BMGT364 Exam 1 Cheat Sheet PDF

# Chapter 1: Organizational Behavior (OB) - **Definition**: Organizational behavior (OB) is defined as the systematic study and application of knowledge about how individuals and groups act within the organizations where they work. - **Levels of Analysis**: - Individual - Group - Organi...

# Chapter 1: Organizational Behavior (OB) - **Definition**: Organizational behavior (OB) is defined as the systematic study and application of knowledge about how individuals and groups act within the organizations where they work. - **Levels of Analysis**: - Individual - Group - Organization - **Importance**: - It matters because it is all about things you care about. - OB can help you become a more engaged organizational member. - Getting along with others, getting a great job, lowering your stress level, making more effective decisions, and working effectively within a team. - **Learning Styles**: - **Visual**: - Draw pictures and diagrams to help you understand. - Take careful notes during class so you can refer back to them later on. - **Auditory**: - Join study groups so you can discuss your questions and ideas. - Write down any oral instructions you hear in class right away. - **Kinesthetic**: - Schedule your homework and study sessions so you can take breaks and move around between reading your notes or chapters. - Take good notes during class - this will force you to pay attention and process information even when you feel like you are “getting it”. - **Why you might want to know your learning style**: - It allows you to tailor your study methods to best suit how you absorb information, leading to improved comprehension, better retention of knowledge, and ultimately, increased success in learning by enabling you to study in a way that aligns with your preferred learning methods. - **Trends Influencing OB**: (these trends affect how work gets done today and in the future) - Ethical challenges - Ethical principles to situations that arise at work - Rapid technological change - A flattening world - This makes the point that the Internet has "flattened” the world and created an environment in which there is a more level playing field in terms of access to information. - Sustainable business practices - The primary role of for-profit companies is to generate shareholder wealth. - More recently, the concept of the triple bottom line has been gaining popularity. Those subscribing to the triple bottom line believe that beyond economic viability, businesses need to perform well socially and environmentally. - Demographic trends - Aging workforces create challenges and opportunities. - Global marketplace. - Outsourcing refers to having someone outside the formal ongoing organization doing work previously handled in-house. # Chapter 2: Diversity and Inclusion - **Diversity**: Diversity refers to the ways in which people are similar or different from each other. It may be defined by any characteristic that varies within a particular work unit such as gender, race, age, education, tenure, or functional background (such as being an engineer versus being an accountant). - **Importance**: Having a diverse workforce and managing it effectively have the potential to bring about a number of benefits to organizations. - **Benefits**: - Drives innovation (higher creativity) - Improves decision-making - Better understanding of service and customers - More satisfied workforce - Higher stock prices - Lower legal expenses - Higher performance - **Challenges**: - Similarity-Attraction Phenomenon - Faultlines (attribute along which a group is split into subgroups) - Stereotypes (may act as barriers to advancement) - Earnings gap - Glass ceiling - Fair treatment of employees. - Demographic traits such as gender, race, age, religion, disabilities, and sexual orientation each face unique challenges. - **Inclusion**: Creating an environment where all individuals feel valued and integrated. - **Why is it difficult to achieve diversity and inclusion?** - Unconscious bias, lack of inclusive recruitment practices, communication barriers due to different cultural backgrounds, challenges in managing diverse perspectives, difficulty changing ingrained workplace culture, and the need for consistent leadership commitment to foster an inclusive environment. - **How does the similarity attraction phenomenon play a role in diversity?** - The similarity attraction phenomenon, where people tend to be drawn to others who are similar to themselves, can negatively impact diversity by making individuals more likely to form connections with people who share similar demographics, potentially excluding those from different backgrounds, leading to less inclusive environments and potentially hindering collaboration within diverse teams. - **Surface vs. Deep-Level Diversity**: Surface (observable traits) vs. Deep-level (values, beliefs). - **Faultlines**: Faultlines are hypothetical dividing lines that split a group into two or more subgroups based on the alignment of one or more individual attributes and have been found to influence group processes, performance outcomes, and affective outcomes. - **What are stereotypes and how do biases influence them?