Midterm 2019 Exam Paper PDF

lOMoARcPSD|47043948 MIDTERM 2019, questions and answers Organizational Behaviour I (Wilfrid Laurier University) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Dow...

lOMoARcPSD|47043948 MIDTERM 2019, questions and answers Organizational Behaviour I (Wilfrid Laurier University) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 BU288 MIDTERM #1 STUDY GUIDE (SECTIONS A1, E, A5) Date: Thursday September 27, 2018 Time: 1:00 (Section A1); 2:30 (Section E); 4:00 (Section A5) Location: LH2066 (our usual classroom) Duration: 80 minutes Weight: 20% The midterm will consist of: - 30 multiple-choice questions (1 point each) - 3 short-answer questions (10 points each) – there will be 4 questions, but you only need to answer 3 of them. The midterm will include the following materials: - Textbook chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, & Appendix on Research in OB - All lecture slides **Note: if you miss a class, it’s your responsibility to borrow notes from your classmates How to prepare for the midterm: 1. Multiple-choice questions: a. Read the 10th ed. of the textbook (multiple choice questions will be drawn directly from the textbook) b. Make sure you go over the textbook topic checklist (see below) – some concepts from the textbook that are not covered in class may appear on the midterm as multiple-choice questions c. Go over textbook chapter summaries that are on MyLS 2. Short-answer questions: a. Go over the lecture slides (short-answer questions will be based on both what was covered in lectures and the textbook). b. Make sure you understand (rather than simply memorize) the material on the lecture slides. You will be tested on your understanding and application of the material. My best suggestion is to be familiar with the terms and concepts, and think about how they would apply to a real work setting. Integration and application of materials from the class is what I am looking for c. We will go over example short-answer questions and model answers in class the week before the midterm Happy studying and good luck! TEXTBOOK TOPICS CHECKLIST Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 CHAPTER 1 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND MANAGEMENT CHAPTER 1 LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Define organizations and describe their basic characteristics. a. Social inventions for accomplishing common goals through group effort. i. SOCIAL INVENTIONS - When we say that organizations are social inventions, we mean that their essential characteristic is the coordinated presence of people, not necessarily things. The field of organizational behaviour is about understanding people and managing them to work effectively. ii. GOALS ACCOMPLISHMENT - Individuals are assembled into organizations for a reason. Non-profit organizations have goals such as saving souls, promoting the arts, helping the needy, or educating people. Virtually all organizations have survival as a goal. Certain behaviours are necessary for survival and adaptation. People have to: 1. be motivated to join and remain in the organization; 2. carry out their basic work reliably, in terms of productivity, quality, and service; 3. be willing to continuously learn and upgrade their knowledge and skills; and 4. be flexible and innovative. The field of organizational behaviour is concerned with all these basic activities. Innovation and flexibility, which foster adaptation to change, are especially important for contemporary organizations. The field of organizational behaviour is concerned with how organizations can survive and adapt to change. iii. GROUP EFFORT - At its most general level, this means that organizations depend on interaction and coordination among people to accomplish their goals. Much of the intellectual and physical work done in organizations is quite literally performed by groups, whether they are permanent work teams or short-term project teams. Also, informal grouping occurs in all organizations because friendships develop and individuals form informal alliances to accomplish work. The quality of this informal contact in terms of communication and morale can have a strong impact on goal achievement. the field of organizational behaviour is concerned with how to get people to practise effective teamwork. 2. Explain the concept of organizational behaviour and describe the goals of the field. a. Organizational behaviour refers to the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups in organizations. (micro) Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 i. Meso: how organizations can be structured more effectively b. The discipline of organizational behaviour systematically studies these attitudes and behaviours and provides insight about effectively managing and changing them. It also studies how organizations can be structured more effectively and how events in their external environments affect organizations. Those who study organizational behaviour are interested in attitudes—how satisfied people are with their jobs, how committed they feel to the goals of the organization, or how supportive they are of promoting minorities into management positions. Behaviours such as cooperation, conflict, innovation, resignation, or ethical lapses are important areas of study in the field of organizational behaviour. c. These questions provide a good overview of some issues that those in the field of organizational behaviour study. i. What can organizations do to help employees manage stress? ii. What does it mean to empower employees, and why is this important? iii. How can organizations motivate employees, and how important is compensation? iv. What is the purpose of an employee survey? An employee survey is an organizational approach to improve communication. v. What is an organizational culture, and what role does it play in an organization’s success? d. Analysis followed by action is what organizational behaviour is all about. e. The three goals of the field of organizational behaviour are: i. Predicting, explaining, and managing behaviour f. Human resources management: refers to programs, practices, and systems to acquire, develop, motivate, and retain employees in organizations. i. Recruitment and selection, compensation, and training and development ii. Closely related, but distinct principle 3. Define management and describe what managers do to accomplish goals. a. Management is defined as the art of getting things accomplished in organizations through others. b. Managers acquire, allocate, and utilize physical and human resources to accomplish goals. c. If behaviour can be predicted and explained, it can often be managed. That is, if we truly understand the reasons for high-quality service, ethical behaviour, or anything else, we can often take sensible action to manage it effectively. If prediction and explanation constitute analysis, then management constitutes action. d. Evidence-based management: Making decisions through the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of the best available evidence from multiple sources. Involves translating principles based on the best scientific evidence into organizational practices. Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 i. By using evidence-based management, managers can make decisions based on the best available scientific evidence from social science and organizational research, rather than personal preference and unsystematic experience. Evidence-based management derives principles from research evidence and translates them into practices that solve organizational problems. The use of evidence-based management is more likely to result in the attainment of organizational goals, including those affecting employees, stockholders, and the public in general 4. Contrast the classical viewpoint of management with that advocated by the human relations movement a. Classical viewpoint i. An early prescription on management that advocated a high specialization of labour, intensive coordination, and centralized decision making. ii. Each department was to tend to its own affairs, with centralized decision making from upper management providing coordination. The classical view suggested that, to maintain control, managers have fairly few workers, except for lower-level jobs, where machine pacing might substitute for close supervision. iii. Bureaucracy: Max Weber’s ideal type of organization that included a strict chain of command, detailed rules, high specialization, centralized power, and selection and promotion based on technical competence. Weber made the term bureaucracy famous by advocating it as a means of rationally managing complex organizations. Weber saw bureaucracy as an “ideal type” or theoretical model that would standardize behaviour in organizations and provide workers with security and a sense of purpose. iv. Even during this period, some observers, such as Mary Parker Follett noted that the classical view of management seemed to take for granted an essential conflict of interest between managers and employees. This sentiment found expression in the human relations movement. b. Human Relations Movement i. Hawthorne studies: Research conducted in the 1920s and 1930s at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric near Chicago that illustrated how psychological and social processes affect productivity and work adjustment. This impact suggested that there could be dysfunctional aspects to how work was organized. One obvious sign was resistance to management through strong informal group mechanisms, such as norms that limited productivity to less than what management wanted. ii. Human relations movement: A critique of classical management and bureaucracy that advocated management styles that were more participative and oriented toward employee needs. called attention to certain dysfunctional aspects of classical management and bureaucracy Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 and advocated more people-oriented styles of management that catered more to the social and psychological needs of employees. This critique of bureaucracy addressed several specific problems: 1. Strict specialization is incompatible with human needs for growth and achievement. This can lead to employee alienation from the organization and its clients. 