Organizational Behavior

• Systems theory sees organizations as one element of number of elements that act interdependently. The organization takes resources (inputs) from the larger system (environment), processes these resources, and returns them in changed form (output).
• Effectiveness criteria must reflect the entire input process output cycle, not simply output
• effectiveness criteria must reflect the interrelationships between the organization and its outside environment

• Values are the conscious affect desires or wants of people that guide behavior. They are society’s ideas about what is right or wrong, are passed from one generation to the next, and are communicated through education systems, religion, families, communities, and organizations
• Organizations are able to operate efficiently only when shared values exist among employees.

• Edgar Schein defined organizational culture as a pattern of basic assumptions, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with the problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.
•  Artifacts
•  Values
•  Basic Assumptions
•  The more employees share and except the core values of an organization, the stronger the culture is and the more influential it is on behavior

•  cultures are elusive and hidden and difficult to diagnose
•  cultural change requires a major commitment of resources and an influential and powerful leader
•  deliberate attempts at cultural change are not practical because of the requirements of difficult techniques, rare skills, and time requirements
• Cultures sustain people through periods of difficulty and provide continuity and stability, thus people will naturally resist change to a new culture

• .Change Behaviors: one of the most effective ways of changing people’s beliefs and values is the first change their behavior.
•  Justify Behaviors: managers must get employees to see the inherent worth in behaving a new way, that is, justify the new behavior.
•  Communicate Justification for Behaviors: managers typically use communications such as announcements, memos, rituals, stories, and dress to motivate and justify new behaviors.
•  Socialization of New Members: the transmittal of values, assumptions, and attitudes from the older to the newer employees.
• Removal of Deviants: removal of existing members who deviate from the culture.

• the extent to which a person’s values and personality are perceived to fit the culture of the organization
• Employees who fit well with an organizational culture are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs, coworkers, and supervisors; committed to the organization; less likely to quit.
• Socialization attempts to make this fit more comfortable.

• coincides generally with the stages of career:
• Anticipatory socialization: the individual attempts to acquire information about the organization.
• Accommodation: individual begins to see the organization for what it is; establishes new interpersonal relationships with coworkers and supervisors; learning the tasks of the job; clarifying the role in the organization; evaluating progress toward satisfying job demands.
• Role management: managing conflict between work and home, and work groups in the organization

• once relevant stimuli are selected individuals categorize and group them so that they will make sense. The brain seeks to recognize common patterns.
• Stereotyping is a translation step in the perceptual process used to assist individual in dealing with massive information processing demands.
• Prejudice is a stereotype that refuses to change when presented with information indicating the stereotype is an accurate.
• Personal prejudice
• group prejudice
• Scapegoating is an extreme form of prejudice in which a person or group is blamed for the actions of others or for condition not of their making.
• Halo effect
• similar to me errors
•  

according to attribution theory, it is the perceived causes of the events, not the actual events themselves, that influence people behaviors

• managing emotions for compensation. The employee manages and modifies his emotions based on organizational expectations
• Can be experienced through empathy
• emotional labor is stressful and may result in burnout
• more emotional labor is likely in work settings and have high frequency of negative events

• self-awareness, self control, empathy toward others, and sensitivity to the feelings of others. Two prevailing themes:
• Salovey and Mayer: coined the term emotional intelligence. Propose that EI emphasizes for cognitive components:

capacity to perceive motion

to integrate emotion and thought

to understand the motion

• manage emotions effectively
• Goleman: argues that we have two brains, two mines, and two different kinds of intelligence: rational and emotional. The balanced and management of emotions determine how to intelligently a person acts and how successful he or she will be in life

• capacity to perform: relates to the degree to which an individual possesses task – relevant skills, abilities, knowledge, and experiences.
• Opportunity to perform:
• willingness to perform: relates to the degree to which an individual both desires and is willing to exert effort toward attaining job performance (motivation

