1.

dasIntro to OB:

Organizational behavior: refers to the attitudes and behaviour of individuals and groups
in organizations.
Goals:
Thermostat analogy: adjusting as needed to move from one state of work to another
state to reach the desired state. how many degrees it takes to adjust to get to the
desired state. to close the gaps
Classic views/traditional views:
- early 1900’s
- high specialization of labour (each department tents to its own business, and
decision making is centralized)
- Bureaucracy (M. Weber) - early to mid 1900s
➔ hiring people based on WHAT they know not WHO they know.
➔ strict chain of command, detailed rules, high specialization, centralized
power, and selection and promotion based on technical competence.
- Scientific Management (F. Taylor) - early 1900s
➔ irst efficiency expert
➔ - believed we should treat work like science
➔ - increase in productivity by 300%
➔ - use of careful research to determine degree of specialization
Human relations Movement:
- Hawthorne studies (E. Mayo)
➔ was a consultant
➔ went to hawthorn plan in the 1920s to do studies
➔ they were interested to see what changes they can make in the workplace
to increase productivity
➔ when workers felt like they matter in the workplace, it increased
productivity
➔ when people see value in what they do, they are often more productive
 - Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs

- Mcgregors theory x vs theory Y

➔ Theory X explains the importance of heightened supervision, external
rewards, and penalties, while Theory Y highlights the motivating role of job
satisfaction and encourages workers to approach tasks without direct
supervision.
Human resource perspective
- Participative management:
- Workplace democracy:
contingency/systems approach:
Mintzberg’s managerial roles:
- henry mintzberg is a canadian management theorist who discovered a complex
set of rules that managers play
- henry took his observations and put them into three roles ( informational role,
interpersonal role, and decisional role)
- informational role:
- how managers receive and transmit information
- for example, a spokesperson or monitor
- interpersonal role:
- establishing and maintaining relationships inside and outside the company
- example, a leader or figurehead (entertaining clients), a sales person/manager
- decisional role:
- making decisions that may impact the employee or the organization
- Suggesting new products or services
- example, entrepreneur

2. Personality, Values & Attitudes:

Ability: what a person is capable of doing (competency)
- Cognitive intelligence: capacity to learn and process cognitive information such
as reading, comprehension, mathematical patterns and spatial patterns
- E.I. and its 4 parts: refers to the ability to accurately identify emotions (in Self and
others)as well as understand and manage those emotions separately
1. Self awareness
2. Self management
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management
- C.I and 4 sub skills: represents a persons capability to function effectively in
sitations characterized by culture diversity
1. CQ-Drive or Motivation: person’s interest in experiencing other cultures
and interacting with people from different cultures
2. CQ-Knowledge: person’s understanding of how cultures are similar and
different
3. CQ-Strategy: how a person interprets and understands intercultural
experiences
4. CQ-Action or Behaviour: person’s capability to modify their own verbal and
nonverbal behaviour so it is appropriate for different cultures
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
Five-factor model of personality
- Openness to experience: degree to which u think flexibly and ur receptive to new
ideas
➔ Higher openness to experience: Creativity, imagination,
curiosity,innovation.
➔ Lower openness to experience: like jobs with repetition and lots of rules
and hierarchy, comfort in standards and policies.
- Conscientiousness: the degree of how responsible/ accountable an achievement
orientation is.
➔ High conscientiousness: more dependable, self disciplined, good time
management, hard working,
➔ Lower conscientiousness: responsibility is daunting and stress inducing,
not highly goal oriented, less driven by success, impulsive, lazy.
- Conscientiousness can:
1. Predict performance in all jobs
2. The higher the conscientiousness the quicker they will obtain employment.
- Extraversion: a measure of how energetic, sociable and friendly a person is
➔ High extraversion: People who are high in extroversion seek out social
stimulation and love to engage with others
 ➔ Low extraversion: hose who are low in extroversion (introverts), on the
other hand, tend to be more quiet, reserved, and less involved in social
situations.
- Agreeableness: Degree to which you are approachable
- This variable is most strongly related to organizational commitment.
➔ High agreeableness:Loyal, committed to the company, highers OCBs
OCB(organizational citizenship behavior): go over and above and beyond
their job description.
➔ Low agreeableness: more argumentative, more inflexible, intolerant, less
sympathetics, no OCBs
- Emotional stability (neuroticism): control of ones emotions
➔ High: preferred in most professions because they have more control over
their emotions at work.
➔ Low: may be more easily distracted from their work, by deadlines,
personal situations, and pressure.
Locus of control
➔ Internal locus of control: take it on themselves to get what they want (take control
and don't let stress control them)
➔ External locus of control: wait on others to do things for them. ( don't take charge
of anything).
Self efficacy: person's belief in oneself with respect to performance. (task, activity,
job…)
Self monitoring: the degree which people observe how people behave in social settings.
Self esteem: the degree to which you believe in yourself.
Positive and negavitve affectivity: an emotional disposition (trait) that predicts general
emotional tendencies. Do you look at the world positively or negatively?
Proactive personality: do you make positive change across a range of situations and
activities?
Core self evaluations: Belief in overall work
Values and differences in values
- Generational differences
- Cultural differences (hofstede)
➔ Power distance
➔ Uncertainty avoidance
➔ masculinity/femininity
➔ individualism/collectivism
➔ long-term/short-term orientation
➔ indulgence/restraint
Attitudes: a fairly stable evaluative tendency to respond consistently to some specific
object, situation, person or category of people
Job satisfaction:
➔ Discrepancy
➔ Fairness
➢ distributive fairness: when people receive the outcome they think they
deserve relative to others. (how things are distributed.)
➢ Procedural fairness: when the Process used to determine work
outcomes is reasonable or unreasonable.
➢ Interactional fairness: is when people feel they received respectful and
informative communication
➔ Disposition
➔ Mood and emotion
➔ Work factors
Consequences of job satisfaction:
1. Absenteeism:
- Sick
- Somatic complaints
- Lateness
2. Turnover:
- People leaving
- People looking to leave
3. Performance/ productivity:
- Clock watchers
- Doing the bare minimum
- Stealing or theft
- Under performing (less than bare minimum)
- Over performing (fear and insecurity)
4. OCB (Organizational citizenship behavior)
- worker is job satisfies of they show OCB
5. Customer Satisfaction and profit.

