Organizational
Behavior
Schermerhorn,
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and
Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University

Chapter 1 Study Questions
What is organizational behavior and why is
it important?
What are organizations like as work
settings?
What is the nature of managerial work?
How do we learn about organizational
behavior?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 2

Study Question 1: What is organizational
behavior and why is it important?
Workplace success depends on:
– Respect for people.
– Understanding of human behavior in complex
organizational systems.
– Individual commitment to flexibility,
creativity, and learning.
– Individual willingness to change.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 3

Study Question 1: What is organizational
behavior and why is it important?
Organizations and their members are
challenged to:
– Simultaneously achieve high performance and
high quality of life.
– Embrace ethics and social responsibility.
– Respect the vast potential of demographic and
cultural diversity among people.
– Recognize the impact of globalization.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 4

Study Question 1: What is organizational
behavior and why is it important?
Organizational behavior.
– Study of human behavior in
organizations.
– A multidisciplinary field devoted to
understanding individual and group
behavior, interpersonal processes, and
organizational dynamics.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 5

Study Question 1: What is organizational
behavior and why is it important?
Pick up Figure 1.1 from the textbook.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 6

Study Question 1: What is organizational
behavior and why is it important?
Reasons for importance of scientific
thinking.
– The process of data collection is
controlled and systematic.
– Proposed explanations are carefully
tested.
– Only explanations that can be
scientifically verified are accepted.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 7

Study Question 1: What is organizational
behavior and why is it important?
Contingency approach.
– Tries to identify how different situations can
be best understood and handled.
– Important contingency variables include:
• Environment.
• Technology.
• Tasks.
• Structure.
• People.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 8

Study Question 1: What is organizational
behavior and why is it important?
Modern workplace trends.
– Commitment to ethical behavior.
– Importance of human capital.
– Demise of “command and control.”
– Emphasis on teamwork.
– Pervasive influence of information
technology.
– Respect for new workforce expectations.
– Changing definition of “jobs” and “career.”
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 9

Study Question 2: What are organizations
like as work settings?
An organization is a collection of people
working together in a division of labor to
achieve a common purpose.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 10

Study Question 2: What are organizations
like as work settings?
The core purpose of an organization is the
creation of goods and services.
Missions and mission statements focus
attention on the core purpose.
Mission statements communicate:
– A clear sense of the domain in which the
organization’s products and services fit.
– A vision and sense of future aspirations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 11

Study Question 2: What are organizations
like as work settings?
A strategy is a comprehensive plan that
guides organizations to operate in ways
that allow them to outperform their
competitors.
Key managerial responsibilities include
strategy formulation and implementation.
Knowledge of OB is essential to
effectively strategy implementation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 12

Study Question 2: What are organizations
like as work settings?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 13

Study Question 2: What are organizations
like as work settings?
Stakeholders.
– People, groups, and institutions having an
interest in an organization’s performance.
– Customers, owners, employees, suppliers,
regulators, and local communities are key
stakeholders.
– Interests of multiple stakeholders sometimes
conflict.
– Executive leadership often focuses on
balancing multiple stakeholder expectations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 14

Study Question 2: What are organizations
like as work settings?
Organizational culture and diversity.
– Organizational culture refers to the shared beliefs and
values that influence the behavior of organizational
members.
– Positive organizational cultures:
• Have a high-performance orientation.
• Emphasize teamwork.
• Encourage risk taking.
• Emphasize innovation..
• Respect people and workforce diversity.
– Success in business world is tied to valuing diversity.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 15

Study Question 2: What are organizations
like as work settings?
Organizational effectiveness approaches.
– Systems resource approach focuses on
inputs.
– Internal process approach focuses on the
transformation process.
– Goal approach focuses on outputs.
– Strategic contingencies approach
focuses on impact on key stakeholders.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 16

Study Question 2: What are organizations
like as work settings?
Longitudinal views of organizational
effectiveness.
– Short-run emphasis on goal accomplishment,
resource utilization, and stakeholder
satisfaction.
– Intermediate-run emphasis on organization’s
adaptability and development potential.
– Long-run emphasis on survival.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 17

Study Question 3: What is the nature
of managerial work?
Managers perform jobs that involve
directly supporting the work efforts of
others.
Managers assume roles such as
coordinator, coach, or team leader.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 18

Study Question 3: What is the nature
of managerial work?
The management process.
– An effective manager is one whose
organizational unit, group, or team
consistently achieves its goals while its
members remain capable, committed, and
enthusiastic.
– Key results of effective management:
• Task performance.
• Job satisfaction.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 19

Study Question 3: What is the nature
of managerial work?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 20

Study Question 3: What is the nature
of managerial work?
The nature of managerial work.
– Managers work long hours.
– Managers are busy people.
– Managers are often interrupted.
– Managerial work is fragmented and variable.
– Managers work mostly with other people.
– Managers spend a lot of time communicating.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 21

Study Question 3: What is the nature
of managerial work?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 22

Study Question 3: What is the nature
of managerial work?
Managerial mind-sets.
– Reflective mind-set — managing one’s self.
– Analytic mind-set — managing organizational
operations and decisions.
– Worldly mind-set — managing in a global context.
– Collaborative mind-set — managing relationships.
– Action mind-set — managing change.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 23

Study Question 3: What is the nature
of managerial work?
Managerial skills and competencies.
– A skill is an ability to translate knowledge into
action that results in a desired performance.
– Categories of skills.
• Technical.
• Human.
• Conceptual.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 24

Study Question 4: How do we learn
about organizational behavior?
Learning is an enduring change in behavior
that results from experience.
Organizational learning is the process of
acquiring knowledge and utilizing
information to adapt successfully to
changing circumstances.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 25

Study Question 4: How do we learn
about organizational behavior?
.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 26

Study Question 4: How do we learn
about organizational behavior?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 27

Chapter 2 Study Questions
What is a high-performance organization?
What is multiculturalism, and how can
workforce diversity be managed?
How do ethics and social responsibility
influence human behavior in
organizations?
What are key OB transitions in the new
workplace?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 28

Study Question 1: What is a high-
performance organization?
High-performance organizations.
– Value and empower people, and respect diversity.
– Mobilize the talents of self-directed work teams.
– Use cutting-edge technologies to achieve success.
– Thrive on learning and enable members to grow and
develop.
– Are achievement-, quality-, and customer-oriented, as
well as being sensitive to the external environment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 29

Study Question 1: What is a high-
performance organization?
Stakeholders.
– The individuals, groups, and other
organizations affected by an
organization’s performance.
Value creation.
– The extent to which an organization
satisfies the needs of strategic
constituencies.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 30

Study Question 1: What is a high-
performance organization?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 31

Study Question 1: What is a high-
performance organization?
Total quality management (TQM).
– A total commitment to:
• High-quality results.
• Continuous improvement.
• Customer satisfaction.
– Meeting customers’ needs.
– Doing all tasks right the first time.
– Continuous improvement focuses on two questions:
• Is it necessary?
• If so, can it be done better?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 32

Study Question 1: What is a high-
performance organization?
Human capital.
– The economic value of people with job-relevant
abilities, knowledge, ideas, energies, and
commitments.
Knowledge workers.
– People whose minds rather than physical capabilities
create value for the organization.
Intellectual capital.
– The performance potential of the expertise,
competencies, creativity, and commitment within an
organization’s workforce.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 33

Study Question 1: What is a high-
performance organization?
Empowerment.
– Allows people, individually and in groups, to
use their talents and knowledge to make
decisions that affect their work.
Social capital.
– The performance potential represented in the
relationships maintained among people at
work.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 34

Study Question 1: What is a high-
performance organization?
Learning and high-performance cultures.
– Uncertainty highlights the importance of
organizational learning.
– High-performance organizations are designed
for organizational learning.
– A learning organization has a culture that
values human capital and invigorates learning
for performance enhancement.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 35

Study Question 1: What is a high-
performance organization?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 36

Study Question 2: What is multi-culturalism,
and how can workforce diversity be managed?
Workforce diversity.
– Describes differences among people with respect to
age, race, ethnicity, gender, physical ability, and
sexual orientation.
Multiculturalism.
– Refers to pluralism and respect for diversity and
individual differences in the workplace.
Inclusivity.
– The degree to which the organization’s culture
respects and values diversity.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 37

Study Question 2: What is multi-culturalism,
and how can workforce diversity be managed?
Diversity biases in the workplace.
– Prejudice.
– Discrimination.
– The glass ceiling effect.
– Sexual harassment.
– Verbal abuse.
– Pay discrimination.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 38

Study Question 2: What is multi-culturalism,
and how can workforce diversity be managed?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 39

Study Question 2: What is multi-culturalism,
and how can workforce diversity be managed?
Managing diversity.
– Developing a work environment and organizational
culture that allows all organization members to reach
their full potential.
A diversity mature organization is created when:
– Managers ensure the effective and efficient utilization
of employees in pursuit of the corporate mission.
– Managers consider how their behaviors affect
diversity.
Well-managed workforce diversity increases
human capital.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 40

Study question 3: How do ethics and
social responsibility influence human
behavior in organizations?
Ethical behavior.
– “Good” or “right” as opposed to “bad”
or “wrong” in a particular setting.
The public demands that people in
organizations act according to high
moral standards.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 41

Study question 3: How do ethics and
social responsibility influence human
behavior in organizations?
Immoral managers.
– Do not subscribe to any ethical principles;
pursuit of self-interest.
Amoral managers.
– Ethics is simply not on this manager’s “radar
screen.”
Moral managers.
– Incorporate ethical principles and goals into
their personal behavior .
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 42

Study question 3: How do ethics and social
responsibility influence human behavior in
organizations?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 43

Study question 3: How do ethics and
social responsibility influence human
behavior in organizations?
Ways of thinking about ethical behavior.
– Utilitarian view –– the greatest good for the
greatest number of people.
– Individualism view –– best serving long-term
self-interests.
– Moral-rights view –– respects and protects the
fundamental rights of all human beings.
– Justice view –– fair and impartial in the
treatment of all people.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 44

Study question 3: How do ethics and
social responsibility influence human
behavior in organizations?
Different types of justice.
– Procedural justice –– properly following rules
and procedures in all cases.
– Distributive justice –– treating people the
same under a policy, regardless of
demographic differences.
– Interactional justice –– treating people affected
by a decision with dignity and respect.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 45

Study question 3: How do ethics and social
responsibility influence human behavior in
organizations?
Ethical dilemmas.
– Occur when someone must choose
whether or not to pursue a course of
action that, although offering the
potential of personal or
organizational benefit or both, may
be considered unethical.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 46

Study question 3: How do ethics and
social responsibility influence human
behavior in organizations?
Rationalizations for unethical behavior.
– Pretending the behavior is not really unethical
or illegal.
– Saying the behavior is really in the
organization’s or person’s best interest.
– Assuming the behavior is acceptable if others
don’t find out about it.
– Presuming that superiors will support and
protect you.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 47

Study question 3: How do ethics and
social responsibility influence human
behavior in organizations?
Organizational social responsibility.
– The obligation of organizations to behave in
ethical and moral ways as institutions of the
broader society.
– Managers should commit organizations to:
• Pursuit of high productivity.
• Corporate social responsibility.
– A whistleblower exposes others’ wrongdoings
in order to preserve high ethical standards.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 48

Study question 4: What are key OB
transitions in the new workplace?
Corporate governance and ethics
leadership.
– Society expects and demands ethical decisions
and actions from businesses and other social
institutions.
– Corporate governance.
• The active oversight of management decisions,
corporate strategy, and financial reporting by
Boards of Directors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 49

Study question 4: What are key OB
transitions in the new workplace?
Corporate governance and ethics
leadership (cont.).
– Ethics leadership.
• Making business and organizational decisions with
high moral standards that meet the ethical test of
being “good” and not “bad,” and of being “right”
and not “wrong.” .
– Integrity.
• Acting in ways that are always honest, credible,
and consistent in putting one’s values into practice.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 50

Study question 4: What are key OB
transitions in the new workplace?
Positive organizational behavior.
– Quality of work life.
• The overall quality of human experience in the
workplace.
• Commitment to quality of work life is an important
value within organizational behavior.
• Theory Y provides the theoretical underpinnings
for contemporary quality of work life concepts.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 51

Study question 4: What are key OB
transitions in the new workplace?
Positive organizational behavior (cont.).
– Positive organizational behavior focuses on
practices that value human capacities and
encourage their full utilization.
– Positive organizational behavior is based on
the core capacities of:
• Confidence.
• Hope.
• Optimism.
• Resilience.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 52

Study question 4: What are key OB
transitions in the new workplace?
Globalization, job migration, and
organizational transformation.
– Globalization.
• The worldwide interdependence of resource flows,
product markets, and business competition.
– Job migration.
• The shifting of jobs from one nation to another.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 53

Study question 4: What are key OB
transitions in the new workplace?
Globalization, job migration, and
organizational transformation (cont.).
– Global outsourcing.
• Involves employers cutting back on domestic jobs
and replacing them with contract workers in other
nations.
– Job migration and global outsourcing have
contributed to organizations redesigning
themselves for high performance in a changed
world.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 54

Study question 4: What are key OB
transitions in the new workplace?
Personal management and career planning.
– Shamrock organizations.
• Relatively small core group of permanent, full-time
employees with critical skills.
• Outside operators contracting to core group to
perform essential daily activities.
• Part-timers hired by core group on an as-needed
basis.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 55

Study question 4: What are key OB
transitions in the new workplace?
Personal management and career planning
(cont.).
– Personal management.
• Understand one’s self, exercising initiative,
accepting responsibility, working well with others,
and continually learning from experience.
– Self-monitoring.
• Observing and reflecting on one’s own behavior
and acting in ways that adapt to the situation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 2 56

Chapter 3 Study Questions
Why is globalization significant for
organizational behavior?
What is culture and how can we
understand cultural differences?
How does cultural diversity affect people
at work?
What is a global view on organizational
learning?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 57

Study Question 1: Why is globalization
significant for organizational behavior?
Most organizations must achieve high
performance within a complex and competitive
global environment.
Globalization refers to the complex economic
networks of international competition, resource
suppliers, and product markets.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 58

Study Question 1: Why is globalization
significant for organizational behavior?
Forces of globalization.
– Rapid growth in information technology and
electronic communication.
– Movement of valuable skills and investments.
– Increasing cultural diversity.
– Implications of immigration.
– Increasing job migration among nations.
– Impact of multicultural workforces.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 59

Study Question 1: Why is globalization
significant for organizational behavior?
Globalization is contributing to the
emergence of regional economic alliances.
Important regional alliances.
– European Union (EU).
– North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA).
– Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum
(APEC).
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 60

Study Question 1: Why is globalization
significant for organizational behavior?
Outsourcing.
– Contracting out of work rather than accomplishing it
with a full-time permanent workforce.
Off shoring.
– Contracting out work to persons in other countries.
Job migration.
– Movement of jobs from one location or country to
another.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 61

Study Question 1: Why is globalization
significant for organizational behavior?
Global managers.
– Know how to conduct business in multiple
countries.
– Are culturally adaptable and often
multilingual.
– Think with a worldview and are able to map
strategy in the global context.
– Have a global attitude.
– Have a global mindset.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 62

Study Question 1: Why is globalization
significant for organizational behavior?
Culture.
– The learned, shared way of doing things in a
particular society.
– The “software of the mind.”
– Helps define boundaries between different
groups and affects how their members relate to
one another.
– Cultural intelligence is the ability to identify,
understand, and act with sensitivity and
effectiveness in cross-cultural situations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 63

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Language.
– Perhaps the most visible aspect of culture.
– Whorfian hypothesis — considers language as
a major determinant of thinking.
– Low-context cultures — the message is
conveyed by the words used.
– High-context cultures — words convey only a
limited part of the message.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 64