• direction: relates to what an individual chooses to do when presented with a number of possible alternatives.
• Intensity: refers to the length of the response once the choice (direction) is made.
• Persistence: the staying power of behavior or how long a person will continue to develop effort

• focus on factors within the person that energize, direct, sustained, and stop behavior
• Maslow’s need hierarchy
• Alderfers ERG theory
• Herzberg two factor theory
• McClelland’s learned needs theory

• needs are arranged in a hierarchy and are satisfied according to the lowest needs first. Assumes that a satisfied need ceases to motivate, unsatisfied needs cause frustration and stress, people have a need to grow and develop and will constantly strive to move up the hierarchy
• Physiological (lowest order need)
• safety and security needs
• belongingness, social, and love
• esteem
• self actualization (highest order)

• in agreement with Maslow that needs are arranged in a hierarchy but proposes only three sets of needs in a frustration-regression process:
• existence: needs satisfied by such factors as food, air, water
• relatedness: needs satisfied by meaningful social and interpersonal relationships
• growth: needs satisfied by an individual making creative or productive contributions

• extrinsic conditions which result in dissatisfaction among employees when conditions are not present and intrinsic conditions build strong levels of motivation that results in good job performance when present:
• intrinsic motivators:
• feeling of achievement,
• meaningful work
• opportunities for advancement
• increased responsibility
• recognition
• opportunities for growth
• hygiene factors:
• pay
• status
• job security
• working conditions
• benefits
• interpersonal relations

• needs are required from the culture. When needs are strong in a person, its effect is to motivate a person to use behavior that leads to its satisfaction. Needs are learned through coping with one’s environment and behavior that is rewarded tends to recur at a higher frequency. Proposed needs:
• achievement:

affiliation

• power

• describes explains and analyzes how behavior is energized directed sustained and stopped.
• Victor Vroom: expectancy theory
• Adams: equity theory
• Locke: goalsetting theory

• A theory of motivation that suggests employees are more likely to be motivated when they perceived their efforts will result in successful performance and, ultimately, desired rewards and outcomes.
• First level outcomes: results from behavior associated with doing the job itself such as productivity, absenteeism, turnover, and quality.
• Second level outcomes: those events (rewards or punishments) that the first level outcomes are likely to produce.
• Instrumentality: is the perception by an individual that first level outcomes are associated with second level outcomes.
• Valence: refers to the preferences for outcomes as seen by the individual. An outcome is positively vanished when it is preferred and negatively they met when it is not preferred. Valence is zero when the individual is indifferent to obtaining or not attaining a second-level outcome.
• Expectancy: refers to the individual's belief regarding the likelihood or subjective probability that a particular behavior will be followed by a particular outcome.

• A theory of motivation that examines how a person might respond to perceived discrepancies between his input/outcome ratio and that of a reference person. Employees compare their efforts and rewards with those of others in similar work situations and assumes that individuals are motivated by a desire to be equitably treated at work. Four important components:
• Person: the individual for whom the equity or in equity is perceived.
• Comparison other: any group or persons used by person as a referent regarding the ratio of inputs and outputs.
• Inputs: the individual characteristics brought by person to the job.
• Outcomes: what person received from the job.

• Organizational science research that focuses on perceptions and judgments by employees regarding the fairness of the organization's procedures and decisions. For components:
• Distributive Justice: the perceived fairness of how resources and rewards are distributed throughout an organization.
• Procedural justice: refers to the perceived equity or fairness of the organization's processes and procedures used to make resource and allocation decisions. Relates to decision-making procedures. Decisions are interpreted as fair when employees have a voice in the decision, there is consistency in the decision-making, and the process and procedure of decision-making is ethical and moral. Self interest theory (extrinsic rewards)/group value theory (intrinsic rewards)
• Interpersonal Justice: judgments made by employees about whether they feel fairly treated by their supervisors and other authorities in the organization. Employees who perceive abuse treatment from authorities and supervisors experience lower job and life satisfaction, lower organizational commitment, conflict between work and family, and psychological distress.
• Informational justice: research that focuses on perceived fairness of the communication provided to employees from authorities. Are decisions communicated and explained in a fair manner.

