INTERNATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAMS CENTER

SPRING SEMESTER 2021

Subject: Organizational Behavior MGT 4772

Date of exam: June 9th, 2021

STUDENT’S NAME: Nguyen Pham Thanh Truc

STUDENT’S ID: 1565781

EXAMINATION RESULT Faculty’s remarks

1. Why understanding organizational behavior is so important for you as a future

manager? How do you understand diversity in an organization?

There are two main reasons why understanding organizational behavior is crucial for a

future manager. Firstly, it is because people behave differently when they are in a group of

people, in contrast to when they are on themselves. This could be understood as a herd behavior.

Main behavior patterns of a group of people, such as an organization, could largely affect how a

person acts in the group. Most importantly, different groups of people will make a person act

differently. For example, when a person works for Unilever, whose culture is characterized by

speedy decision-making, whenever he must decide, he would decide quickly and assertively in
minutes. In contrast, if that same person works for Nestle, which is characterized by careful and

conservative decision-making, whenever he must come up with a decision, it may take him days

to evaluate and carefully consider many alternatives’ costs and benefits before the final decision

is made. The second reason why understanding organizational behavior is so significant is

because people is the most valuable and expensive asset for a company to achieve its goals. If we

do not understand their behaviors in an organization properly, we would manage people poorly

and waste the resource. And any waste in an organization accumulates to a loss in profit, or

expenses. It is important to note that we, as managers, manage people to lead them to achieve the

company’s goal. With the purpose of managing them well, we first must understand their

behaviors in an organization. This includes understanding what could motivate them, what would

prevent them from delivering their best performance, and what would make them trust and

engage in the company’s desire to actualizing the organization’s objectives. In this way, we

could maximize the return on our investment in people. For example, in my Public Relations

Department at TOUCH Non-profit organization, there are two kinds of people. The first one is

motivated by challenging and urgent tasks while the second one is motivated by basic, and non-

thought-provoking tasks. Therefore, as a leader of the team, I decide to give the first group tasks

that are difficult and assign routine tasks to the second group. By doing this, I have achieved the

goal of leveraging the team’s creative and break-through results, which are delivered by the first

group, as well as attain the goal of administering stable daily operations through the second

group.

Understanding diversity in an organization requires understanding the diversity as its core

definition and nature. Diversity in an organization means any attribute that generates the

difference between people and one another. There are two prominent levels of diversity in an
organization which are surface-level diversity and deep-level diversity. Surface-level diversity

simply refers to the differences that could be easily recognized and pointed out. For example, it

could be race, age, gender, or disability, which are obvious differences that could be seen at first

glance. However, it is important to mention that those characters may not determine how people

think or feel but recognizing those differences in attributes might generate some specific

stereotypes. On the other hand, deep-level diversity refers to differences that are more subtle,

which are a person’s values, the ways they like to work and personality. This is the more crucial

one as people work with each other because if the diversity cannot be realized and managed, it

would be catastrophic to the organization. For example, in the “Salt of the Earth” translation

group in which I am a leader, there is a diversity in how people like to do their work, causing a

conflict in the team. For instance, there are people in my team who are laid-back, focusing on

making the assignment perfect rather than adhering to deadlines. In contrast, there are also those

people who strictly commit to deadlines. Therefore, when it comes to joint project where all

team must work together, this diversity causes problems. Those people who commit to deadlines

grieve that their work is affected because of the delay of tasks caused by the other group of

people, while those laid-back people strongly believe that their delay of deadlines would perfect

the final work. Through those explanations and examples, it could be seen that diversity is

important and must be managed thoroughly to benefit, not harming, the organization. After

understanding the core definition and nature of diversity, to better understand the diversity in our

organization, we should carefully observe, actively listen to people, and create a sense of trust

and empathy in the organization so that they could expressively show the diversity, which would

help us to clearly see the whole picture and manage diversity effectively. For example, when

people are working in an environment where they are respected, they would feel free to express
who they truly are. And this would give you a sign for diversity to understand the diversity in

your group better.

2. Explain your understanding of the relationship between attitudes and job

satisfaction; And the advantages and disadvantages of group decision making and

individual decision making?

