Organizational Behavior Midterm
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197 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Surface level diversity | differences in easily perceived characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, age or disability, that do not necessarily reflect the ways people think or feel but that may activate certain stereotypes |
| Deep level diversity | differences in values, personality, and work preferences that become progressively more important for determining similarity as people get to know one another better |
| Discrimination | noting of a difference between things; often we refer to unfair discrimination, which means making judgments about individuals based on stereotypes regarding their demographic group |
| Biographical characteristics | personal characteristics-such as age, gender, race, and length of tenure-that are objective and easily obtained from personnel records. These characteristics are representative of surface-level diversity |
| Ability | an individual's capacity to perform the various tasks in a job |
| Intellectual abilities | the capacity to do mental activities-thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving |
| General mental ability (GMA) | an overall factor of intelligence, as suggested by the positive correlations among specific intellectual ability dimensions |
| Physical abilities | the capacity to do tasks that demand stamina, dexterity, strength, and similar characteristics |
| Diversity management | the process and programs by which managers make everyone more aware of and sensitive to the needs and differences of others |
| Manager | an individual who achieves goals through other people |
| Organization | a consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals |
| Planning | a process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing plans to coordinate activities |
| Organizing | determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made |
| Leading | a function that includes motivating employees, directing others, selecting the most effective communication channels, and resolving conflicts |
| Controlling | monitoring activities to ensure they are being accomplished as planned and correcting any significant deviations |
| Technical skills | the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise |
| Human skills | the ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups |
| Conceptual skills | the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations |
| Organizational behavior | a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization's effectiveness |
| Systematic study | looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence |
| Evidence-based management (EBM) | the basing of managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence |
| Intuition | a gut feeling not necessarily supported by research |
| Psychology | the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals |
| Social psychology | an area of psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one another |
| Sociology | the study of people in relation to their social environment or culture |
| Anthropology | the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities |
| Contingency variables | situational factors: variables that moderate the relationship between two or more variables |
| Workforce diversity | the concept that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and inclusion of other diverse groups |
| Positive organizational scholarship | an area of OB research that concerns how organizations develop human strength, foster vitality and resilience, and unlock potential |
| Ethical dilemmas and ethical choices | situations in which individuals are required to define right and wrong conduct |
| Model | an abstraction of reality. A simplified representation of some real world phenomenon |
| Dependent variable | a response that is affected by an independent variable |
| Productivity | a performance measure that includes effectiveness and efficiency |
| Effectiveness | achievement of goals |
| Efficiency | the ratio of effective output to the input required to achieve it |
| Absenteeism | the failure to report to work |
| Turnover | voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization |
| Deviant workplace behavior | voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and, in so doing, threatens the well-being of the organization or its members |
| Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) | discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee's formal job requirements but that nevertheless promotes the effective functioning of the organization |
| Job satisfaction | a positive feeling about one's job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics |
| Independent variable | the presumed cause of some change in a dependent variable |
| Four Functions of Management | Planning, organizing, leading, controlling |
| Attitudes | evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events |
| Cognitive component | the opinion or belief segment of an attitude |
| Affective component | the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude |
| Behavioral component | an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something |
| Cognitive dissonance | any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes |
| Job satisfaction | a positive feeling about one's job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics |
| Job involvement | the degree to which a person identifies with a job, actively participates in it, and considers performance important to self-worth |
| Psychological empowerment | Employees' belief in the degree to which they affect their work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, and their perceived autonomy in their work |
| Organizational commitment | the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization |
| Affective commitment | an emotional attachment to an organization and a belief in its values |
| Continuance commitment | the perceived economic value of remaining with an organization compared with leaving it |
