20708847
Description
Flashcards by Catherine Lee Ross, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Catherine Lee Ross
over 4 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| What is the definition of organizational behavior (OB)? | A field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and ultimately improving the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations. More simply, it focuses on why individuals and groups in organizations act the way they do. |
| What are the two primary outcomes in studies of organizational behavior? | The two primary outcomes in organizational behavior are job performance and organizational commitment. |
| What is the role of theory (scientific method) when studying OB? | A theory is a collection of assertions, both verbal and symbolic, that specifies how and why variables are relates, as well as the conditions in which they should (and should not) be related. Theories about organizational behavior are built from a combinations of interviews, observations, research reviews, and reflection. Theories form the beginning point for the scientific method and inspire hypotheses that can be tested with data. |
| Why are correlations important when studying OB? | A correlation is a statistic that expresses the strength of a relationship between two variables (ranging from 0 to +/- 1). In OB research, a .50 correlation is considered strong," a .30 correlation is considered moderate,"and a .10 correlation is considered ¨weak.¨ |
| What is the definition of job performance? | is formally defined as the value of the set of employee behaviors that contribute, either positively or negatively, to organizational goal accomplishment. |
| What are the three dimensions of job performance? | Two categories are task performance and citizenship behavior, both of which contribute positively to the organization. The third category is counterproductive behavior, which contributes negatively to the organization. |
| What is task performance? | includes employee behaviors that are directly involved in the transformation of organizational resources into the goods or services that the organization produces. |
| How do organizations identify the behaviors that underlie task performance? | Organizations gather information about relevant task behaviors using job analysis and O*NET. |
| What is citizenship behavior, and what are some specific examples of it? | Citizenship behaviors are voluntary employee activities that may or may not be rewarded but that contribute to the organization by improving the overall quality of the setting in which work takes place. Examples of citizenship behavior helping, courtesy, sportsmanship, voice, civic virtue, and booster-ism. |
| What is counterproductive behavior, and what are some specific examples of it? | Employee behaviors that intentionally hinder organizational goal accomplishment. Examples of counterproductive behavior include sabotage, theft, wasting resources, substance abuse, gossiping, incivility, harassment, and abuse. |
| What workplace trends affect job performance in today’s organizations? | A number of trends have affected job performance in today´s organizations. These trends include the rise of knowledge work and the increase in service jobs. |
| How can organizations use job performance information to manage employee or member performance? | MBO, BARS, 360-degree feedback, and forced ranking practices are four ways that organizations can use job performance information to manage employee performance. |
| What is organizational commitment? | is defined as the desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of the organization. |
| What are the types of withdrawal behavior? | Withdrawal comes in two forms: psychological (or neglect) and physical (or exit). |
| What is the relationship of organizational commitment and withdrawal behavior? | Commitment and withdrawal are negatively related to each other--the more committed employees are, the less likely they are to engage in withdrawal. High levels of overall organizational commitment reduce the frequency of psychological and physical withdrawal. |
| What are the three types of organizational commitment, and how do they differ? | There are three types of organizational commitment. Affective commitment occurs when employees want to stay and is influenced by the emotional bonds between employees. Continuance commitment occurs when employees need to stay and is influenced by salary and benefits and the degree to which they are embedded in the community. Normative commitment occurs when employees feel that they ought to stay and is influenced by an organization investing in its employees or engaging in charitable efforts. |
| What are the 4 primary responses to negative events at work? | Employees can respond to negative work events in four ways: exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect. Exit is a form of physical withdrawal in which the employee either ends or restricts organizational membership. Voice is an active and constructive response by which employees attempt to improve the situation. Loyalty is passive and constructive; employees remain supportive while hoping the situation improves on its own. Neglect is a form of psychological withdrawal in which interest and effort in the job decrease. |
| What workplace trends are affecting organizational commitment in today’s organizations? | The increased diversity of the workforce can reduce commitment if employees feel lower levels of affective commitment or become less embedded in their current jobs. The employee-employer relationship, which has changed due to decades of downsizing, can reduce affective and normative commitment, making it more of a challenge to retain talented employees. |
| How can organizations foster a sense of commitment among employees? | Organizations can foster commitment among employees by fostering perceived organizational support, which reflects the degree to which the organization cares about employees' well-being. Commitment can also be fostered by specific initiatives directed at the three commitment types. |
| What is job satisfaction? | Job satisfaction is a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences. It represents how you feel about your job and what you think about your job. |
| Why are some employees more satisfied than others? | Answering that question requires paying attention to more rational appraisals people make about their job and the things it supplies for them, such as pay, promotions, supervision, coworkers, and the work itself. Answering that questions also requires paying attention to daily fluctuations in how people feel, in terms of their positive and negative moods and positive and negative emotions. |
| What is the value-percept theory? | argues that job satisfaction depends on whether you perceive that your job supplies the things that you value. (Summarized in this following equation "dissatisfaction = (v want - v have) * (v importance)") |
| What are the 5 core job characteristics of the Job Characteristics Model? | Job characteristics theory suggests that five "core characteristics" --variety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedback--combine to result in particularly high levels of satisfaction with the work itself. |
