ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR 3.

Separation: Differences in position or

opinion among group members
MIDTERMS REVIEWER
reflecting disagreement or opposition—
CHAPTER 2 dissimilarity in an attitude or value, for
example, especially with regard to
group goals or processes

Variety = Differences in a certain type or

category, including group members’
expertise, knowledge, or functional
background

Disparity = Differences in the concentration

of valuable social assets or resources—
dissimilarity in rank, pay, decision-making
authority, or status, for example

Trends in Diversity

• The population is projected to become

older.
• By 2050, the total population is
forecasted to grow from 282.1 million
in 2000 to 419.9 million, a 49 percent
Five important environmental forces
increase.
1. Globalization • Non-Hispanic Whites are expected to
2. Diversity decrease.
3. Technology • Proportion of Blacks, Asians, and
4. Ethics and Corporate Governance Hispanics will increase.
5. New Employment Relationships • Talent shortages are forecast to rise
globally.
Diversity and Business

Diversity = The variety of observable and

unobservable similarities and differences
among people
Types of Diversity
1. Surface-level: Observable differences in
people, including race, age, ethnicity,
physical abilities, physical
characteristics, and gender
2. Deep-level: Individual differences that
cannot be seen directly, including goals,
values, personalities decision-making
styles, knowledge, skills, abilities, and
attitudes
Five Types of Diversity
1. Surface-level diversity: observable
differences in people, including
gender, race, age, ethnicity, and
physical abilities
2. Deep-level diversity: individual
differences that cannot be seen
directly, including goals, values,
personalities, decision-making styles,
knowledge, and attitudes
 3. Separation: differences in position or Diversity issues for managers
opinion among group members
• The business case for diversity
reflecting disagreement or
o Diversity also fosters greater
opposition, especially with regard to
creativity and innovation.
group goals or processes—
o Organizational performance
dissimilarity in an attitude or value,
increases when employees have
for example (a type of deep-level
a positive attitude toward
diversity)
diversity.
4. Variety: differences in a certain type o Culturally diverse teams make
or category, including group better decisions over time than
members’ expertise, knowledge, or homogeneous ones.
functional background (a type of o Women in top management
deep-level diversity) result in more innovation.
o Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
5. Disparity: differences in the
1964 prohibits employment
concentration of valuable social
discrimination based on race,
assets or resources— including
color, religion, sex, or national
dissimilarity in rank, pay, decision-
origin.
making authority, or status (a type of
deep-level diversity)

Barriers to Inclusion
Generational diversity

Age diversity

• May result in younger managers

supervising older workers
• Reverse mentoring: pairing a junior
employee with a senior employee to
transfer technical/computer skills from
the junior employee to the senior one

Generations (by birth year)

• Seniors: 1922–1943
• Baby boomers: 1943–1963
• Generation X: 1964–1980
• Generation Y/Millennials: 1980–2000
o Older workers may have better
job performance but need
mentoring to adopt new
technology.
Managing diversity
• Top management support for diversity
and for diversity initiatives.
• Reciprocal mentoring: matches senior
employees with diverse junior
employees to allow both individuals to
learn more about a different group.
 4. Older adults may benefit from self-
paced learning environments and
confidence-boosting interventions.
5. It is not realistic to claim or to pursue an
“I’m totally unbiased” stance with
regard to diversity.
Globalization and Business
Globalization = The internationalization of
business activities and the shift toward an
integrated global economy
Factors increasing globalization
• Advances in communication and
transportation
• Businesses have expanded
internationally to increase their
markets.
• Control of labor, distribution, and
distribution costs
• Increased international competition
Cross-Cultural Differences and Similarities
General observations
• Cultural and national boundaries may
not coincide
• Behavior in organizational settings
varies across cultures
• Culture is one major cause of this
variation
• Organizations and the way they are
structured appear to be growing
increasingly similar.
• The same individual behaves differently
in different cultural settings.
• Cultural diversity can be an essential
source of synergy in enhancing
organizational effectiveness.
Specific Cultural Issues
Geert Hofstede’s research
• Attitudes and behaviors differ
significantly because of values and
beliefs that characterize those countries

Hofstede’s Categories
Cultural competence
a) Individualism
• Culture = The set of shared values,
b) Collectivism
often taken for granted, that help
c) Power distance
people in a group, organization, or
d) Uncertainty avoidance
society understand which actions are
e) Masculinity
considered acceptable and which are
f) Long-term orientation
deemed unacceptable
g) Short-term orientation
• Cultural competence = The ability to
interact effectively with people of
different cultures
Hofstede’s Primary Dimensions
o Awareness of our worldview
and our reactions to people
who are different
o Our attitude toward cultural
differences
o Knowledge of different
worldviews and cultural
practices
o Cross-cultural skills
Global Perspective Ethics and Corporate Governance