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Time orientation.
– Polychronic cultures.
• Circular view of time.
• No pressure for immediate action or performance.
• Emphasis on the present.
– Monochronic cultures.
• Linear view of time.
• Create pressure for action and performance.
• Long-range goals and planning are important.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 65

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Use of space.
– Proxemics.
• The study of how people use space to
communicate.
• Reveals important cultural differences.
– Concept of personal space varies across
cultures.
– Space is arranged differently in different
cultures.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 66

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Religion.
– A major element of culture.
– Can be a very visible aspect of culture.
– Influences codes of ethics and moral behavior.
– Influences conduct of economic matters.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 67

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Values and national culture.
– Cultures vary in underlying patterns of values
and attitudes.
– Hofstede’s five dimensions of national culture:
• Power distance.
• Uncertainty avoidance.
• Individualism-collectivism.
• Masculinity-femininity.
• Long-term/short-term orientation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 68

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Power distance.
– The willingness of a culture to accept status
and power differences among members.
– Respect for hierarchy and rank in
organizations.
– Example of a high power distance culture —
Indonesia.
– Example of a low power distance culture —
Sweden.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 69

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Uncertainty avoidance.
– The cultural tendency toward discomfort with
risk and ambiguity.
– Preference for structured versus unstructured
organizational situations.
– Example of a high uncertainty avoidance
culture — France.
– Example of a low uncertainty avoidance
culture — Hong Kong.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 70

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Individualism-collectivism.
– The cultural tendency to emphasize individual
or group interests.
– Preferences for working individually or in
groups.
– Example of an individualistic culture —
United States.
– Example of a collectivist culture — Mexico.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 71

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Masculinity-femininity.
– The tendency of a culture to value
stereotypical masculine or feminine traits.
– Emphasizes competition/assertiveness versus
interpersonal sensitivity/relationships.
– Example of a masculine culture — Japan.
– Example of a feminine culture — Thailand.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 72

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Long-term/short-term orientation.
– The tendency of a culture to emphasize future-
oriented values versus present-oriented values.
– Adoption of long-term or short-term
performance horizons.
– Example of a long-term orientation culture —
South Korea.
– Example of a short-term orientation culture —
United States.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 73

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 74

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Understanding cultural differences helps in
dealing with parochialism and
ethnocentrism.
– Parochialism — assuming that the ways of
one’s own culture are the only ways of doing
things.
– Ethnocentrism — assuming that the ways of
one’s culture are the best ways of doing
things.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 75

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 76

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Cultural differences in handling
relationships with other people.
– Universalism versus particularism.
• Relative emphasis on rules and consistency, or on
relationships and flexibility.
– Individualism versus collectivism.
• Relative emphasis on individual freedom and
responsibility, or on group interests and consensus.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 77

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Cultural differences in handling
relationships with other people (cont.).
– Neutral versus affective.
• Relative emphasis on objectivity and detachment,
or on emotion and expressed feelings.
– Specific versus diffuse.
• Relative emphasis on focused and narrow
involvement, or on involvement with the whole
person.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 78

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Cultural differences in handling
relationships with other people (cont.).
– Achievement versus prescription.
• Relative emphasis on performance-based and
earned status, or on ascribed status.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 79

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Cultural differences in attitudes toward
time.
– Sequential view of time.
• Time is a passing series of events.
– Synchronic view of time.
• Time consists of an interrelated past, present, and
future.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 80

Study Question 2: What is culture and how can
we understand cultural differences?
Cultural differences in attitudes toward the
environment.
– Inner-directed cultures.
• Members view themselves as separate from nature
and believe they can control it.
– Outer-directed cultures.
• Members view themselves as part of nature and
believe they must go along with it.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 81

Study Question 3: How does cultural
diversity affect people at work?
Multinational corporation (MNC).
– A business firm that has extensive
international operations in more than one
foreign country.
– Have a total world view without allegiance to
any one national home.
– Have enormous economic power and impact.
– Bring benefits and controversies to host
countries.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 82

Study Question 3: How does cultural
diversity affect people at work?
Multicultural workforces and expatriates.
– Styles of leadership, motivation, decision
making, planning, organizing, and controlling
vary from country to country.
– Expatriates.
• People who live and work abroad for extended
periods of time.
• Can be very costly for employers.
• Progressive employers take supportive measures to
maximize potential for expatriate success.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 83

Study Question 3: How does cultural
diversity affect people at work?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 84

Study Question 3: How does cultural
diversity affect people at work?
Ethical behavior across cultures.
– Ethical challenges result from:
• Cultural diversity.
• Variations in governments and legal systems.
– Prominent current issues.
• Corruption and bribery.
• Poor working conditions.
• Child and prison labor.
• Business support of repressive governments.
• Sweatshops.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 85

Study Question 3: How does cultural
diversity affect people at work?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 86

Study Question 3: How does cultural
diversity affect people at work?
Advice regarding cultural relativism and
ethical absolutism.
– Multinational businesses should adopt core or
threshold values that respect and protect
fundamental human rights.
– Beyond the threshold, businesses should adapt
and tailor actions to respect the traditions,
foundations, and needs of different cultures.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 87

Study Question 4: What is a global
view on organizational learning?
Organizational learning.
– The process of acquiring the knowledge
necessary to adapt to a changing
environment.
Global organizational learning.
– The ability to gather from the world at large
the knowledge required for long-term
organizational adaptation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 88

Study Question 4: What is a global
view on organizational learning?
Are management theories universal?
– Answer is “no.”
– Cultural influences should be carefully
considered in transferring theories and their
applications across cultures.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 89

Study Question 4: What is a global
view on organizational learning?
Best practices around the world.
– Global organizational learning should identify
best practices around the world.
– Potential high-performance benchmarks exist
throughout the world.
– Cultural diversity enriches global organization
learning.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 3 90

Chapter 4 Study Questions
What is personality?
How do personalities differ?
What are value and attitude differences
among individuals, and why are they
important?
What are individual differences and how
are they related to workforce diversity?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 91

Study Question 1: What is personality?
Personality.
– The overall profile or combination of
characteristics that capture the unique nature
of a person as that person reacts and interacts
with others.
– Combines a set of physical and mental
characteristics that reflect how a person looks,
thinks, acts, and feels.
– Predictable relationships are expected between
people’s personalities and their behaviors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 92

Study Question 1: What is personality?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 93

Study Question 1: What is personality?
Heredity and environment.
– Heredity sets the limits on the development of
personality characteristics.
– Environment determines development within these
limits.
– About a 50-50 heredity-environment split.
– Cultural values and norms play a substantial role in
the development of personality.
– Social factors include family life, religion, and many
kinds of formal and informal groups.
– Situational factors reflect the opportunities or
constraints imposed by the operational context.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 94

Study Question 1: What is personality?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 95

Study Question 1: What is personality?
Personality and the self-concept.
– Personality dynamics.
• The ways in which an individual integrates and
organizes social traits, values and motives,
personal conceptions, and emotional adjustments.
– Self-concept.
• The view individuals have of themselves as
physical, social, and spiritual or moral beings.
• Self-esteem.
• Self-efficacy.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 96

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
“Big Five” personality dimensions.
– Extraversion
• Being outgoing, sociable, assertive.
– Agreeableness.
• Being good-natured, trusting, cooperative.
– Conscientiousness.
• Being responsible, dependable, persistent.
– Emotional stability.
• Being unworried, secure, relaxed.
– Openness to experience.
• Being imaginative, curious, broad-minded.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 97

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
Social traits.
– Surface-level traits that reflect the way a
person appears to others when interacting in
various social settings.
– An important social trait is problem-solving
style.
• The way a person goes about gathering and
evaluating information in solving problems and
making decisions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 98

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
Information gathering in problem solving.
– Getting and organizing data for use.
– Sensation-type individuals prefer routine and
order and emphasize well-defined details in
gathering information.
– Intuitive-type individuals like new problems
and dislike routine.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 99

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
Information evaluation in problem solving.
– Making judgments about how to deal with
information once it has been collected.
– Feeling-type individuals are oriented toward
conformity and try to accommodate
themselves to other people.
– Thinking-type individuals use reason and
intellect to deal with problems and downplay
emotions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 100

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 101

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
Personal conception traits.
– The way individuals tend to think about their
social and physical settings as well as their
major beliefs and personal orientation.
– Key traits.
• Locus of control.
• Authoritarianism/dogmatism.
• Machiavellianism.
• Self-monitoring.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 102

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
Locus of control.
– The extent to which a person feels able to
control his/her own life.
– Externals.
• More extraverted in their interpersonal
relationships and more oriented toward the world
around them.
– Internals.
• More introverted and more oriented towards their
own feelings and ideas.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 103

Study Question 2: How do personalities differ?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 104

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
Authoritarianism/dogmatism.
– Authoritarianism.
• Tendency to adhere rigidly to conventional values
and to obey recognized authority.
– Dogmatism.
• Tendency to view the world as a threatening place.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 105

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
People with a high-Machiavellian personality:
– Approach situations logically and
thoughtfully.
– Are capable of lying to achieve personal goals.
– Are rarely swayed by loyalty, friendships, past
promises, or others’ opinions.
– Are skilled at influencing others.
– Try to exploit loosely structured situations.
– Perform in a perfunctory or detached manner
in highly structured situations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 106

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
People with a low-Machiavellian personality:
– Accept direction imposed by others in loosely
structured situations.
– Work hard to do well in highly structured
situations.
– Are strongly guided by ethical considerations.
– Are unlikely to lie or cheat.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 107

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
Self-monitoring.
– A person’s ability to adjust his/her behavior to
external situational factors.
– High self-monitors.
• Sensitive to external cues.
• Behave differently in different situations.
– Low self-monitors.
• Not sensitive to external cues.
• Not able to disguise their behaviors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 108

Study Question 2: How do
personalities differ?
Emotional adjustment traits.
– How much an individual experiences distress
or displays unacceptable acts.
– Type A orientation.
• Characterized by impatience, desire for
achievement, and perfectionism.
– Type B orientation.
• Characterized as more easygoing and less
competitive in relation to daily events.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 109

Study Question 3: What are value and attitude
differences among individuals, and why are they
important?
Values.
– Broad preferences concerning appropriate
courses of action or outcomes.
– Values influence behavior and attitudes.
– Parents, friends, teachers, and external
reference groups can influence individual
values.
– Values develop as a product of learning and
experiences.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 110

Study Question 3: What are value and attitude
differences among individuals, and why are they
important?
Pick up Figure 4.5 from the textbook.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 111

Study Question 3: What are value and attitude
differences among individuals, and why are they
important?
Gordon Allport’s values categories.
– Theoretical values.
– Economic values.
– Aesthetic values.
– Social values.
– Political values.
– Religious values.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 112

Study Question 3: What are value and attitude
differences among individuals, and why are they
important?
Maglino’s categories of workplace values.
– Achievement.
– Helping and concern for others.
– Honesty.
– Fairness.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 113

Study Question 3: What are value and attitude
differences among individuals, and why are they
important?
Attitudes.
– Are influenced by values and are acquired
from the same sources as values.
– Are more specific and less stable than values.
– An attitude is a predisposition to respond in a
positive or negative way to someone or
something in one’s environment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 114

Study Question 3: What are value and attitude
differences among individuals, and why are they
important?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 115

Study Question 3: What are value and attitude
differences among individuals, and why are they
important?
The attitude-behavior relationship is
stronger when:
– Attitudes and behaviors are more specific.
– There is freedom to carry out the behavioral
intent.
– The person has experience with the attitude.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 116

Study Question 3: What are value and attitude
differences among individuals, and why are they
important?
Attitudes and cognitive consistency.
– Cognitive dissonance.
• Describes a state of inconsistency between an
individual’s attitudes and his or her behavior.
– Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by:
• Changing the underlying attitude.
• Changing future behavior.
• Developing new ways of explaining or
rationalizing the inconsistency.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 117

Study Question 3: What are value and attitude
differences among individuals, and why are they
important?
Attitudes and cognitive consistency (cont.).
– Dissonance reduction choices are influenced
by:
• The degree of control a person has over the
situation.
• The magnitude of the rewards involved.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 118

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Workforce diversity.
– The presence of individual human
characteristics that make people different
from one another.
Challenge of workforce diversity.
– Respecting individuals’ perspectives and
contributions and promoting a shared sense
of organizational vision and identity.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 119

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
As workforce diversity increases, the
possibility of stereotyping and
discrimination increases.
– Demographic characteristics may serve as the
basis for stereotypes.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 120

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Equal employment opportunity.
– Nondiscriminatory employment decisions.
• No intent to exclude or disadvantage legally
protected groups.
– Affirmative action.
• Remedial actions for proven discrimination or
statistical imbalance in workforce.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 121

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Demographic characteristics.
– The background characteristics that help shape what a
person becomes.
Important demographic characteristics for the
workplace.
– Gender.
– Age.
– Able-bodiedness.
– Race.
– Ethnicity.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 122

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Gender.
– No consistent differences between men and
women in:
• Problem-solving abilities.
• Analytical skills.
• Competitive drive.
• Motivation.
• Learning ability.
• Sociability.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 123

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Gender (cont.).
– As compared to men, women:
• Are more conforming.
• Have lower expectations of success.
• Have higher absenteeism.
• Are more democratic as leaders.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 124

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Age.
– Aging workforce.
– Older workers are more susceptible to stereotyping.
– Age discrimination lawsuits are increasingly common
in the United States.
– Small businesses tend to value older workers.
– Experienced workers, who are usually older, tend to
perform well, be absent less, and have low turnover.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 125

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Able-bodiedness.
– Despite evidence of effective job performance,
most disabled persons are unemployed.
– Most disabled persons want to work.
– More firms are likely to hire disabled workers
in the future.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 126

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Racial and ethnic groups.
– African Americans, Asian Americans, and
Hispanic Americans make up an ever-
increasing percentage of the American
workforce.
– Potential for stereotypes and discrimination
can adversely affect career opportunities.
– Race cannot be a BFOQ.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 127

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Important lessons regarding demographic
characteristics.
– Respect and deal with the needs and concerns
of people with different demographics.
– Avoid linking demographics to stereotypes.
– Demography is not a good indicator of
individual-job fits.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 128

Study Question 4: What are individual differences
and how are they related to workforce diversity?
Aptitude.
– A person’s capability of learning something.
Ability.
– A person’s existing capacity to perform the
various tasks needed for a given job.
– Includes relevant knowledge and skills.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 4 129

Chapter 5 Study Questions
What is the perception process?
What are common perceptual
distortions?
How can perceptions be managed?
What is attribution theory?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 130

Study Question 1: What is the
perception process?
Perception.
– The process by which people select, organize,
interpret, retrieve, and respond to information.
– People process information inputs into
responses involving feeling and action.
– The quality or accuracy of a person’s
perceptions has a major impact on responses.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 131

Study Question 1: What is the perception
process?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 132

Study Question 1: What is the
perception process?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 133

Study Question 1: What is the
perception process?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 134

Study Question 1: What is the
perception process?
Information attention and selection.
– Selective screening.
• Lets in only a tiny portion all the information that
is available.
– Two types of selective screening.
• Controlled processing.
• Screening without perceiver’s conscious
awareness.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 135

Study Question 1: What is the
perception process?
Organization of information.
– Schemas.
• Cognitive frameworks that represent organized
knowledge about a given concept or stimulus
developed through experience.
– Types of schemas:
• Self schemas.
• Person schemas.
• Script schemas.
• Person-in-situation schemas.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 136

Study Question 1: What is the
perception process?
Information interpretation.
– Uncovering the reasons behind the ways
stimuli are grouped.
– People may interpret the same information
differently or make different attributions about
information.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 137

