ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

 

Organizational Behavior (OB) is the study and application of knowledge about how people, individuals, and groups act in organizations.

 

Contributing disciplines to the OB field:

Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science that is built upon contributions from a number of behavioral disciplines.

 

Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals. it may be the mental and behavour characteristic of an individual or group

Sociology is study the social system in which individuals fill their roles; that is, sociology studies people in relation to their fellow human beings.

Social psychology is the area within psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one another. it deal with the fulfilment of social needs in a phycological sense of interpretations.it cause different socio phycho conditions and affaire for the modificationof OB.

Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. we also define anthrapology as “science of human beings especialy of their environment and social relations and there culture” environment play a pivotal role in the iimprovment and modification of OB

Political science is the study of the behavior of individuals and groups within a political environment.

 

 

Management Functions (Henry Fayol)

Planning: A manager must determine what the organizations goals are and how to achieve those goals. Much of this information will come directly from the vision and mission statement for the company. Setting objectives for the goal and following up on the execution of the plan are two critical components of the planning function. For example, a manager of a new local restaurant will need to have a marketing plan, a hiring plan and a sales plan.

Organizing: Managers are responsible for organizing people and resources. Knowing how many employees are needed for particular shifts can be critical to the success of a company. If those employees do not have the necessary resources to complete their jobs, organization has not occurred. Without an organized workplace, employees will see a manager as unprepared and may lose respect for that particular manager’s supervisory techniques.

Leading: Managing and leading are not the same activity. A manager manages employees; this person makes sure that tasks are completed on time and policies are followed. Employees typically follow managers because he or she is the supervisor and in-charge of employees. Employees see a leader as someone that motivates them and guides them to help meet the firm’s goals. In an ideal situation, the manager also serves as the leader. Managers who want to lead effectively need to discover what motivates their employees and inspire them to reach the company objectives.

Controlling: The controlling function involves monitoring the firm’s performance to make sure goals are being met. Managers need to pay attention to costs versus performance of the organization. For example, if the company has a goal of increasing sales by 5% over the next two months, the manager may check the progress toward the goal at the end of month one. An effective manager will share this information with his or her employees. This builds trust and a feeling of involvement for the employees.

 

Management Roles (Henry Mintzberg)

 

Interpersonal Roles: The ones that, like the name suggests, involve people and other ceremonial duties.

Leader: Responsible for staffing, training, and associated duties.

Figurehead: The symbolic head of the organization.

Liaison: Maintains the communication between all contacts and informers that compose the organizational network.

 

Informational Roles: Related to collecting, receiving, and disseminating information.

Monitor: Personally seek and receive information, to be able to understand the organization.

Disseminator: Transmits all import information received from outsiders to the members of the organization.

Spokesperson: On the contrary to the above role, here the manager transmits the organization’s plans, policies and actions to outsiders.

Decisional Roles: Roles that revolve around making choices.

Entrepreneur: Seeks opportunities. Basically they search for change, respond to it, and exploit it.

Negotiator: Represents the organization at major negotiations.

Resource Allocator: Makes or approves all significant decisions related to the allocation of resources.

Disturbance Handler: Responsible for corrective action when the organization faces disturbances.

 

Management Skills (Robert L. Katz)

Three important managerial skills that must be cultivated and enhanced by the organization are technical, human, and conceptual.’

 

Technical skills are those abilities that are necessary to carry out a specific task. Examples of technical skills are writing computer programs, completing accounting statements, analyzing marketing statistics, writing legal documents, or drafting a design for a new airfoil on an airplane.

Human skills involve the ability to work with, motivate, and direct individuals or groups in the organization whether they are subordinates, peers, or superiors. Human skills, therefore, relate to the individual’s expertise in interacting with others in a way that will enhance the successful completion of the task at hand. Some human skills that are often necessary for managers to display are effective communication (writing and speaking), creation of a positive attitude toward others and the work setting, development of cooperation among group members, and motivation of subordinates.

Conceptual skills require an ability to understand the degree of complexity in a given situation and to reduce that complexity to a level at which specific courses of action can be derived. Examples of situations that require conceptual skills include the passage of laws that affect hiring patterns in an organization, a competitor’s change in marketing strategy, or the reorganization of one department which ultimately affects the activities of other departments in the organization.

What is Organization?

An organization is composed of two or more people, which functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.

 

Components of an Organization

The environment influences organizational design. When uncertainty exists, the ability to respond quickly and creatively is important; when the environment is stable, an organization improves performance by making attitudes and behaviors predictable. Creativity and predictability are fostered by certain structures and cultures.

 

Task – an organization’s mission, purpose, or goal for existing

People – the human resources of the organization

Structure – the manner in which an organization’s work is designed at the micro level; how departments, divisions, & the overall organization are designed at the macro level

Technology – the intellectual and mechanical processes used by an organization to transform inputs into products or services that meet

Formal vs. Informal Organization

Formal Organization – the part of the organization that has legitimacy and official recognition

Informal Organization – the unofficial part of the organization

 

How does an Organization Create Value?