2. Strong centralization and reliance on formal authority often fail to take advantage of the creative ideas and knowledge of lower-level members, who are often closer to the customer. As a result, the organization will fail to learn from its mistakes, which threatens innovation and adaptation. Resistance to change will occur as a matter of course. 3. Strict, impersonal rules lead members to adopt the minimum acceptable level of performance that the rules specify. If a rule states that employees must process at least eight claims a day, eight claims will become the norm, even though higher performance levels are possible. 4. Strong specialization causes employees to lose sight of the overall goals of the organization. Forms, procedures, and required signatures become ends in themselves, divorced from the true needs of customers, clients, and other departments in the organization. This is the “red-tape mentality” that we sometimes observe in bureaucracies iii. Obviously, not all bureaucratic organizations have these problems. However, they were common enough that human relations advocates and others began to call for the adoption of more flexible systems of management and the design of more interesting jobs. They also advocated open communication, more employee participation in decision making, and less rigid, more decentralized forms of control. 5. Describe the contingency approach to management. a. The contingency approach to management recognizes that there is no one best way to manage; rather, an appropriate style depends on the demands of the situation. Thus, the effectiveness of a leadership style is contingent/reliant on the abilities of the followers, and the consequence of a pay increase is partly contingent on the need for money. Contingencies illustrate the complexity of organizational behaviour and show why we should study it systematically. 6. Explain what managers do — their roles, activities, agendas for action, and thought processes. a. Managerial roles i. Interpersonal roles Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 1. Interpersonal roles are expected behaviours that have to do with establishing and maintaining interpersonal relations. In the figurehead role, managers serve as symbols of their organization rather than active decision makers. Examples of the figurehead role are making a speech to a trade group, entertaining clients, or signing legal documents. In the leadership role, managers select, mentor, reward, and discipline employees. In the liaison role, managers maintain horizontal contacts inside and outside the organization. This might include discussing a project with a colleague in another department or touching base with an embassy delegate of a country where the company hopes to do future business ii. Informational roles 1. These roles are concerned with the various ways managers receive and transmit information. In the monitor role, managers scan the internal and external environments of the firm to follow current performance and to keep themselves informed of new ideas and trends. For example, the head of research and development might attend a professional engineering conference. In the disseminator role, managers send information on both facts and preferences to others. For example, the R&D head might summarize what he or she learned at the conference in an email to employees. The spokesperson role concerns mainly sending messages into the organization’s external environment—for example, drafting an annual report to stockholders or giving an interview to the press. iii. Decisional roles 1. The final set of managerial roles deals with decision making. In the entrepreneur role, managers turn problems and opportunities into plans for improved changes. This might include suggesting a new product or service that will please customers. In the disturbance handler role, managers deal with problems stemming from employee conflicts and address threats to resources and turf. In their resource allocation role, managers decide how to deploy time, money, personnel, and other critical resources. Finally, in their negotiator role, managers conduct major negotiations with other organizations or individuals. b. Managerial activities i. Managers engage in 4 basic types of activities 1. Routine communication. This includes the formal sending and receiving of information (as in meetings) and the handling of paperwork Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 2. Traditional management. Planning, decision making, and controlling are the primary types of traditional management. 3. Networking. Networking consists of interacting with people outside of the organization and informal socializing and politicking with insiders. 4. Human resource management. This includes motivating and reinforcing, disciplining and punishing, managing conflict, staffing, and training and developing employees. c. Managerial agendas i. Agenda setting 1. Kotter’s managers, given their positions, all gradually developed agendas of what they wanted to accomplish for the organization. Many began these agendas even before they assumed their positions. These agendas were almost always informal and unwritten, and they were much more concerned with “people issues” and were less numerical than most formal strategic plans. The managers based their agendas on wide-ranging informal discussions with a wide variety of people. ii. Networking 1. Kotter’s managers established a wide formal and informal network of key people both inside and outside of their organizations. Insiders included peers, employees, and bosses, but they also extended to these people’s employees and bosses. Outsiders included customers, suppliers, competitors, government officials, and the press. This network provided managers with information and established cooperative relationships relevant to their agendas. Formal hiring, firing, and reassigning shaped the network, but so did informal liaisons in which managers created dependencies by doing favours for others. iii. Agenda implementation 1. The managers used networks to implement the agendas. They would go anywhere in the network for help—up or down, in or out of the organization. In addition, they employed a wide range of influence tactics, from direct orders to subtle language and stories that conveyed their message indirectly 2. The theme that runs through Kotter’s findings is the high degree of informal interaction and concern with people issues that were necessary for the managers to achieve their agendas. To be sure, the managers used their formal organizational power, but they often found themselves dependent on people over whom they wielded no power. An understanding of organizational behaviour helps to recognize and manage these realities. d. Managerial minds Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 i. Some people think that organizational behaviour and its implications for management are just common sense. However, careful observers of successful managers have often noted that intuition seems to guide many of their actions. Isenberg’s research suggests that experienced managers use intuition in several ways: 1. To sense that a problem exists; 2. to perform well-learned mental tasks rapidly (e.g., sizing up a written contract); 3. to synthesize isolated pieces of information and data; and 4. to double-check more formal or mechanical analyses (“Do these projections look correct?”). ii. Rather, good intuition is problem identification and problem solving based on a long history of systematic and extensive education and experience that enables the manager to locate problems within a network of previously acquired information. e. International managers i. Would managers in other global locations act and think the same way? Up to a point, the answer is probably yes. After all, we are dealing here with some very basic behaviours and thought processes. However, the style in which managers do what they do and the emphasis they give to various activities will vary greatly across cultures because of cross-cultural variations in values that affect both managers’ and employees’ expectations about interpersonal interaction ii. technical requirements for accomplishing goals are actually the same across cultures. It is only the behavioural requirements that differ. Thus, national culture is one of the most important contingency variables in organizational behaviour. The appropriateness of various leadership styles, motivation techniques, and communication methods depends on where one is in the world. 7. Describe the four contemporary management concerns facing organizations and how organizational behaviour can help organizations understand and manage these concerns. a. Diversity: local and global i. Labour force and customers becoming increasingly culturally diverse. ii. organizations realize they have not treated certain segments of the population, such as women, LGBT, etc. fairly in many aspects of employment. iii. In response to this demographic shift, organizations are beginning to adopt new programs, such as flexible benefit plans, compressed workdays, and part-time jobs, to attract and retain older workers. Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 iv. Organizations have to be able to get the best from everyone to be truly competitive. Although legal pressures (such as the Employment Equity Act) have contributed to this awareness, general social pressure, especially from customers and clients, has also done so v. What does diversity have to do with organizational behaviour? The field has long been concerned with stereotypes, conflict, cooperation, and teamwork. These are just some of the factors that managers must manage effectively for organizations to benefit from the considerable opportunities that a diverse workforce affords. b. Talent Management and Employee Engagement i. Talent management: an organization’s process to attract, develop, retain, and utilize people with the required skills to meet current and future business needs. 