Study Question 1: What is the
perception process?
Information retrieval.
– Attention and selection, organization, and
interpretation are part of memory.
– Information stored in memory must be
retrieved in order to be used.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 138

Study Question 2: What are common
perceptual distortions?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 139

Study Question 2: What are common
perceptual distortions?
Stereotypes or prototypes.
– Combines information based on the category
or class to which a person, situation, or object
belongs.
– Individual differences are obscured.
– Strong impact at the organization stage.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 140

Study Question 2: What are common
perceptual distortions?
Halo effects.
– Occur when one attribute of a person or
situation is used to develop an overall
impression of the individual or situation.
– Likely to occur in the organization stage.
– Important in the performance appraisal
process.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 141

Study Question 2: What are common
perceptual distortions?
Selective perception.
– The tendency to single out those aspects of a
situation, person, or object that are consistent
with one’s needs, values, or attitudes.
– Strongest impact is at the attention stage.
– Perception checking with other persons can
help counter the adverse impact of selective
perception.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 142

Study Question 2: What are common
perceptual distortions?
Projection.
– The assignment of one’s personal attributes to
other individuals.
– Especially likely to occur in interpretation
stage.
– Projection can be controlled through a high
degree of self-awareness and empathy.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 143

Study Question 2: What are common
perceptual distortions?
Contrast effects.
– Occur when an individual is compared to other
people on the same characteristics on which
the others rank higher or lower.
– People must be aware of the impact of contrast
effects in many work settings
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 144

Study Question 2: What are common
perceptual distortions?
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
– The tendency to create or find in another
situation or individual that which one expected
to find.
– Also called the “Pygmalion effect.”
– Can have either positive or negative outcomes.
– Managers should adopt positive and optimistic
approaches to people at work.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 145

Study Question 3: How can
perceptions be managed?
Impression management.
– A person’s systematic attempt to behave in
ways that create and maintain desired
impressions in others’ eyes.
– Successful managers:
• Use impression management to enhance their own
images.
• Are sensitive to other people’s use of impression
management.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 146

Study Question 3: How can
perceptions be managed?
Distortion management.
– Managers should:
• Balance automatic and controlled information
processing at the attention and selection stage.
• Broaden their schemas at the organizing stage.
• Be attuned to attributions at the interpretation
stage.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 147

Study Question 4:What is
attribution theory?
Attribution theory aids in perceptual
interpretation by focusing on how people
attempt to:
– Understand the causes of a certain event.
– Assess responsibility for the outcomes of the
event.
– Evaluate the personal qualities of the people
involved in the event.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 148

Study Question 4:What is
attribution theory?
Factors influencing internal and external
attributions.
– Distinctiveness — consistency of a person’s
behavior across situations.
– Consensus — likelihood of others responding
in a similar way.
– Consistency — whether an individual
responds the same way across time.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 149

Study Question 4:What is
attribution theory?
Fundamental attribution error.
– Applies to the evaluation of someone’s else
behavior.
– Attributing success to the influence of
situational factors.
– Attributing failure to the influence of personal
factors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 150

Study Question 4:What is
attribution theory?
Self-serving bias.
– Applies to the evaluation of our own behavior.
– Attributing success to the influence of
personal factors.
– Attributing failure to the influence of
situational factors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 151

Study Question 4:What is
attribution theory?
Techniques for effectively managing perceptions
and attributions.
– Be self-aware.
– Seek a wide range of differing information.
– Try to see a situation as others would.
– Be aware of different kinds of schemas.
– Be aware of perceptual distortions.
– Be aware of self and impression management.
– Be aware of attribution theory implications.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 5 152

Chapter 6 Study Questions
What is motivation?
What do the content theories suggest about
individual needs and motivation?
What do the process theories suggest about
individual motivation?
What are reinforcement theories and how
are they linked to motivation?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 153

Study Question 1:What is motivation?
Motivation refers to forces within an individual
that account for the level, direction, and
persistence of effort expended at work.
– Direction — an individual’s choice when presented
with a number of possible alternatives.
– Level — the amount of effort a person puts forth.
– Persistence — the length of time a person stays with a
given action.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 154

Study Question 1:What is motivation?
Categories of motivation theories.
– Content theories.
• Focus on profiling the needs that people seek to
fulfill.
– Process theories.
• Focus on people’s thought or cognitive processes.
– Reinforcement theories.
• Emphasize controlling behavior by manipulating
its consequences.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 155

Study Question 2: What do the content theories
suggest about individual needs and motivation?
Content theories.
– Motivation results from the individual’s attempts to
satisfy needs.
Major content theories.
– Hierarchy of needs theory.
– ERG theory.
– Acquired needs theory.
– Two-factor theory.
Each theory offers a slightly different view.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 156

Study Question 2: What do the content theories
suggest about individual needs and motivation?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 157

Study Question 2: What do the content theories
suggest about individual needs and motivation?
ERG theory.
– Existence needs.
• Desire for physiological and material well-being.
– Relatedness needs.
• Desire for satisfying interpersonal relationships.
– Growth needs.
• Desire for continued personal growth and
development.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 158

Study Question 2: What do the content theories
suggest about individual needs and motivation?
Acquired needs theory.
– Need for achievement (nAch).
• The desire to do something better or more efficiently, to solve
problems, or to master complex tasks.
– Need for affiliation (nAff).
• The desire to establish and maintain friendly and warm
relations with others.
– Need for power (nPower).
• The desire to control others, to influence their behavior, or to
be responsible for others.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 159

Study Question 2: What do the content theories
suggest about individual needs and motivation?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 160

Study Question 3: What do the process theories
suggest about individual motivation?
Process theories.
– Focus on the thought processes through which
people choose among alternative courses of
action.
The chapter focuses on two process
theories:
– Equity theory.
– Expectancy theory.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 161

Study Question 3: What do the process theories
suggest about individual motivation?
Equity theory.
– People gauge the fairness of their work outcomes in
relation to others.
– Felt negative inequity.
• Individual feels he/she has received relatively less
than others in proportion to work inputs.
– Felt positive inequity.
• Individual feels he/she has received relatively more
than others in proportion to work inputs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 162

Study Question 3: What do the process theories
suggest about individual motivation?
Equity restoration behaviors.
– Change work inputs.
– Change the outcomes received.
– Leave the situation.
– Change the comparison person.
– Psychologically distort the comparisons.
– Take actions to change the inputs or outputs of
the comparison person.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 163

Study Question 3: What do the process theories
suggest about individual motivation?
Coping methods for dealing with equity
comparisons.
– Recognize that equity comparisons are inevitable in the
workplace.
– Anticipate felt negative inequities when rewards are given.
– Communicate clear evaluations for any rewards given.
– Communicate an appraisal of performance on which the reward
is based.
– Communicate comparison points that are appropriate in the
situation
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 164

Study Question 3: What do the process theories
suggest about individual motivation?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 165

Study Question 3: What do the process theories
suggest about individual motivation?
A person’s motivation is a multiplicative function
of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence (M =
E x I x V).
Motivational implications of expectancy theory.
– Motivation is sharply reduced when, expectancy,
instrumentality, or valence approach zero.
– Motivation is high when expectancy and
instrumentality are high and valence is strongly
positive.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 166

Study Question 3: What do the process theories
suggest about individual motivation?
Extrinsic rewards.
– Positively valued work outcomes given to the
individual by some other person.
Intrinsic rewards.
– Positively valued work outcomes that the
individual receives directly as a result of task
performance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 167

Study Question 3: What do the process theories
suggest about individual motivation?
Guidelines for the distribution of extrinsic
rewards.
– Clearly identify the desired behaviors.
– Maintain an inventory of rewards that have the
potential to serve as positive reinforcers.
– Recognize individual differences in the
rewards that will have a positive value for
each person.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 168

Study Question 3: What do the process theories
suggest about individual motivation?
Guidelines for the distribution of extrinsic
rewards (cont.).
– Let each person know exactly what must be done to
receive a desirable reward; set clear target antecedents
and give performance feedback.
– Allocate rewards contingently and immediately upon
the appearance of the desired behaviors.
– Allocate rewards wisely in terms of scheduling the
delivery of positive reinforcement.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 169

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Reinforcement.
– The administration of a consequence as a
result of a behavior.
– Proper management of reinforcement can
change the direction, level, and persistence of
an individual’s behavior.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 170

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 171

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Law of effect.
– Theoretical basis for manipulating
consequences of behavior.
– Behavior that results in a pleasant outcome is
likely to be repeated while behavior that
results in an unpleasant outcome is not likely
to be repeated.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 172

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 173

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Organizational behavior modification (OB
Mod).
– The systematic reinforcement of desirable
work behavior and the nonreinforcement or
punishment of unwanted work behavior.
– Uses four basic strategies:
• Positive reinforcement.
• Negative reinforcement.
• Punishment.
• Extinction.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 174

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Positive reinforcement.
– The administration of positive consequences
to increase the likelihood of repeating the
desired behavior in similar settings.
– Rewards are not necessarily positive
reinforcers.
– A reward is a positive reinforcer only if the
behavior improves.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 175

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Principles governing reinforcement.
– Law of contingent reinforcement.
• The reward must be delivered only if the desired
behavior is exhibited.
– Law of immediate reinforcement.
• The reward must be given as soon as possible after
the desired behavior is exhibited.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 176

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Scheduling reinforcement.
– Continuous reinforcement.
• Administers a reward each time the desired
behavior occurs.
– Intermittent reinforcement.
• Rewards behavior periodically — either on
the basis of time elapsed or the number of
desired behaviors exhibited.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 177

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 178

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Negative reinforcement.
– Also known as avoidance.
– The withdrawal of negative consequences to
increase the likelihood of repeating the desired
behavior in a similar setting.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 179

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Punishment.
– The administration of negative consequences
or the withdrawal of positive consequences to
reduce the likelihood of repeating the behavior
in similar settings.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 180

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Implications of using punishment.
– Punishing poor performance enhances
performance without affecting satisfaction.
– Arbitrary and capricious punishment leads to
poor performance and low satisfaction.
– Punishment may be offset by positive
reinforcement from another source.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 181

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Extinction.
– The withdrawal of the reinforcing
consequences for a given behavior.
– The behavior is not unlearned; it simply is not
exhibited.
– The behavior will reappear if it is reinforced
again.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 182

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 183

Study Question 4: What are reinforcement
theories and how are they linked to motivation?
Ethical issues with reinforcement usage.
– Is improved performance really due to reinforcement?
– Is the use of reinforcement demeaning and
dehumanizing?
– Will managers abuse their power by exerting external
control over behavior?
– How can we ensure that the manipulation of
consequences is done in a positive and constructive
fashion?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 6 184

Chapter 7 Study Questions
How are motivation, job satisfaction, and
performance related?
What are job-design approaches?
How are technology and job design
related?
What alternative work arrangements are
used today?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 185

Study Question 1: How are motivation,
job satisfaction, and performance related?
Job satisfaction.
– The degree to which individuals feel positively
or negatively about their jobs.
– Job satisfaction can be assessed:
• By managerial observation and interpretation.
• Through use of job satisfaction questionnaires.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 186

Study Question 1: How are motivation,
job satisfaction, and performance related?
Implications of key work decisions for job
satisfaction.
– Joining and remaining a member of an organization.
• Satisfied workers have better attendance and less turnover.
– Working hard in pursuit of high levels of task
performance.
• Three alternative relationships between performance and
satisfaction.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 187

Study Question 1: How are motivation,
job satisfaction, and performance related?
Argument: satisfaction causes
performance.
– Managerial implication — to increase
employees’ work performance, make them
happy.
– Job satisfaction alone is not a consistent
predictor of work performance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 188

Study Question 1: How are motivation,
job satisfaction, and performance related?
Argument: performance causes
satisfaction.
– Managerial implication — help people achieve
high performance, then satisfaction will
follow.
– Performance in a given time period is related
to satisfaction in a later time period.
– Rewards link performance with later
satisfaction.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 189

Study Question 1: How are motivation,
job satisfaction, and performance related?
Argument: rewards cause both satisfaction
and performance.
– Managerial implications.
• Proper allocation of rewards can positively
influence both satisfaction and performance.
• High job satisfaction and performance-contingent
rewards influence a person’s work performance.
• Size and value of the reward should vary in
proportion to the level of one’s performance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 190

Study Question 1: How are motivation,
job satisfaction, and performance related?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 191

Study question 2: What are job-
design approaches?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 192

Study question 2: What are job-
design approaches?
Scientific management.
– Sought to improve work efficiency by creating
small, repetitive tasks and training workers to
do these tasks well.
– Job simplification.
• Standardizes work procedures and employs people
in clearly defined and highly specialized tasks.
• Intent is to increase efficiency, but it may be
decreased due to the motivational impact of
unappealing jobs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 193

Study question 2: What are job-
design approaches?
Job enlargement and job rotation.
– Job enlargement.
• Increases task variety by combining into one job
two or more tasks that were previously assigned to
separate workers.
– Job rotation.
• Increases task variety by periodically shifting
workers among jobs involving different tasks.
– Enlargement and rotation use horizontal
loading to increase job breadth.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 194

Study question 2: What are job-
design approaches?
Job enrichment.
– The practice of enhancing job content by
building motivating factors such as
responsibility, achievement, recognition, and
personal growth into the job.
– Adds planning and evaluating duties to the job
content.
– Uses vertical loading to increase job depth.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 195

Study question 2: What are job-
design approaches?
Ways to increase job depth.
– Allow workers to plan.
– Allow workers to control.
– Maximize job freedom.
– Increase task difficulty.
– Help workers become task experts.
– Provide performance feedback.
– Increase performance accountability.
– Provide complete units of work.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 196

Study question 2: What are job-
design approaches?
Concerns about job enrichment.
– Job enrichment can be very costly.
– Controversy concerning whether pay
must be increased when jobs are
enriched.
• Herzberg’s argument regarding the impact
of competitive pay and enriched jobs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 197

Study question 3: What are the keys
to designing motivating jobs?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 198

Study question 3: What are the keys
to designing motivating jobs?
Core job characteristics.
– Skill variety.
• Degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities
and involves the use of a number of different skills and
talents of the individual.
– Task identity.
• Degree to which the job requires the completion of a “whole”
and identifiable piece of work; one that involves doing a job
from beginning to end with a visible outcome.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 199

Study question 3: What are the keys
to designing motivating jobs?
Core job characteristics (cont.).
– Task significance.
• Degree to which the job is important and involves a
meaningful contribution to the organization or society in
general.
– Autonomy.
• Degree to which the job gives the employee substantial
freedom, independence, and discretion in scheduling the
work and in determining the procedures used in carrying it
out.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 200

Study question 3: What are the keys
to designing motivating jobs?
Core job characteristics (cont.).
– Job feedback.
• Degree to which carrying out the work activities provides
direct and clear information to the employee regarding how
well the job has been done. .
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 201

Study question 3: What are the keys
to designing motivating jobs?
Motivating potential score.
– Combined together, the core job
characteristics create a motivating potential
score (MPS).
– MPS indicates the degree to which the job is
capable of motivating people.
– A job’s MPS can be raised by enriching the
core characteristics.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 202

Study question 3: What are the keys
to designing motivating jobs?
Critical psychological states.
– When the core characteristics are highly
enriched, three critical psychological states
are positively influenced.
• Experienced meaningfulness of work.
• Experienced responsibility for work outcomes.
• Knowledge of actual results of work activities.
– Positive psychological states create positive
work outcomes.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 203

Study question 3: What are the keys
to designing motivating jobs?
Enriched core job characteristics will
create positive psychological states, which
in turn will create positive work outcomes
only when:
– Employee growth-need strength is high.
– The employee has the requisite knowledge and
skill.
– Employee context satisfaction exists.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 204