 Organizational Process: The organizational environment is the set of resources surrounding an organization, including inputs (e.g., raw materials and skilled employees); resources to transform inputs (e.g., computers, buildings, and machinery); and resources (e.g., customers) Organizations compete for the scarce, needed resources. There is much uncertainty about obtaining needed resources. Organizations design their structures and cultures in ways to secure and protect needed resources. Technology is the second design contingency an organization faces. Technology refers to the combination of human resources (skills, knowledge abilities, and techniques) and raw materials and equipment (machines, computers, and tools) that workers use to convert raw materials into goods and services. Each job is part of an organization’s technology. An organization must design its structure and culture to allow for the operation of technology. Organizational processes develop plans of actions for competing successfully by obtaining resources and outperforming competitors. These plans of actions are strategies. To attract customers, for example, organizations can pursue the following strategies.

 

Understanding the Basics of Human Behavior

An organization’s human resource policies and practices represent important forces for shaping employee behavior and attitudes. In this chapter, we specifically discussed the influence of selection practices, training and development programs, performance evaluation systems, and the existence of a union. Human resource policies and practice influence organizational effectiveness. Human resource management includes: employee selection, training performance management, and union-management relations and how they influence organizations effectiveness.

 

Biographical Characteristics

Age: The relationship between age and job performance is increasing in importance.

Gender: There are few, if any, important differences between men and women that will affect their job performance, including the areas of: Problem-solving, Analytical skills, Competitive drive, Motivation, Sociability, Learning ability, Marital status, Length of service, etc.

Marital Status: Research consistently indicates that married employees have fewer absences, undergo fewer turnovers, and are more satisfied with their jobs than are their unmarried coworkers.

Tenure: There is a positive relationship between tenure and job productivity.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: ABILITIES AND PERFORMANCE

That people differ from each other is obvious. How and why they differ is less clear and is the subject of the study of Individual differences (IDs). Although to study individual differences seems to be to study variance, how are people different, it is also to study central tendency, how well can a person be described in terms of an overall within-person average. Indeed, perhaps the most important question of individual differences is whether people are more similar to themselves over time and across situations than they are to others, and whether the variation within a single person across time and situation is less than the variation between people. A related question is that of similarity, for people differ in their similarities to each other. Questions of whether particular groups (e.g., groupings by sex, culture, age, or ethnicity) are more similar within than between groups are also questions of individual differences

 

Implications of globalization:

Following are the implications of globalizations:

–        New organizational structures

–        Different forms of communication

–        More competition, change, mergers, downsizing, stress

–        Need more sensitivity to cultural differences

 

Ethics

Moral principles/values — determines whether actions are right/wrong and outcomes are good/bad.

 

Ethical behavior

– “Good” and “right” as opposed to “bad” or “wrong” in a particular setting.

 

An organization’s ethics are rules, beliefs, and values that outline ways in which managers and workers should behave when confronted with a situation that may help or harm other people inside or outside an organization. Ethical behavior enhances the well-being (the happiness, health, and prosperity) of individuals, groups, organizations, and the organizational environment.

 

Ability: Mental and physical capabilities to perform various tasks.

 

Intellectual Abilities: The capacity to do mental activities

• Number aptitude

• Verbal comprehension

• Perceptual speed

• Inductive reasoning

• Deductive reasoning

• Spatial visualization

• Memory ability

 

Emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage one’s own feelings and emotions and the feelings and emotions of others. Research on emotional intelligence is in its early stages. However, it is plausible that emotional intelligence may facilitate job performance in a number of ways, and a low level of emotional intelligence may actually impair performance. Emotional intelligence is important for managers and people in leadership positions who must understand how others feel and manage these feelings.

Physical Ability: The capacity to do tasks demanding stamina, strength and similar characteristics. For some jobs, physical ability is important. Physical ability consists primarily of motor skill, the ability to manipulate objects in an environment physically, and physical skill, a person’s fitness and strength. According to Fleishman, there are 11 types of motor skills (e.g., reaction time, manual dexterity, speed of arm movement) and 9 types of physical skills (e.g., static strength, which includes the ability to lift weights and stamina).

Learning: A relatively permanent change in the behavior occurring as a result of experience.

 

Methods of Shaping Behavior

Reinforcement is the process that increases the probability that desired behaviors occur by applying consequences. Managers use reinforcement to increase the likelihood of higher sales, better attendance, or observing safety procedures.

Positive reinforcement increases the probability that a behavior will occur by administering positive consequences (called positive reinforces) following the behavior. Managers determine what consequences a worker considers positive.

Negative reinforcement increases the probability that a desired behavior, then occur by removing a negative consequence (or negative reinforce) when a worker performs the behavior.

 

Extinction: According to operant conditioning, both good and bad behaviors are controlled by reinforced consequences. Identifying behavioral reinforces and removing them can decrease a behavior. An undesired behavior without reinforcement can diminishes until it no longer occurs. This process is called extinction.

Punishment consists of administering a negative consequence when the undesired behavior occurs. Punishment is not the same as negative reinforcement. It decreases a behavior, whereas negative reinforcement increases the frequency of a behavior.

 

UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE

Values: Values are broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of action or outcomes. Values influence behavior and attitudes.

 

Basic convictions: “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. They contain a judgmental element in that they carry the individual’s idea of what is right, good, or desirable.

Value System: A hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual’s values in terms of their intensity

Sources of values: Parents, Friends, Teachers, Role models, External reference groups.

 

Types of values

Terminal values: Preferences concerning the ends to be achieved

Instrumental values: Preferences for the means to be used in achieving desired ends.