1. the management of talent has become a major organizational concern that involves a concerted effort and the involvement of all levels of management. 2. An increasing number of organizations are having trouble finding qualified talent, a problem stemming in part from changing demographics that will result in a dramatic shortage of skilled workers over the next 10 years, as the baby boomers begin to retire, leaving a large skills gap. People are entering the skilled trades less, people are more willing to relocate => CEOs say retaining talent is their #1 priority, but most say they cannot find enough competent employees ii. Employment Engagement: positive work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication, absorption. 1. It has been reported that only one-third of workers are engaged, and yet engaged workers have more positive work attitudes and higher job performance. Employee engagement is considered to be key to an organization’s success and competitiveness, and it can have a significant impact on productivity, customer satisfaction, profitability, innovation, and quality. iii. What does organizational behaviour have to do with talent management and employee engagement? Organizational behaviour provides the means for organizations to be designed and managed in ways that optimize the attraction, development, retention, engagement, and performance of talent. For example, providing opportunities for learning and designing jobs that are challenging, meaningful, and rewarding; providing recognition and monetary rewards for performance; managing a diverse workforce; offering flexible work arrangements; and providing effective leadership are just some of the factors that are important for the effective management of talent and employee engagement c. Employee health and wellbeing. i. Workplace mental health and safety have become so important that in 2013 a new national standard for workplace mental health and safety was Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 introduced to help Canadian organizations create workplaces that promote a mentally healthy workplace and support employees dealing with mental illness. The standard provides guidelines to help organizations identify potential hazards to mental health and how they can improve policies and practices. In response, organizations have begun to implement mental health initiatives and to make mental health a priority at work. While organization wellness programs in the past focused primarily on physical health, an increasing number of organizations are now also focusing on mental health. ii. organizational behaviour is concerned with creating positive work environments that contribute to employee health and wellness. Two examples of this are workplace spirituality (or a spiritual workplace) and positive organizational behaviour iii. workplace spirituality 1. found in workplaces that provide employees with meaning, purpose, a sense of community, and a connection to others. It is important to realize that workplace spirituality is not about religion in the workplace, but rather providing employees with a meaningful work life that is aligned with their values. In a spiritual workplace, employees have interesting work that provides meaning and a feeling of purpose, a sense that they belong to and are part of a caring and supportive community, and a sense of connection to their work and others. Employees in a spiritual workplace have opportunities for personal growth and development, and they feel valued and supported. iv. positive organizational behavior 1. Organizational behaviour is concerned with developing employees and providing them with the resources they need to achieve their goals and for their well-being. This is best reflected in what is known as positive organizational behaviour 2. POB = “the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today’s workplace. 3. → Psychological Capital: a. an individual’s positive psychological state of development characterized by: self-efficiency (confidence in ability to do task), optimism, hope, resilience. b. related to attitudes, behaviour, and job performance. c. It is important to note that each of the components of PsyCap are considered to be states or positive work-related psychological resources that can be changed, modified, and developed. In other words, they are not fixed, stable, or static personality traits 4. Thus, POB is an effective approach for organizations to improve employee health and well-being by developing employees’ PsyCap Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 v. → OB issues: employee engagement, stress, absenteeism, turnover, workplace spirituality (sense of purpose), psychological capital. d. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): i. refers to an organization’s taking responsibility for the impact of its decisions and actions on its stakeholders (e.g., employees, customers, suppliers, environmentalists, the community, owners/shareholders). It has to do with an organization’s overall impact on society at large and extends beyond the interests of shareholders to the interests and needs of employees and the community in which it operates. CSR involves a variety of issues that range from community involvement, environmental protection, product safety, ethical marketing, employee diversity, and local and global labour practices. Ultimately, CSR has to do with how an organization performs its core functions of producing goods and providing services while doing so in a socially responsible way ii. What does a focus on social responsibility have to do with organizational behaviour? For starters, many CSR issues have to do with organizational behaviour, such as an organization’s treatment of employees, management practices such as promoting diversity, work–family balance, and employment equity. Organizations that rank high on CSR are good employers because of the way they treat their employees and because of management practices that promote employee well-being. CHAPTER 1 TEXTBOOK STUDY CHECKLIST - What are organizations? - What is organizational behaviour? o Organizational behaviour o Human resources management - Why study organizational behaviour? - Goals of organizational behaviour o Predicting organizational behaviour o Explaining organizational behaviour o Managing organizational behaviour - Early prescriptions concerning management o The classical view and bureaucracy o The Human Relations Movement and a critique of bureaucracy - Contemporary management — the contingency approach - What do managers do? o Managerial roles o Managerial activities o Managerial agendas o Managerial minds o International managers Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 - Some contemporary management concerns ______________________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 2 PERSONALITY AND LEARNING CHAPTER 2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Define personality and describe the dispositional, situational, and interactionist approaches to organizational behaviour. a. Personality: the relatively stable set of psychological characteristics that influences the way an individual interacts with his or her environment and how he or she feels, thinks, and behaves. An individual’s personality summarizes his or her personal style of dealing with the world. b. Dispositional approach: Individuals possess stable traits or characteristics that influence their attitudes and behaviours. i. In other words, individuals are predisposed to behave in certain ways. However, decades of research produced mixed and inconsistent findings that failed to support the usefulness of personality as a predictor of organizational behaviour and job performance. As a result, there was a dramatic decrease in personality research and a decline in the use of personality tests for selection. c. Situational approach: Characteristics of the organizational setting influence people’s attitudes and behaviour i. such as rewards and punishment. For example, many studies have shown that job satisfaction and other work-related attitudes are largely determined by situational factors, such as the characteristics of work tasks d. Interactionist approach: Individuals’ attitudes and behaviour are a function of both dispositions and the situation i. both approaches are important for predicting and understanding organizational behaviour ii. In other words, to predict and understand organizational behaviour, one must know something about an individual’s personality and the setting in which they work. Now the most widely accepted perspective within organizational behaviour. e. In weak situations, it is not always clear how a person should behave, while in strong situations there are clear expectations for appropriate behaviour. As a result, personality has the most impact in weak situations. This is because in these situations (e.g., a newly formed volunteer community organization) there are loosely defined roles, few rules, and weak reward and punishment contingencies. However, in strong situations, which have more defined roles, rules, and contingencies (e.g., routine military operations), personality tends to have less impact. Thus, as you can see, the extent to which personality influences people’s attitudes and behaviour depends on the situation. f. According to trait activation theory, personality traits lead to certain behaviours only when the situation makes the need for that trait salient. In other words, Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 personality characteristics influence people’s behaviour when the situation calls for a particular personality characteristic. Thus, there is no one best personality, and managers need to appreciate the advantages of employee diversity. A key concept here is fit: putting the right person in the right job, group, or organization and exposing different employees to different management styles. 