Study question 3: What are the keys
to designing motivating jobs?
Social information processing theory.
– Social information in organizations influences
the way people perceive their jobs and respond
to them.
– Research evidence shows that both social
information and the core characteristics are
important determinants of how people
perceive their jobs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 205

Study question 3: What are the keys
to designing motivating jobs?
Managerial and global implications of
enriching jobs.
– Not everyone’s job should be enriched.
– Job enrichment can apply to groups.
– Culture has a substantial impact on job
enrichment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 206

Study Question 4: How are technology
and job design related?
Sociotechnical systems.
– Reflects the importance of integrating people
and technology to create high-performance
work systems.
– Essential for new developments in job design,
given the impact of computers and information
technology in the modern workplace.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 207

Study Question 4: How are technology
and job design related?
Flexible manufacturing systems.
– Adaptive computer-based technologies and
integrated job designs that are used to shift
work easily and quickly among alternative
products.
– Workers develop expertise across a wide range
of functions.
– Jobs offer a wealth of potential for enriched
core job characteristics.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 208

Study Question 4: How are technology
and job design related?
Workflow and process reengineering.
– Process reengineering is the analysis,
streamlining, and reconfiguration of actions
and tasks required to reach a work goal.
– This approach for improving workflows and
job designs is driven by one question:
• What is necessary and what else can be eliminated?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 209

Study Question 5: What alternative
work arrangements are used today?
Compressed work weeks.
– Any scheduling of work that allows a full-time
job to be completed in fewer than the standard
five days.
– “4/40” is most common form.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 210

Study Question 5: What alternative
work arrangements are used today?
Compressed work weeks (cont.).
– Advantages.
• For workers: added time off.
• For organizations: lower absenteeism and
improved recruiting of new employees.
– Disadvantages.
• For workers: increased fatigue and family
adjustment problems.
• For organizations: work scheduling problems,
customer complaints, and possible union
opposition.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 211

Study Question 5: What alternative
work arrangements are used today?
Flexible working hours.
– Gives individuals a daily choice in the timing of
their work commitments.
– Advantages:
• For workers: shorter commuting time, more leisure
time, more job satisfaction, and greater sense of
responsibility.
• For organizations: less absenteeism, tardiness, and
turnover; more commitment; and higher
performance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 212

Study Question 5: What alternative
work arrangements are used today?
Job sharing.
– One full-time job is assigned to two or more
persons who divide the work according to
agreed-upon hours.
– Advantages.
• For workers: less burnout and higher energy level.
• For organizations; attracting talented people who
who would otherwise be unable to work.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 213

Study Question 5: What alternative
work arrangements are used today?
Work at home and the virtual office.
– Telecommuting.
• Work done at home or in a remote location via use
of computers and advanced communication
linkages with a central office or other employment
locations.
– Variants of telecommuting.
• Flexiplace.
• Hoteling.
• Virtual office.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 214

Study Question 5: What alternative
work arrangements are used today?
Advantages of telecommuting.
– For workers: flexibility, comforts of home, and choice
of work locations consistent with one’s lifestyle.
– For organizations: costs savings, efficiency, and
improved employee satisfaction.
Disadvantages of telecommuting.
– For workers: isolation from co-workers, decreased
identification with work team, and technical
difficulties with computer linkages.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 215

Study Question 5: What alternative
work arrangements are used today?
Part-time work.
– Temporary part-time work.
• An employee is classified as temporary and works
less than the standard 40-hour work week.
– Permanent part-time work.
• An employee is classified as a permanent member
of the workforce and works less than the standard
40-hour work week.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 216

Study Question 5: What alternative
work arrangements are used today?
Advantages of part-time work.
– For workers: appeals to people who want to
supplement other jobs or do not want full-time work.
– For organizations: lower labor costs, ability to better
accommodate peaks and valleys of business cycle, and
better management of retention quality.
Disadvantages of part-time work.
– For workers: added stress and potentially diminished
performance if holding two jobs, failure to qualify for
benefits, and lower pay rates than full-time
counterparts.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 7 217

Chapter 8 Study Questions
What is goal setting?
What is performance appraisal?
What are compensation and rewards?
What are human resource
development and person-job fit?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 218

Study Question 1: What is goal setting?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 219

Study Question 1: What is goal setting?
Goal setting guidelines.
– Difficult goals are more likely to lead to
higher performance than are less difficult
ones.
– Specific goals are more likely to lead to higher
performance than are no goals or vague or
general ones.
– Task feedback, or knowledge of results, is
likely to motivate people toward higher
performance by encouraging the setting of
higher performance goals.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 220

Study Question 1: What is goal setting?
Goal setting guidelines (cont.).
– Goals are most likely to lead to higher
performance when the people have the
abilities and the feeling of self-efficacy
required to accomplish them.
– Goals are most likely to motivate people
toward higher performance when they are
accepted and there is commitment to them.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 221

Study Question 1: What is goal setting?
Goal setting and MBO.
– Management by objectives (MBO) is a process
of joint goal setting between a supervisor and
a subordinate.
– MBO is consistent with the goal setting
guidelines derived from the Locke and Latham
model.
– MBO establishes performance goals consistent
with higher level work unit and organizational
objectives.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 222

Study Question 1: What is goal setting?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 223

Study Question 1: What is goal setting?
Potential problems with MBO.
– Too much paperwork. in documenting goals and
accomplishments.
– Too much emphasis on:
• Goal-oriented rewards and punishments.
• Top-down goals.
• Goals that are easily stated in objective terms.
• Individual goals instead of group goals.
– MBO may need to be implemented organization-wide.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 224

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Performance appraisal.
– Helps both the manager and subordinate
maintain the organization-job-employee
characteristics match
– The process of systematically evaluating
performance and providing feedback upon
which performance adjustments can be made.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 225

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Functions of performance appraisal.
– Define the specific job criteria against which
performance will be measured.
– Measure past job performance accurately.
– Justify rewards, thereby differentiating
between high and low performance.
– Define ratee’s needed development
experiences.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 226

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Two general purposes of good
performance appraisal.
– Evaluation.
• Concerned with such issues as promotions,
transfers, terminations, and salary increases.
– Feedback and development.
• Let workers know their status relative to firm’s
expectations and performance objectives.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 227

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Who does the performance appraisal?
– Traditionally done by ratee’s immediate
superior.
– People other than immediate superior may
have better information on certain aspects of
ratee’s performance.
– 360-degree evaluation provides appraisal
information from multiple perspectives.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 228

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Performance appraisal dimensions and
standards.
– Output measures.
• Quantity of work output.
• Quality of work output.
– Activity measures.
• Behavioral measures that are typically obtained
from the evaluator’s observation and rating.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 229

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Comparative methods of performance
appraisal.
– Ranking.
• Raters rank order people from best to worst.
– Paired comparisons.
• Raters compare each person with every other
person.
– Forced distribution.
• Raters place a specific proportion of employees
into each performance category.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 230

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Absolute methods of performance appraisal.
– Graphic rating scales.
• Raters assign scores on a list of dimensions related
to high performance outcomes in a given job.
– Critical incident diary records.
• Rater records incidents of unusual success or
failure in a given performance aspect.
– Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS).
• Rater identifies observable job behaviors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 231

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Absolute methods of performance appraisal
(cont.).
– Behavioral observation scale (BOS).
• Rater rates each observable job behavior on a five-
point frequency scale.
– Management by objectives.
• Jointly established goals used as standards against
which the subordinate’s performance is evaluated.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 232

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
To be meaningful, an appraisal system must be:
– Reliable — provide consistent results across time.
– Valid — actually measure people on relevant job
content.
Measurement errors can threaten the reliability or
validity of performance appraisals.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 233

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Measurement errors in performance appraisal.
– Halo errors.
• Raters evaluate on several different dimensions and
give a similar rating for each dimension.
– Leniency errors.
• Raters tend to give everyone relatively high
ratings.
– Strictness errors.
• Raters tend to give everyone relatively low ratings.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 234

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Measurement errors in performance appraisal
(cont.).
– Central tendency errors.
• Raters lump everyone together around the average
or middle.
– Low differentiation errors.
• Raters restrict themselves to a small part of the
rating scale.
• Examples include leniency, strictness, and central
tendency errors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 235

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Measurement errors in performance appraisal
(cont.).
– Recency errors.
• Raters allow recent events to exercise undue
influence on ratings.
– Personal bias errors.
• Raters let personal biases, such as stereotypes,
unduly influence the ratings.
– Cultural bias errors.
• Raters allow cultural differences of employees to
influence the performance appraisal.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 236

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Ways to reduce rating errors in performance
appraisals.
– Training raters to understand the evaluation process
and recognize errors.
– Ensuring that raters observe ratees on an ongoing
basis.
– Not having the rater evaluate too many ratees.
– Ensuring the clarity and adequacy of performance
dimensions and standards.
– Avoiding terms that have different meanings for
different raters.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 237

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Guidelines for ensuring the legality of
performance appraisal systems.
– Base appraisal on job requirements as
reflected in performance standards.
– Ensure that employees clearly understand the
performance standards.
– Use clearly defined dimensions.
– Use behaviorally-based dimensions supported
by observable evidence.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 238

Study Question 2: What is performance
appraisal?
Guidelines for ensuring the legality of
performance appraisal systems (cont.).
– Avoid abstract trait names.
– Ensure that scale anchors are brief and
logically consistent.
– Ensure that the system is valid and
psychometrically sound.
– Provide an appeal mechanism to handle
appraisal disagreements.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 239

Study Question 3: What are
compensation and rewards?
Pay as an extrinsic reward.
– Pay can help organizations attract and retain
highly capable workers, and help satisfy and
motivate these workers.
– High levels of job performance must be
viewed as the path through which high pay can
be achieved.
– Merit pay bases an individual’s salary or wage
increase on the person’s performance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 240

Study Question 3: What are
compensation and rewards?
Pay as an extrinsic reward (cont.).
– Merit pay should be based on realistic and
accurate measures of individual work
performance.
– Some people argue that merit pay plans ignore
the high degree of task interdependence
among employees.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 241

Study Question 3: What are
compensation and rewards?
Creative pay practices.
– Skill-based pay.
• Rewards people for acquiring and developing job-
relevant skills.
– Gain-sharing plans.
• Give workers an opportunity to share in
productivity gains through increased earnings.
– Profit-sharing plans.
• Reward employees based on the entire
organization’s performance
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 242

Study Question 3: What are
compensation and rewards?
Creative pay practices (cont.).
– Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs).
• Give company stock to employees or allow them to
purchase it at a price below market value
– Lump-sum pay increases.
• Provide wage or salary increase in one or more
lump-sum payments.
– Flexible benefit plans.
• Allow workers to select benefits according to their
individual needs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 243

Study Question 4: What are human
resource development and person-job fit?
Human resource development (HRD) and
the person-job fit.
– HRD and the person-job fit are key
contributing activities in performance
management and rewards.
– Human resource strategic planning provides
the foundation for HRD and the person-job fit.
– Staffing, training, and career planning and
development are important functions in HRD
and achieving a person-job fit.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 244

Study Question 4: What are human
resource development and person-job fit?
Job analysis.
– The process and procedures used to collect
and classify information about tasks the
organization needs to complete.
– Identifies the worker characteristics needed to
perform the job.
– Forms the basis for a job description and job
specifications.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 245

Study Question 4: What are human
resource development and person-job fit?
Recruitment.
– The process of attracting the best qualified individuals
to apply for a given job.
– Typical recruitment steps.
• Advertisement of a position vacancy.
• Preliminary contact with potential job candidates.
• Preliminary screening to obtain a pool of candidates.
– Recruitment approaches are external or internal.
– Realistic job previews.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 246

Study Question 4: What are human
resource development and person-job fit?
Selection.
– A series of steps from initial applicant
screening to final hiring of the new employee.
– Selection process.
• Completing application materials.
• Conducting an interview.
• Completing any necessary tests.
• Doing a background investigation.
• Deciding to hire or not to hire.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 247

Study Question 4: What are human
resource development and person-job fit?
Socialization.
– Process that adapts employees to the
organization’s culture.
– Occurs during and after completion of the
staffing process.
– Phases of socialization.
• Anticipatory socialization.
• Encounter.
• Change and acquisition.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 248

Study Question 4: What are human
resource development and person-job fit?
Training.
– A set of activities that provides the
opportunity to acquire and improve job-related
skills.
– Types of training.
• On-the-job training involves job instruction while
performing the job in the actual workplace.
• Off-the-job training commonly involves lectures,
videos, and simulations, and increasingly is done
through e-training.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 249

Study Question 4: What are human
resource development and person-job fit?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 250

Study Question 4: What are human
resource development and person-job fit?
Adult life cycle and career stages.
– The different problems and prospects of the adult life
cycle affect people’s work and careers.
– Career stages reflect the different responsibilities and
achievements associated with people’s working lives.
– Life cycle and career stages.
• Entry and establishment or the provisional
adulthood stage.
• Advancement or the first adulthood stage.
• Maintenance, withdrawal, and retirement or the
second adulthood stage.
. Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8 251

Chapter 9 Study Questions
What is the nature of groups in
organizations?
What are the stages of group development?
What are the foundations of group
performance?
How do groups make decisions?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 252

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
A group is a collection of two or more
people who work with one another
regularly to achieve common goals.
In a true group, members are mutually
dependent on one another and interact with
one another.
Hot groups thrive in conditions of crisis
and competition.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 253

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Effective groups achieve high levels of:
– Task performance.
• Members attain performance goals regarding quantity,
quality, and timeliness of work results.
– Members satisfaction.
• Members believe that their participation and experiences are
positive and meet important personal needs.
– Team viability.
• Members are sufficiently satisfied to continue working
together on an ongoing basis.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 254

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
How groups help organizations
– Groups are good for people.
– Groups can improve creativity.
– Groups can make better decisions.
– Groups can increase commitments to action.
– Groups help control their members.
– Groups help offset large organization size.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 255

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Situations in which groups are superior to
individuals.
– When there is no clear expert in a particular
problem or task.
– When problem solving can be handled by a
division of labor and the sharing of
information.
– When creativity and innovation are needed.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 256

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Potential benefits for group members.
– People learn from each other and share job skills and
knowledge.
– Groups are important sources of need satisfaction for
their members.
– Members can provide emotional support for each
other in times of crisis or pressure.
– Members’ contributions can help them experience
self-esteem and personal involvement.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 257

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Social loafing.
– The tendency of people to work less hard in a
group than they would individually.
– Reasons for social loafing.
• Individual contributions are less noticeable in the
group context.
• Some individuals prefer to see others carry the
workload.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 258

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Ways of preventing social loafing.
– Define member roles and tasks to maximize
individual interests.
– Raise accountability by identifying
individuals’ performance contributions to the
group.
– Link individual rewards to performance
contributions to the group.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 259

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Social facilitation.
– The tendency for a person’s behavior to be
influenced by the presence of others.
– Positively affects performance when a person
is proficient on the task.
– Negatively affects task performance when the
task is not well-learned.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 260

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Formal groups.
– Officially designated to serve a specific
organizational purpose.
– The head of a formal group is responsible for
the group’s performance and serves a “linking-
pin” role.
– May be permanent or temporary.
• Permanent work groups are command
groups.
• Temporary work groups are task groups.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 261

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Types of formal groups.
– Cross-functional teams or task forces.
• Engage in special problem-solving efforts
drawing on input of the functional areas.
– Project teams.
• Formed to complete a specific task with a
well-defined end point.
– Virtual group.
• Members work together via computers.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 262

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Informal groups.
– Emerge without being officially designated by
the organization.
– Types of informal groups.
• Friendship groups.
• Interest groups.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 263