 

Work Values

– Achievement (career advancement)

– Concern for others (compassionate behavior)

– Honesty (provision of accurate information)

– Fairness (impartiality)

 

Work values are a worker’s personal convictions about expected outcomes work and behavior at work. Outcomes might include a comfortable existence with family security, a sense of accomplishment and self-respect, or social recognition, and an exciting lifestyle. Appropriate work behaviors at work include being ambitious, imaginative, obedient, self-controlled, and respectful. Work values guide ethical behavior at work—honesty, trustworthiness, and helpfulness.

Work moods, how people feel when they perform their jobs, are more transitory than values and attitudes, changing from day to day, hour to hour, or minute to minute. Moods are categorized as either positive or negative. Positive moods include feeling excited, enthusiastic, active, strong, peppy, or elated. Negative moods include feeling distressed, fearful, scornful, hostile, jittery, or nervous. Moods can also be less intense. A worker might simply feel drowsy, sluggish, calm, placid, and relaxed.

 

Values across Cultures

Power distance: The degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.

Individualism versus collectivism: Individualism is the degree to which people in a country prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups. Collectivism equals low individualism.

Quantity of life versus quality of life: Quantity of life is the degree to which values such as assertiveness, the acquisition of money and material goods, and competition prevail. Quality of life is the degree to which people value relationships and show sensitivity and concern for the welfare of others.

Uncertainty avoidance: The degree to which people in a country prefer structured over unstructured situations.

Long-term versus short-term orientation: Long-term orientations look to the future and value thrift and persistence. Short-term orientation values the past and present and emphasizes respect for tradition and fulfilling social obligations.

 

GLOBE Framework for Assessing

Cultures:

Assertiveness: The extent to which a society encourages people to be tough, confrontational, assertive, and competitive versus modest and tender

Future Orientation: The extent to which a society encourages and rewards future-oriented behaviors such as planning, investing in the future and delaying gratification

Gender differentiation: The extent to which a society maximized gender role differences

Uncertainly avoidance: Society’s reliance on social norms and procedures to alleviate the unpredictability of future events

Power distance: The degree to which members of a society expect power to be unequally shared

Individualism/Collectivism: The degree to which individuals are encouraged by societal institutions to be integrated into groups within organizations and society

In-group collectivism: The extent to which society’s members take pride in membership in small groups such as their families and circles of close friends, and the organizations where they are employed

Performance orientation: The degree to which society encourages and rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence

Humane orientation: The degree to which a society encourages and rewards individuals for being fair, altruistic, generous, caring, and kind to others.

 

ATTITUDES AT WORK

Importance of Values: Values lay the foundation for the understanding of attitudes and motivation because they influence our perceptions. Individuals enter organizations with notions of what is right and wrong with which they interpret behaviors or outcomes—at times this can cloud objectivity and rationality. Values generally influence attitudes and behavior.

 

Rights are normative principles, variously construed as legal, social, or moral freedoms or entitlements. While the concept of rights is fundamental to civilized societies, there is considerable disagreement about what is meant precisely by the term rights.

Right: A person’s just claim or entitlement, Focuses on the person’s actions or the actions of others toward the person

Legal rights: defined by a system of laws

Moral rights: based on ethical standards, Purpose: let a person freely pursue certain actions without interference from others

Attitudes: An attitude is a mental stage of readiness, learned and organized through experience, exerting a specific influence on a person’s response to people, objects, and situations with which it is related.

 

Types of attitudes: OB focuses our attention on a very limited number of job-related attitudes. Most of the research in OB has been concerned with three attitudes: job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment.

 

Job satisfaction: It is an individual’s general attitude toward his/her job. A high level of job satisfaction equals positive attitudes toward the job and vice versa. Employee attitudes and job satisfaction are frequently used interchangeably. Often when people speak of “employee attitudes” they mean “employee job satisfaction.”

 

Job involvement: A workable definition: the measure of the degree to which a person identifies psychologically with his/her job and considers his/her perceived performance level important to self-worth. High levels of job involvement are thought to result in fewer absences and lower resignation rates. Job involvement more consistently predicts turnover than absenteeism


 

Organizational commitment: A state in which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals, and wishes to maintain membership in the organization. Research evidence demonstrates negative relationships between organizational commitment and both absenteeism and turnover.

 

Job satisfaction is the collection of feelings and beliefs people have about their current jobs. In addition to attitudes about a job as a whole, people can have attitudes about various aspects of their jobs, such as the kind of work, coworkers, or pay.

 

PERSONALITY

Personality: Relatively stable pattern of behaviors and consistent internal states that explain a person’s behavioral tendencies. An individual reacts and interacts with others. Mean how people affect others and how they understand and view themselves, as well as their pattern of inner and outer measurable traits and Person-situation interaction.

 

Personality: The relatively stable set of psychological attributes that distinguish one person from another”

 

The “Big Five” Personality Traits

The Big Five Model of Personality: Personality is typically described in terms of traits. A trait is a specific component of a personality that describes the particular tendencies a person has to feel, think, and act in a certain way. Thus, an individual’s personality is a collection of traits, thought to be organized hierarchically.