| Normative commitment | an obligation to remain with an organization for moral or ethical reasons |
| Perceived organizational support (POS) | the degree to which employees believe an organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being |
| Employee engagement | an individual's involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the work he or she does |
| Core self-evaluations | bottom-line conclusions individuals have about their capabilities, competence, and worth as a person |
| Exit | dissatisfaction expressed through behavior directed toward leaving the organization |
| Voice | dissatisfaction expressed through active and constructive attempts to improve conditions |
| Loyalty | dissatisfaction expressed by passively waiting for conditions to improve |
| Neglect | dissatisfaction expressed through allowing conditions to worsen |
| Affect | a broad range of feelings that people experience |
| Emotions | intense feelings that are directed at someone or something |
| Moods | feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus |
| Positive affect | a mood dimension that consists of specific positive emotions such as excitement, self-assurance, and cheerfulness at the high end and boredom, sluggishness, and tiredness at the low end |
| Negative affect | a mood dimension that consists of emotions such as nervousness, stress, and anxiety at the high end and relaxation, tranquility, and poise at the low end |
| Positivity offset | the tendency of most individuals to experience a mildly positive mood at zero input (when nothing in particular is going on) |
| Affect intensity | individual differences in the strength with which individuals experience their emotions |
| Illusory correlation | the tendency of people to associate two events when in reality there is no connection |
| Emotional labor | a situation in which an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions at work |
| Emotional dissonance | inconsistencies between the emotions people feel and the emotions they project |
| Felt emotions | an individual's actual emotions |
| Displayed emotions | emotions that are organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given job |
| Surface acting | hiding one's inner feelings and forging emotional expressions in responses to display rules |
| Deep acting | trying to modify one's true inner feelings based on display rules |
| Affective events theory (AET) | a model that suggests that workplace events cause emotional reactions on the part of employees, which then influence workplace attitudes and behaviors |
| Emotional intelligence (EI) | the ability to detect and to manage emotional cues and information |
| Emotional contagion | the process by which peoples' emotions are caused by the emotions of others |
| Personality | the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others |
| Heredity | factors determined at conception; one's biological, physiological, and inherent psychological makeup |
| Personality traits | enduring characteristics that describe an individual's behavior |
| Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) | a personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies people into 1 of 16 personality types |
| Big Five Model | a personality assessment model that taps five basic dimensions |
| Extraversion | a personality dimension describing someone who is sociable, gregarious, and assertive |
| Agreeableness | a personality dimension that describes someone who is good natured, cooperative, and trusting |
| Conscientiousness | a personality dimension that describes someone who is responsible, dependable, persistent, and organized |
| Emotional stability | a personality dimension that characterizes someone as calm, self-confident, secure (positive) versus nervous, depressed, and insecure (negative) |
| Openness to experience | a personality dimension that characterizes someone in terms of imagination, sensitivity, and curiousity |
| Core self-evaluation | the degree to which an individual likes or dislikes himself or herself, whether the person sees himself or herself as capable and effective, and whether the person feels in control of his or her environment or powerless over the environment |
| Machiavellianism | the degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means |
| Narcissim | the tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-importance, require excessive admiration, and have a sense of entitlement |
| Self-monitoring | a personality trait that measures an individual's ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors |
| Type A personality | aggressive involvement in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time and, if necessary, against the opposing efforts of other things or other people |
| Proactive personality | people who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs |
| Values | basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence |
| Value system | a hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual's values in terms of their intensity |
| Terminal values | desirable end-states of existence; the goals a person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime |
| Instrumental values | preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving one's terminal values |
| Personality-job fit theory | a theory that identifies six personality types and proposes that the fit between personality type and occupational environment determines satisfaction and turnover |
| Power distance | a national culture attribute that describes the extent to which a society accepts that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally |
| Individualism | a national culture attribute that describes the degree to which people prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups |
| Collectivism | a national culture attribute that describes a tight social framework in which people expect others in groups of which they are a part to look after them and protect them |