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of groups in organizations?
Effects of informal groups.
– Can help people get their jobs done.
– Can speed up workflow by supplementing
formal lines of authority.
– Can satisfy needs that are thwarted or unmet
by the formal group.
– Can provide members with social satisfaction,
security, and a sense of belonging.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 264

Study Question 2: What are the
stages of group development?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 265

Study Question 2: What are the
stages of group development?
Forming stage.
– Initial entry of members to a group.
– Member challenges.
• Getting to know each other.
• Discovering what is considered acceptable
behavior.
• Determining the group’s real task.
• Defining group rules.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 266

Study Question 2: What are the
stages of group development?
Storming stage.
– A period of high emotionality and tension
among group members.
– Member challenges.
• Hostility and infighting.
• Formation of coalitions and cliques.
• Clarification of members’ expectations.
• Giving attention to obstacles to group goals.
• Understanding one another’s interpersonal styles.
• Finding ways to accomplish group goals while
satisfying individual needs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 267

Study Question 2: What are the
stages of group development?
Norming stage.
– The point at which the group really begins to
come together as a coordinated unit.
– Member challenges.
• Holding group together by maintaining a positive
balance.
• Letting the desire for group harmony obscure
group problems.
• Being mistaken about reaching ultimate maturity .
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 268

Study Question 2: What are the
stages of group development?
Performing stage.
– Marks the emergence of a mature, organized,
and well-functioning group.
– Member challenges.
• Meeting complex tasks and conflicts in creative
ways.
• Being motivated by group goals and achieving
satisfaction.
• Continuing to improve relationships and
performance.
• Adapting to changing opportunities and demands.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 269

Study Question 2: What are the
stages of group development?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 270

Study Question 2: What are the
stages of group development?
Adjourning stage.
– A well-integrated group is:
• Able to disband when its work is finished.
• Willing to work together in the future.
– Particularly important for temporary groups.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 271

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 272

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Tasks.
– Technical demands of a task.
• Routineness, difficulty, and information
requirements.
– Tasks that are complex in technical demands
require unique solutions and more information
processing.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 273

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Tasks (cont.).
– Social demands of a task.
• Relations, ego involvement, and controversies over
ends and means.
– Tasks that are complex in social demands
involve difficulties in reaching agreement on
goals or methods for accomplishing them.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 274

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Goals, rewards, and resources.
– Long-term performance relies on:
• Appropriate goals.
• Well-designed reward systems.
• Adequate resources.
– A group’s performance can suffer when:
• Goals are unclear, unchallenging, or arbitrarily imposed.
• Goals are focused too much on individuals.
• Adequate budgets, facilities, good work methods and
procedures, and the best technologies are not available.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 275

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Technology.
– Provides the means to get work accomplished.
– The right technology must be available for the
task at hand.
– Workflow technology can affect the way
group members interact.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 276

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Membership characteristics.
– A group must have the right skills and
competencies available for task performance
and problem solving.
• Homogeneous groups may not perform well if they
lack the requisite experiences, skills, and
competencies.
• Heterogeneous groups may perform well if they
effectively utilize a variety of experiences, skills,
and competencies.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 277

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Membership characteristics (cont.).
– Diversity-consensus dilemma.
• Increasing diversity among group members makes
it harder for group members to work together, even
though the diversity itself expands the skills and
perspectives available for problem solving.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 278

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Membership characteristics (cont.).
– FIRO-B theory.
• Identifies individual differences in how people
relate to one another in groups.
• Based on needs to express and receive feelings of
inclusion, control, and affection.
• Groups whose members have compatible
characteristics are likely to be more effective.
• Groups whose members have incompatible
characteristics are likely to be less effective.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 279

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Membership characteristics (cont.).
– Status.
• A person’s relative rank, prestige, or standing in a
group.
– Status congruence.
• Occurs when a person’s position within the group
is equivalent in status to positions held outside the
group.
• When status incongruence is present, problems will
likely occur.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 280

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Group size.
– Can make a difference in a group’s
effectiveness.
– As group size increases, performance and
member satisfaction increase up to a point.
– As a group size continues to grow,
communication and coordination problems
often set in, and performance and satisfaction
may decline.
– Problem-solving groups should have 5 to 7
members.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 281

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
Group dynamics concern the forces
operating within groups that affect the way
members relate to and work with one
another.
From a systems perspective, the
throughputs for a group or team are group
dynamics.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 282

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
What goes on within groups.
– Work group behaviors.
• Required behaviors — those that are formally
defined and expected by the organization.
• Emergent behaviors — those that group members
display in addition to what the organization asks of
them.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 283

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
What goes on within groups.
– Member relationships.
• Activities — the things people do or the actions
they take.
• Interactions — interpersonal communications and
contacts.
• Sentiments — the feelings, attitudes, beliefs, or
values held by group members.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 284

Study Question 3: What are the
foundations of group performance?
What goes on between groups.
– Intergroup dynamics.
• The dynamics that take place between two or more
groups.
– Ways to achieve positive intergroup dynamics.
• Refocusing members on a common enemy or goal.
• Negotiating directly.
• Training members to work more cooperatively.
• Refocusing rewards on contributions to the total
organization and how much groups help each
other.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 285

Study Question 3: What are the foundations of
group performance?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 286

Study Question 4: How do groups
make decisions?
How groups make decisions.
– Decision by lack of response.
• One idea after another is suggested without any discussion-
taking place; when the group finally accepts the idea, all
others have been bypassed and discarded by simple lack of
response rather than by critical evaluation.
– Decision by authority rule.
• The chairperson, manager, or leader makes a decision for the
group.
– Decision by minority rule.
• Two or three people are able to dominate or “railroad” the
group into making a decision to which they agree.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 287

Study Question 4: How do groups
make decisions?
How groups make decisions (cont.).
– Decision by majority rule.
• Formal voting may take place, or members may be polled to
find the majority viewpoint.
– Decision by consensus.
• Discussion leads to one alternative being favored by most
members and the other members agree to support it.
– Decision by unanimity.
• All group members agree totally on the course of action to be
taken.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 288

Study Question 4: How do groups
make decisions?
Potential advantages of group decision
making.
– More knowledge and expertise is applied to
solve the problem.
– A greater number of alternatives are
examined.
– The final decision is better understood and
accepted by all group members.
– More commitment among all group members
to make the final decision work.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 289

Study Question 4: How do groups
make decisions?
Potential disadvantages of group decision
making.
– Individuals may feel compelled to conform to
the apparent wishes of the group.
– The group’s decision may be dominated by
one individual or a small coalition.
– Group decisions usually take longer to make.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 290

Study Question 4: How do groups
make decisions?
Ways to avoid groupthink.
– Assign the role of critical evaluator to each
group member.
– Have the leader avoid seeming partial to one
course of action.
– Create subgroups that each work on the same
problem.
– Have group members discuss issues with
outsiders and report back.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 291

Study Question 4: How do groups
make decisions?
Ways to avoid groupthink (cont.).
– Invite outside experts to observe and react to
group processes.
– Assign someone to be a “devil’s advocate” at
each meeting.
– Write alternative scenarios for the intentions
of competing groups.
– Hold “second-chance” meetings after
consensus is apparently achieved.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 292

Study Question 4: How do groups
make decisions?
How to improve group decisions.
– Brainstorming.
• Group members actively generate as many ideas
and alternatives as possible, and they do so
relatively quickly and without inhibitions.
– Nominal group technique.
• Puts people in small groups of six to seven
members and asks everyone to respond
individually and in writing to a “nominal”
question.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 293

Study Question 4: How do groups
make decisions?
How to improve group decisions (cont.).
– Delphi technique.
• Involves generating decision-making alternatives
through a series of survey questionnaires.
– Computer-mediated decision making.
• Group decision making takes place across great
distances with the aid of group decision support
systems.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9 294

Chapter 10 Study Questions
What is a the nature of teams and
teamwork?
What is team building?
How does team building improve
performance?
How do teams contribute to the high-
performance workplace?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 295

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of team and teamwork?
A team is a small group of people with
complementary skills, who work actively
together to achieve a common purpose for
which they hold themselves collectively
accountable.
Teams are one of the major forces behind
revolutionary changes in contemporary
organizations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 296

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of team and teamwork?
Types of teams.
– Teams that recommend things.
• Established to study specific problems and
recommend solutions to them.
– Teams that run things.
• Have formal responsibility for leading other
groups.
– Teams that make or do things.
• Functional groups that perform ongoing tasks.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 297

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of team and teamwork?
Teamwork occurs when group members
actively work together in such a way that
all their respective skills are well utilized
to achieve a common purpose.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 298

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of team and teamwork?
Characteristics of high performance teams.
– They have strong core values.
– They turn a general sense of purpose into
specific performance objectives.
– They have the right mix of skills.
– They possess creativity.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 299

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of team and teamwork?
Characteristics of teams with homogeneous
membership.
– Members are similar with respect to such variables as
age, gender, race, experience, ethnicity, and culture.
– Members can quickly build social relations and
engage in the interactions needed for teamwork.
– Homogeneity may limit the team in terms of ideas,
viewpoints, and creativity.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 300

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of team and teamwork?
Characteristics of teams with heterogeneous
membership.
– Members are diverse in demography, experiences, life
styles, and cultures, among other variables.
– Diversity can help improve team problem solving and
increase creativity.
– Diversity among team members may create
performance difficulties early in the team’s life or
stage of development.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 301

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of team and teamwork?
Characteristics of teams with heterogeneous
membership (cont.).
– Enhanced performance potential is possible once
short-run struggles are resolved.
– Diversity can provide great advantages for high-
performance organizations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 302

Study Question 2: What is team
building?
Work groups and teams must master challenges
as they pass through the various stages of group
development.
Team building is a sequence of planned activities
designed to gather and analyze data on the
functioning of a group and to initiate changes
designed to improve teamwork and increase
group effectiveness.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 303

Study Question 2: What is team
building?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 304

Study Question 2: What is team
building?
Approaches to team building.
– Formal retreat approach.
• Team building occurs during an offsite retreat.
– Continuous improvement approach.
• The manager, team leader, or members take
responsibility for ongoing team building.
– Outdoor experience approach.
• Members engage in physically challenging
situations that require teamwork.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 305

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
New members are concerned about
issues of:
– Participation.
– Goals.
– Control.
– Relationships.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 306

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Behavior profiles of coping with
individual entry problems.
– Tough battler.
– Friendly helper.
– Objective thinker.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 307

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Task and maintenance leadership.
– Sustained high performance requires meeting both
task needs and maintenance needs.
– High-performance teams require distributed
leadership.
– Distributive leadership is the sharing among team
members of the responsibilities for task and
maintenance contributions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 308

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 309

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Groups members should avoid the following
disruptive behaviors:
– Being overly aggressive toward other members.
– Withdrawing and refusing to cooperate with others.
– Horsing around when there is work to be done.
– Using the group as a forum for self-confession.
– Talking too much about irrelevant matters.
– Trying to compete for attention and recognition.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 310

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Roles and role dynamics.
– A role is a set of expectations associated with
a job or position on a team.
– Role ambiguity — occurs when a person is
uncertain about his/her role.
– Role overload — occurs when too much is
expected and the person feels overwhelmed
with work.
– Role underload — occurs when too little is
expected and the person feels underutilized.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 311

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Roles and role dynamics (cont.).
– Role conflict — occurs when a person is
unable to meet conflicting expectations.
– Forms of role conflict.
• Intrasender role conflict.
• Intersender role conflict.
• Person-role conflict.
• Interrole conflict.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 312

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 313

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Norms represent beliefs about how group
or team members are expected to behave.
Norms are rules or standards of conduct.
Managers and leaders should help their
groups adopt positive norms that support
organizational goals.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 314

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Key norms that can have positive or
negative implications.
– Performance norms.
– Ethics norms.
– Organizational and personal pride norms.
– High-achievement norms.
– Support and helpfulness norms.
– Improvement and change norms.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 315

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Cohesiveness is the degree to which members are
attached to and motivated to remain a part of the
team
High team cohesiveness occurs when:
– Members are similar in age, attitudes, needs, and backgrounds.
– Group size is small.
– Members respect each others’ competencies.
– Members agree on common goals.
– Members work on interdependent tasks.
– Groups are physically isolated from others.
– Groups experience performance success or crisis.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 316

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 317

Study Question 3: How does team
building improve performance?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 318

Study Question 4: How do teams contribute to
the high-performance workplace?
Problem-solving teams.
– Employee involvements teams include a wide
variety of teams whose members meet
regularly to collectively examine important
workplace issues.
– Quality circle.
• A special type of employee involvement team.
• Team meets periodically to address problems
relating to quality, productivity, or cost.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 319

Study Question 4: How do teams contribute to
the high-performance workplace?
Cross-functional teams.
– Consist of members representing different
functional departments or work units.
– Used to overcome functional silos problem.
– Used to solve problems with a positive
combination of functional expertise and
integrative systems thinking.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 320

Study Question 4: How do teams contribute to
the high-performance workplace?
Advantages of virtual teams.
– Cost-effectiveness and speed where members
are unable to meet easily face-to-face.
– Computer power fulfills typical team needs for
information processing and decision making.
– Communication is possible among people
separated by great distances.
– Interaction and decision making are focused
on facts and objective information rather than
emotional considerations.
– . Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 321

Study Question 4: How do teams contribute to
the high-performance workplace?
Disadvantages of virtual teams.
– The lack of personal contact between team
members.
– Group decisions are made in a limited social
context.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 322

Study Question 4: How do teams contribute to
the high-performance workplace?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 323

Study Question 4: How do teams contribute to
the high-performance workplace?
Advantages of self-managing teams.
– Productivity and quality improvements.
– Production flexibility and faster response to
technological change.
– Reduced absenteeism and turnover.
– Improved work attitudes and quality of work
life.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 324

Study Question 4: How do teams contribute to
the high-performance workplace?
Disadvantages of self-managing teams.
– Structural changes in job classifications and
management levels eliminate the need for first-line
supervisors.
– Managers must learn to deal with teams rather than
individuals.
– Supervisors who are displaced by self-managing
teams may feel threatened.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 325

Chapter 11 Study Questions
What is leadership and how does it differ
from management?
What are situational contingency
approaches to leadership ?
What are attributional approaches to
leadership?
What are some emerging leadership
perspectives and why are they especially
important in today’s organizations?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 326

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Management promotes stability or enables the
organization to run smoothly.
Leadership promotes adaptive or useful changes.
Persons in managerial positions may be involved
with both management and leadership.
Both management and leadership are needed for
organizational success.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 327

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Leadership is a special case of
interpersonal influence that gets an
individual or group to do what the leader or
manager wants done.
Forms of leadership.
– Formal leadership.
– Informal leadership.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 328

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Approaches to leadership.
– Trait and behavioral perspectives.
– Situational contingency perspectives.
– Attributional perspectives.
– New leadership perspectives.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 329

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Trait theories.
– Assume that traits play a key role in:
• Differentiating between leaders and nonleaders.
• Predicting leader or organizational outcomes.
– Great person-trait approach.
• Earliest approach in studying leadership.
• Tried to determine the traits that characterized
great leaders.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 330

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Pick up Figure 11.1 from the textbook.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 331

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Behavioral theories.
– Assume that leader behaviors are crucial for
explaining performance and other
organizational outcomes.
– Focus on leader behaviors rather than traits.
– Major behavioral theories.
• Michigan leadership studies.
• Ohio State leadership studies.
• Leadership Grid.
• Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 332

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Michigan leadership studies.
– Employee-centered supervisors.
• Place strong emphasis on subordinate’s welfare.
– Production-centered supervisors.
• Place strong emphasis on getting the work done.
– Employee-centered supervisors have more
productive work groups than production-
centered supervisors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 333

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Ohio State leadership studies.
– Consideration.
• Concerned with people’s feelings and making
things pleasant for the followers.
– Initiating structure.
• Concerned with defining task requirements and
other aspects of the work agenda.
– Effective leaders should be high on both
consideration and initiating structure.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 334