The Big Five model of personality places five general personality dimensions at the top of this hierarchy—extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience

 

1. Extroversion: Refers to the tendency to be sociable, friendly, and expressive. Extraversion, or positive affectivity, is one of the Big Five personality traits, and describes the predisposition of individuals to experience positive emotional states and feel good about themselves and the world. Extroverts are more sociable, affectionate, and friendly than introverts and experience higher levels of job satisfaction.

 

2. Emotional Stability: Refers to the tendency to experience positive emotional states. Another Big Five trait, neuroticism, or negative affectivity, refers to people’s dispositions to experience negative emotional states, feel distressed, and view the world around them negatively.

 

3. Agreeableness: Being courteous, forgiving, tolerant, trusting, and self-hearted. Agreeableness is a Big Five trait capturing the distinction between individuals who get along well with others and those who do not. Individuals high in agreeableness are caring, affectionate, and likable, whereas individuals low in this dimension are antagonistic, mistrustful, unsympathetic, and uncooperative. Agreeableness is likely to contribute to being a team player and is helpful in fostering good working relationships.

 

4. Conscientiousness: Is exhibited by those who are described as dependable, organized, and responsible.

 

The Big Five trait of conscientiousness refers to the extent to which an individual is careful, scrupulous, and persevering. Individuals high on this dimension are organized and self-disciplined, whereas individuals low in conscientiousness may lack direction and self-discipline. Conscientiousness has been found to be a good predictor of performance in many jobs in a wide variety of organizations.

 

5. Openness to Experience: Reflects the extent to which an individual has broad interests and is willing to be a risk-taker. Openness to experience is a trait that refers to the extent to which an individual is original, is open to a wide variety of stimuli, has broad interests, and is willing to take risks, rather than being narrow-minded or cautious. For openness to experience to be translated into creative and innovative behavior in organizations, the organization must remove obstacles to innovation.

 

Other Organizationally Relevant Personality Traits: Other traits are important for understanding behavior in organizations.

Locus of Control: Individuals who think that their own actions and behaviors have an impact in determining what happens to them have an internal locus of control. Individuals who believe that outside forces are largely responsible for their fate have an external locus of control. Internals are more easily motivated and need less direct supervision than externals.

 

Self-Monitoring: Self-monitoring refers; to the extent to which people try to control the way they present themselves to others. Individuals high on self-monitoring behave in a socially acceptable manner.

 

Sources of self-efficacy:

–Prior experiences and prior success

–Behavior models (observing success)

–Persuasion

–Assessment of current physical & emotional capabilities

Self-Esteem: Self-esteem is the extent to which people have pride in themselves and their capabilities. Individuals with high self-esteem believe in their abilities and tend to set higher goals and perform more difficult tasks, whereas individuals with low self-esteem are full of self-doubt and apprehension. Still, people with low self-esteem may be just as capable as those with high self-esteem. Personality characteristics create the parameters for people’s behavior; they give us a framework for predicting behavior.

 

Type A and Type B Personalities

Type A individuals have an intense desire to achieve, are extremely competitive, have a sense of urgency, are impatient, and can be hostile. A Type A personality is “aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and, if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things or other persons.’’ They are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly, are impatient with the rate at which most events take place, are doing do two or more things at once and cannot cope with leisure time. They are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how much of everything they acquire.

 

Type B individuals are more relaxed and easygoing. Type A individuals may get a lot accomplished in organizations, but they also are more easily frustrated, more involved in more conflicts, and more likely to develop coronary heart disease than Type B individuals. Type Bs never suffers from a sense of time urgency with its accompanying impatience and feels no need to display or discuss either their achievements or accomplishments unless such exposure is demanded by the situation.

 

Play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their superiority at any cost and can relax without guilt.

Type A’s operating under moderate to high levels of stress. They subject themselves to continuous time pressure, are fast workers, quantity over quality, work long hours, and are also rarely creative. Their behavior is easier to predict than that of Type Bs.

 

Are Type As or Type Bs more successful?

Type Bs is the ones who appear to make it to the top.

Great salespersons are usually Type As; senior executives are usually Type Bs.

Personality Traits: Realize that some workers are more likely to be positive and enthusiastic and some more likely to complain because of personality differences. Provide more direction for workers with less initiative to solve problems and who tend to blame others or the situation for problems. Provide more encouragement and support to workers with low self-esteem who belittle themselves and question their abilities. Realize that Type A personalities can be difficult to get along with and have difficulty in teams. Communicate to subordinates who are overly concerned being liked that sometimes honest feedback and be constructive criticism are necessary.

 

 

EMOTIONS AND MOOD

Work moods: How people feel when they perform their jobs, are more transitory than values and attitudes, changing from day to day, hour to hour, or minute to minute. Moods are categorized as either positive or negative. Positive moods include feeling excited, enthusiastic, active, strong, peppy, or elated. Negative moods include feeling distressed, fearful, scornful, hostile, jittery, or nervous

 

Emotions defined: Feelings experienced towards an object, person or event that create a state of readiness.

What Are Emotions?

Affect is a generic term that covers a broad range of feelings that people experience and encompasses both emotions and moods. Emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. They are reactions, not a trait. Moods are feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and which lack a contextual stimulus.