** - Stereotypes are generalizations about a particular group of people. People often use them to make decisions about a particular individual without actually verifying whether the assumption holds for the person in question. As a result, stereotypes often lead to unfair and inaccurate decision making. - Biases influence stereotypes by shaping the content of these generalizations, often leading to inaccurate and unfair perceptions of individuals within that group due to preconceived notions based on their social identity; essentially, biases act as the underlying filter through which stereotypes are formed and reinforced. - **What are specific diversity issues in the workplace?** - **Gender**: - Earning gap - Glass ceiling (women being seen less in higher positions) - **Race**: - Racial discrimination in hiring and promotion practices, unequal pay, microaggressions, racial stereotyping, lack of representation in leadership roles, cultural exclusion, racial harassment, unconscious bias in decision-making, and a hostile work environment for people of color, often stemming from systemic racism within the company culture. - **Age**: - Miscommunication - Lack of trust. - Undervalued skills # Chapter 3: Fit and Personality - **Interactionist Perspective**: - **Why does fit matter?** Because when employees’ personalities, values, and skills align with the organization's culture and job demands, they tend to experience higher job satisfaction, commitment, and performance, which contributes to better retention and influence within the company. - **What are the different types of fit?** - **Person-organization fit**: refers to the degree to which a person's values, personality, goals, and other characteristics match those of the organization. - **Person-job fit**: is the degree to which a person's skill, knowledge, abilities, and other characteristics match the job demands. - **Values**: - Values refer to stable life goals that people have. - **Types of values**: - **Terminal values**: refer to end states people desire in life, such as leading a prosperous life and a world at peace. - **Instrumental values**: deal with views on acceptable modes of conduct, such as being honest and ethical, and being ambitious. - **Why values are important**: - The values a person holds will affect his or her employment. - The values that are important to people tend to affect the types of decisions they make, how they perceive their environment, and their actual behaviors. - Moreover, whether individuals will be satisfied at a given job may depend on whether the job provides a way to satisfy their dominant values. Therefore, understanding employees at work requires understanding the value orientations of employees. - **Personality**: - Personality encompasses the relatively stable feelings, thoughts, and behavioral patterns a person has. - **Big Five Traits**: - **Openness**: People who are open are curious, interested in their inner and outer worlds, and enjoy trying new things. - **Conscientiousness**: People who are conscientious are hard workers and good team players. - **Extraversion**: People who are extroverted are sociable, energetic, optimistic, friendly, and assertive. - **Agreeableness**: People who are agreeable are warm, friendly, empathetic, kind, and cooperative. - **Neuroticism**: People who are neurotic are emotionally unstable, moody, irritable, prone to stress, shy, and underconfident. - **Self-Monitoring**: Self-monitoring refers to the extent to which a person is capable of monitoring his or her actions and appearance in social situations. In other words, people who are social monitors are social chameleons who understand what the situation demands and act accordingly, while low social monitors tend to act the way they feel. High social monitors are sensitive to the types of behaviors the social environment expects from them. - **Proactive Personality**: Taking initiative in improving situations. Proactive personality refers to a person's inclination to fix what is perceived as wrong, change the status quo, and use initiative to solve problems. Instead of waiting to be told what to do, proactive people take action to initiate meaningful change and remove the obstacles they face along the way. - **Self-efficacy**: Self-efficacy is a belief that one can perform a specific task successfully. # Chapter 4: Work Attitudes - **What work attitudes do we consider when attempting to determine organizational Outcomes?** - **Job satisfaction**: Job satisfaction refers to the feelings people have toward their job. If the number of studies conducted on job satisfaction is an indicator, job satisfaction is probably the most important job attitude. - **Organizational commitment**: is the emotional attachment people have toward the company they work for. - **Job engagement**: Job satisfaction refers to the feelings people have toward their job. - **What factors contribute to positive job attitudes? How?** - Including how they are treated, the relationships they form with colleagues and managers, and the actual work they perform. - People develop positive work attitudes as a result of their personality, fit with their environment, stress levels they experience, relationships they develop, perceived fairness of their pay, company policies, interpersonal treatment, whether their psychological contract is violated, and the presence of policies addressing work-life conflict. - **What are the consequences of positive work attitudes?