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Leadership Grid.
– Developed by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton.
– Built on dual emphasis of consideration and
initiating structure.
– A 9 x 9 Grid (matrix) reflecting levels of
concern for people and concern for task.
• 1 reflects minimum concern.
• 9 reflects maximum concern.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 335

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Leadership Grid (cont.).
– Five key Grid combinations.
• 1/1 — low concern for production, low concern for
people.
• 1/9 — low concern for production, high concern
for people.
• 9/1 — high concern for production, low concern
for people.
• 5/5 — moderate concern for production, moderate
concern for people.
• 9/9 — high concern for production, high concern
for people.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 336

Study Question 1: What is leadership and
how does it differ from management?
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory.
– Focuses on the quality of the working
relationship between leaders and followers.
– LMX dimensions determine followers’
membership in leader’s “in group” or “out
group.”
– Different relationships with “in group” and
“out group.”
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 337

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Leader traits and behaviors can act in conjunction
with situational contingencies.
The effects of leader traits are enhanced by their
relevance to situational contingencies.
Major situational contingency theories.
– Fiedler’s leadership contingency theory.
– Fiedler’s cognitive resource theory.
– House’s path-goal theory of leadership.
– Hersey and Blanchard’s situational leadership model.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 338

Study Question 2: What are the situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Key variables in Fiedler’s contingency
model.
– Situational control.
• The extent to which a leader can determine what
his or her group is going to do as well as the
outcomes of the group’s actions and decisions.
• Is a function of:
– Leader-member relations.
– Task structure.
– Position power.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 339

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Key variables in Fiedler’s contingency
model (cont.).
– Least preferred co-worker (LPC) score reflects
a person’s leadership style.
• High-LPC leaders have a relationship-motivated
style.
• Low-LPC leaders have a task-motivated style.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 340

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 341

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Fiedler’s cognitive resource theory.
– A leader’s use of directive or nondirective
behavior depends on:
• The leader’s or subordinate group members’ ability
or competency.
• Stress.
• Experience.
• Group support of the leader.
– Leader directiveness is most helpful for
performance when the leader is competent,
relaxed, and supported.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 342

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
House’s path-goal theory of leadership.
– Rooted in the expectancy model of motivation.
– Emphasizes how a leader influences
subordinates’ perceptions of both work goals
and personal goals and the links, or paths,
found between these two sets of goals.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 343

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 344

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Path-goal theory predictions.
– Directive leadership will have a positive
impact on subordinates when tasks are
ambiguous and the opposite effect when tasks
are clear.
– Supportive leadership will increase the
satisfaction of subordinates who work on tasks
that are highly repetitive, unpleasant, stressful,
or frustrating.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 345

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Path-goal theory predictions (cont.).
– Achievement-oriented leadership will
encourage subordinates to strive for higher
performance standards and to have more
confidence in their ability to meet challenging
goals when subordinates are working at
ambiguous, nonrepetitive tasks.
– Participative leadership will promote
satisfaction on nonrepetitive tasks that allow
for the ego involvement of subordinates.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 346

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 347

Study Question 2: What are situational
contingency approaches to leadership?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 348

Study Question 3: What are attributional
approaches to leadership?
Attribution theory provides a competing
perspective to the traditional leadership theory
assumption that leadership and its substantive
effects can be identified and measured
objectively.
Attribution theory suggests that leadership is
influenced by attempts to understand causes of
and assess responsibilities for behavior.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 349

Study Question 3: What are attributional
approaches to leadership?
Leadership prototypes.
– People’s mental image of what a model leader
should look like.
– Mix of specific and general characteristics.
– Prototypes may differ by country and national
culture.
– The closer that a leader’s behavior matches the
prototype held by the followers, the more
favorable the leader’s relations and key
outcomes.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 350

Study Question 3: What are attributional
approaches to leadership?
Exaggeration of the leadership difference.
– Top leaders of organizations have little impact
on profits and effectiveness compared to
environmental and industry forces.
– Much of the impact of top leaders is symbolic.
– The romance of leadership refers to people
attributing romantic, almost magical, qualities
to leadership.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 351

Study Question 4: What are some emerging
leadership perspectives and why are they
especially important in today’s organizations?
Charismatic approaches to leadership.
– Charismatic leaders, by force of their personal
abilities, can have a profound and
extraordinary effect on followers.
– Characteristics of charismatic leaders include:
• High need for power.
• High feelings of self-efficacy.
• Conviction in the moral rightness of their beliefs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 352

Study Question 4: What are some emerging
leadership perspectives and why are they
especially important in today’s organizations?
Dark side versus bright side of charismatic
leadership.
– Dark side.
• Emphasizes personalized power.
• Leaders focus on themselves.
– Bright side.
• Emphasizes socialized power.
• Leaders empower followers.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 353

Study Question 4: What are some emerging
leadership perspectives and why are they
especially important in today’s organizations?
Conger and Kanungo’s three-stage charismatic
leadership model.
– Stage 1: the leader critically evaluates the status quo.
– Stage 2: the leader formulates and articulates future
goals and a idealized future vision.
– Stage 3: the leader shows how the goals and vision
can be achieved.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 354

Study Question 4: What are some emerging
leadership perspectives and why are they
especially important in today’s organizations?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 355

Study Question 4: What are some emerging
leadership perspectives and why are they
especially important in today’s organizations?
Transactional leadership.
– Involves leader-follower exchanges necessary
for achieving routine performance that is
agreed upon by leaders and followers.
– Leader-follower exchanges involve:
• Use of contingent rewards.
• Active management by exception.
• Passive management by exception.
• Abdicating responsibilities and avoiding decisions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 356

Study Question 4: What are some emerging
leadership perspectives and why are they
especially important in today’s organizations?
Transformational leadership.
– Leaders broaden and elevate followers’
interests, generate awareness and acceptance
of the group’s mission, and stir followers to
look beyond self-interests.
– Dimensions of transformational leadership.
• Charisma.
• Inspiration.
• Intellectual stimulation.
• Individualized consideration.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 357

Study Question 4: What are some emerging
leadership perspectives and why are they
especially important in today’s organizations?
Leadership in self-managing work teams.
– Leaders provide resources or act as liaisons with other
units but without the trappings of authority associated
with traditional first-line supervisors.
– Conditions for creating and maintaining team
performance.
• Efficient, goal-directed effort.
• Adequate resources.
• Competent, motivated performance.
• A productive, supportive climate.
• Commitment to continuous improvement and adaptation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 358

Study Question 4: What are some emerging
leadership perspectives and why are they
especially important in today’s organizations?
Can people be trained in the new
leadership?
– People can be trained to adopt new leadership
approaches.
– Leaders can devise improvement programs to
address their weaknesses and work with
trainers to develop their leadership skills.
– Leaders can be trained in charismatic skills.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 359

Study Question 4: What are some emerging
leadership perspectives and why are they
especially important in today’s organizations?
Is new leadership always good?
– Not always good.
– Dark-side charismatics can have negative
effects on followers.
– Not always needed.
– Needs to be used in conjunction with
traditional leadership.
– Applies at all levels of organizational
leadership.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 11 360

Chapter 12 Study Questions
What are power and influence in an
organization?
How are power, obedience, and formal
authority intertwined in an organization?
What is empowerment?
What is organizational politics?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 361

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Power.
– The ability to get someone to do something
you want done.
– The ability to make things happen in the way
you want.
Influence.
– Expressed by others’ behavioral response to
your exercise of power.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 362

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Position power derives from a person’s position
in the organizational hierarchy.
Types of position power.
– Reward power.
– Coercive power.
– Legitimate power.
– Process power.
– Information power.
– Representative power.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 363

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Reward power.
– The extent to which a manager can use extrinsic and
intrinsic rewards to control other people.
Coercive power.
– The extent to which a manager can deny desired
rewards and administer punishment to control other
people.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 364

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Legitimate power.
– The extent to which a manager can use subordinates’
internalized values or beliefs that the boss has the
“right of command” to control other people.
Process power.
– The control over methods of production and analysis
that a manager has due to being in a position to
influence how inputs are transformed into outputs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 365

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Information power.
– The access to and/or control of information. .
Representative power.
– The formal right conferred by the firm to speak for a
potentially important group composed of individuals
across departments or outside the firm.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 366

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Personal power derives from individual
sources.
Types of personal power.
– Expert power.
– Rational persuasion.
– Referent power.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 367

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Expert power.
– The ability to control another person’s behavior
through the possession of knowledge, experience, or
judgment that the other person does not have but
needs.
Rational persuasion.
– The ability to control another person’s behavior by
convincing the other person of the desirability of a
goal and a reasonable way of achieving it.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 368

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Referent power.
– The ability to control another’s behavior because the
person wants to identify with the power source.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 369

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 370

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Ways to build position power.
– Demonstrating work unit relevance to
organizational goals and needs.
– Increasing task relevance of one’s own
activities and work unit’s activities.
– Attempting to define tasks so they are difficult
to evaluate.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 371

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Ways to build personal power.
– Building expertise.
• Advanced training and education, participation in
professional associations, and project involvement.
– Learning political savvy.
• Learning ways to negotiate, persuade, and
understand goals and means that others accept.
– Enhancing likeability.
• Pleasant personality characteristics, agreeable
behavior patterns, and attractive personal
appearance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 372

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Ways that managers increase the visibility
of their job performance.
– Expanding contacts with senior people.
– Making oral presentations of written work.
– Participating in problem-solving task forces.
– Sending out notices of accomplishment.
– Seeking opportunities to increase name
recognition.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 373

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Controlling decision premises.
– Executives attempt to control, or at least
influence, decision premises.
– A decision premise is a basis for defining the
problem and for selecting among alternatives.
– Executives who want to increase their power
will make their goals and needs clear and
bargain effectively.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 374

Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Common techniques for exercising
relational influence.
– Reason.
– Friendliness.
– Coalition.
– Bargaining.
– Assertiveness.
– Higher authority.
– Sanctions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 375

Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
Important practical issues in the exercise
of power and formal authority.
– Why should subordinates respond to a
manager’s authority (or “right to
command”)?
– Given that subordinates are willing to obey,
what determines the limits of obedience?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 376

Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
The Milgram experiments.
– Designed to determine the extent to which people
obey the commands of an authority figure, even if
they believe they are endangering the life of another
person.
– The results indicated that the majority of the
experimental subjects would obey the commands of
the authority figure.
– Basic conclusion was that people tend to comply with
and be obedient to authority.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 377

Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
For a directive from a superior to be
accepted as authoritative, the subordinate:
– Can and must understand it.
– Must feel mentally and physically capable of
carrying it out.
– Must believe that it is consistent with the
organization’s purpose.
– Must believe that it is consistent with his or
her personal interests.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 378

Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
Zone of indifference.
– In exchange for certain inducements,
subordinates recognize the authority of the
organization and its managers to direct their
behavior in certain ways.
– A zone of indifference is the range of
authoritative requests to which a subordinate is
willing to respond without subjecting the
directives to critical evaluation or judgment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 379

Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 380

Study Question 3: What is empowerment?
Empowerment.
– The process by which managers help others to
acquire and use the power needed to make
decisions affecting themselves and their work.
– Provides the foundation for self-managing
work teams and other employee involvement
groups.
– Empowerment emphasizes the ability to make
things happen.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 381

Study Question 3: What is empowerment?
Changing position power.
– Moving power down the hierarchy alters the
existing pattern of position power.
– Changing this pattern raises the following
important questions:
• Can “empowered” individuals give rewards and
sanctions based on task accomplishment?
• Has their new right to act been legitimized with
formal authority?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 382

Study Question 3: What is empowerment?
Expanding the zone of indifference.
– Management needs to recognize the current
zone of indifference and systematically move
to expand it.
– Management should show how empowerment
will benefit people and provide the needed
inducement.
– . Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 383

Study Question 3: What is empowerment?
Power as an expanding pie.
– Employees need to be trained to expand their
power and their new influence potential.
– The key is to change from a view stressing
power over others to one emphasizing the use
of power to get things done.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 384

Study Question 3: What is empowerment?
Power as an expanding pie.
– Clearer definition of roles and responsibilities
helps managers empower others.
– All mangers need to emphasize different ways
of exercising influence.
– Special support may be needed for individuals
to become comfortable.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 385

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Machiavellian tradition of organizational
politics.
– Emphasizes self-interest and the use of
nonsanctioned means.
– Organizational politics is defined as the
management of influence to obtain ends not
sanctioned by the organization or to obtain
sanctioned ends through nonsanctioned
influence means.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 386

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Alternate tradition of organizational
politics.
– Politics is a necessary function resulting from
differences in the self-interests of individuals.
– Politics is the art of creative compromise
among competing interests.
– Politics is the use of power to develop socially
acceptable ends and means that balance
individual and collective interests.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 387

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 388

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Subunit power.
– Line units are typically more powerful than
are staff groups.
– Units toward the top of the organizational
hierarchy are often more powerful than those
toward the bottom.
– Power differentials are not as pronounced
among units at or near the same level in an
organization.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 389

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Political actions for influencing lateral,
intergroup relationships.
– Workflow linkages.
– Service linkages.
– Advisory linkages.
– Auditing linkages.
– Approval linkages.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 390

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Important aspects of corporate political strategy.
– Absence of a political strategy can be damaging.
– Corporate political strategy should be targeted toward
turning the government from a regulator against
industry to a protector of it.
– Need to make decisions about when and how to get
involved in the public policy processes.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 391

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Avoidance is quite common where the employee
must risk being wrong or where actions may
yield a sanction.
Common techniques for avoiding action and risk
taking.
– Working to the rules.
– Playing dumb.
– Depersonalization.
– Stalling.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 392

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Common techniques for redirecting
accountability and responsibility.
– Passing the buck.
– Buffing (or rigorous documentation).
– Preparing a blind memo.
– Rewriting history.
– Redirecting.
• Scapegoating.
• Blaming the problem on uncontrollable events.
• Escalating commitment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 393

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Defending turf.
– Defending turf is a time-honored tradition in most
large organizations.
– Defending turf results when:
• Managers seek to increase their power by expanding the jobs
their groups perform.
• Competing interests exist among various departments and
groups.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 394

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Agency theory.
– An important power problem arises from the
separation of owners and managers.
– Managers are “agents” of the owners.
– Public corporations can function effectively
even though its managers are self-interested.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 395

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Key arguments of agency theory.
– By protecting stockholder interests, all the
interests of society are served.
– Stockholders have a clear interest in greater
returns.
– Managers are self-interested and must be
controlled.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 396

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Types of controls instituted for agents.
– Pay plan incentives that align the interests of
management and stockholders.
– The establishment of a strong, independent
board of directors.
– Stockholders with a large stake in the firm
taking an active role on the board.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 397

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Resource dependencies.
– The firm’s need for resources that are controlled by
others.
The resource dependence of an organization
increases as:
– Needed resources become more scarce.
– Outsiders have more control over needed resources.
– There are fewer substitutes for a particular type of
resource controlled by a limited number of outsiders.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 398

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Organizational governance.
– The pattern of authority, influence, and acceptable
managerial behavior established at the top of the
organization.
– Organizational governance establishes the following:
• What is important.
• How issues will be defined.
• Who should and should not be involved in key
choices
• Boundaries for acceptable implementation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 399

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Negative views of organizational
governance.
– Unbalanced organizational governance by
some United States corporations may limit
their ability to manage global operations
effectively.
– Organizational governance is too closely tied
to the short-term interests of stockholders and
the pay of the CEO.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 400

Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Positive views of organizational governance.
– The governance of U.S. firms extends well beyond the
limited interests of the owners.
– Organization governance should be based on three
ethical criteria.
– When the three ethical criteria cannot be fulfilled, the
criterion of overwhelming factors should be invoked.
– Choosing to be ethical often involves considerable
personal sacrifice.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12 401

Chapter 13 Study Questions
What is the nature of communication in
organizations?
What are the essentials of interpersonal
communication?
What are the barriers to effective
communication?
What are current issues in organizational
communication?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 402

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of communication in organizations?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 403

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of communication in organizations?
Feedback and communication.
– Feedback is the process through which the
receiver communicates with the sender by
returning another message.
– Giving feedback often is associated with one
or more persons communicating an evaluation
of what another person has said or done.
– 360-degree feedback.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 404

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of communication in organizations?
Guidelines for effective constructive feedback.
– Give feedback directly and in a spirit of mutual trust.
– Be specific, not general; use clear examples.
– Give feedback when the receiver is most ready to
accept it.
– Be accurate; check validity with others.
– Focus on things that the receiver can control.
– Limit how much feedback the receiver gets at one
time.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 405

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of communication in organizations?
Communication channels.
– Formal channels.
• Follow the chain of command established by an
organization’s hierarchy of authority.
– Informal channels.
• Do not follow an organization’s hierarchy of
authority.
• The grapevine is an informal channel through
which rumors and unofficial information pass.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 406

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of communication in organizations?
Channel richness.
– The capacity of a communication channel to convey
information effectively.
– Richest channels — face-to-face communication.
– Moderately rich channels — telephone, electronic chat
rooms, E-mail, written memos, and letters.
– Leanest channels — posted notices and bulletins.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 407

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of communication in organizations?
Organizational communication is the
specific process through which information
moves and is exchanged throughout an
organization.
Information flows:
– Through formal and informal structures.
– Downward, upward, and laterally.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 408

Study Question 1: What is the nature
of communication in organizations?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 409

Study Question 2: What are the essentials
of interpersonal communication?
Effective and efficient communication.
– Effective communication.
• The accuracy of communication.
– Efficient communication.
• The cost of communication.
– Effectiveness does not guarantee efficiency or
vice versa.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 410

Study Question 2: What are the essentials
of interpersonal communication?
Nonverbal communication.
– Occurs through facial expressions, body
position, eye contact, and other physical
gestures.
– Gives clues to what a person is really thinking.
– Two important aspects of nonverbal
communication.
• Kinesics  the study of gestures and body
postures.
• Proxemics  the study of how space is utilized.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 411

Study Question 2: What are the essentials
of interpersonal communication?
Active listening.
– Ability to listen well is a distinct asset.
– Everyone needs to develop good skills in
active listening.
– Active listening is the ability to help the
source of a message say what he or she really
means.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 412

Study Question 2: What are the essentials
of interpersonal communication?
Guidelines for active listening.
– Listen for content.
– Listen for feelings.
– Respond to feelings.
– Note all cues.
– Reflect back.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 413

Study Question 2: What are the essentials
of interpersonal communication?
Cross-cultural communication.
– Ethnocentrism.
• The tendency to believe that one’s culture and its
values are superior to those of others.
– Cross-cultural communication challenges.
• Language differences.
• Use of gestures.
– One of the best ways to understand cultural
differences is to learn some of the language.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 414

Study Question 3: What are the
barriers to effective communication?
Physical distractions.
– Any aspect of the physical setting in which
communication takes place.
– Can interfere with communication
effectiveness.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 415

Study Question 3: What are the
barriers to effective communication?
Semantic problems.
– Involves a poor choice or use of words.
– Use the KISS principle of communication.
• “Keep it short and simple.”
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 416

Study Question 3: What are the
barriers to effective communication?
Mixed messages.
– Occur when a person’s words communicate
one thing while actions or body language
communicates another.
– Nonverbals add important insights in face-to-
face meetings.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 417

Study Question 3: What are the
barriers to effective communication?
Absence of feedback.
– One-way communication flows from sender to
receiver only, with no direct and immediate
feedback.
– Two-way communication goes from sender to
receiver and back again.
– Two-way communication is more effective
than one-way communication.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 418

Study Question 3: What are the
barriers to effective communication?
Status effects.
– Status differences create potential communication
barriers between persons of higher and lower ranks .
– Mum effect.
• Occurs when people are reluctant to transmit bad
news.
– Management by wandering around (MBWA).
• Getting out of the office to directly communicate
with others as they do their jobs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 419

Study Question 4: What are current issues
in organizational communication?
Advances in information technologies enable
organizations to:
– Distribute information much faster.
– Make more information available.
– Allow broader and more immediate access to
information.
– Encourage participation in the sharing and use of
information.
– Integrate systems and functions, and use information
to link with the environment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 420

Study Question 4: What are current issues
in organizational communication?
Potential disadvantages of electronic
communications.
– Technologies are impersonal.
– Nonverbal communication is removed from
situation.
– Can unduly influence the emotional aspects of
communication.
– Information overload.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 421

Study Question 4: What are current issues
in organizational communication?
Communication and social context.
– Mean and women are socialized into different
communication styles.
• Women are socialized to be more sensitive to
interpersonal relationships in communication.
• Men are socialized to be competitive, aggressive,
and individualistic, which may cause
communication problems.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 422

Chapter 14 Study Questions
What is the decision-making process in
organizations?
What are the useful decision-making
models?
How do intuition, judgment, and creativity
affect decision making?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 423

Chapter 14 Study Questions (cont.)
How do you manage the decision-making
process?
What are some of the current issues in
decision making?
How do you infuse ethics into the decision-
making process?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 424

Study Question 1: What is the decision-
making process in organizations?
Decision making is the process of choosing a
course of action for dealing with a problem or
opportunity.
Steps in systematic decision making.
– Recognize and define the problem or opportunity.
– Identify and analyze alternative courses of action, and
estimate their effects on the problem or opportunity.
– Choose a preferred course of action.
– Implement the preferred course of action.
– Evaluate the results and follow up as necessary.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 425

Study Question 1: What is the decision-
making process in organizations?
Certain decision environments.
– Exist when information is sufficient to predict the
results of each alternative in advance of
implementation.
Risk decision environments.
– Exist when decision makers lack complete certainty
regarding the outcomes of various courses of action,
but they are aware of the probabilities associated with
their occurrence.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 426

Study Question 1: What is the decision-
making process in organizations?
Uncertain decision environments.
– Exist when managers have so little information on
hand that they cannot even assign probabilities to
various alternatives and their possible outcomes.
– Described as a rapidly changing setting in terms of:
• External conditions.
• The information technology requirements needed for
analyzing and making decisions.
• The people who influence problem and choice definitions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 427

Study Question 1: What is the decision-
making process in organizations?
Uncertain decision environments (cont.).
– Can be described in terms of types of risks
encountered by the organization.
• Strategic risks are threats to overall business
success.
• Operational risks are threats inherent in the
technologies used to reach business success.
• Reputation risks are threats to a brand or to the
firm’s reputation
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 428

Study Question 1: What is the decision-
making process in organizations?
Types of decisions.
– Programmed decisions.
• Involve routine problems that arise regularly and
can be addressed through standard responses.
– Nonprogrammed decisions.
• Involve nonroutine problems that require solutions
specifically tailored to the situation at hand.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 429

Study Question 2:What are the useful
decision-making models?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 430

Study Question 2:What are the useful
decision-making models?
Classical decision theory assumes the
manager faces a clearly defined problem,
knows all possible action alternatives and
their consequences, and then chooses the
optimum solution.
Widespread application of classical
decision theory is restricted by bounded
rationality.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 431

Study Question 2:What are the useful
decision-making models?
Classical decision theory does not appear
to fit well in the modern business world,
though it can be used toward the bottom of
many firms.
Behavioral decision theory accepts the
notion of bounded rationality. It assumes
the manager acts only in terms of what is
perceived about a given situation, and then
chooses a satisficing solution.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 432

Study Question 2:What are the useful
decision-making models?
The garbage can model.
– A model of decision making that views
problems, solutions, participants, and choice
situations as mixed together in the “garbage
can” of the organization.
– The garbage can model highlights two
important organizational facts of life.
• Different individuals may do choice making and
implementation.
• Many problems go unsolved.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 433

Study Question 2:What are the useful
decision-making models?
Decision making realities.
– Decision making information may not be
available.
– Bounded rationality and cognitive limitations
affect the way people define problems,
identify alternatives, and choose preferred
solutions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 434

Study Question 2:What are the useful
decision-making models?
Decision making realities (cont.).
– Most decision making in organizations goes
beyond step-by-step rational choice.
– Decisions must be made under risk and
uncertainty.
– Decisions should be ethical.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 435

Study Question 3: How do intuition, judgment,
and creativity affect decision making?
Intuition.
– The ability to know or recognize quickly and
readily the possibilities of a given situation.
– A key element of decision making under risk
and uncertainty.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 436

Study Question 3: How do intuition, judgment,
and creativity affect decision making?
Judgmental heuristics.
– Simplifying strategies or “rules of thumb”
used to make decisions.
– Make it easier to to deal with uncertainty and
limited information.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 437

Study Question 3: How do intuition, judgment,
and creativity affect decision making?
Types of heuristics.
– Availability heuristic.
• Bases a decision on similarity to past occurrences
that are easily remembered.
– Representativeness heuristic.
• Bases a decision on similarities between an event
and stereotypes of similar occurrences.
– Anchoring and adjustment heuristic.
• Bases a decision on incremental adjustments to an
initial value determined by historical precedent or
some reference point.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 438

Study Question 3: How do intuition, judgment,
and creativity affect decision making?
General judgmental biases in decision
making.
– Confirmation trap.
• The tendency to seek confirmation for what is
already thought to be true and to not search for
disconfirming information.
– Hindsight trap.
• The tendency to overestimate the degree to which
an event that has already taken place could have
been predicted.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 439

Study Question 3: How do intuition, judgment,
and creativity affect decision making?
Stages in the creative thinking process.
– Preparation.
– Concentration.
– Incubation.
– Illumination
– Verification.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 440

Study Question 3: How do intuition, judgment,
and creativity affect decision making?
Ways of fostering creativity.
– Diversifying teams to include members with different
backgrounds, training, and perspectives.
– Encouraging analogical reasoning.
– Stressing periods of silent reflection.
– Recording all ideas so that the same ones are not
rediscovered.
– Establishing high expectations for creativity.
– Developing a physical space that encourages fun,
divergent ideas.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 441

Study Question 3: How do intuition, judgment,
and creativity affect decision making?
Creativity is higher when:
– Linguistic ability, willingness to engage in
divergent thinking, and intelligence are
present.
– Individuals are motivated by and derive
satisfaction from task accomplishment.
– There are opportunities for creativity, as many
constraints as possible are eliminated, and
rewards are provided for creative efforts.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 442

Study Question 3: How do intuition, judgment,
and creativity affect decision making?
Creativity is higher when (cont.):
– The decision maker emphasizes engagement in
the creative process and counsels individuals
to share their ideas with others.
– The decision maker encourages subordinates
to recognize ambiguity, contact others with
different views, and be prepared to make
considerable changes.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 443

Study Question 4: How do you
manage the decision-making process?
In choosing problems to address, ask and
answer the following questions:
– Is the problem easy to deal with?
– Might the problem resolve itself?
– Is this my decision to make?
– Is this a solvable problem within the context of
the organization?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 444

Study Question 4: How do you
manage the decision-making process?
Reasons for decision making failure.
– Managers too often copy others’ choices and try to sell
them to subordinates.
– Subordinates may believe the manager is imposing his
or her will rather than working for everyone’s
interests.
– Managers may focus on the problems they see rather
than the outcomes they want.
– Managers use participation too infrequently.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 445

Study Question 4: How do you
manage the decision-making process?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 446

Study Question 4: How do you
manage the decision-making process?
Key problem attributes in the Vroom, Yetton,
and Jago decision making framework.
– The required quality of the decision.
– The commitment needed from subordinates.
– The amount of information the leader has.
– Commitment probability.
– Goal congruence.
– Subordinate conflict.
– Subordinate information.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 447

Study Question 4: How do you
manage the decision-making process?
Authority decisions in the Vroom, Yetton, and
Jago decision making framework.
– Manager or team leader uses information that he or
she possesses and decides what to do without
involving others.
– Variant 1  manager solves the problem or makes the
decision alone.
– Variant 2  manager obtains the necessary
information from others and then decides.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 448

Study Question 4: How do you
manage the decision-making process?
Consultative decisions in the Vroom, Yetton, and
Jago decision making framework.
– Manager or team leader solicits input from other
people and then, based on this information and its
interpretation, makes a final choice.
– Variant 1  manager seeks input from others
individually and then makes a decision.
– Variant 2  manager seeks input from others
collectively and then makes a decision.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 449

Study Question 4: How do you
manage the decision-making process?
Group decisions in the Vroom, Yetton, and
Jago decision making framework.
– Manager or team leader consults with others
and allows them to help make the final choice.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 450

Study Question 4: How do you
manage the decision-making process?
Knowing when to quit.
– The natural desire to continue on a selected course of
action reinforces escalating commitment.
– Escalating commitment is the tendency to continue
and renew effort on a previously chosen course of
action, even though it is not working.
– Tendency to escalate commitments often outweighs
the willingness to disengage from them.
– Good decision makers are willing to reverse previous
decisions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 451

Study Question 5: What are some of the
current issues in decision making?
Workplace trends affecting organizational
decision makers.
– Business units are becoming smaller in size.
– New, more flexible, and adaptable
organizational forms.
– Multifunctional understanding is increasingly
important.
– Workers with both technical knowledge and
team skills are increasingly desirable.
– The nature of “work” is in a state of flux.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 452

Study Question 5: What are some of the
current issues in decision making?
Information technology and decision
making.
– Artificial intelligence is the study of how
computers can be programmed to think like
human beings.
– Expert systems support decision making by
following “either-or” rules to make
deductions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 453

Study Question 5: What are some of the
current issues in decision making?
Information technology and decision
making (cont.).
– Fuzzy logic and neural networks reason
inductively.
– Computer support for decision making.
– Information technology does not deal with
issues raised by the garbage can model.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 454

Study Question 5: What are some of the
current issues in decision making?
Cultural factors and decision making.
– Culture is “the way in which a group of people solves
problems.”
– North American culture stresses decisiveness, speed,
and the individual selection of alternatives.
– Other cultures place less emphasis on individual
choice than on developing implementations that work.
– The most important impact of culture on decision
making concerns which issues are elevated to the
status of problems solvable within the firm.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 455

Study Question 6: How do you infuse
ethics into the decision-making process?
Ways to infuse ethics into decision
making.
– Develop a code of ethics and follow it.
– Establish procedures for reporting violations.
– Involve employees in identifying ethical
issues.
– Monitor ethical performance.
– Reward ethical behavior.
– Publicize ethical efforts.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 456

Study Question 6: How do you infuse
ethics into the decision-making process?
Morality is involved in:
– Choosing problems.
– Deciding who should be involved in making
decisions.
– Estimating the impacts of decision
alternatives.
– Selecting an alternative for implementation.
An effective decision needs to solve a problem as
well as match moral values and help others.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 14 457

Chapter 15 Study Questions
What is conflict?
How can conflict be managed
successfully?
What is negotiation?
What are the different strategies involved
in negotiation?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 458

Study Question 1: What is conflict?
Conflict occurs whenever:
– Disagreements exist in a social situation over
issues of substance.
– Emotional antagonisms cause frictions
between individuals or groups.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 459

Study Question 1: What is conflict?
Types of conflict.
– Substantive conflict.
• A fundamental disagreement over ends or goals to
be pursued and the means for their
accomplishment.
– Emotional conflict.
• Interpersonal difficulties that arise over feelings of
anger, mistrust, dislike, fear, resentment, etc.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 460