Felt vs. Displayed Emotions: Emotional labor creates dilemmas for employees when their job requires them to exhibit emotions incongruous with their actual feelings. It is a frequent occurrence. For example, when there are people that you have to work with whom you find it very difficult to be friendly toward. You are forced to feign friendliness. Felt emotions are an individual’s actual emotions. Displayed emotions are those that are organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given job. They are learned. Key—felt and displayed emotions are often different. This is particularly true in organizations, where role demands and situations often require people to exhibit emotional behaviors that mask their true feelings.

 

Emotion Dimensions

Variety: There are many emotions. Six universal emotions have been identified: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, and surprise. Emotions are identified along a continuum from positive to negative. The closer any two emotions are to each other on this continuum, the more people are likely to confuse them.

Intensity: People give different responses to identical emotion-provoking stimuli. Sometimes this can be attributed to personality. People vary in their inherent ability to express intensity—from never showing feelings to displaying extreme happiness or sadness. Jobs make different intensity demands in terms of emotional labor. For example, air traffic controllers must remain calm even in stressful situations.

Frequency and duration: Emotional labor that requires high frequency or long duration is more demanding and requires more exertion by employees. Whether or not the employee can successfully meet the emotional demands of a job depends on both the intensity of the emotions displayed and for how long the effort has to be made.

Can People Be Emotionless?

1. Some people have difficulty in expressing their emotions and understanding the emotions of others. Psychologists call this alexithymia. People who suffer from alexithymia rarely cry and are often seen by others as bland and cold. Their own feelings make them uncomfortable, and they are not able to discriminate among their different emotions. Are people who suffer from alexithymia poor work performers? Not necessarily. They might very well be effective performers, in a job requiring little or no emotional labor. Sales or customer service jobs would not be good career choices.

 

Gender and Emotions

1. It is widely assumed that women are more “in touch” with their feelings than men.

2. The evidence does confirm differences between men and women when it comes to emotional reactions and ability to read others. Women show greater emotional expression than men, experience emotions more intensely, and display more frequent expressions of both positive and negative emotions. Women also report more comfort in expressing emotions. Women are better at reading nonverbal cues than are men.

These differences may be explained several ways: The different ways men and women have been socialized.  Women may have more innate ability to read others and present their emotions than do men.  Women may have a greater need for social approval and, thus, a higher propensity to show positive emotions such as happiness.

 

Women:

• Can show greater emotional expression.

• Experience emotions more intensely.

• Display emotions more frequently.

• Are more comfortable in expressing emotions.

• Are better at reading others’ emotions.

Men

• Believe that displaying emotions is inconsistent with the male image.

• Are innately less able to read and to identify with others’ emotions.

• Have less need to seek social approval by showing positive emotions.

 

Emotional Intelligence: EI refers to an assortment of non-cognitive skills, capabilities, and competencies that influence a person’s ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures.

 

a. Self-awareness. Being aware of what you are feeling.

b. Self-management. The ability to manage one’s own emotions and impulses.

c. Self-motivation. The ability to persist in the face of setbacks and failures.

d. Empathy. The ability to sense how others are feeling.

e. Social skills. The ability to handle the emotions of others

 

Several studies suggest EI may play an important role in job performance. EI, not academic I.Q., characterized high performers. The implications from the initial evidence on EI are that employers should consider it as a factor in selection, especially in jobs that demand a high degree of social interaction.

 

External Constraints on Emotions: Every organization defines boundaries that identify what emotions are acceptable and the degree to which they can be expressed. The same applies in different cultures.

Organizational influences:  There is no single emotional “set” sought by all organizations.

Cultural influences: Cultural norms in the United States dictate that employees in service organizations should smile and act friendly when interacting with customers. But this norm does not apply worldwide.

 

OB Applications of Understanding Emotions

Ability and Selection: Emotions affect employee effectiveness. Ability and Selection: People who know their own emotions and are good at reading others’ emotions may be more effective in their jobs.

Decision Making: Emotions are an important part of the decision-making process in organizations.

Motivation: Emotional commitment to work and high motivation are strongly linked. Motivation theories basically propose that individuals “are motivated to the extent that their behavior is expected to lead to desired outcomes.”

Leadership: Emotions are important to acceptance of messages from organizational leaders. The ability to lead others is a fundamental quality sought by organizations. Effective leaders almost all rely on the expression of feelings to help convey their messages and is often the critical element that results in individuals accepting or rejecting a leader’s message.

Interpersonal Conflict: Conflict in the workplace and individual emotions are strongly intertwined.

• Whenever conflicts arise, you can be fairly certain that emotions are also surfacing.

• A manager’s success in trying to resolve conflicts, in fact, is often largely due to his or her

ability to identify the emotional elements in the conflict and to get the conflicting parties to

work through their emotions.

Deviant Workplace Behaviors: Negative emotions can lead to employee deviance in the form of actions that violate established norms and threaten the organization and its members.

i. Productivity failures

ii. Property theft and destruction

iii. Political actions

iv. Personal aggression

 

PERCEPTION

What is Perception?

“A process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment”

 

Why is it Important?

• Because people’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself.

• The world that is perceived is the world that is behaviorally important.

 

Factors Influencing Perception

• Perceiver

• Target

• Situation

When an individual looks at a target and attempts to interpret what he or she sees, that interpretation is heavily influenced by personal characteristics of the individual perceiver. The more relevant personal characteristics affecting perception of the perceiver are attitudes, motives, interests, past experiences, and expectations. Characteristics of the target can also affect what is being perceived. This would include attractiveness, gregariousness, and our tendency to group similar things together. For example, members of a group with clearly distinguishable features or color are often perceived as alike in other, unrelated characteristics as well. The context in which we see objects or events also influences our attention. This could include time, heat, light, or other situational factors.

