Mgmt 371 Chapter Fifteen

1. Mgmt 371Chapter Fifteen Basic Elements of Individual Behavior in Organizations

2. Understanding Individuals in Organizations • The Psychological Contract • The overall set of expectations held by an individual with respect to what he or she will contribute to the organization and what the organization will provide in return. • The unwritten expectations that employees and employers have about the nature of their work relationships • Quid pro quo • Loosely defines what actions are “fair” in the workplace. • Both tangible items and intangible items can affect the psychological contract.

3. Psychological Contracts (Employee Expectations) • Generally, employees expect employers to provide: • Competitive wages • Competitive benefits • Job security • Career development opportunities • Flexibility to balance family and work • If the psychological contract is not altered, the employer may expect greater employee commitment (loyalty).

4. Psychological Contracts (Employer Expectations) • Generally, employers expect employees to provide: • Effort. • Ability. • Loyalty. • Skills. • Time. • Competencies.

5. Factors Adversely Affecting Individual & Organizational Relations • Mergers and acquisitions • Self-employment and contingent work • Less management job tenure • Job insecurity (economic anxiety) • Downsizing • Global competition • Job obsolescence • Executive pay v. the plight of the workers.

6. Understanding Individuals in Organizations (Person-Job Fit) • The Person-Job Fit • Reasons for poor person-job fit: • Organizational selection procedures are imperfect. • Both people and organizations change over time. • Adopting new technologies changes the skills needed by employees. • Each individual is unique and each job is unique.

7. Understanding Individuals in Organizations (Individual Differences) • Individual Differences • Personal attributes that vary from one person to another. • Physical • Psychological • Emotional.

8. Personality and Individual Behavior • Personality • The relatively stable set of psychological and behavioral attributes that distinguish one person from another.

9. The “Big Five” Personality Traits • Agreeableness—a person’s ability to get along with others. • Conscientiousness—the number of goals on which a person focuses. • Negative emotionality—the extent to which a person is calm, resilient, and secure. • Extraversion—a person’s comfort level with relationships. • Openness—a person’s rigidity of beliefs and range of interests.

10. The “Big Five” Model of Personality

11. The Myers-Briggs Framework • The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) • A popular questionnaire that some organizations use to assess personality types. • Is a useful method for determining communication styles and interaction preferences. • Has questionable validity and reliability. • Personality Types • Extraversion (E) versus Introversion (I) • Sensing (S) versus Intuition (N) • Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F) • Judging (J) versus Perceiving (P)

12. Other Personality Traits at Work • Locus of Control (J.B. Rotter) • The extent to which people believe that their behavior has a real effect on what happens to them. • Internal locus ofcontrol—individuals who believe they are in control of their lives. • External locus ofcontrol—individuals believe that external forces dictate what happen to them.

13. Other Personality Traits at Work • Self-Efficacy (Albert Bandura) • A person’s belief about his or her capabilities to perform a task. High self-efficacy individuals believe they can perform well while low self-efficacy individuals doubt their ability to perform.

14. Other Personality Traits at Work • Authoritarianism • The extent to which an individual believes that power and status differences are appropriate within hierarchical social organizations. • Machiavellianism • Behavior directed at gaining power and controlling the behavior of others.

15. Other Personality Traits at Work • Self-Esteem • The extent to which a person believes she/he is a worthwhile individual. • Risk Propensity • The degree to which an individual is willing to take chances and make risky decisions.

16. Emotional Intelligence • Emotional intelligence, or EQ • The extent to which people are self-aware, can manage their emotions, can motivate themselves, express empathy for others, and possess social skills. • Dimensions of EQ • Self-awareness • Managing emotion • Motivating oneself • Empathy • Social skill

17. Attitudes and Individual Behavior • Attitudes - Complexes of beliefs and feelings that people have about specific ideas, situations, or other people. Attitudinal components: • Affective component • Feelings and emotions toward a situation (i.e., how we feel). • Cognitive component • Perceived knowledge (i.e., why we feel the way we feel). • Intentional component • Expected behavior in a given situation (i.e., what we intend do about the situation).

18. Attitudes andIndividual Behavior • Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger) • The conflict individuals experience among their own attitudes caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. • The affective and cognitive components of the individual’s attitude are in conflict with intended behavior. • The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a fundamental cognitive drive to reduce this dissonance by modifying an existing belief, or rejecting one of the contradictory ideas.

19. Work-Related Attitudes • Job Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction • An attitude that reflects the extent to which an individual is gratified or fulfilled by his or her work. • Job Satisfaction and Work Behaviors • Job satisfaction is influenced by personal, group, and organizational factors. • Satisfied employees are absent less often, make positive contributions, and stay with the organization. • Dissatisfied employees are absent more often, may experience stress which disrupts coworkers, and may be continually looking for another job. • High levels of job satisfaction do not necessarily lead to high job performance.

20. Work-Related Attitudes • Organizational Commitment - An attitude that reflects an individual’s identification with and attachment to an organization. • Organizational Commitment and Work Behaviors • Employee commitment strengthens with an individual’s age, years with the organization, sense of job security, and participation in decision making. • Committed employees have highly reliable habits, plan a longer tenure with the organization, and muster more effort in performance.