2. Discuss the Five-Factor Model of personality, locus of control, self-monitoring, and self- esteem. a. 5-factor model provides a framework for classifying personality characteristics into five general dimensions. This framework makes it much easier to understand and study the role of personality in organizational behaviour i. Extraversion. This is the extent to which a person is outgoing versus shy. Persons who score high on extraversion tend to be sociable, outgoing, energetic, joyful, and assertive. High extraverts enjoy social situations, while those low on this dimension (introverts) avoid them. Extraversion is especially important for jobs that require a lot of interpersonal interaction, such as sales and management, where being sociable, assertive, energetic, and ambitious is important for success. ii. Emotional stability/Neuroticism. This is degree to which a person has appropriate emotional control. People with high emotional stability (low neuroticism) are self-confident and have high self-esteem. Those with lower emotional stability (high neuroticism) tend toward self-doubt and depression. They tend to be anxious, hostile, impulsive, depressed, insecure, and more prone to stress. As a result, for almost any job the performance of persons with low emotional stability is likely to suffer. Persons who score high on emotional stability are likely to have more effective interactions with co-workers and customers because they tend to be more calm and secure. iii. Agreeableness. This is the extent to which a person is friendly and approachable. More agreeable people are warm, considerate, altruistic, friendly, sympathetic, cooperative, and eager to help others. Less agreeable people tend to be cold and aloof. They tend to be more argumentative, inflexible, uncooperative, uncaring, intolerant, and disagreeable. Agreeableness is most likely to contribute to job performance in jobs that require interaction and involve helping, cooperating, and nurturing others, as well as in jobs that involve teamwork and cooperation. iv. Conscientiousness. This is the degree to which a person is responsible and achievement oriented. More conscientious people are dependable and positively motivated. They are orderly, self-disciplined, hard-working, and achievement striving, while less conscientious people are irresponsible, lazy, and impulsive. Persons who are high on conscientiousness are likely to perform well on most jobs, given their tendency toward hard work and achievement. v. Openness to experience. This is the extent to which a person thinks flexibly and is receptive to new ideas. More open people tend toward creativity and innovation. Less open people favor the status quo. People Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 who are high on openness to experience are likely to do well in jobs that involve learning and creativity, given that they tend to be intellectual, curious, and imaginative, and to have broad interests vi. The Big Five dimensions are relatively independent. That is, you could be higher or lower in any combination of dimensions. Also, they tend to hold up well cross-culturally. Thus, people in different cultures use these same dimensions when describing the personalities of friends and acquaintances. vii. Big 5 linked to OB 1. better traits lead to better job performance and more citizenship behaviours. Further, the Big Five dimensions that best predict job performance depend on the occupation. For example, high extraversion is important for managers and salespeople. Nonetheless, high conscientiousness predicts performance in all jobs across occupations and is the strongest predictor of all the Big Five dimensions of overall job performance 2. the Big Five are related to other work behaviours. For example, conscientiousness is related to retention and attendance at work and is also an important antidote for counterproductive behaviours such as theft, absenteeism, and disciplinary problems. Extraversion has also been found to be related to absenteeism; extraverts tend to be absent more often than introverts. There is also evidence of relationships between personality and unsafe work behaviour and workplace deviance. For example, while high levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness are associated with fewer unsafe behaviours, high levels of extraversion and low emotional stability (neuroticism) are associated with more unsafe behaviours. In addition, higher levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability are associated with lower levels of workplace deviance. 3. The Big Five are also related to work motivation and job satisfaction. In a study that investigated the relationship between the Big Five and different indicators of work motivation, the Big Five were found to be significantly related to motivation. Among the five dimensions, neuroticism and conscientiousness were the strongest predictors of motivation, with the former being negatively related and the latter being positively related. In another study, the Big Five were shown to be significantly related to job satisfaction. The strongest predictor was emotional stability, Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 followed by conscientiousness, extraversion, and, to a lesser extent, agreeableness. Openness to experience was not related to job satisfaction. Similar results have been found for life satisfaction. In addition, individuals with higher conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability perform better on a team in terms of their performance of important team-relevant behaviours such as cooperation, concern, and courtesy to team members 4. The Big Five are also related to career success. High conscientiousness, extraversion, and emotional stability have been found to be associated with a higher income and occupational status. These personality traits were related to career success even when the influence of general mental ability was taken into account. Furthermore, both childhood and adult measures of personality predicted career success during adulthood over a period of 50 years. Thus, the effects of personality on career success are relatively enduring b. Locus of control i. This variable refers to individuals’ beliefs about the location of the factors that control their behaviour. At one end of the continuum are high internals who believe that the opportunity to control their own behaviour resides within themselves. At the other end of the continuum are high externals, who believe that external forces determine their behaviour. Not surprisingly, compared with internals, externals see the world as an unpredictable, chancy place in which luck, fate, or powerful people control their destinies ii. iii. Internals tend to see stronger links between the effort they put into their jobs and the performance level that they achieve. In addition, they perceive to a greater degree than externals that the organization will notice high performance and reward it. Since internals believe that their work behaviour will influence the rewards they achieve, they are more likely to be aware of and to take advantage of information that will enable them to perform effectively Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 iv. locus of control influences organizational behaviour in a variety of occupational settings. Evidently, because they perceive themselves as being able to control what happens to them, people who are high on internal control are more satisfied with their jobs and more committed to their organizations, and they earn more money and achieve higher organizational positions. In addition, they seem to perceive less stress, cope with stress better, experience less burnout, and engage in more careful career planning. They are also less likely to be absent from work and more likely to be satisfied with their lives c. Self-monitoring i. the extent to which people observe and regulate how they appear and behave in social settings and relationships ii. The people who “wear their heart on their sleeve” are low self-monitors. They are not so concerned with scoping out and fitting in with those around them. Their opposites are high self-monitors, who take great care to observe the thoughts, actions, and feelings of those around them and control the images that they project. In this sense, high self-monitors behave somewhat like actors. In particular, high self-monitors tend to show concern for socially appropriate emotions and behaviours, to tune in to social and interpersonal cues, and to regulate their behaviour and self- presentation according to these cues iii. How does self-monitoring affect organizational behaviour? For one thing, high self-monitors tend to gravitate toward jobs that require, by their nature, a degree of role-playing and the exercise of their self-presentation skills. Sales, law, public relations, and politics are examples. In such jobs, the ability to adapt to one’s clients and contacts is critical; so are communication skills and persuasive abilities, characteristics that high self-monitors frequently exhibit. High self-monitors perform particularly well in occupations that call for flexibility and adaptiveness in dealings with diverse constituencies. As well, a number of studies show that managers are inclined to be higher self-monitors than non-managers in the same organization. High self-monitors tend to be more involved in their jobs, to perform at a higher level, and to be more likely to emerge as leaders. However, high self-monitors are also likely to experience more role stress and show less commitment to their organization iv. Are high self-monitors always at an organizational advantage? Not likely. They are unlikely to feel comfortable in ambiguous social settings in which it is hard to determine exactly what behaviours are socially