 

The Nature of Perception

Perception is the process by which individuals select, organize, and interpret the input from their senses to give meaning and order to the world around them. The process of perception involves the perceiver—the person making the interpretation, the target of perception—what the perceiver interprets, and the situation in which perception takes place. The target can be an event, a situation, an idea, a noise, a group of people, or another person. Person perception, or the process of perceiving another person, plays a large role in organizational behavior.

 

Internal and External Attributions

Causal explanations for behaviors can be either internal attributions, behavior caused by some characteristic of the target, or external attributions, behavior assigned to factors outside the individual. Common internal attributions include ability, effort, and personality. Poor performance may be attributed to lack of effort or ability, and poor relations with coworkers may be attributed to personality. Common external attributions include luck, chance, and easy tasks. A worker’s accomplishment may be viewed as a stroke of luck. Whether attributions are internal or external determines how people respond to behavior. High performance, attributed to ability, results in a promotion, but attributed to luck, results in no promotion. The attributions people make for their own behavior influence subsequent actions. A successful worker who attributes an outcome to luck remains unaffected, whereas attributing success to ability increases confidence.

 

Social Perception: The processes, through which individuals attempt to combine, integrate and interpret information about others. Social status, a target’s real or perceived position in society or an organization, also affects perception. High-status targets are perceived as more credible, knowledgeable, and responsible than low-status targets. Organizations use a high-status target to make public announcements and presentations because the audience perceives that person as credible.

 

 

Barriers to Social Perception

Selective Perception: Any characteristic that makes a person, object, or event stand out will increase the probability that it will be perceived. It is impossible for us to assimilate everything we see—only certain stimuli can be taken in.

Halo Effect: The halo effect occurs when we draw a general impression on the basis of a single characteristic:

a. This phenomenon frequently occurs when students appraise their classroom instructor.

b. Students may give prominence to a single trait such as enthusiasm and allow their entire evaluation to be tainted by how they judge the instructor on that one trait.

Stereotyping: Stereotyping—judging someone on the basis of our perception of the group to which he or she belongs. Generalization is not without advantages. It is a means of simplifying a complex world, and it permits us to maintain consistency. The problem, of course, is when we inaccurately stereotype. In organizations, we frequently hear comments that represent stereotypes based on gender, age, race, ethnicity, and even weight. From a perceptual standpoint, if people expect to see these stereotypes, that is what they will perceive, whether or not they are accurate.

 

PERCEPTION, ATTITUDES AND PERSONALITY

Frequently Used Shortcuts in Judging Others

Selective Perception: People selectively interpret what they see on the basis of their interest, background, experience, and attitudes.

Halo Effect: A general impression about an individual is based on a single positive characteristic.

Contrast Effects: Evaluations of a person’s characteristics that are affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.

Projection: Attributing one’s own characteristics to other people

Stereotyping: Judging someone on the basis of the group to which he/she belongs.

 

MOTIVATION-THE BASIC CONCEPT

Motivation: A state of mind, desire, energy or interest that translates into action. Or the inner drive that directs a person’s behavior toward goals

Motivation is central to understanding and managing organizational behavior because it influences workers’ behaviors, workers’ level of effort, and their persistence in the face of obstacles.

Defining Motivation: The processes that account for an individual’s intensity direction and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal

 

Key Elements

Intensity: how hard a person tries. Intensity is concerned with how hard a person tries. This is the element most of us focus on when we talk about motivation.

Direction: toward beneficial goal. Direction is the orientation that benefits the organization.

Persistence: how long a person tries. Persistence is a measure of how long a person can maintain his/her effort. Motivated individuals stay with a task long enough to achieve their goal.

 

Motivational Theories

 

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Need theory is actually a collection of theories that focus on workers’ needs as the sources of motivation.

A need is a requirement for survival and well-being. Maslow’s theory helps managers understand that workers’ needs differ and that motivation for one worker is not motivation for another. Managers must identify a worker’s needs and ensure satisfaction of these needs if desired behaviors are performed.

 

Physiological needs: food, drink, shelter, sexual satisfaction, and other physical requirements.

Safety needs: security and protection from physical and emotional harm, as well as assurance that physical needs will continue to be met.

Social needs: affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship.

Esteem needs: internal esteem factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement and external esteem factors such as status, recognition, and attention.

Self-actualization needs: growth, achieving one’s potential, and self-fulfillment; the drive to become what one is capable of becoming. In terms of motivation, Maslow argued that each level in the hierarchy must be substantially satisfied before the next is activated and that once a need is substantially satisfied it no longer motivates behavior.

Maslow separated the five needs into higher and lower levels. Physiological and safety needs were described as lower-order needs; social, esteem, and self-actualization were described as higher-order needs. The difference between the two levels was made on the premise that higher-order needs are satisfied internally while lower-order needs are predominantly satisfied externally.