Organizational commitment
- High affective = stay because they want to
- High continuance = stay because they have to
- High normative = stay because we think we should

3. Perception

Perception: the process of interpreting the messages of our senses to provide order
and meaning to the environment
- What are three components of perception:
 ➔ Perceiver:perceivers past experiences, current needs and emotions affect
their perception of the target
➔ Target: perception involves interpretation of the target
➔ Situation: context (e.g. timing) can affect what one perceives
Social identity theory
➔ People (perceivers) form perceptions of themselves (target) based on their
characteristics and memberships on social categories (situation).
➔ People (perceivers) form perceptions of others (target) based on their
memberships on social categories (situation)
The perceptual process
- Environmental stimuli:
- observation:
- perceptual selection:
- perceptual organization/construction:
- Interpretation:
Bruners model of perceptual process:

Perceptual defence: a misperception that occurs when anxiety-arousing stimuli are

unconsciously distorted
Attribution theory and 3 attribution cues:
- Consistency Cue: Attribution cues that reflect how consistently a person engages
in a behaviour over time
- Consensus Cue: Attribution cues that reflect how a person's behaviour compares
with that of others
- Distinctiveness Cues: Attribution cues that reflect the extent to which a person
engages in some behaviour across a variety of situations
- Example: Roshany is absent a lot, her co workers are never absent, she was
absent in her previous job, what cue combination is roshany displaying?
➔ Answer - High consistency, low distinctiveness, and low consensus
Biases in attribution:
- Fundamental attribution error: tendency to overemphasize dispositional
explanations for behavior at the expense of situational explanations
- Actor-observer effect: propensity for actors and observers to view the causes of
the actors behavior differently.
 - Self serving bias: tendency to take credit for successful outcomes and to deny
responsibility for failure.
Perceptual errors
- Selective perception: the process by which individuals perceive what they want to
in media messages while ignoring opposing viewpoints
- Halo effect: one trait forms a general impression
- Stereotyping: tendency to generalize about people in a social category and
ignore variations amount them
- Contrast effect: an unconscious bias that happens when two things are judged in
comparison to one another, instead of being assessed individually.
- Projection: the tendency for perceivers to attribute their own thoughts and
feelings for others
- Impression: an idea, feeling, or opinion about something or someone, especially
one formed without conscious thought or on the basis of little evidence

4. Motivation

Effort: the strength of the person’s work-related behaviour

Persistence: firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or
opposition.
Direction of effort: do workers channel persistent effort in a direction that benefits the
organization?
Goals: motivated people act to enhance organizational objectives
Intrinsic vs extrinsic
- Intrinsic motivation: doing something because you want to
- Extrinsic motivation: doing something for a reward
3 C’s of motivation
- C1: Content
➔ Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
➢ Self actualization
➢ Esteem needs
➢ Belongingness needs
➢ Safety needs
➢ Phycological needs
➔ Hertzbergs two factor theory
 ➔ Alderfers ERG model

➔
➔ mcClellands three needs
➢ Need for power
➢ Need for affiliation
➢ Need for achievement
- C2: Cognitive
➔ Equity theory
➔ Expectancy theory
➔ Goal setting theory (MBO)
- C3: Contextual
➔ Reinforcement theory
➔ Hackman & oldhams job characteristics model:
Self determination theory: An approach that relates the satisfaction of 3 basic
psychological needs to autonomous or controlled motivation
5. Individual Decision Making
Definition: the process of developing a commitment to some course of action
Perfect rationality vs bounded rationality:
➔ Perfect rationality: a decision strategy that is completely informed, perfectly
logical, and oriented towards economic gain
 ➔ Bounded rationality: a decision that relies on limited information and that reflects
time constraints and political considerations
Why does bounded rationality occur?
- Framing: aspects of the presentation of information about a problem that are
assumed by decision makers
- Cognitive biases: tendencies to acquire and process information in an
error-prone way
➢ Availability bias
➢ Representativeness bias
- Problems with problem identification, with information search
➢ Perceptual defense
➢ Problem defined in terms of functional speciality
➢ Problem defined in terms of solution
➢ Problem diagnosed in terms of symptoms
- Alternative development, evaluation & choice:
➢ Maximization
➢ Anchoring effect
➔ The inadequate adjustment of subsequent estimates from an initial
estimate that serves as an anchor
➢ satisficing
➔ Establishing an adequate level of acceptability for a solution to a
problem and then screening solutions until one that exceeds level is
found.

6. Communication

Basic model of communication

Chain of command
- Lines of authority and formal reporting relationships
 - Three necessary forms (communication upward; communication
across/horizontal; communication downward)
Barriers to communication
- No voice
- Not feeling psychologically safe
- Mum (minimizing unpleasant message) effect
- Grapevine: an organzations informal communication network
➢ Can keep employees informed
➢ Provide a test of employee reactions to proposed changes
➢ A potential informal recruiting source
- Jargon
Gender differences

Cross-culture differences
Information richness
- Degree of synchronization and degree of nonverbal and paraverbal cues
Organizational approaches to improving communication
- Provision of explanations
- 360 feedback