Organizational Behavior: History and Principles

• Organizational behavior examines how individuals act, think, and feel within organizations through the study of individual and group processes.
• To thrive, organizations require individuals to be motivated, reliable, continuously learning, flexible, and innovative
• Evidence-based management involves applying scientific principles to organizational practices.

History of Organizational Behavior

• Scientific Management - Taylorism/Bureaucracy involves a high specialization, routinized procedures, decision-making power in upper management, and using promotion to motivate staff
• Faults of Scientific Management include repetitive work which is boring, people losing sight of the significance of work when tasks are specialized, strict rules that lead to rebellion, and missed opportunities due to upper management decisions
• 1920's and 30's emphasized the social influence on workers including the human relations movement.
• Hawthorne's research showed increased productivity with medium breaks, food, and early end
• Contemporary Management includes the Contingency Approach, situational guidance in which there is no one best way to manage, because the appropriate management style depends on the situation.

Role of the Manager

• Informal/informational roles include monitoring the environment, acting as a spokesperson, and disseminating facts/preferences
• Interpersonal involves figurehead, leader (selecting, mentoring, and rewarding employees), and acting as a liaison
• Decisional Roles include entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator

Managerial Activities

• Routine communication involves sending/receiving information and paperwork, like in meetings
• Traditional Management includes planning, decision-making, and controlling
• Networking includes internal and external connections to the organization
• Human resource management is also a key managerial activity

Contemporary Management Concerns

• Diversity includes that of employees and mindset
• Employee health and wellbeing is important due to stress/mental health that causes low productivity, efficiency, high absenteeism and turnover
• Workplace spirituality provides employees with meaning, purpose, sense of community, and connection.
• Positive Organizational Behavior involves developing employees and providing resources for goals and well-being
• Psychological capital is an individual's positive state of mind due to self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience

Talent Management and Engagement

• Talent Management involves attracting, developing, retaining, and utilizing people with the skills to meet current and future business needs
• Employee Engagement is a positive, work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption
• Opportunities for learning, meaningful/challenging/rewarding jobs, recognizing performance, flexible arrangements, and effective leadership are key

Corporate Social Responsibility

• Corporate Social Responsibility: an organization taking responsibility for the impact of its decisions.
• Personality relates to psychological characteristics that influence the way an individual interacts with their environment

Dispositional Approach

• Dispositional approach: individuals possess stable traits that influence their attitudes and behaviors, for example, using personality tests for hiring
• Situational approach: characteristics of the organization's setting influence attitudes and behaviors, for example, rewards, emotions, and processes.
• Interactionist approach: individual attitudes and behaviors are a function of both dispositions and situations
• Strong situations contain clear demands to restrict people from displaying their true traits with less impact from personality
• Weak situations place few constraints on behavior, making traits more clear and giving personality a large impact
• Trait activation theory: traits lead to certain behaviors only when the situation makes the need for the trait

Personality Traits

• Personality Traits: characteristics differentiating people that are relatively stable across situations and over time
• Extraversion indicates if a person is outgoing, sociable, and assertive versus shy and withdrawn, important for interpersonal jobs (sales, management), and related to absenteeism (more extroverted = more absent)
• Emotional stability indicates the extent to which a person has appropriate emotional control.
• People with high emotional stability are calm, self-confident, and have high self esteem, while those with low emotional stability are nervous, insecure and prone to stress, with higher stability being better in all jobs for both customer and co-worker interaction.
• Agreeableness extends to which a person is friendly, warm, and approachable, with more agreeable people being tolerant, cooperative, friendly, and eager to help others.
• Conscientiousness measures extent to which a person is responsible and achievement oriented, with high conscientiousness meaning dependable, responsible, hardworking, and motivated - related to retention, attendance, theft

Openness to Experience

• Openness to experience extends to which a person thinks flexibly and is receptive to new ideas, with high openness meaning curious, original, and creative
• There is little change in extraversion
• Emotional stability increases, mostly in young adulthood
• Agreeableness increases across life through experience and empathy
• Conscientiousness increases quickly at first, then slower as responsibilities increase
• Openness to experience decreases as you get to know yourself better and become more selective with experiences

