self esteem. STABLE CONFIDENT VS DEPRESSED
ANXIOUS

Agreeableness: the extent to which a person is friendly and approachable. Warm, considerate,
altruistic, friendly, sympathetic, cooperative and eager to help others. Interaction and involve
helping, cooperating and nurturing others. TOLERANT, COOPERATIVE VS COLD, RUDE

Conscientiousness: the degree to which a person is responsible and achievement orientated.

Perform well on most jobs. DEPENDABLE, RESPONSIBLE VS CARELESS, IMPULSIVE

Openness to Experience: extent to which a person thinks flexibly and is receptive to new
ideas. Do well in jobs that involve learning and creativity. CURIOUS, ORIGINAL VS DULL,
UNIMAGINATIVE

Locus of Control: a set of beliefs about whether one’s behaviour is controlled mainly by
internal or external forces.

Self-Monitoring: the extent to which people observe and regulate how they appear and behave
in social settings and relationships

Behavioural Plasticity Theory: people with low self esteem tend to be more susceptible to
external and social influences than those who have high self esteem

Positive Reinforcement: application or addition of a stimulus that in turn increases or

maintains the probability of some behavior
Negative Reinforcement: removal of a stimulus that in turn increases or maintains the
probability of some behaviour

Organizational errors involving reinforcement: confusing rewards with reinforces and

neglecting diversity in preferences for reinforcement

Performance feedback is good to use when

- Conveyed in positive manner
- Delivered immediately after performance is observed
- Represented visually such as in graph or chart form
- Specific to the behaviour that is being targeted for the feedback

Reducing probability of behaviour….

- Extinction: the gradual dissipation of behaviour following the termination of
reinforcement, if the behaviour is not reinforced, it will gradually dissipate or be
extinguished
- Punishment: application of an aversive stimulus following some behaviour deigned to
decrease the probability of the behaviour

Social Cognitive Theory (SCT): emphasizes the role of cognitive processes in learning and in
the regulation of people’s behaviours; suggests that human behaviour can best be explained
through a system of triadic reciprocal causation (which person factors and environmental factors
work together and interact to influence people’s behaviours)

Organizational Behaviour Modification (OB Mod): the systematic use of learning principles to
influence organizational behaviour

Behaviour Modelling training (BMT): one of the most widely used and effective methods of
training, involving a 5 steps based on observational component of social cognitive theory

Practice Quiz:

1. Personality will have the most impact in which situation?

---------> weak situations with well defined roles, rules, and contingencies.

2. Emotional stability helps support positive work performance if

---------> the person is more calm and has highly effective interactions with co-workers
and customers.

3. Janet has shown her boss how effective she is on the job because she is naturally
curious about what is happening with her company, has broad interests and has a
vibrant imagination. She is demonstrating great
---------> openness to experience
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 - Central traits: personal characteristics of a target person that are of particular interest to
the perceiver (kindness to others)

Implicit Personality Theory: theories that people have about which personality characteristics
go together

Projection: the tendency for perceivers to attribute their own thoughts and feelings to others;

Stereotyping: tendency to generalize about people in a certain social category and ignore
variations among them

Attribution: the process by which causes or motivates the assigned to explain peoples
behaviour

Dispositional attributions: explanations for behaviour based on an actor’s personality to

intellect

Situational attributions: explanations for behaviour based on an actor’s external situation or

environment (accident based on situation)

Fundamental attribution error: is the tendency people have to overemphasize personal

characteristics and ignore situational factors in judging others' behavior

Consistency cues: attribution cues that reflect how consistently a person engages in a
behaviour over time

Consensus cues: attribution cues that reflect how a person’s behaviour compares with that of
others

Distinctiveness cues: attribution cues that reflect the extent to which a person engages in
some behaviour across a variety of situations

Dispositional Factors: (also known as Internal Factors) are individual characteristics that
influence behavior and actions in a person. Things like individual personality traits,
temperament, and genetics are all dispositional factors.

Cost Argument: as organizations become more diverse, the cost of a poor job in integrating
workers will increase. Those who can handle this create cost advantages over those who don’t

Resource-acquisition argument: companies develop reputations on favourability as

prospective employers for women and ethnic minorities. Those with the best reputations for
managing diversity will win the competition for the best personnel. As the labour pool shrinks
and changes composition, this edge will become increasingly important:
Marketing argument: For multinational organizations, the insight and cultural sensitivity that
members with roots in other countries bring to the marketing effort should improve these efforts
in important ways.

Creativity argument: Diversity of perspective and less emphasis on conformity to norms of the
past (which characterize the modern approach to management of diversity) should improve the
level of creativity
Problem Solving argument: heterogeneity in decision and problem solving groups potentially
produces better decisions through a wider range of perspectives and more thorough critical
analysis of issues

System Flexibility argument: an implication of the multicultural model for managing diversity is
that the system will become less determinant, less standardized and therefore more fluid. The
increased fluidity should create greater flexibility to react to environmental changes

Perceived Organizational Support (POS): employee’s general belief that their organization
values their contribution and cares about their well being

Organization Support Theory: states that employees who have strong perceptions of
organizational support feel an obligation to care about the organization’s welfare and to help the
organization achieve its objectives

Perceived Supervisor support: employee’s general belief that their supervisor values their
contribution and cares about their well being

Practice Quiz:

1. My perceptions of people are strongly influenced by how kind they are to others. Which
concept explains my reaction?
---------> Central trait

2. According to Bruner's model of the perceptual process, when an unfamiliar target is

encountered, we are likely to be ________ to target cues. Once the target has been
categorized, however, we become ________ selective in our cue search.
----------> Open; more

3. Samantha engages in a low consensus behaviour. What other combination of cues will
ensure that an observer makes a dispositional attribution about the behaviour?
----------> The behaviour is also low in distinctiveness and high in consistency.

4. Which of the following statements may indicate projection by the speaker?

----------> "Most of my sales staff think like I think."
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 - Emotional Contagion: tendency for moods and emotions to spread between people or
throughout a group

- Emotional Regulation: requirement for people to conform to certain “display rules” in

their job behaviour in spite of their true mood or emotions

Turnover: refers to resignation from an organization

Organizational Citizenship Behaviour: voluntary, informal behaviour that contributes to

organizational effectiveness (customer satisfaction and profit)

Organizational Commitment: an attitude that reflects the strength of the linkage between an
employee and an organization; three types:

- Affective commitment: a commitment based on a person’s identification and

involvement with an organization. People with a high affective commitment stay with an
organization because they want to
- Continuous commitment: a commitment based on the costs that would be incurred in
leaving an organization. People with high continuous commitment stay with an
organization because they have to
- Normative Commitment: a commitment based on ideology or a feeling of obligation to
an organization. People with high normative commitment stay with an organization
because they think they should do so

Practice Quiz:

1. Which of the following is not a job input, according to equity theory?

---------> Pay

2. Which one of your friends is experiencing a "honeymoon effect"?

----------> Thelma has just quit a job that had many things she did not like, started a new
job with many things she likes, and does not yet know about some other things she will
not like

3. If a manager wants to increase the job satisfaction of employees, he should

---------> provide rewards for good performance

4. As a manager, you have to communicate to employees their work outcomes. You are
concerned about interactional fairness, which means that your communication must be:
---------> respectful and informative

5. Your three best friends all found jobs after graduation. Jack has just found out that he
has to attend a training program. Jamal has just announced that he is getting a divorce.
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