** - They may have the inclination to perform better, display citizenship behaviors, and be absent less often and for shorter periods of time, and they are less likely to quit their jobs within a short period of time. When workplace attitudes are more positive, companies benefit in the form of higher safety and better customer service, as well as higher company performance. - **What factors have the strongest influence over work behaviors (job performance,citizenship, counterproductive work behaviors, absenteeism, turnover)** - **General Mental Ability**: Strong predictor of job performance, especially in complex roles (e.g., sales, management). - **Treatment by Organization**: Being treated fairly and having good relationships with managers and colleagues improves performance and citizenship behaviors. - **Stress**: High stress lowers job performance and can lead to absenteeism and turnover. # Chapter 5: Motivation - **What factors impact job performance** - Motivation, ability, and environment are the major influences over employee performance. - **Definition**: - The process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. - **Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic**: - Internal satisfaction vs. external rewards. - Intrinsic motivation is the drive to do something because of interest in the activity itself. - Extrinsic motivation is the motivation to do something to receive external rewards or avoid punishment. - **Need-Based Theories**: How do need based theories help explain motivation? - **Two-Factor Theory**: - **Hygiene factors**: Hygiene factors included company policies, supervision, working conditions, salary, safety, and security on the job. - **Motivators**: Motivators are factors that are intrinsic to the job, such as achievement, recognition, interesting work, increased responsibilities, advancement, and growth opportunities - **Acquired Needs Theory**: - Need for achievement, affiliation, and power. - **How do process-based theories help explain motivation?** - Explain the thought processes of individuals who demonstrate motivated behavior - **Equity theory**: - Employees are demotivated when they view reward distribution as unfair. - If they perceive inequity, they become demotivated. - Fair reward distribution is key to maintaining motivation. - **Distributive, procedural, and interactional justice**: - Distributive justice focuses on fairness in the outcomes received. - Procedural justice involves fairness in the processes used to determine outcomes. - Interactional justice relates to the fairness of interpersonal treatment during the process. - **What are the tenants of expectancy theory and how can we use expectancy to increase motivation?** - **Expectancy**: Belief that effort leads to performance. - **Instrumentality**: Belief that performance leads to outcomes. - **Valence**: The desirability of the outcomes. - To increase motivation, ensure employees believe their effort will yield results, and that the results are desirable. - **Reinforcement theory**: - Behavior is influenced by its consequences. - Positive behaviors should be rewarded. - Negative behaviors should be punished or have rewards removed. - This encourages the repetition of desired behaviors. # Chapter 6: Job Design and Goal Setting - **Job design**: - Structuring jobs to motivate employees and improve performance. - The process of organizing a job's tasks, roles, and responsibilities to improve employee performance and organizational effectiveness. - **Overcoming specialization through**: - **Job rotation**: Moving employees through various tasks to reduce monotony. - **Job enlargement**: Increasing the number of tasks to reduce boredom. - **Job enrichment**: Adding more meaningful tasks and responsibilities. - **Job crafting**: Employees shaping their own roles to fit their strengths and interests. - **Job characteristics model**: - Core job characteristics (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback) enhance motivation. - These characteristics lead to increased satisfaction, higher motivation, and better performance. - **Empowerment**: - Giving employees autonomy and control over their work. - Enhanced through participative decision-making, meaningful tasks, and providing the necessary tools and resources. - **Goal-setting theory**: - **SMART goals**: Specific, Measurable, Aggressive, Realistic, Time-bound. - SMART goals motivate by: - Energizing behavior. - Providing direction and challenge. - Encouraging creative problem-solving. - Goals are more effective with feedback, ability, and commitment from employees. - **Downsides of goal setting**: - Can limit learning, adaptability. - Single-minded focus may neglect other important activities. - Can encourage unethical behavior if poorly set. - **Performance management**: - Continuous process of evaluating and improving employee performance. - **Performance reviews**: Assess employees' strengths and areas for improvement, and align performance with company goals. - **Biases in performance reviews**: - Recency bias (focusing on recent events). - Leniency or strictness bias. - Halo effect (allowing one trait to influence overall judgment). - Biases can be managed by increasing rater accountability and providing training. # Chapter 7: Stress and Emotions - **What is stress?