Link to Performance

• Job Satisfaction: Emotional stability > conscientiousness > extraversion > agreeableness (openness unrelated to job sat.)
• Job performance = Conscientiousness
• Unsafe behavior = high extraversion, low emotional stability
• Less deviance = high conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability
• Motivation = emotional stability and conscientiousness
• Teamwork = conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability
• High income and status = extraversion, conscientiousness and emotional stability
• Locus of Control: beliefs about if behavior is controlled by internal or external forces

High External Control

• High External Control: behavior is determined by fate, luck, or powerful people, typically very religious people
• High Internal Control: behavior is determined by self-initiative, personal actions, and free will
  • Uncertainty generates stress
  • Higher job and life satisfaction
  • Committed to the organization, earn more money and get promoted more -Less stress, less burnout, plan careers better, less absent
• Self Monitoring: extent which people observe and regulate how they appear in social settings

Self-Monitors

• High self-monitors use social cues to guide their own behavior as "Social chameleon"
  • Gravitates towards role-playing jobs, good at adapting (law, PR, politics)
  • Involved in job, emerge as leaders, perform better
    • More role stress and less commitment to organization
• Low self-monitors use their own attitudes and beliefs to guide their own behavior
• "What you see is what you get”, hearts on their sleeve
• Good innovators, can resist social pressure, stand up for their beliefs
• Self-Esteem: degree to which a person has a positive evaluation of himself

Behavioral Plasticity Theory

• Low self-esteem means more susceptible to external influence, good at behavior modelling, respond poorly to negative feedback- good candidates are low self-esteem managers, behavioral plasticity theory
• Focus on external force instead of individual abilities when giving feedback
• Focus on behavior and outline what they can change
• Positive/ Negative Affectivity: emotional disposition predicting peoples general emotional tendencies
• Positive affectivity includes propensity to view the world and self in a positive light, creative, happy at work, high job satisfaction and performance
• Negative affectivity is the propensity to view the world and self in a negative light through anxiety and fear, which means lots of stress, strain and counterproductive/withdrawal behaviors

Proactive Personalities

• Proactive personality: stable personal disposition reflecting a tendency to take the initiative to improve current circumstances or creating new ones
  • Higher job satisfaction, performance, org, Citizenship behavior, and leadership
  • More likely to find jobs, higher salaries and promotions
• General Self Efficacy: general trait that refers to an individual's belief in his or her ability to perform successfully in various situations
• Serves as a motivational trait instead of affective trait
• Self-efficacy beliefs: beliefs about their own ability to perform a task, influenced by performance mastery, observation, mental state, and persuasion.
• Core Self-evaluation: broad personality concept that consists of self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability
  • Among the best predictors of job satisfaction and performance

Reinforcement Strategies:

• Operant learning involves learning to function in an environment to achieve certain consequences by using positive reinforcement.
• Positive reinforcement is the application/addition of a stimulus that increases the probability of a behavior
• Negative reinforcement is the removal of a bad stimulus to increase the probability of a behavior
• Managers can make reinforcement errors by confusing rewards with reinforcement, rewards should be directly related to performance in order to be successful
• Neglecting important sources of reinforcement: performance feedback and social recognition (praise, appreciation)

Reinforcement Strategies

• Fast acquisition requires reinforcement to be applied immediately and every time (continuous) the behavior occurs, shapes short term behaviors
• Persistence sometimes (partial) use of reinforcement after it occurs shapes long-term behaviors
• Reducing Probability of learned behaviors
• Extinction: stopping the reinforcement that is creating the unwanted behavior
• Punishment: applying an adverse stimulus following bad behavior

Social Cognitive Theory

• Social Cognitive Theory: emphasizes the role of cognitive processes in learning and regulating behavior - people learn by observing others, setting goals and rewarding themselves.
• Observational Learning: observing and imitating the behavior of others
• Affective if model is vivid and memorable by an attractive, credible high status person
• Self-Regulation techniques: collects self-observation data, observe models, set goals, rehearse, reinforce yourself Organizational learning practices: OB modification, employee recognition, training, Employee Recognition Programs must involve public recognition!
• Values: broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others
• Hofstede's Study: culturally different work values