• A willingness to be open to and learn Ethics = A person’s beliefs regarding what is

from the alternative systems and right or wrong in a given situation
meanings of other people and cultures,
Framing ethical issues = Treatment of
and a capacity to avoid assuming that
employees (hiring, firing, wages, working
people from everywhere are the same.
conditions, respect, privacy)

• How employees treat the organization

Technology and Business
Technology = the methods used to create
products, including both physical goods and
intangible services
Manufacturing = A form of business that
combines and transforms resources into
tangible outcomes that are then sold to others
(conflicts of interest, secrecy,
confidentiality, personal internet use,
unacceptable absenteeism)
• Treatment of economic agents
(customers, competitors, stockholders,
suppliers, dealers, unions)
• Variations in ethical and legal business
practices across countries

Service organization = One that transforms

resources into an intangible output and creates
time or place utility for its customers
Managerial Ethics

Technology and Competition

• Maintaining a leadership position:

technology is the basis of competition
for some firms
• Coping with decreasing cycle times (the
time it takes a firm to accomplish some
recurring activity or function, e.g.,
making deliveries, processing credit
payments)

Information technology and social media

• Advantages: leaner and more flexible

organizations, increased collaboration,
improved management
processes/systems
• Managers face a variety of ethical
• Disadvantages: less personal
situations. In most cases, these
communication, less “down time,” an
situations involve how the organization
increased sense of communication and
treats its employees, how employees
decision-making urgency
treat the organization, and how
 employees and organizations treat
other economic agents.
Corporate governance = oversight of a public
corporation by its board of directors
Governance issues
• Proper management of the business in
the best interests of shareholders and
other stakeholders
• Independence of the board from the
business
Ethical Issues and Information Technology
• individual rights to privacy and the
potential abuse of information
technology by companies.
Social responsibility
• Businesses living and working together
for the common good and valuing
human dignity
• have lasting effects, social responsibility
efforts should be integrated into the
culture of the organization
• The International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) has created a
variety of standards that help
organizations gain international
acceptance of their practices and
outcomes.
New Employment Relationships
Management of knowledge workers
• Those employees who add value in an
organization simply because of what
they know
o Examples: computer scientists,
physical scientists, engineers,
product designers, video game
developers
Knowledge worker employment issues
• Unique working arrangements and
performance motivation requirements
o Autonomous work, strong
identification with professional
standards, continual updating
of skills
• Specifically (individually) tailored
compensation packages
o Growth opportunities, profit
sharing, less bureaucracy
Outsourcing = the practice of hiring other firms
to do work previously performed by the
organization itself; when this work is moved
overseas, it is often called offshoring
Advantages of outsourcing
• Helps firms to focus on core activities
• Lowers labor costs through the
exportation of work
Disadvantages of outsourcing
• Disaffected employees: out-of-job
workers are used to train the newly
hired foreign replacements
• Reduction of domestic job
opportunities
Offshoring = Outsourcing to workers in another
country
Advantages of offshoring
• Lower labor costs
Disadvantages of offshoring
• Results in loss of jobs in the home
country
• Controversial issue

Temp and contingency workers
• Work for an organization on something
other than a permanent or full-time
basis as independent contractors, on-
call workers, temporary employees
(usually hired through outside
agencies), and contract and leased
employees
o contingent worker: A person
who works for an organization
on something other than a
permanent or full-time basis
Tiered workforce
• When one group of an organization’s
workforce has a contractual
arrangement with the organization
objectively different from another
group performing the same jobs
• Occurs with contracts negotiated at
different times
Psychological contract = A person’s set of
expectations regarding what he or she will
contribute to an organization and what the
organization, in return, will provide to the
individual
• Individuals contribute effort, skills,
ability, time, loyalty
• Organizations provide inducements in
the form of tangible/intangible rewards
• Psychological contracts govern the basic
relationship between people and
organizations. Individuals contribute
such things as effort and loyalty. In turn,
organizations offer such inducements as
pay and job security.
CHAPTER 3
People in Organizations
Individual differences = Personal attributes that
vary from one person to another
The concept of fit
• Person-job fit—The fit between a
person’s abilities and the demands of
the job, and the fit between a person’s
desires and motivations and the
attributes and rewards of a job
• Person-group fit—The extent to which
an individual fits with the workgroup’s
and supervisor’s work styles, skills, and
goals
• Person-organization fit— The fit
between an individual’s values, beliefs,
and personality and the values, norms,
and culture of the organization
• Person-vocation fit—The fit between a
person’s interests, abilities, values, and
personality and a profession
Realistic job previews (RJPs)
• Present both positive and potentially
negative information to job candidates
• Goal is not to deter candidates, but to:
o Provide accurate information
about job and organization
o Build trust
o Reduce turnover (especially
from employees who quit
because the job wasn’t what
they expected)
Personality and Individual Behavior • Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) is a
popular questionnaire used to assess
• Personality = The relatively stable set of
personality types
psychological attributes that distinguish
o Communications styles
one person from another, nature versus
o Interaction preferences
nurture?