| Masculinity | a national culture attribute that describes the extent to which the culture favors traditional masculine work roles of achievement, power, and control. Societal values are characterized by assertiveness and materialim |
| Femininity | a national culture attribute that indicates little differentiation between male and female roles; a high rating indicates that women are treated as the equals of men in all aspects of the society |
| Uncertainty avoidance | a national culture attribute that describes the extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations and tries to avoid them |
| Long-term orientation | a national culture attribute that emphasizes the future, thrift, and persistence |
| Short-term orientation | a national culture attribute that emphasizes the past and present, respect for tradition, and fulfillment of social obligations |
| Perception | a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment |
| Attribution theory | an attempt to determine whether an individual's behavior is internally or externally caused |
| Fundamental attribution error | the tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others |
| Self-serving bias | the tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors and put the blame for failures on external factors |
| Selective Perception | the tendency to selectively interpret what one sees on the basis of one's interests, background, experience, and attitudes |
| Halo effect | the tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic |
| Contrast effect | evaluation of a person's characteristics that is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics |
| Stereotyping | judging someone on the basis of one's perception of the group to which that person belongs |
| Self-fulfilling prophecy | a situation in which a person inaccurately perceives a second person, and the resulting expectations cause the second person to behave in ways consistent with the original perception |
| Decisions | choices made from among two or more alternatives |
| Problem | a discrepancy between the current state of affairs and some desired state |
| Rational | characterized by making consistent, value-maximizing choices within specified constraints |
| Rational decision-making model | a decision-making model that describes how individuals should behave in order to maximize some outcome |
| Bounded rationality | a process of making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract the essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity |
| Intuitive decision making | an unconscious process created out of distilled experience |
| Anchoring bias | a tendency to fixate on initial information, from which one then fails to adequately adjust for subsequent information |
| Confirmation bias | the tendency to seek out information that reaffirms past choices and to discount information that contradicts past judgments |
| Availability bias | the tendency for people to base their judgments on information that is readily available to them |
| Escalation of commitment | an increased commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative information |
| Randomness error | the tendency of individuals to believe that they can predict the outcome of random events |
| Risk aversion | the tendency to prefer a sure gain of a moderate amount over a riskier outcome, even if the riskier outcome might have a higher expected payoff |
| Hindsight bias | the tendency to believe falsely, after an outcome of an event is actually known, that one would have accurately predicted that outcome |
| Utilitarianism | a system in which decisions are made to provide the greatest good for the greatest number |
| Whistle-blowers | individuals who report unethical practices by their employer to outsiders |
| Creativity | the ability to produce novel and useful ideas |
| Three-component model of creativity | the proposition that individual creativity requires expertise, creative thinking skills, and intrinsic task motivation |
| Motivation | the processes that account for an individual's intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal |
| Hierarchy of Needs | Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of five needs-physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization-in which, as each need is substantially satisfied, the next need becomes dominant |
| Lower-order needs | needs that are satisfied externally, such as physiological and safety needs |
| Self-actualization | the drive to become what a person is capable of becoming |
| Higher-order needs | needs that are satisfied internally, such as social, esteem, and self-actualization needs |
| Theory X | the assumption that employees dislike work, are lazy, dislike responsibility, and must be coerced to perform |
| Theory Y | the assumption that employees like work, are creative, seek responsibility, and can exercise self-direction |
| Two-factor theory | a theory that relates intrinsic factors to job satisfaction and associates extrinsic factors with dissatisfaction. Also called motivation-hygiene theory |
| Hygiene factors | factors-such as company policy and administration, supervision, and salary-that, when adequate in a job, placate workers. When these factors are adequate, people will not be dissatisfied |
| McClelland's theory of needs | a theory that states achievement, power, and affiliation are three important needs that help explain motivation |
| Need for achievement | the drive to excel, to achieve in relationship to a set of standards, and to strive to succeed |
| Need for power | the need to make others behave in a way in which they would not have behaved otherwise |
| Need for affiliation | the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships |
| Self-determination theory | a theory of motivation that is concerned with the beneficial effects of intrinsic motivation and the harmful effects of extrinsic motivation |
| Cognitive evaluation theory | a version of self-determination theory which holds that allocating extrinsic rewards for behavior that had been previously intrinsically rewarding tends to decrease the overall level of motivation if the rewards are seen as controlling |