Hofstede's Study

• Power distance: extent to which an unequal distribution of power is excepted
• Small power distance: equality, accessible superiors (Denmark, Australia)
• Large power distance: inequality, inaccessible superiors, highlighted power differences (Canada, USA)
• Uncertainty Avoidance: extent to which people are uncomfortable with uncertain/ambiguous situations
• Strong uncertainty = lots of rules, conformity, security, hard work Low uncertainty avoidance = less rules, conformity, security, hard work

Individualism & Collectivism

• Individualism/collectivism: individualist stress independence, initiative and privacy
• Collectivism: favor interdependence, cooperation and loyalty to family/clan
• Long/short term orientation
• Long stress persistence and pay attention to status differences
• Short: stress personal stability and face-saving
• Cultural Distance: extent to which cultures differ in values
• Implications of Cultural Variation

Attitudes

• Attitudes stable evaluative tendency to respond consistently to a situation, person or object, beliefs + values attitudes
• Job satisfaction has a weak relationship with task performance but medium with customer satisfaction and turnover
• Stressors: conditions that have the potential to cause stress
• Stress: Reaction to a stressor- make a person feel tense of anxious
• Managing stress individually involves problem-solving, delegation, time-management
• High stress occurs if threats overwhelm personal resources, locus of control
• Role ambiguity: unclear goals
• Role conflict: when you have several roles, time spent on one takes away from time spent on another
• Managing stress as an individual is done by problem-solving(reducing stress/effect), delegation, or self-care
• Managing stress on an organizational level is done through job redesign, family-friendly HR practices, etc
• Stress management programs involve relaxation exercises

Disposition Theory

• Some are predisposed to be more or less satisfied despite changes in fairness
• The most satisfied people tend to be extroverted and conscientious
• Affective Events Theory: moods and emotions on the job affect satisfaction through emotional contagion & regulation
• Emotion regulation strategies include antecedent, response and teacher study
• Organizational Citizenship Behavior: voluntary, informal behavior that contributes to the organizational effectiveness - tied closely with job satisfaction
• Organizational Commitment: reflects the link between an employee and

Motivation

• Motivation: persistent effort is directed
• Persistence (consistent application of effort)
• Factors involved include a direction of effort, & goals
• Extrinsic stems from the work environment external to the task
• Intrinsic stems from the relationship between the worker and the task
• Predicting job performance - wonderlic personality test 50 items 12 minutes
• Emotional Intelligence: to understand & manage owns and others feelings/emotions
• Skills include identify emotions, using them to guide. Understand and regulate
• Motivation High performance cognitive ability and high emotional intelligence
• Self and others are capable of motivation and are important to success

Need Theories – Workers

• People are motivated by factors such as psychological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization
• A satisfied need is no longer an effective motivator
• Need for achievement for people to perform challenging tasks well
• Need for power relates to a desire to influence others and motivated to improve work, for journalism and management.

Motivational Implications

• Appreciating diverse survey
• Appreciate the difference in levels
• Autonomously motivated
• Process theories of work
• Expectancy is caused by results actions

Linking Performance

• Goal Setting Theory states employees are motivated to attain goals that are specific, challenging, and receive feedback, they must be accepted to be effective
• Personality and ability are necessary to predict behavior, having high levels of both are helpful to overall success
• Strongest Performers: score well in both ability tests as well as in networking and resources Linking Performance: wage incentive plans, increase productivity.
• Linking Pay to Performance: pay links increase/decrease productivity

Job Design

• Breadth: the number of activities performed
• Potential problems are those that reduce quality or cooperation due to external factors

Chapter 11 & 12 - Decision-Making

• MBO: Meetings with managers to monitor progress

• Job-Sharing: Part-time employees share a role

• Flexible Time: flexible schedules for employees

• Heuristics: Look for characteristics for making decisions

• Framing: Gain vs Loss

• Model

• Core Job Characteristics

• High Internal work motivation

• H high general job satisfaction High work effectiveness

This lesson explores organizational behavior, examining individual actions and thoughts within organizations. It covers the history of organizational behavior, including scientific management, and the human relations movement. It also touches on evidence-based management within organizational practices.