appropriate. Dealing with unfamiliar cultures (national or corporate) might provoke stress. Also, some roles require people to go against the grain or really stand up for what they truly believe in. Thus, high self-monitoring types would seem to be weak innovators and would have difficulty resisting social pressure d. Self-esteem i. the degree to which a person has a positive self-evaluation. People with high self-esteem have favourable self-images. People with low self-esteem Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 have unfavourable self-images. They also tend to be uncertain about the correctness of their opinions, attitudes, and behaviours. In general, people tend to be highly motivated to protect themselves from threats to their self- esteem ii. According to behavioural plasticity theory, people with low self-esteem tend to be more susceptible to external and social influences than those who have high self-esteem—that is, they are more pliable. Thus, events and people in the organizational environment have more impact on the beliefs and actions of employees with low self-esteem. This occurs because, being unsure of their own views and behaviour, they are more likely to look to others for information and confirmation. In addition, people who have low self-esteem seek social approval from others, approval that they might gain from adopting others’ views, and they do not react well to ambiguous and stressful situations. This is another example of the interactionist approach, in that the effect of the work environment on people’s beliefs and actions is partly a function of their self-esteem iii. Employees with low self-esteem also tend to react badly to negative feedback—it lowers their subsequent performance. This means that managers should be especially cautious when using punishment with employees with low self-esteem. If external causes are thought to be responsible for a performance problem, this should be made very clear. Also, managers should direct criticism at the performance difficulty and not at the person. modelling the correct behaviour should be especially effective with employees with low self-esteem, who are quite willing to imitate credible models and who also respond well to mentoring. organizations should try to avoid assigning those with low self-esteem to jobs (such as life insurance sales) that inherently provide a lot of negative feedback iv. Organizations will generally benefit from a workforce with high self- esteem. Such people tend to make more fulfilling career decisions, they exhibit higher job satisfaction and job performance, and they are generally more resilient to the strains of everyday worklife. What can organizations do to bolster self-esteem? Opportunity for participation in decision making, autonomy, and interesting work have been fairly consistently found to be positively related to self-esteem. Also, organizations should avoid creating a culture with excessive and petty work rules that signal to employees that they are incompetent or untrustworthy 3. Discuss positive and negative affectivity, proactive personality, general self-efficacy, and core self-evaluations and their consequences. a. Positive affectivity i. People who are high on positive affectivity experience positive emotions and moods like joy and excitement and view the world, including themselves and other people, in a positive light. They tend to be cheerful, enthusiastic, lively, sociable, and energetic. b. Negative affectivity Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 i. People who are high on negative affectivity experience negative emotions and moods like fear and anxiety and view the world in a negative light. They have an overall negative view of themselves and the world around them, and they tend to be distressed, depressed, and unhappy.31 It is important to understand that PA and NA are not opposite ends of a continuum but are relatively independent dimensions. ii. positive and negative affectivity are emotional dispositions that predict people’s general emotional tendencies. Thus, they can influence people’s emotions and mood states at work and influence job attitudes and work behaviours. Research has found that people who are high on PA have higher job satisfaction and job performance and engage in more organizational citizenship behaviours. High PA employees are also more creative at work, and there is some evidence that PA is a key factor that links happiness to success at work and in life. Individuals who are high on NA report lower job satisfaction and have poorer job performance. High NA employees experience more stressful work conditions and report higher levels of workplace stress and strain. NA has also been found to be associated with counterproductive work behaviours (e.g., harassment and physical aggression), withdrawal behaviours (e.g., absenteeism and turnover), and occupational injury. c. Proactive personality i. Taking initiative to improve one’s current circumstances or creating new ones is known as proactive behaviour. It involves challenging the status quo rather than passively adapting to present conditions. Some people are very good at this because they have a stable disposition toward proactive behaviour, known as a “proactive personality.” Individuals who have a proactive personality are relatively unconstrained by situational forces and act to change and influence their environment. Proactive personality is a stable personal disposition that reflects a tendency to take personal initiative across a range of activities and situations and to effect positive change in one’s environment ii. People who do not have a proactive personality are more likely to be passive and to react and adapt to their environment. As a result, they tend to endure and to be shaped by the environment instead of trying to change it iii. Proactive personality has been found to be related to a number of work outcomes, including job satisfaction, job performance, organizational citizenship behaviours, tolerance for stress in demanding jobs, leadership effectiveness, participation in organizational initiatives, work-team performance, and entrepreneurship. One study found that proactive personality is associated with higher performance evaluations because individuals with a proactive personality develop strong supportive networks and perform initiative-taking behaviours, such as implementing solutions to organizational or departmental problems or spearheading new programs. Individuals with a proactive personality have also been found to have high-quality relationships with their supervisors. There is also Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 evidence that persons with a proactive personality are more successful in searching for employment and career success. They are more likely to find jobs, receive higher salaries and more frequent promotions, and have more satisfying careers. d. General self-efficacy i. General self-efficacy (GSE) is a general trait that refers to an individual’s belief in his or her ability to perform successfully in a variety of challenging situations. GSE is considered to be a motivational trait rather than an affective trait, because it reflects an individual’s belief that he or she can succeed at a variety of tasks rather than how an individual feels about him- or herself. An individual’s GSE is believed to develop over the lifespan as repeated successes and failures are experienced across a variety of tasks and situations. Thus, if you have experienced many successes in your life, you probably have high GSE, whereas somebody who has experienced many failures probably has low GSE. Individuals who are high on GSE are better able to adapt to novel, uncertain, and adverse situations. In addition, employees with higher GSE have higher job satisfaction and job performance e. Core self-evaluations i. core self-evaluations refers to a broad personality concept that consists of more specific traits. The idea behind the theory of core self-evaluations is that individuals hold evaluations about themselves and their self-worth or worthiness, competence, and capability. four traits make up a person’s core self-evaluation; they include self-esteem, general self-efficacy, locus of control, and neuroticism (emotional stability) ii. Research on core self-evaluations has found that these traits are among the best dispositional predictors of job satisfaction and job performance. People with more positive core self-evaluations have higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance. Furthermore, research has shown that core self-evaluations measured in childhood and in early adulthood are related to job satisfaction in middle adulthood. This suggests that core self-evaluations are related to job satisfaction over time. Core self-evaluations have also been found to be positively related to life and career satisfaction, and individuals with higher CSE perceive fewer stressors and experience less stress and conflict at work. One of the reasons for the relationship between core self- evaluations and work outcomes is that individuals with a positive self- regard are more likely to perceive and pay attention to the positive aspects of their environments. They experience their job as more intrinsically satisfying and have higher perceptions of fairness and support. 4. Define learning and describe what is learned in organizations. a. Learning: A relatively permanent change in behaviour potential that occurs due to practice or experience. Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 i. The words practice or experience rule out viewing behavioural changes caused by factors like drug intake or biological maturation as learning. One does not learn to be relaxed after taking a tranquilizer, and a child does not suddenly learn to be a bass singer at the age of 14. The practice or experience that prompts learning stems from an environment that gives feedback concerning the consequences of behaviour. b. What do employees learn? i. Learning in organizations can be understood in terms of taxonomies that indicate what employees learn, how they learn, and different types of learning experiences. The “what” aspect of learning can be described as learning content, of which there are four primary categories: practical skills, intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, and cultural awareness ii. Practical skills include job-specific skills, knowledge, and technical competence. Employees frequently learn new skills and technologies to continually improve performance and to keep organizations competitive. Constant improvement has become a major goal in many organizations today, and learning can give an organization a competitive advantage iii. Intrapersonal skills are skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, learning about alternative work processes, and risk taking. iv. Interpersonal skills include interactive skills such as communicating, teamwork, and conflict resolution. v. cultural awareness involves learning the social norms of organizations and understanding company goals, business operations, and company expectations and priorities. All employees need to learn the cultural norms and expectations of their organizations to function as effective organizational members 5. Explain operant learning theory and differentiate between positive and negative reinforcements, and extinction and punishment, and explain how to punish effectively. a. Operant learning theory: learning by which the subject learns to operate on the environment to achieve certain consequences i. Notice that operantly learned behaviour is controlled by the consequences that follow it. These consequences usually depend on the behaviour, and this connection is what is learned. For example, salespeople learn effective sales techniques to achieve commissions and avoid criticism from their managers. The consequences of commissions and criticism depend on which sales behaviours salespeople exhibit ii. Operant learning can be used to increase the probability of desired behaviours and to reduce or eliminate the probability of undesirable behaviours. Let’s now consider how this is done iii. One of the most important consequences that influences behaviour is reinforcement. Reinforcement is the process by which stimuli strengthen behaviours. Thus, a reinforcer is a stimulus that follows some behaviour and increases or maintains the probability of that behaviour. The sales commissions and criticism mentioned earlier are reinforcers for salespeople. In each case, reinforcement serves to strengthen behaviours, such as proper sales techniques, that fulfill organizational goals. In Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 general, organizations are interested in maintaining or increasing the probability of behaviours such as correct performance, prompt attendance, and accurate decision making 1. positive reinforcers work by their application to a situation, while negative reinforcers work by their removal from a situation b. Positive reinforcement i. Positive reinforcement increases or maintains the probability of some behaviour by the application or addition of a stimulus to the situation in question. Such a stimulus is a positive reinforcer. ii. in general, positive reinforcers tend to be pleasant things, such as food, praise, money, or business success. However, the intrinsic character of stimuli does not determine whether they are positive reinforcers, and pleasant stimuli are not positive reinforcers when considered in the abstract. Whether or not something is a positive reinforcer depends only on whether it increases or maintains the occurrence of some behaviour by its application. c. Negative reinforcement i. Negative reinforcement increases or maintains the probability of some behaviour by the removal of a stimulus from the situation in question. Also, negative reinforcement occurs when a response prevents some event or stimulus from occurring. In each case, the removed or prevented stimulus is a negative reinforcer. Negative reinforcers are usually aversive or unpleasant stimuli, and it stands to reason that we will learn to repeat behaviours that remove or prevent these stimuli ii. Negative reinforcers increase the probability of behaviour iii. Managers who continually nag their employees unless the employees work hard are attempting to use negative reinforcement. The only way employees can stop the aversive nagging is to work hard and be diligent. The nagging maintains the probability of productive responses by its removal. In this situation, employees often get pretty good at anticipating the onset of nagging by the look on their boss’s face. This look serves as a signal that they can avoid the nagging altogether if they work harder iv. Negative reinforcers generally tend to be unpleasant things, such as nagging or the threat of fines. Again, however, negative reinforcers are defined only by what they do and how they work, not by their unpleasantness. Above, we indicated that nagging could serve as a negative reinforcer to increase the probability of productive responses. However, nagging could also serve as a positive reinforcer to increase the probability of unproductive responses if an employee has a need for attention and nagging is the only attention the manager provides. In the first case, nagging is a negative reinforcer—it is terminated following productive responses. In the second case, nagging is a positive reinforcer —it is applied following unproductive responses. In both cases, the responses increase in probability. d. Extinction and Punishment Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 i. Two strategies that can reduce the probability of learned behaviour ii. Extinction 1. Extinction simply involves terminating the reinforcement that is maintaining some unwanted behaviour. If the behaviour is not reinforced, it will gradually dissipate or be extinguished 2. extinction works best when coupled with the reinforcement of some desired substitute behaviour. Remember that behaviours that have been learned under delayed or partial reinforcement schedules are more difficult to extinguish than those learned under continuous, immediate reinforcement iii. Punishment 1. Punishment involves following an unwanted behaviour with some unpleasant, aversive stimulus. In theory, when the actor learns that the behaviour leads to unwanted consequences, this should reduce the probability of the response. Notice the difference between punishment and negative reinforcement. In negative reinforcement, a nasty stimulus is removed following some behaviour, increasing the probability of that behaviour. With punishment, a nasty stimulus is applied after some behaviour, decreasing the probability of that behaviour. If a boss criticizes her assistant after seeing her use the office phone for personal calls, we expect to see less of this activity in the future. iv. How to punish effectively 1. In theory, punishment should be useful in eliminating unwanted behaviour. After all, it seems unreasonable to repeat actions that cause us trouble. Unfortunately, punishment has some unique characteristics that often limit its effectiveness in stopping Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 unwanted activity. First, while punishment provides a clear signal as to which activities are inappropriate, it does not by itself demonstrate which activities should replace the punished response. Both positive and negative reinforcers specify which behaviours are appropriate. Punishment indicates only what is not appropriate. Since no reinforced substitute behaviour is provided, punishment only temporarily suppresses the unwanted response. When surveillance is removed, the response will tend to recur. Constant monitoring is very time consuming, and individuals become amazingly adept at learning when they can get away with the forbidden activity. The moral here is clear: Provide an acceptable alternative for the punished response 2. A second difficulty with punishment is that it has a tendency to provoke a strong emotional reaction on the part of the punished individual. This is especially likely when the punishment is delivered in anger or perceived to be unfair. Managers who try overly hard to be patient with employees and then finally blow up risk over-emotional reactions. So do those who tolerate unwanted behaviour on the part of their employees and then impulsively decide to make an example of one individual by punishing him or her. Managers should be sure that their own emotions are under control before punishing, and they should generally avoid punishment in front of observers. Because of the emotional problems involved in the use of punishment, some organizations downplay its use in discipline systems. They give employees who have committed infractions paid time off to think about their problems 3. In addition to providing correct alternative responses and limiting the emotions involved in punishment, there are several other principles that can increase the effectiveness of punishment. a. Make sure the chosen punishment is truly aversive. Organizations frequently “punish” chronically absent employees by making them take several days off work. Managers sometimes “punish” ineffective performers by requiring them to work overtime, which allows them to earn extra pay. In both cases, the presumed punishment may actually act as a positive reinforcer for the unwanted behaviour. b. Punish immediately. Managers frequently overlook early instances of rule violations or ineffective performance, hoping that things will “work out.” This only allows these behaviours to gain strength through repetition. If immediate punishment is difficult to apply, the manager should delay action until a more appropriate time and then reinstate the circumstances surrounding the problem behaviour. Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 c. Do not reward unwanted behaviours before or after punishment. Many supervisors join in horseplay with their employees until they feel it is time to get some work done. Then, unexpectedly, they do an about-face and punish those who are still “goofing around.” Sometimes, managers feel guilty about punishing their employees for some rule infraction and then quickly attempt to make up with displays of good-natured sympathy or affection. d. Do not inadvertently punish desirable behaviour. This happens commonly in organizations. The manager who does not use all his capital budget for a given fiscal year might have the department’s budget for the next year reduced, punishing the prudence of his employees. Government employees who “blow the whistle” on wasteful or inefficient practices might find themselves demoted. University professors who are considered excellent teachers might be assigned to onerous, time- consuming duty on a curriculum committee, cutting into their class preparation time. 4. In summary, punishment can be an effective means of stopping undesirable behaviour. However, managers must apply it very carefully and deliberately to achieve this effectiveness. In general, reinforcing correct behaviours and extinguishing unwanted responses are safer strategies for managers than the frequent use of punishment 6. Explain when to use immediate versus delayed reinforcement and when to use continuous versus partial reinforcement. a. To obtain the fast acquisition of some response, continuous and immediate reinforcement should be used—that is, the reinforcer should be applied every time the behaviour of interest occurs, and it should be applied without delay after each occurrence. Many conditions exist in which the fast acquisition of responses is desirable. These include correcting the behaviour of “problem” employees, training employees for emergency operations, and dealing with unsafe work behaviours. Consider the otherwise excellent performer who tends to be late for work. Under pressure to demote or fire this good worker, the boss might sensibly attempt to positively reinforce instances of prompt attendance with compliments and encouragement. To modify the employee’s behaviour as quickly as possible, the supervisor might station herself near the office door each morning to supply these reinforcers regularly and immediately. b. You might wonder when one would not want to use a continuous, immediate reinforcement strategy to change organizational behaviour. Put simply, behaviour that individuals learn under such conditions tends not to persist when reinforced less frequently or stopped. Intuitively, this should not be surprising. For example, under normal conditions, operating the power switch on your iPod is continuously and immediately reinforced by music. If the system develops a short circuit and fails to produce music, your switch-operating behaviour will cease Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 very quickly. In the example in the preceding paragraph, the need for fast learning justified the use of continuous, immediate reinforcement. Under more typical circumstances, we would hope that prompt attendance could occur without such close attention. c. Behaviour tends to be persistent when it is learned under conditions of partial and delayed reinforcement. That is, it will tend to persist under reduced or terminated reinforcement when not every instance of the behaviour is reinforced during learning or when some time period elapses between its enactment and reinforcement. In most cases, the supervisor who wishes to reinforce prompt attendance knows that he or she will not be able to stand by the shop door every morning to compliment the crew’s timely entry. Given this constraint, the supervisor should compliment prompt attendance occasionally, perhaps later in the day. This should increase the persistence of promptness and reduce the employees’ reliance on the boss’s monitoring d. Continuous, immediate reinforcement facilitates fast learning, and delayed, partial reinforcement facilitates persistent learning e. Notice that it is impossible to maximize both speed and persistence with a single reinforcement strategy. Also, many responses in our everyday lives cannot be continuously and immediately reinforced, so in many cases it pays to sacrifice some speed in learning to prepare the learner for this fact of life. All this suggests that managers have to tailor reinforcement strategies to the needs of the situation. Often, managers must alter the strategies over time to achieve effective learning and maintenance of behaviour. For example, the manager training a new employee should probably use a reinforcement strategy that is fairly continuous and immediate (whatever the reinforcer). Looking over the employee’s shoulder to obtain the fast acquisition of behaviour is appropriate. Gradually, however, the supervisor should probably reduce the frequency of reinforcement and perhaps build some delay into its presentation to reduce the employee’s dependency on his or her attention 7. Explain social cognitive theory and discuss observational learning, self-efficacy beliefs, and self-regulation. a. Social cognitive theory i. Emphasizes the role of cognitive processes in learning and in the regulation of people’s behaviour ii. According to SCT, people learn by observing the behaviour of others. Individuals also manage their own behaviour by thinking about the consequences of their actions (forethought), setting performance goals, monitoring their performance and comparing it to their goals, and Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 rewarding themselves for goal accomplishment. People also develop beliefs about their abilities through their interaction with the environment, and these beliefs influence their thoughts and behaviour iii. Social cognitive theory suggests that human behaviour can best be explained through a system of triadic reciprocal causation, in which personal factors and environmental factors work together and interact to influence people’s behaviour. In addition, people’s behaviour can also influence personal factors and the environment. Thus, SCT complements operant learning in explaining how people learn and organizational behaviour iv. SCT involves three key components: observational learning, self-efficacy beliefs, and self-regulation b. Observational learning i. the process of observing and imitating the behaviour of others. With observational learning, learning occurs by observing or imagining the behaviour of others (models), rather than through direct personal experience.54 Generally, observational learning involves examining the behaviour of others, seeing what consequences they experience, and thinking about what might happen if we were to act the same way. If we expect favourable consequences, we might imitate the behaviour. It is self- reinforcement that occurs in the observational learning process. For one thing, it is reinforcing to acquire an understanding of others who are viewed positively. In addition, we are able to imagine that the reinforcers that the model experiences will come our way when we imitate his or her behaviour. Surely, this is why we imitate the behaviour of sports heroes and entertainers, a fact that advertisers capitalize on when they choose them to endorse products ii. What kinds of models are likely to provoke the greatest degree of imitation? In general, attractive, credible, competent, high-status people stand a good chance of being imitated. In addition, it is important that the model’s behaviour provoke consequences that are seen as positive and successful by the observer Finally, it helps if the model’s behaviour is vivid and memorable—bores do not make good models. iii. The extent of observational learning as a means of learning in organizations suggests that managers should pay more attention to the process. For one thing, managers who operate on a principle of “Do as I say, not as I do” will find that what they do is more likely to be imitated, including undesirable behaviours such as expense account abuse. Also, in the absence of credible management models, workers might imitate dysfunctional peer behaviour if peers meet the criteria for strong models. For example, one study found that the antisocial behaviour of a work group was a significant predictor of an individual’s antisocial workplace behaviour. Thus, an individual’s antisocial workplace behaviour can be shaped, in part, through the process of observation. Furthermore, abusive behaviour on the part of managers and supervisors can lead to abusive behaviour among employees. On a more positive note, well-designed Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 performance appraisal and reward systems permit organizations to publicize the kind of organizational behaviour that should be learned and imitated c. Self-efficacy beliefs i. Self-efficacy beliefs refer to beliefs people have about their ability to successfully perform a specific task. At this point, it is important to note the difference between task-specific self-efficacy and some of the general personality traits discussed earlier in the chapter. In particular, unlike self- esteem and general self-efficacy, which are general personality traits, self- efficacy is a task-specific cognitive appraisal of one’s ability to perform a specific task. Furthermore, people can have different self-efficacy beliefs for different tasks. ii. Because self-efficacy is a cognitive belief rather than a stable personality trait, it can be changed and modified in response to different sources of information. iii. self-efficacy beliefs are influenced by one’s experiences and success performing the task in question (performance mastery), observation of others performing the task, verbal persuasion and social influence, and one’s physiological or emotional state. Thus, the self-efficacy of the vice- president could have been strengthened by observing the behaviour of others during meetings, by encouragement from peers that he would do a great job, and perhaps by his own sense of comfort and relaxation rather than feelings of