| Self-concordance | the degree to which peoples' reasons for pursuing goals are consistent with their interests and core values |
| Goal-setting theory | a theory that says that specific and difficult goals, with feedback, lead to higher performance |
| Management by objectives (MBO) | a program that encompasses specific goals, participatively set, for an explicit time period, with feedback on goal process |
| Self-efficacy | an individual's belief that he or she is capable of performing a task |
| Reinforcement theory | a theory that says that behavior is a function of its consequences |
| Behaviorism | a theory that argues that behavior follows stimuli in a relatively unthinking manner |
| Social-learning theory | the view that we can learn through both observation and direct experience |
| Equity theory | a theory that says that individuals compare their job inputs and outcomes with those of others and then respond to eliminate any inequities |
| Distributive justice | perceived fairness of the amount and allocation of rewards among individuals |
| Organizational justice | an overall perception of what is fair in the workplace, composed of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice |
| Procedural justice | the perceived fairness of the process used to determine the distribution of rewards |
| Interactional justice | the perceived degree to which an individual is treated with dignity, concern, and respect |
| Expectancy theory | a theory that says that the strength of a tendency to act in a certain way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual |
| Job design | the way the elements in a job are organized |
| Job characteristics model (JCM) | a model that proposes that any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback |
| Skill variety | the degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities |
| Task identity | the degree to which a job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work |
| Task significance | the degree to which a job has a substantial impact on the lives or work of other people |
| Autonomy | the degree to which a job provides substantial freedom and discretion to the individual in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out |
| Feedback | the degree to which carrying out the work activities required by a job results in the individual obtaining direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance |
| Motivating potential score (MPS) | a predictive index that suggests the motivating potential in a job |
| Job rotation | the periodic shifting of an employee from one task to another |
| Job enrichment | the vertical expansion of jobs, which increases the degree to which the worker controls the planning, execution, and evaluation of the work |
| Flextime | flexible work hours |
| Job sharing | an arrangement that allows two or more individuals to split a traditional 40-hour-a-week job |
| Telecommuting | working from home at least two days a week on a computer that is linked to the employer's office |
| Employee involvement | a participative process that uses the input of employees and is intended to increase employee commitment to an organization's success |
| Three criteria to being successful | Technical skills, work ethic, and business personality |
| Need Theories | Maslow's Hierarchy, McClelland's needs, and the two-factor theory focus on needs |
| Three focuses of Expectancy theory | effort-performance relationship, performance-reward relationship, rewards-personal goals relationship |
| Participative Management | a process in which subordinates share a significant degree of decision-making power with their immediate superiors |
| Representative Participation | a system in which workers participate in organizational decision making through a small group of representative employees |
| Variable-pay Program | a pay plan that bases a portion of an employee's pay on some individual and/or organizational measure of performance |
| Piece-rate pay plan | a pay plan in which workers are paid a fixed sum for each unit of production completed |
| Merit-based pay plan | a pay plan based on performance appraisal ratings |
| Bonus | a pay plan that rewards employees for recent performance rather than historical performance |
| Skill-based pay | a pay plan that sets pay levels on the basis of how many skills employees have or how many jobs they can do |
| Profit-sharing plan | an organization-wide program that distributes compensation based on some established formula designed around a company's profitability |
| Gainsharing | a formula-based group incentive plan |
| Employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) | a company-established benefits plan in which employees acquire stock, often at below-market prices, as part of their benefits |
| Flexible benefits | a benefits plan that allows each employee to put together a benefits package individually tailored to his or her own needs and situation |
| Big Five Personality Model | extraversion,, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience |
| Myers-Briggs characteristics | extraverted v introverted, sensing v intuitive, thinking v feeling, and judging v perceiving |
| Hofstede's framework for assessing cultures | managers and employees vary on five value dimensions of national culture. power distance, individualism v collectivism, masculinity v femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term v short-term orientation |
| Six Basic Emotions | anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, and surprise |
| Overconfidence Bias | overestimating performance and ability |
| Individual differences | personality, gender, and mental ability |
| Organizational constraints | performance evaluation, reward systems, formal regulations, system-imposed time constraints, historical precedents |
| Three ethical decision criteria | utilitarianism, make decisions consistent with fundamental liberties and privileges, and impose and enforce rules fairly and impartially to ensure justice or an equitable distribution of benefits and costs |
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