Attitudes and job satisfaction has a strongly connected and intertwined relationship. In the

purpose of understanding this relationship, it is important to first understand those terms’

definition. Attitudes are defined as judgements or statements a person makes that evaluate

objects, people, or events. Job satisfaction is defined as a positive feeling towards a job, which is

a result of complex combination of evaluation of many characteristics about the job. Firstly, it is

obvious that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between job satisfaction and attitudes. Job

satisfaction is a result of evaluations about the job and those evaluations are attitudes about the

job, as mentioned above. Secondly, the relationship between attitudes and job satisfaction is that

job satisfaction, which is classified as work-related attitude, is a part of attitudes. This is because

although there are countless attitudes, most Organizational Behavior’s research only focuses on a

few work-related attitudes, including job satisfaction, job involvement and organization

commitment. Job satisfaction and attitudes are tightly correlated since when an employee has

positive evaluations, which are attitudes, about the job, he will have a high level of job

satisfaction, and vice versa. For example, when I was working as a Business Development

Executive at Tomorrow Marketers Academy, I also had a complex combination of evaluations,

which are attitudes, about the job. I evaluated that when doing the job, I had a chance to work

with an experienced and good-mannered boss, my colleagues were friendly, the training given

was insightful, and my tasks were always challenging and delightful. However, the amount of
work was too heavy that I could not manage to balance between working and studying at school.

And because of the combination of those evaluations, which are attitudes, I had only a moderate

level of job satisfaction.

Although there are many advantages and disadvantages regarding group decision making

and individual decision making, only the most highlighted ones would be presented. Regarding

group decision making, there are two prominent advantages and one disadvantage. Firstly, when

gathering as a group to decide, we can establish a comprehensive perspective on the problem,

which enables us to better identify and solve the problem. This is because each person has their

own unique perspective about the world and everything, therefore, many people can help

contribute many different unique angles on the problem. Secondly, a group decision making

helps bring about many alternatives for the solution. For example, in my industry of advertising,

whenever there is an internal meeting, the meeting would include many people come from

different departments and roles, such as strategic planner, copywriters, designers, and accounts.

The strategic planner will contribute strategic solutions while copywriters and designers will

offer creative solutions being accompanied by the account’s solutions which aim to ensure the

clients’ satisfaction. However, there is one prominent disadvantage of group decision making is

groupthink. This happens when people in the team want a consensus of a joint decision so much

that they neglect their own judgements as individuals, which is dangerous since we could not

come up with a genuinely comprehensive decision. In terms of individual decision making, there

are also two prominent advantages and one disadvantage. Firstly, it is obvious that making

decisions as individuals is much more time saving. For example, in Unilever corporation where

there is a culture of assertiveness and speediness, besides significantly important decisions,

executives are required to make decisions on their own to foster the speed of operations toward.
Secondly, individual decision making helps people to really think. In a group, the real process of

thinking of a person is hindered since people’s other ideas may interrupt a person’s full flow of

thinking. However, the disadvantage of individual decision making is the enormous loss of

comprehensive perspective. Only one person’s limited view could not see the big picture that

many people could.

3. Describe the Big Five Personality Model and other personality traits influencing OB.

Big Five Personality Model declares that there are only five basic dimensions which lie

under all other dimensions and relate to most enormous variations in the personality of human

beings. The factors of Big Five include extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,

emotional stability, and openness to experience. Firstly, extraversion dimension is about a

person’s comfort level when interacting in relationships. For example, if a person is an extravert,

like Barack Obama, he would be aggressive, friendly, and outgoing. In contrast, if he is an

introvert, he would be shy and speak very little. Secondly, agreeableness dimension is about a

person’s tendency to submit to the opinion of another person. For example, if a person is high on

this dimension, they would be willing to work together, and hearty. In contrast, for example,

Steve Jobs is low on this dimension, resulting in him being cold, often disagree and hostile

towards his employees. Thirdly, conscientiousness dimension is about reliability. Being high on

this means that the person is dependable and constant while being low on this means that he is

unreliable and easy to be distracted. Fourthly, emotional stability dimension is about a person’s

stress tolerance ability. Being negative on this means that a person is easy to be anxious and

insecure while scoring positive means that the person is calm and usually in a self-confident

state. Fifthly, openness to experience dimension is about a person’s interest with discovery.
Those who are open are creative and inquisitive while the other group of people is comfortable

with familiarity.

Seven other personality traits influencing Organizational Behavior includes core self-

evaluations, Machiavellianism, narcissism, self-monitoring, risk taking, proactive personality,

and other-orientation. Firstly, core self-evaluation is about how a person sees himself regarding

his capabilities, competence and worth. If he is positive on this, he would like himself and

consider him as being able to control the environment. In contrast, if he is negative on this, he

would not like himself and usually doubt his self-worth, considering him as not being able to

control the environment. Secondly, Machiavellianism is a degree to which people are practical,

keeping emotional distance and believing in how ends can justify means. Thirdly, narcissism is

the propensity of a person to view himself as overly important, requiring other to give him much

admiration and having a sense that he has a right or claim to do things. Fourthly, self-monitoring

is about a person’s flexibility in adjusting his behaviors to the external situations. Fifthly, risk

taking is about the willingness to take risks. A strong example for this is Donald Trump who is

prone to take risks to earn large profits. Sixthly, proactive personality is the propensity of a

person who takes initiatives until the situation improves. Lastly, the other-orientation refers to a

person’s natural tendency to think about other people’s well-being.