Unit 1
What is the definition of Organizational Behaviors?
OB is the field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and ultimately improving the attitudes & behaviours of individuals & groups in organisations
An acronym to remember the “Big Five” personality dimensions (Starts with a “C”).
CANOE
What is job satisfaction?
(pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences)
What is the double bind?
When women act traditionally feminine, they are liked but not seen as leadership material and when women act traditionally masculine, they are disliked and not seen as leadership material
What are the two primary outcomes in OB and what factors affect these outcomes?
Organizational Commitment
Job Performance
Organizational Commitment
Factors
Individual Mechanisms
Individual Characteristics
Group Mechanisms
Organisational Mechanisms
People with this mindset tend to avoid situations that they don’t think they will perform well in.
Fixed Mindset
Extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation: which works better?
intrinsic
What are three approaches to studying leadership?
Structural, Trait and Behavioral/situational
How does OB contribute to a company’s profitability?
Having good OB includes having rare and talented employees who can accommodate for different personalities
Better employees = better work
According to this theory, a person’s job satisfaction depends on whether they believe that their job is supplying them with things of value
Value-Percept Theory
Name 5 key facets that employees consider when evaluating their job satisfaction
Pay satisfaction, promotion satisfaction, supervision satisfaction, coworker satisfaction, satisfaction with the work itself
What is fundamental attribution error?
The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behaviour of others
What is “theory” and its importance in the scientific method?
Theory: collection of assertations (verbal and symbolic) that specify how and why variables are related, as well as the conditions in which they should and shouldn't be related
Can be used to inspire hypothesis
Bill is speeding because he’s late for work. He almost crashes into another driver who is also speeding, and Bill calls the driver reckless and selfish. Bill has fallen prey to what bias?
The Fundamental Attribution Error
What are the two main things that one’s need for achievement is motivated by?
challenging tasks that provide feedback of whether they are doing well or not, the chance to improve upon what they’ve already done - personal growth
What is a Transformational Leader and what are the pros and cons?
Leaders with this style are charismatic and create an inspirational vision to motivate team members. Appeal to values and ideals
Pros: Can inspire intrinsic motivation, Can promote creativity
Cons: Can backfire, Can be out of touch with reality
What is a correlation and what are some examples for strong, moderate, and weak correlations?
Correlation: a statistic that expresses the strength of the relationship between two variables
Ranges from -1 to 1
Strong: 0.50
Moderate: 0.3
Weak: 0.10
An approach which posits that personality comes from a mixture of a person’s predisposed genetic traits and their organizational setting
Interactionist Approach
Who came up with this theory of needs?
Needs as individual differences
– Different people have different needs
– The needs you personally focus on the most are the ones that motivate you the most - intrinsically
McClelland
What is the trait theory of leadership and how accurate is it?
Theories that consider personality, social, physical, or intellectual traits to differentiate leaders from non-leaders and how you can find leadership traits (ex. conscientiousness) to find leaders, leadership traits can explain more about emergence than effectiveness, and explains between 2-22% of the variance of leadership effectiveness criteria