anxiety and stress while attending meetings. Finally, his mastery displayed during the meeting is also likely to have further strengthened his self-efficacy beliefs. iv. Self-efficacy beliefs are important because they influence the activities people choose to perform, the amount of effort and persistence they devote to a task, affective and stress reactions, and job performance d. Self-regulation i. The use of learning principles to regulate one’s own behaviour ii. How does self-regulation occur? You will recall that observational learning involved factors such as observation of models, imagination, imitation, and self-reinforcement. Individuals can use these and similar Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 techniques in an intentional way to control their own behaviour. The basic process involves observing one’s own behaviour (i.e., self-observation), comparing the behaviour with a standard (i.e., self-evaluation), and rewarding oneself if the behaviour meets the standard (i.e., self- reinforcement). A key part of the process is people’s pursuit of self-set goals that guide their behaviour. When a discrepancy exists between one’s goals and performance, individuals are motivated to modify their behaviour in the pursuit of goal attainment, a process known as discrepancy reduction. When individuals attain their goals, they are likely to set even higher and more challenging goals, a process known as discrepancy production. In this way, people continually engage in a process of setting goals in the pursuit of ever higher levels of performance. Thus, discrepancy reduction and discrepancy production lie at the heart of the self-regulatory process iii. Self-regulation techniques 1. Collect self-observation data. This involves collecting objective data about one’s own behaviour. 2. Observe models - find someone successful to imitate. 3. Set goals. The executive might set specific short-term goals to reduce telephone interruptions and unscheduled personal visits, enlisting the aid of her assistant, and using self-observation data to monitor her progress. Longer-term goals might involve four free nights a week and no more than four hours of work on weekends. 4. Rehearse. The executive might anticipate that she will have to educate her co-workers about her reduced availability. So as not to offend them, she might practise explaining the reason for her revised accessibility. 5. Reinforce oneself. The executive might promise herself a weekend at the beach with her family the first time she gets her take-home workload down to her target level iv. Research has found that self-regulation can improve learning and result in a change in behaviour. For example, one study showed how a self- regulation program was used to improve work attendance among unionized maintenance employees. Those who had used over half their sick leave were invited by the human resources department to participate in an eight-week self-regulation program. Compared with a group of employees who did not attend the program, the employees who were exposed to the program achieved a significant improvement in attendance, and they also felt more confident (i.e., higher self-efficacy) that they would be able to come to work when confronted with various obstacles to attendance. In another study, training in self-regulation was found to significantly improve the sales performance of a sample of insurance salespeople. Self-regulation programs have been successful in changing a variety of work behaviours and are an effective method of training and learning Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 8. Discuss the following organizational learning practices: organizational behaviour modification, employee recognition programs, and training and development programs. a. Organizational behaviour modification i. The systematic use of learning principles to influence organizational behaviour ii. For example, consider how one company used organizational behaviour modification through the reinforcement of safe working behaviour in a food-manufacturing plant. At first glance, accidents appeared to be chance events or wholly under the control of factors such as equipment failures. However, the researchers felt that accidents could be reduced if specific safe working practices could be identified and reinforced. These practices were identified with the help of past accident reports and advice from supervisors. Systematic observation of working behaviour indicated that employees followed safe practices only about 74 percent of the time. A brief slide show was prepared to illustrate safe versus unsafe job behaviours. Then, two reinforcers of safe practices were introduced into the workplace. The first consisted of a feedback chart that was conspicuously posted in the workplace to indicate the percentage of safe behaviours observers noted. This chart included the percentages achieved in observational sessions before the slide show, as well as those achieved every three days after the slide show. A second source of reinforcement was supervisors, who were encouraged to praise instances of safe performance that they observed. These interventions were successful in raising the percentage of safe working practices to around 97 percent almost immediately. The plant moved from last to first place in the company standings and received a safety plaque from the company “in recognition of successfully working 280 000 hours without a disabling injury” over a period of 10 months iii. In addition to improvements in safety, O.B. Mod has also been found to have a positive effect on improving work attendance and task performance. The effects on task performance, however, tend to be stronger in manufacturing than in service organizations. As well, money, feedback, and social recognition have all been found to be effective forms of positive reinforcement. Although money has been found to have stronger effects on performance than social recognition and performance feedback, the use of all three together has the strongest effect on task performance. Research has also found that the effect of money on performance is greater when it is provided systematically through O.B. Mod compared to a routine pay-for-performance program b. Employee recognition programs i. A popular example of an organizational learning practice that uses positive reinforcement is employee recognition programs. Employee recognition programsare formal organizational programs that publicly recognize and reward employees for specific behaviours. ii. Many companies in Canada have some form of employee recognition program, and employees in the best companies to work for in Canada believe that they receive adequate recognition beyond compensation for Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 their contributions and accomplishments. To be effective, however, a formal employee recognition program must specify (a) how a person will be recognized, (b) the type of behaviour being encouraged, (c) the manner of the public acknowledgement, and (d) a token or icon of the event for the recipient. A key part of an employee recognition program is public acknowledgement. Thus, a financial reward for good performance would not qualify as an employee recognition program if it was not accompanied by some form of public praise and recognition iii. Peer recognition programs are formal programs in which employees can publicly acknowledge, recognize, and reward their co-workers for exceptional work and performance. For example, IT/NET Ottawa Inc. has a peer-to-peer recognition program called “My Thanks,” in which employees are encouraged to acknowledge co-workers’ exceptional work by sending them a cash-valued gift certificate. The value of the certificate is determined by the person who is awarding it and it can be done any time and as often as employees choose to recognize a co-worker iv. Employee recognition programs have been found to result in individual and organizational outcomes, including job satisfaction, performance and productivity, and lower turnover.6 c. Training and development programs i. Training is planned organizational activities that are designed to facilitate knowledge and skill acquisition to change behaviour and improve performance on one’s current job; development focuses on future job responsibilities. ii. Employees learn a variety of skills by attending formal training and development programs. In addition to teaching employees technical skills required to perform their jobs, training and development programs also teach employees non-technical skills such as how to work in teams, how to provide excellent customer service, and how to understand and appreciate cultural diversity iii. Effective training and development programs include many of the principles of learning described earlier in the chapter, such as positive reinforcement, feedback, observational learning, strengthening employees’ self-efficacy beliefs, and self-regulation. One of the most widely used and effective methods of training is behaviour modelling training (BMT), which is based on the observational learning component of social cognitive theory and involves the following steps: 1. Describe to trainees a set of well-defined behaviours (skills) to be learned. 2. Provide a model or models displaying the effective use of those behaviours. 3. Provide opportunities for trainees to practise using those behaviours. 4. Provide feedback and social reinforcement to trainees following practice. 5. Take steps to maximize the transfer of those behaviours to the job. Downloaded by Rehal Family ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|47043948 iv. Many organizations have used behavioural modelling training to develop supervisory, communications, sales, and customer service skills CHAPTER 2 TEXTBOOK STUDY CHECKLIST - What is personality? - Personality and organizational behaviour o The Five-Factor Model of personality  Research evidence o Other personality concepts  Locus of control  Self-monitoring  Self-esteem