** - Stress is the body's reaction to a perceived threat or challenge, leading to physical and psychological strain. - **Major causes of stress at work**: - Time pressure and tight deadlines. - Lack of control or autonomy. - Role ambiguity or role overload. - Interpersonal conflicts. - Organizational changes or instability. - Unclear expectations from leadership. - **Outcomes of stress**: - **Physiological**: - Headaches, increased heart rate, high blood pressure, and fatigue. - **Psychological**: - Anxiety, depression, mood swings, and irritability. - **Work outcomes**: - Lower productivity, absenteeism, high turnover, decreased job satisfaction, and burnout. - **How different people experience stress** - **Type A personalities**: - More prone to stress due to competitiveness and urgency. - **Type B personalities**: - More relaxed and less susceptible to stress. - Social support and coping mechanisms can also influence stress levels. - **Flow and mindfulness to manage stress**: - **Flow**: - Immersing in activities that challenge your skills helps reduce stress and increase engagement. - **Mindfulness**: - Staying present, self-aware, and managing thoughts can reduce stress and enhance focus. - **What are emotions?** - Emotions are intense, short-term feelings that arise in response to specific events. - **Positive emotions**: - Happiness, excitement, satisfaction. - **Negative emotions**: - Anger, frustration, sadness. - **Emotional contagion**: - The phenomenon where one person's emotions spread to others, influencing the emotional tone of a group or workplace. # Chapter 11: Decision Making - **What is decision-making?** - Decision-making is the process of choosing among alternative courses of action, including the option of inaction. - **Different decision types made in organizations**: - **Automatic decisions**: Quick, routine choices often based on established procedures. - **Programmed decisions**: Decisions made using predetermined guidelines or rules. - **Non programmed decisions**: More complex choices that require careful consideration and analysis. - **Rational decision-making model**: - Involves a structured process that includes: - Identifying the problem. - Gathering information. - Developing alternatives. - Evaluating alternatives. - Making the decision. - Implementing and monitoring the decision. - **Bounded rationality model**: - Acknowledges that decision makers have limitations in their ability to process information. - Decision-making is often based on a simplified model that considers limited options and the most satisfactory solution rather than the optimal one. - **Role of intuition in decision making**: - Intuition involves making decisions based on gut feelings or instincts rather than analytical reasoning. - It can be valuable in situations where quick decisions are needed or when data is limited. - **How decisions can be made creatively**: - **Dimensions of creativity**: - Originality: Developing new and unique ideas. - Flexibility: Approaching problems from different angles. - Elaboration: Expanding on ideas and concepts. - Fluency: Generating a large number of ideas. - **Common decision-making traps**: - Anchoring and adjustment bias: Relying too heavily on the first piece of information encountered. - Availability bias: Overestimating the importance of information that is easily recalled. - Confirmation bias: Seeking out information that confirms existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence. - Escalation of commitment bias: Continuing to invest in a failing decision due to prior commitments. - Framing bias: Being influenced by how information is presented. - Fundamental attribution error**: Overemphasizing personal factors and underestimating situational factors in others' decisions. - Hindsight bias: Believing an event was predictable after it has happened. - Correlation and causality bias: Confusing correlation with causation. - Overconfidence bias: Overestimating one's knowledge or predictive abilities. - Sampling bias: Making decisions based on a non-representative sample of information. - **When are decisions better made by groups vs. individuals?** - **Groups**: When diversity of ideas and experiences is beneficial; complex problems that require multiple perspectives. - **Individuals**: When speed is essential; when a decision falls within one's area of expertise; when clear accountability is needed. - **What is groupthink and why does it occur?** - Groupthink is a phenomenon where the desire for harmony or conformity in a group results in irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcomes. - It occurs due to: - High cohesiveness among group members. - Pressure to conform and maintain group morale. - Lack of diverse viewpoints. - **Techniques to make better decisions**: - **Consensus**: Seeking general agreement among group members. - **Delphi technique**: Gathering input from experts through a series of questionnaires. - **Ethical champions**: Individuals who advocate for ethical considerations in decision-making. - **Majority rule**: Decisions made based on the preferences of more than half the group. - **Nominal group technique**: Structured method for group brainstorming that encourages individual contributions before discussing as a group. - **GDSS (Group Decision Support Systems)**: Technology-based systems that facilitate collaborative decision-making. - **Decision trees**: Visual representations of choices and their potential outcomes to aid in decision making. - **Additional Info**: - Ethical considerations should be part of the decision-making process, as legality does not guarantee ethicality. - Cultural differences influence decision-making styles; for instance, collectivist cultures may prefer consensus, while individualistic cultures may favor majority rule.