• An individual's conscious goals and intentions of the primary determinants of behavior and emphasizes the importance of conscious goals and explaining motivated behavior. Characteristics:
• Goal Specificity: the degree of quantitative precision (clarity) of goal.
• Goal difficulty: the degree of proficiency or level of performance that is sought.
• Goal intensity: the process of setting the goal for of determining how to reach it.
• Goal commitment: the amount of effort used to achieve the goal.
• Moderators: ability, commitment, and feedback.
• Performance leads to rewards preferred by the individual or the team.
• Groups with full or limited participation in goal setting showed significantly more performance and satisfaction improvements.
• Researchers found that specific goals lead to higher output than vague goals.
• Goalsetting programs should be subjected to ongoing examination to monitor attitudinal and performance consequences. Some research has demonstrated the goalsetting programs tend to lose their potency over time.

• Exchange theory suggests that members of an organization engage in reasonably predictable give and take relationships (exchanges) with each other. Schein suggests that the degree to which employees are willing to exert effort, committed to organizational goals, and derive satisfaction from the work depend on two conditions:
• the extent to which employee expectations of what the organization will give them and what they owe the organization return matches the organization's expectations of what it will give and receive.
• Assuming there is an agreement on these expectations, the specific nature of what is exchanged (effort for pay).
• These mutual expectations constitute the psychological contract which is an unwritten agreement between individual and the organization that specifies what each expected to give and receive from the other.
• Psychological contracts are not static; either party's expectations can change as can either party's ability or willingness to continue meeting expectations.
• Psychological contract breach occurs when the employee perceives that the organization has failed to fulfill an unwritten exchange agreement. A breach of the psychological contract often has negative motivation consequences.

Ivancevich, J., Konopaske, R., & Matteson, M. (2011). Organizational Behavior and Management. New York: McGraw-Hill.

• Initially concerned with the social and psychological problems associated with mass production jobs in automobile assembly plants. Walker and Guest found a positive relationship between job range and job satisfaction.
• Supports early motivation theories that predict that increases in job range will increase job satisfaction and other objective job outcomes.
• Job enlargement strategies focus on despecialization or increasing the number of tasks that an employee performs.
• Has evolved to include providing worker paced (rather than machine paced) control.
• Some employees cannot cope with enlarged jobs because they can't comprehend complexity.
• For employees with the requisite ability, job enlargement should increase satisfaction and product quality and decrease absenteeism and turnover.
• Job enlargement could stimulate a demand for larger salaries.

• Designing job depth was provided by Herzberg two factor theory of motivation which argues that factors that meet individuals need for psychological growth must be characteristics of the job. The application of this theory is termed job enrichment. The implementation of job enrichment is realized through direct changes in job depth (the amount of discretion an individual has to decide job activities and job outcomes).
• More useful for employees with a high need for self-esteem and self actualization (strength of employee growth need is high).

• Helping the followeridentify what must be done to accomplish the desired results and ensuring that employees have the resources needed to complete the job.
• The leader considers the employees self-concept and esteem needs.
• The transactiona approach uses path-goal concepts as part of its framework and explanation.
• Transactional leaders wil adjust goals, direction, and mission for practical reasns.

It relies on contingent rewards and mangement by exception -followers believe that accomplishing objectives will result in recieving desired rewards-leaders wil not be involved unless goals are not being accomplished.

• Motivates followers to work for goals instead of short-term self-interest and for achievement and self-actualization instead of security.
• viewed as a special case f transactional leadership; the employees reward is internal.
• The leaders vision provides the follower with the motivation for hrd work that is self-rewarding.
• Translational leader will overhaul the entire organizational philosophy, system, and culture to achieve his mission.

• Characteristics:
• Charisma
• Individual attention
• Intellectual stimulation
• Contingent Reward (transactional)
• Management by exception (transactional)