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Alderfer’s ERG Theory: Clayton Alderfer’s existence-relatedness-growth (ERG) theory is also a need theory of work motivation. Alderfer reduces the number of needs from five to three and states that needs at more than one level can be motivators at any time. Like Maslow, Alderfer proposes a hierarchy of needs. Yet, he believes that when an individual has difficulty satisfying a higher-level need, motivation to satisfy lower-level needs increase

A three-level hierarchical need theory of motivation that allows for movement up and down the hierarchy.

•Existence Needs

•Relatedness Needs

•Growth Needs

 

McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y

Douglas McGregor is best known for his formulation of two sets of assumptions about human nature:

Theory X and Theory Y. Very simply, Theory X presents an essentially negative view of people. It assumes that workers have little ambition, dislike work, want to avoid responsibility, and need to be closely controlled to work effectively. Theory Y offers a positive view. It assumes that workers can exercise self-direction, accept and actually seek out responsibility, and consider work to be a natural activity. McGregor believed that Theory Y assumptions better captured the true nature of workers and should guide management practice.

 

Under Theory X, the four assumptions held by managers are:

• Employees inherently dislike work and, whenever possible, will attempt to avoid it.

• Since employees dislike work, they must be coerced, controlled, or threatened with punishment to achieve goals.

• Employee will avoid responsibilities and seek formal direction whenever possible.

Under Theory Y, the assumptions are:

• Employees can view work as being as natural as rest or play.

• People will exercise self-direction and self-control if they are committed to the objectives.

• The average person can learn to accept, even seek, responsibility.

• The ability to make innovative decisions is widely spread throughout the population and is not necessarily the sole responsibility of those in management positions.

Theory Z

“A management philosophy that stresses employee participation in all aspects of company decision-making”

 

David McClelland’s Theory of Needs: McClelland’s approach is not particularly associated with a theoretical perspective, but identifies three needs important in the workplace. The presence of these needs can be examined in various ways, but McClelland’s drew upon Murray’s use of projective pictures and story telling as a way of identifying the position of these needs in a leader.

The need for affiliation (N-Affil): This is the need for friendly relationships and human interaction. There is a need “to feel liked” and “accepted” by others. A person with a high need for affiliation is likely to be a team player and thrive in a customer services environment. They will perform best in a co-operative environment. McClelland said that a strong need for affiliation will interfere with a manager’s objectivity. The “need to be liked” will affect a manager’s decisions, prompting them to make decisions to increase their popularity rather than furthering the interests of the organization.

The need for power (N-Pow): This is the need to lead others and make an impact. This need can exhibit itself in two ways. The first which is the need for personal power may be viewed as undesirable as the person simply needs to feel that they have “power over others”. They don’t have to be effective or further the objectives of their employer.

The second type of “need for power” is the need for institutional power. People with the need for institutional power; want to direct the efforts of their team, to further the objectives of their organization.

The need for achievement (N-Ach): This is the need to achieve, excel and succeed. A person with this type of need will set goals that are challenging but realistic. The goals have to be challenging so that the person can feel a sense of achievement. However the goals also have to be realistic as the person believes that when a goal is unrealistic, its achievement is dependant on chance rather than personal skill or contribution. This type of person prefers to work alone or with other high achievers. They do not need praise or recognition, achievement of the task is their reward.

Goal-Setting Theory

Goal-setting theory was developed over the past 40 years through research conducted by industrial/organizational psychologists. Its purpose is to explain and predict the effects that setting conscious performance goals have on task performance or achievement levels. A major aim has been to understand what types of goals are effective in motivating high performance and what other factors affect goal setting, motivation and performance. The evidence supports the proposition that setting specific and challenging goals is an effective way to deliver high performance for both individuals and organizations.

Key Findings of Goal-Setting Theory

The main findings so far of goal-setting theory are:

• The mere act of setting goals leads to higher performance compared to having no explicit goals.
• Setting specific, difficult but attainable goals leads to higher performance.
• Setting goals affects performance by directing attention and behavior toward goal-relevant activities.
• Challenging goals energize people to put forth greater effort than they otherwise would.
• Hard goals also enhance persistence when people can control how they allocate their time.
• Difficult goals lead to the marshalling of existing knowledge and skills as well as, when necessary, motivate the search for new learning and strategies to accomplish the required tasks.

Adams’ Equity Theory

Adams’ Equity Theory calls for a fair balance to be struck between an employee’s inputs (hard work, skill level, tolerance, enthusiasm, etc.) and an employee’s outputs (salary, benefits, intangibles such as recognition, etc.). According to the theory, finding this fair balance serves to ensure a strong and productive relationship is achieved with the employee, with the overall result being contented, motivated employees.

Understanding the Theory

The Adams Equity Theory is named for John Stacey Adams, a workplace and behavioral psychologist, who developed this job motivation theory in 1963.

Much like many of the more prevalent theories of motivation (theories by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Herzberg’s Theory, etc.), Adams’ Equity Theory acknowledges that subtle and variable factors affect an employee’s assessment and perception of their relationship with their work and their employer.

The theory is built-on the belief that employees become de-motivated, both in relation to their job and their employer, if they feel as though their inputs are greater than the outputs. Employees can be expected to respond to this is different ways, including de-motivation (generally to the extent the employee perceives the disparity between the inputs and the outputs exist), reduced effort, becoming disgruntled, or, in more extreme cases, perhaps even disruptive.