Other Important Personality Traits

The “Big Five” personality traits

• A set of fundamental traits that are

especially relevant to organizations

Effects of Locus of Control on Organizational

Outcomes
• These five dimensions represent
fundamental personality traits
presumed to be important in
determining the behaviors of
individuals in organizations
o personality traits closer to the
left = more positive in
organizational settings,
o traits closer to the right = less
positive.
• The relationship between personality
The Myers-Briggs framework and behavior changes depending on the
strength of the situation.
• Used to categorize personality
• Differentiation across four general
dimensions
o Extroversion (E)/Introversion (I)
o Sensing (S)/Intuition (N)
o Thinking (T)/Feeling (F)
o Judging (J)/Perceiving (P)

• Sixteen personality classifications result

from the higher and lower positions of
the general dimensions
 • Few people have extreme Type A or
Type B personality profiles. Instead,
people tend toward one type or the
other. This is reflected by the overlap
between the profiles shown here.
Intelligence
General mental ability = The capacity to rapidly
and fluidly acquire, process, and apply
information
Information processing capacity = manner in
which individuals process and organize
information
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
• This theory says there is more than one
way to be smart. Important for
determining different learning
preferences.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) = interpersonal
capability that includes the ability to perceive
and express emotions, to understand and use
them, and to manage emotions in oneself and
other people
• Self-awareness: being aware of what
you’re feeling
• Self-motivation: persisting in the face
of obstacles, setbacks, and failures.
• Self-management: managing your own
emotions and impulses
• Empathy: sensing how others are
feeling
• Social skills: effectively handling
emotions of others
Matching Intelligence Types with Career
Choices
Learning Styles
• Learning styles = Individual differences
and preferences in how we process
information while problem-solving,
learning, or engaging in similar activities
Sensory modalities approach
o Visual: learning by seeing
o Auditory: learning by hearing
o Tactile: learning by touching
o Kinesthetic: learning by doing
Kolb Learning Style Inventory
Learning Style Orientations
CHAPTER 4
Attitudes in Organizations
Attitudes = A person’s complexes of
beliefs and feelings about specific ideas,
situations, or other people
Structural components of attitudes
Cognition: the knowledge a person presumes to
have about something
Affect: a person’s feelings toward something
Intention: component of an attitude that guides
a person’s behavior
Attitude Formation
• Attitudes are generally formed around a
sequence of cognition, affect, and
behavioral intention.
COGNITION = we come to know
something that we believe to
be true
AFFECT = knowledge triggers a
feeling
▪ Cognition and affect
then together influence
how we intend to
behave in the future.
`
Cognitive dissonance = An incompatibility or
conflict between behavior and an attitude or
between two different attitudes
How to reduce cognitive dissonance?
• Change the conflicting attitude
• Change the conflicting behavior
• Reason that one of the conflicting
attitudes or behaviors is not important
in this context
• Seek additional information to better
reason that the benefits of one of the
conflicting attitudes or behaviors
outweigh the costs of the other
• Recognize that attitudes can change
Key work-related attitudes
• Job satisfaction is one of the most
important job-related attitudes in
organizations. It reflects both our
attitudes and our feelings about our
job. Job satisfaction is strongly
influenced by our personality, values,
other attitudes, and the work itself.

Values and Emotions in Organizations

Values = Ways of behaving or end-

states that are desirable to a person or
to a group

Types of organizational commitment Types of values

o Terminal: reflects long-term life

goals such as prosperity,
happiness, secure family, and a
sense of accomplishment
o Instrumental: preferred means
of achieving terminal values or
preferred ways of behaving
o Intrinsic: relate to the work
itself
o Extrinsic: relate to the
outcomes of doing work

Conflicts among values

Influences on Job Satisfaction
• Intrapersonal: Conflict between the
instrumental value of ambition and the
terminal value of happiness
• Interpersonal: Occurs when two
different people hold conflicting values
• Individual-organization: When an
employee’s values conflict with those of
the organization

• Values differ around the world—leading

to different managerial behaviors
Two major dimensions • it is also possible to fall in between
these extremes and reflect neither
• Traditional versus secular-rational
positive nor negative affect.
values: reflects the contrast between
societies in which religion is very
important and those in which it is not
• Survival versus self-expression values:
reflects the contrast between societies
that emphasize economic and physical
security and those that emphasize
subjective well-being, self-expression,
and quality of life, giving high priority to
environmental protection, diversity Perception in Organizations
tolerance, and participation in decision Perception = The set of processes by
making which an individual becomes aware of
and interprets information about the
environment
The role of emotions in behavior