| How do mood and emotion affect levels of job satisfaction? | Satisfaction levels wax and wane as a function of mood and emotions. Mood are states of feeling that are often mild in intensity, last for an extended period of time, and are not explicitly directed at or caused by anything. Emotions which are states of feeling that are often intense, last for only a few minutes, and are clearly directed at (and caused by) someone or some circumstance. |
| What is stress and how is it different than stressors and strain? | Stress refers to the psychological response to demands when there's something at stake for the individual and coping with these demands would tax or exceed the individual's capacity or resources. Stressors are the demands that cause the stress response, and strains are the negative consequences of the stress response. |
| What are the four main types of work stressors? | ONe type of work-related hinderance stressor is role conflict, which refers to conflicting expectations that other people have of us. Role ambiguity refers to a lack of information about what needs to be done in a rolse, as well as unpredictability regarding the consequences of performance in that role. Role overload occurs when the number of demanding roles a person holds is so high that the person simply cannot perform some or all of the roles effectively. Daily hassles refers to the relatively minor day-to-day demands that get in the way of accomplishing the things that we really want to accomplish. |
| How do individual people cope with stress? | Coping with stress involves thoughts and behaviors that address one of two goals: addressing the stressful demand or decreasing the emotional discomfort associated with the demand. |
| How does the Type A Behavior Pattern influence the stress process? | INdividual difference in the Type A Behavior Pattern affect how people experience stress in three ways. Type A people tend to experience more stressors, appraise more demands as stressful, and are prone to experiencing more strains. |
| How does stress affect job performance and organizational commitment? | The effects of stress depend on the type of stressor. Hindrance stressors have a weak negative relationship with job performance and a strong negative relationship with organizational commitment. IN contrast, challenge stressors have a weak positive relationship with job performance and a moderate positive relationship with organizational commitment. |
| What steps can organizations take to manage employee stress? | Because of the high costs associated with employee stress, organizations stress and manage stress using a number of different practices. In general, these practices focus on reducing or eliminating stressors, providing resources that employees can use to cope with stressors, or trying to reduce the strains. |
| What is motivation? | Motivation is defined as a set of energetic forces that originates both within and outside an employee, initiates work-related effort, and determines its direction, intensity and persistence. |
| What is expectancy theory, and what are the three beliefs that help determine how work effort is directed? | Expectancy theory describes the cognitive process that employees go through to make choices among different voluntary responses. According to expectancy theory, effort is directed toward behaviors when effort is believed to result in performance (expectancy), performance is believed to result in outcomes (instrumentality), and those outcomes are anticipated to be valuable (valence), |
| What is goal setting theory? | Goal setting theory views goals as the primary drivers of the intensity and persistence of effort. |
| What two qualities make goals strong predictors of task performance? How and when do those effects occur? | According to goal setting theory, goals become strong drivers of motivation and performance when they are difficult and specific. Specific and difficult goals affect performance by increasing self-set goals and task strategies. Those effects occur more frequently when employees are given feedback, tasks are not too complex, and goal commitment is high. |
| What is psychological empowerment? What four beliefs help create a sense of empowerment among employees? | Psychological empowerment reflects an energy rooted in the belief that tasks are contributing to some larger purpose. Psychological empowerment is fostered when work goals appeal to employees' passions (meaningfulness), employees have a sense of choice regarding work tasks (self-determination), employees feel capable of performing successfully (competence), and employees feel they are making progress toward fulfilling their purpose (impact). |
| How does motivation affect job performance and organizational commitment? | Motivation has a strong positive relationship with job performance and a moderate positive relationship with organizational commitment. Of all the energetic forces subsumes by motivation, self-efficacy/competence has the strongest relationship with performance. |
| What is learning, and how does it affect decision making? | Learning is relatively permanent change in an employee's knowledge or skill that results from experience. Decision making refers to the process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem. Learning allows employees to make better decisions by making those decisions more quickly and by being able to generate a better set of alternatives. |
| What types of knowledge can employees gain as they learn and build expertise? | Employees gain both explicit and tacit knowledge as they build expertise. Explicit knowledge is easily communicated and available to everyone. Tacit knowledge, however, is something employees can learn only through experience. |
| What are the methods by which employees learn in organizations? | From an organization's perspective, the tacit knowledge its employees accumulate may be the single most important strategic asset a company possesses. They learn this through reinforcement (i.e, rewards and punishment), observations, and expertise. (Employees learn new knowledge through reinforcement and observation of others. That learning also depends on whether the employees are learning-oriented or performance-oriented.) |
| What two methods can employees use to make decisions? | Programmed decisions are decisions that become somewhat automatic because a person's knowledge allows him or her to recognize and identify a situation and the course of action that needs to be taken. Many task-related decisions made by experts are programmed decisions. Non-programmed decisions are made when a problem is new, complex, or not recognized. Ideally, such decisions are made by following the steps in the rational decision-making model. |
| What decision-making problems can prevent employees from translating their learning into accurate decisions? | Employees are less able to translate their learning into accurate decisions when they struggle with limited information, faulty perceptions, faulty attributions, and escalations of commitment. |
| How does learning affect job performance and organizational commitment? | Learning has a moderate positive relationship with job performance and a weak positive relationship with organizational commitment. |
| What steps can organizations take to foster learning? | Through various forms of training, companies can give employees more knowledge and a wider array of experiences that they can use to make decisions. |
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