Expectancy Theory

Expectancy theory, developed by Victor Vroom, focuses on how workers make choices among alternative behaviors and levels of effort. With its emphasis on choices, expectancy theory focuses on workers’ perceptions and thoughts or cognitive processes. By describing how workers make choices, expectancy theory provides managers with valuable insights on how to get workers to perform desired behaviors and how to encourage workers to exert high levels of effort. Expectancy theory makes two assumptions: (1) workers are motivated to receive positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes and (2) workers are rational, careful processors of information. Expectancy theory identifies three factors that determine motivation: valence, instrumentality, and expectancy. The most comprehensive and widely accepted explanation of employee motivation to date is Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory. Although the theory has its critics, most research evidence supports it.

 

Reinforcement Theory

In contrast to goal-setting theory, reinforcement theory says that behavior is a function of its consequences. Goal-setting theory proposes that an individual’s purpose directs his or her behavior. Reinforcement theory argues that behavior is externally caused. What controls behavior are reinforces, consequences that, when given immediately following a behavior, increase the probability that the behavior will be repeated.

 

The key to reinforcement theory is that it ignores factors such as goals, expectations, and needs. Instead, it focuses solely on what happens to a person when he or she takes some action. This idea helps explain why publishers such as Pearson Education provide incentive clauses in their authors’ contracts. Following reinforcement theory, managers can influence employees’ behavior by reinforcing actions they deem desirable. However, because the emphasis is on positive reinforcement, not punishment, managers should ignore, not punish, unfavorable behavior. Even though punishment eliminates undesired behavior faster than non-reinforcement does, its effect is often only temporary and may later have unpleasant side effects including dysfunctional behavior such as workplace conflicts, absenteeism, and turnover.

 

 

Negative reinforcement: Also known as avoidance. The withdrawal of negative consequences to increase the likelihood of repeating the desired behavior in similar settings

Punishment: The administration of negative consequences or the withdrawal of positive consequences to reduce the likelihood of repeating the behavior in similar settings.

 

 

Following are the core concept of motivation:

Need theories: We introduced four theories that focused on needs. These were Maslow’s hierarchy, two factors, ERG, and McClelland’s needs theories. The strongest of these is probably the last, particularly regarding the relationship between achievement and productivity. If the other three have any value at all, that value relates to explaining and predicting job satisfaction.

 

Goal-setting theory: There is little dispute that clear and difficult goals lead to higher levels of employee productivity. This evidence leads us to conclude that goal-setting theory provides one of the more powerful explanations of this dependent variable. The theory, however, does not address absenteeism, turnover, or satisfaction.

 

Reinforcement theory: This theory has an impressive record for predicting factors like quality and quantity of work, persistence of effort, absenteeism, tardiness, and accident rates. It does not offer much insight into employee satisfaction or the decision to quit.

 

Equity theory: Equity theory deals with all four dependent variables. However, it is strongest when predicting absence and turnover behaviors and weakest when predicting differences in employee productivity.

 

Expectancy theory: Our final theory focused on performance variables. It has proved to offer a relatively powerful explanation of employee productivity, absenteeism, and turnover, but expectancy theory assumes that employees have few constraints on their decision discretion. It makes many of the same assumptions that the rational model makes about individual decision-making .This acts to restrict its applicability.

 

Management by Objectives (MBO)

Motivating people by aligning their objectives with the goals of the organization

For many people working in modern business environments, it’s hard to remember a time when non-managerial employees weren’t involved with, and interested in, corporate strategy and goals. We are regularly reminded about the corporate mission statement, we have strategy meetings where the “big picture” is revealed to us, and we are invited to participate in some decisions. And we’re aware of how our day-to-day activities contribute to these corporate goals.

This type of managing hasn’t been around forever: It’s an approach called Management by Objectives; a system that seeks to align employees’ goals with the goals of the organization. This ensures that everyone is clear about what they should be doing, and how that is beneficial to the whole organization. It’s quite easy to see why this type of managing makes sense – when the parts work in unison the whole works smoothly too. And by focusing on what you’re trying to achieve, you can quickly discriminate between tasks that must be completed, and those that are just a waste of valuable time.

Money as a Motivator: According to Maslow and Alderfer, pay should prove especially motivational to people who have strong lower-level needs. If pay has this capacity to fulfill a variety of needs, then it should have good potential as a motivator.

• They value their services and place high value on them

• Perceive money as symbol of their achievement

• Will not remain in low paying organization

• Very self – confident

• Know their abilities and limitations

 

The Meaning of Money

Money and employee needs: affects several needs, not just existence needs

Money and attitudes: Money ethic — not evil, represents success, should be budgeted carefully

Money and self-identity: Influences our self-perceptions, evidence that man more than women identify with money

Pay and Motivation:  Variable Pay Programs can take the form of piece-rate plans, wage incentives, profit sharing, bonuses, and gain-sharing. A portion of an employee’s pay is based on some individual and/or organizational measure of performance. Unlike more traditional base-pay programs, variable pay is not an annuity—there is no guarantee. The fluctuation in variable pay programs makes them attractive to management. The organization’s fixed labor costs turn into a variable cost reducing expenses when performance declines. Also, tying pay to performance recognizes contribution rather than being a form of entitlement.

 

Four widely used programs are piece-rate wages, bonuses, profit sharing, and gain sharing:

• Piece-rate wages

• Bonuses

• Profit-sharing plans

• Gain-sharing