Emotions = Intense, short-term physiological,

behavioral, and psychological reactions to a
specific object, person, or event that prepare us
to respond to it
Moods = Short-term emotional states that are
not directed toward anything in particular
Affectivity = The tendency to experience a
particular mood or to react to things with
certain emotions
Basic perceptual processes
• Selective perception: screening out
information that we are uncomfortable
with or that contradicts our beliefs
• Stereotyping: categorizing or labeling
people on the basis of a single attribute

Affect and Mood in organizations

POSITIVE AFFECT = Reflects a combination of

high energy and positive evaluation
characterized by emotions like elation

NEGATIVE AFFECT = Comprises feelings of being

upset, fearful, and distressed

• Affect can vary anywhere along a

continuum ranging from positive affect
to negative affect
 Attribution = The way we explain the
causes of our own as well as other
people’s behaviors and achievements,
and understand why people do what
they do
o Are they due to the individual
because of internal factors such
as effort and ability?
o Or are they due to the
environment because of
external factors such as luck,
resources, and other people?
Perceptions and fairness, justice, and trust
Three rules to evaluate whether to assign an
internal or an external attribution
1. Consistency: Has the person
regularly behaved this way or
experienced this outcome in the
past?
2. Distinctiveness: Does the person
act the same way or receive similar
outcomes in different types of
situations?
3. Consensus: Would others behave
similarly in the same situation or
receive the same outcome?
Self-handicapping = When people create
obstacles for themselves that make success
less likely
The Attribution Process
• The attribution process involves
observing behavior and then attributing
causes to it.
• Observed behaviors are interpreted in
terms of their consensus, their
consistency, and their distinctiveness.
o Based on these interpretations,
behavior is attributed to either
internal or external causes.
• Organizational fairness—Employees’
perceptions of organizational events,
policies, and practices as being fair or
not fair
• Distributive fairness—Perceived
fairness of the outcome received,
including resources distributions,
promotions, hiring and layoff decisions,
and raises
• Procedural fairness—Addresses the
fairness of the procedures used to
generate the outcome
• Interactional fairness—Whether the
amount of information about the
decision and process was adequate,
perceived fairness of interpersonal
treatment and explanations received
during the decision-making process
• Trust—The expectation that another
person will not act to take advantage of
us, regardless of our ability to monitor
or control them.
Stress in Organizations
Stress = A person’s adaptive response
to a stimulus that places excessive
psychological or physical demands on
that person
The stress process (Selye)
General adaptation syndrome (GAS) = dentifies
three stages of response to a stressor: alarm,
resistance, and exhaustion
• The general adaptation syndrome (GAS)
perspective describes three stages of
the stress process
Sources of stress
• Eustress: pleasurable stress that
accompanies positive events
• Distress: unpleasant stress accompanies
negative events
Common causes of stress
• Organizational stressors: various
factors in the workplace that can cause
stress
o Task demands—Associated
with the specific job a person
performs
o Physical demands—Associated
with the job’s physical setting
and requirements
o Role demands—Associated
with the expected behaviors of
a particular position in a group
or organization
o Interpersonal demands—
Group pressures, leadership,
interpersonal conflicts
Life stressors: life changes or traumas
Causes and Consequences of Stress
• The causes and consequences of stress
are related in complex ways.
• most common causes of stress can be
classified as either organizational
stressors or life stressors.
• common consequences include
individual and organizational
consequences, as well as burnout.
Workload, Stress, and Performance
• Too much stress is clearly undesirable,
but too little stress can also lead to
unexpected problems
o although too much stress can
cause tension, anxiety, and low
performance, for most people
there is an optimal level of
stress that results in high
energy, motivation, and
performance.
Consequences of Stress
• Individual consequences
o Behavioral consequences
o Psychological consequences
o Medical consequence
• Organizational Consequences
o Burnout = A general feeling of
exhaustion that develops when
an individual simultaneously
experiences too much pressure
and has too few sources of
satisfaction
• Managing and Controlling Stress
• Individual Coping Strategies
o Exercise
o relaxation.
o to develop and maintain
support groups.
Organizational coping strategies
• Institutional programs
o Properly designed jobs and
work schedules
o Fostering a healthy work
culture
o Supervision—keep workloads
reasonable
• Collateral programs
o Organizational programs
specifically created to help
employees deal with stress
▪ Stress management,
health promotion,
employee fitness
programs, career
development
Work-life balance
• Fundamental work-life relationships
• work-life relationships
o Interrelationships between a
person’s work life and personal
life
• Balancing work-life linkages
o Importance of long-term versus
short-term perspectives
o Balance needs of both wage
earners in double-income
families
o Accept that there’s a work-life
integration