21. Affect and Mood in Organizations • Positive Affectivity • A tendency to be relatively upbeat and optimistic, have an overall sense of well-being, see things in a positive light, and seem to be in a good mood. • Negative Affectivity • A tendency to be generally downbeat and pessimistic, tend to see things in a negative way, and seem to be in a bad mood.

22. Perception and Individual Behavior • Perception • The set of processes by which an individual becomes aware of and interprets information. • Selective Perception • The process of screening out information that we are uncomfortable with or that contradicts our beliefs. • If selective perception causes someone to ignore important information it can become quite detrimental.

23. Perceptual Processes

24. Perception and Individual Behavior • Stereotyping • The process of categorizing or labeling people on the basis of a single attribute (gender, race, profession, school, e.g.). • Stereotyping may cost the organization valuable talent, violate federal anti-bias laws, and is likely unethical.

25. Perception and Attribution • Attribution • A mechanism through which we observe behavior and attribute a cause to it. • Ways in Which Attributions Are Formed: • Consensus • Consistency • Distinctiveness

26. Stress and Individual Behavior • Stress • A person’s response to a strong stimulus (i.e., a stressor). • General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) • The general cycle of the stress process. • Stage 1 Alarm • Stage 2 Resistance • Stage 3 Exhaustion

27. The General Adaptation Syndrome

28. Causes of Work Stress

29. Causes and Consequences of Stress • Consequences of Stress • Negative personal consequences • Behavioral • Psychological • Medical • Negative work-related consequences • Poor quality work output and lower productivity. • Job dissatisfaction, low morale, and a lack of commitment. • Withdrawal through indifference and absenteeism. • Burnout • A feeling of exhaustion that may develop when someone experiences too much stress for an extended period of time.

30. Stress and Individual Behavior (Type A Personality) • Personality Types • Type A personality • Extremely competitive (aggressive), devoted to work, have a strong sense of time urgency (impatient). • Have a lot of drive and want to accomplish as much as possible as quickly as possible. • Prone to stress.

31. Stress and Individual Behavior (Type B Personality) • Personality Types • Type B Personality • Less competitive, less devoted to work, have a weaker sense of time urgency. • Less likely to experience personal stress or to come into conflict with other people. • More likely to have a balanced, relaxed approach to life.

32. Managing Stress • Stress Management Strategies for Individuals • Regular exercise • reduces tension and stress, and improves self-confidence and feelings of optimism. • Relaxation • allows individuals to adapt and better deal with their stress. • Time management • reduces stress by prioritizing activities to accomplish them in their order of importance. • Support groups • socializing away from work reduces stress.

33. Managing Stress • Stress Management Strategies for Organizations • Organizations are partly responsible for stress. • Organizations also bear the costs of stress-related claims. • Organizational wellness/stress management programs can be used to promote healthful employee activities and derive the benefits of increased organizational productivity.

34. Creativity in Organizations • Creativity • The ability of an individual to generate new ideas or to conceive of new perspectives in existing ideas. • The Creative Individual • Background experiences and creativity • Many creative individuals were reared in creative environments. • Personal traits and creativity • Creative persons have personal traits of openness, an attraction to complexity, high levels of energy, independence, autonomy, strong self-confidence, and a strong belief in their own creativity.

35. Creativity in Organizations • The Creative Individual • Cognitive abilities and creativity • Most creative people are highly intelligent. • They are both divergent and convergent thinkers, a skill they use to see differences and similarities in situations, phenomena, and events.

36. The Creative Process • Preparation • Formal education and training is used to “get up to speed.” • Experiences on the job provide additional knowledge and ideas. • Incubation • A period of less intense conscious concentration during which knowledge and ideas acquired, during reparation, mature and develop. • Incubation can be helped by pauses in rational thought.

37. The Creative Process • Insight • A spontaneous breakthrough in which the creative person achieves a new understanding of some problem or situation. • Patterns of thought coalesce into a new understanding. • Verification • Determines the validity or truthfulness of the insight. • Tests are conducted and prototypes are built to see if the insight leads to the expected results.

38. The Creative Process • Enhancing Creativity in Organizations • Make creativity part of the organization’s culture. • Set goals for revenues from creative products and services. • Reward creativity; refrain from punishing creative failures. • Some ideas work out as expected, others don’t work out as intended.

39. Types of Workplace Behavior • Workplace Behavior • A pattern of action by the members of an organization that directly or indirectly influences organizational effectiveness. • Performance Behaviors • The total set of work-related behaviors an organization expects an individual to display.

40. Types of Workplace Behavior • Withdrawal Behaviors • Absenteeism occurs when an individual does not show up for work when expected for legitimate or feigned reasons. • Absenteeism may be a symptom of other work-related problems. • Turnover occurs when individuals quit their jobs for work-related or personal reasons.

41. Types of Workplace Behavior • Organizational Citizenship • The behavior of individuals that makes a positive overall contribution to the organization. • The determinants of organizational citizenship is a complex mosaic of individual, social, and organizational variables. • The personality, attitudes, and needs of the individual. • The social context, or work group, in which the individual works. • An organization (and its culture) capable of rewarding citizenship behaviors.