Study Question 1: What is conflict?
Levels of conflict.
– Intrapersonal conflicts.
• Actual or perceived pressures from incompatible
goals or expectations.
• Approach-approach conflict.
• Avoidance-avoidance conflict.
• Approach-avoidance conflict.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 461

Study Question 1: What is conflict?
Levels of conflict (cont.).
– Interpersonal conflict.
• Occurs between two or more individuals who are
in opposition to one another.
– Intergroup conflict.
• Occurs among members of different teams or
groups.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 462

Study Question 1: What is conflict?
Levels of conflict (cont.).
– Interorganizational conflict.
• Commonly refers to the competition and rivalry
that characterize firms operating in the same
markets.
• Encompasses disagreements that exist between any
two or more organizations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 463

Study Question 1: What is conflict?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 464

Study Question 1: What is conflict?
Potential benefits of functional conflict.
– Surfaces important problems so they can be
addressed.
– Causes careful consideration of decisions.
– Causes reconsideration of decisions.
– Increases information available for decision
making.
– Provides opportunities for creativity.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 465

Study Question 1: What is conflict?
Potential disadvantages of dysfunctional
conflict.
– Diverts energies.
– Harms group cohesion.
– Promotes interpersonal hostilities.
– Creates overall negative environment.
– Can decrease work productivity and job
satisfaction.
– Can contribute to absenteeism and job
turnover.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 466

Study Question 1: What is conflict?
Culture and conflict.
– Culture and cultural differences must be
considered for their conflict potential.
– Individuals who are not able to recognize and
respect the impact of culture may contribute to
emergence of dysfunctional situations
– Cross-cultural sensitivity helps defuse
dysfunctional conflict and capture advantages
that constructive conflict may offer.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 467

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 468

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Causes of conflict.
– Vertical conflict.
• Occurs between hierarchical levels.
– Horizontal conflict.
• Occurs between persons or groups at the same
hierarchical level.
– Line-staff conflict.
• Involves disagreements over who has authority and
control over specific matters.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 469

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Causes of conflict (cont.).
– Role conflicts.
• Occur when the communication of task
expectations proves inadequate or upsetting.
– Workflow interdependencies.
• Occur when people or units are required to
cooperate to meet challenging goals.
– Domain ambiguities.
• Occur as misunderstandings over such things as
customer jurisdiction or scope of authority .
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 470

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Causes of conflict (cont.).
– Resource scarcity.
• When resources are scarce, working relationships
are likely to suffer.
– Power or value asymmetries.
• Occur when interdependent people or groups differ
substantially from one another in status and
influence or in values.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 471

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Indirect conflict management approaches.
– Reduced interdependence.
• Adjusting the level of interdependency among
units or individuals when workflow conflicts exist.
• Decoupling, buffering, and linking pin roles.
– Appeal to common goals.
• Focusing the attention of potentially conflicting
parties on one mutually desirable conclusion.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 472

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Indirect conflict management approaches
(cont.).
– Hierarchical referral.
• Problems are referred up the hierarchy for more
senior managers to reconcile.
– Altering scripts and myths.
• Superficial management of conflict by using
behavioral routines that become part of the
organization’s culture.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 473

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 474

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Lose-lose conflict.
– Avoidance.
• Everyone simply pretends that the conflict does not
really exist and hopes that it will go away.
– Accommodation or smoothing.
• Involves playing down differences among the
conflicting parties and highlighting similarities and
areas of agreement.
– Compromise.
• Each party gives up something of value, but neither
party’s desires are fully satisfied
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 475

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Win-lose conflict.
– Competition.
• One party achieves a victory through the use of
force, superior skills, or domination.
– Authoritative command.
• Use of formal authority to dictate a solution and
specify who gains what and who loses what.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 476

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Win-win conflict.
– Collaboration or problem solving.
• Recognition by all conflicting parties that
something is wrong and needs attention, and it
stresses gathering and evaluating information in
solving disputes and making choices.
• Collaboration and problem solving are preferred to
gain true conflict resolution when time and cost
permit.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 477

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Win-win solutions should:
– Achieve each other’s goals.
– Be acceptable to both parties.
– Establish a process whereby both parties see a
responsibility to be open and honest about
facts and feelings.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 478

Study Question 2: How can conflict be
managed successfully?
Potential disadvantages of collaboration.
– Collaboration requires time and energy.
– Both parties to the conflict need to be assertive
and cooperative.
– Collaboration may not be feasible if the
organization’s culture does not value
cooperation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 479

Study Question 3: What is negotiation?
Negotiation goals and outcomes.
– Substance goals.
• Outcomes that relate to content issues.
– Relationship goals.
• Outcomes that relate to how well people involved
in the negotiations and any constituencies they
represent are able to work with one another once
the process is concluded.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 480

Study Question 3: What is negotiation?
Effective negotiation.
– Occurs when substance issues are resolved and
working relationships are maintained or
improved.
– Criteria for an effective negotiation.
• Quality.
• Harmony.
• Efficiency.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 481

Study Question 3: What is negotiation?
Ethical aspects of negotiation.
– To maintain good working relationships, negotiators
should strive for high ethical standards.
– Negotiators’ rationalizations for questionable ethical
behavior are offset by long-run negative
consequences.
– The unethical negotiator may be targeted for revenge.
– Unethical negotiating actions may become habitual.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 482

Study Question 3: What is negotiation?
Organizational settings for negotiation.
– Two-party negotiation.
• Manager negotiates directly with one other person.
– Group negotiation.
• Manager is part of a group whose members are
negotiating.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 483

Study Question 3: What is negotiation?
Organizational settings for negotiation (cont.).
– Intergroup negotiation.
• Manager is part of a group that is negotiating with
another group.
– Constituency negotiation.
• Manager is involved in negotiation with other
persons, with each party representing a broader
constituency.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 484

Study Question 4: What are the different
strategies involved in negotiation?
Distributive negotiation.
– Focuses on positions staked out or declared by the
conflicting parties.
– Parties try to claim certain portions of the existing pie.
Integrative negotiation.
– Sometimes called principled negotiation.
– Focuses on the merits of the issues.
– Parties try to enlarge the available pie.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 485

Study Question 4: What are the different
strategies involved in negotiation?
Distributive negotiation.
– The key question is: “Who is going to get this
resource?”
– “Hard” distributive negotiation.
• Each party holds out to get its own way.
– “Soft” distributive negotiation.
• One party is willing to make concessions to the
other party to get things over.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 486

Study Question 4: What are the different
strategies involved in negotiation?
Integrative negotiation.
– The key question is: “How can the resource
best be utilized?”
– Is less confrontational than distributive
negotiation, and permits a broader range of
alternative solutions to be considered.
– Opportunity for a true win-win solution.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 487

Study Question 4: What are the different
strategies involved in negotiation?
Attitudinal foundations of integrative
agreements.
– Willingness to trust the other party.
– Willingness to share information with the
other party.
– Willingness to ask concrete questions of the
other party.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 488

Study Question 4: What are the different
strategies involved in negotiation?
Behavioral foundations of integrative
agreements.
– Ability to separate the people from the problem.
– Ability to focus on interests rather than positions.
– Ability to avoid making premature judgments.
– Ability to keep alternative creation separate from
evaluation.
– Ability to judge possible agreements on an objective
set of criteria or standards.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 489

Study Question 4: What are the different
strategies involved in negotiation?
Information foundations of integrative
agreements.
– Each party must know what he or she will do
if an agreement can’t be reached.
– Each party must determine what is personally
important in the situation.
– Each party must achieve an understanding of
what the other party values.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 490

Study Question 4: What are the different
strategies involved in negotiation?
Common negotiation pitfalls.
– Myth of the fixed pie.
– Possibility of escalating commitment.
– Negotiators often develop overconfidence in
their positions.
– Communication problems can cause
difficulties during a negotiation.
• Telling problem.
• Hearing problem.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 491

Study Question 4: What are the different
strategies involved in negotiation?
Third-party roles in negotiation.
– Alternative dispute resolution.
• A neutral third party works with persons
involved in a negotiation to help them
resolve impasses and settle disputes.
– Arbitration.
• A third party acts as a “judge” and has the
power to issue a decision that is binding on
all disputing parties.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 492

Study Question 4: What are the different
strategies involved in negotiation?
Third-party roles in negotiation (cont.).
– Mediation.
• A neutral third party tries to engage
disputing parties in a negotiated solution
through persuasion and rational argument.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 493

Chapter 16 Study Questions
What is organizational change?
What change strategies are used in
organizations?
How is resistance to change best managed?
How do organizations innovate?
How does stress affect people in change
environments?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 494

Study Question 1: What is
organizational change?
Transformational change.
– Results in a major overhaul of the organization
or its component systems.
– Described as radical change or frame-breaking
change.
– Organizations experiencing transformational
change undergo a significant shift in basic
characteristic features.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 495

Study Question 1: What is
organizational change?
Incremental change or frame-bending
change.
– Part of the organization’s natural evolution in
building on the existing ways of operating to
enhance or extend them in new directions.
– Introduction of new products, new
technologies, and new systems and processes.
– Continuous improvement through incremental
change is an important asset.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 496

Study Question 1: What is
organizational change?
Change agents.
– Individuals and groups who take responsibility
for changing the existing behavior patterns of
another person or social system.
– Success of change efforts depends in part on
change agents.
– Being an effective change agent means being
a great change leader.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 497

Study Question 1: What is
organizational change?
Unplanned change.
– Occurs spontaneously and without a change
agent’s direction, and such change may be
disruptive.
– Appropriate goal is to act quickly to minimize
the negative consequences and maximize any
possible benefits.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 498

Study Question 1: What is
organizational change?
Planned change.
– The result of specific efforts by a change
agent.
– Direct response to someone’s perception of a
performance gap.
• A performance gap is the discrepancy between the
desired and actual state of affairs.
• Performance gaps represent problems to be
resolved or opportunities to be explored.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 499

Study Question 1: What is
organizational change?
Organizational forces for change.
– Organization-environment relationships.
– Organizational life cycle.
– Political nature of organizations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 500

Study Question 1: What is organizational
change?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 501

Study Question 1: What is
organizational change?
Reasons for failure of transformational change.
– No sense of urgency.
– No powerful guiding coalition.
– No compelling vision.
– Failure to communicate the vision.
– Failure to empower others to act.
– Failure to celebrate short-term wins.
– Failure to build on accomplishments.
– Failure to institutionalize results.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 502

Study Question 1: What is
organizational change?
Phases of planned change.
– Unfreezing.
• Preparing a situation for change by disconfirming
existing attitudes and behaviors.
– Changing.
• Taking action to modify a situation by altering the
targets of change.
– Refreezing.
• Maintaining momentum and eventually
institutionalizing the change.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 503

Study Question 2: What change
strategies are used in organizations?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 504

Study Question 3: How is resistance
to change best managed?
Resistance to change.
– Any attitude or behavior that indicates
unwillingness to make or support a desired
change.
– Alternative views of resistance.
• Something that must be overcome for change to be
successful.
• Feedback that can be used to facilitate achieving
change objectives.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 505

Study Question 3: How is resistance
to change best managed?
Why people resist change.
– Fear of the unknown.
– Lack of good information.
– Fear for loss of security.
– No reasons to change.
– Fear for loss of power.
– Lack of resources.
– Bad timing.
– Habit.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 506

Study Question 3: How is resistance
to change best managed?
Resistance to the change itself.
– People may reject a change because they believe it is
not worth their time, effort, or attention.
– To deal with resistance to the change itself, all those
affected should know how it satisfies the following
criteria:
• Benefit.
• Compatibility.
• Complexity.
• Triability.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 507

Study Question 3: How is resistance
to change best managed?
Resistance to the change strategy.
– Force-coercion strategy.
• Likely resistance among individuals who resent management
by “command” or the use of threatened punishment.
– Rational persuasion strategy.
• Likely resistance when the data are suspect or the expertise of
advocates is unclear.
– Shared-power strategy.
• Likely resistance if it appears manipulative and insincere.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 508

Study Question 3: How is resistance
to change best managed?
Resistance to the change agent.
– Resistance to the change agent is directed at
the person implementing the change and often
involves personality and other differences.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 509

Study Question 3: How is resistance
to change best managed?
How to deal with resistance.
– Education and communication.
– Participation and support.
– Facilitation and support.
– Negotiation and agreement.
– Manipulation and cooptation.
– Explicit and implicit coercion.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 510

Study Question 3: How is resistance
to change best managed?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 511

Study Question 4: How do
organizations innovate?
Innovation.
– The process of creating new ideas and putting them
into practice.
Product innovations.
– The introduction of new or improved goods or
services to better meet customer needs.
Process innovations.
– The introduction of new and better work methods and
operations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 512

Study Question 4: How do
organizations innovate?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 513

Study Question 4: How do
organizations innovate?
Features of innovative organizations.
– Strategies and cultures that are built around a
commitment to innovation.
– Structures that support innovation.
– Staffing with a clear commitment to
innovation.
– Top-management support for innovation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 514

Study Question 5: How does stress affect
people in change environments?
Stress.
– A state of tension experienced by individuals
facing extraordinary demands, constraints, or
opportunities.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 515

Study Question 5: How does stress affect
people in change environments?
Source of stress.
– Stressors.
• The wide variety of things that cause stress for
individuals.
– Types of stressors.
• Work-related stressors.
• Life stressors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 516

Study Question 5: How does stress affect
people in change environments?
Work-related stressors.
– Task demands.
– Role ambiguities.
– Role conflicts.
– Ethical dilemmas.
– Interpersonal problems.
– Career developments.
– Physical setting.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 517

Study Question 5: How does stress affect
people in change environments?
Life stressors.
– Family events.
– Economic difficulties.
– Personal affairs.
– Individual’s needs.
– Individual’s capabilities.
– Individual’s personality.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 518

Study Question 5: How does stress affect
people in change environments?
Stress and performance.
– Constructive stress (or eustress).
• Moderate levels of stress act in a positive way for
both individuals and organization.
– Destructive stress (or distress).
• Low and especially high levels of stress act in a
negative way for both individuals and organization.
– Job burnout.
• A loss of interest in and satisfaction with a job due
to stressful working conditions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 519

Study Question 5: How does stress affect
people in change environments?
Stress and health.
– Stress can harm people’s physical and psychological
health.
– Health problems associated with stress.
• Heart attack.
• Stroke.
• Hypertension.
• Migraine headache.
• Ulcers.
• Substance abuse.
• Overeating.
• Depression.
• Muscle aches.
– Managers and team leaders should be alert to signs of
excessive stress.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 520

Study Question 5: How does stress affect
people in change environments?
Stress management.
– Stress prevention.
• Taking action to keep stress from reaching
destructive levels in the first place.
– Once stress has reached a destructive point,
special techniques of stress management can
be implemented.
– Stress management.
• Begins with the recognition of stress symptoms
and continues with actions to maintain a positive
performance edge.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 521

Study Question 5: How does stress affect
people in change environments?
Stress management (cont.).
– Personal wellness.
• Pursuit of one’s job and career goals with the
support of a personal health promotion program.
– Employee assistance programs.
• Provide help for employees who are experiencing
personal problems and related stress.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 16 522

Chapter 17 Study Questions
What is strategy and how is it linked to
different types of organizational goals?
What are the basic attributes of
organizations?
How is work organized and coordinated?
What are bureaucracies and what are the
common structures?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 523

Study Question 1: What is strategy and
how is it linked to different types of
organizational goals?
Strategy.
– The process of positioning the organization in
the competitive environment and
implementing actions to compete successfully.
– A pattern in a stream of decisions.
• Choices regarding goals and the way the firm
organizes to accomplish them.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 524

Study Question 1: What is strategy and
how is it linked to different types of
organizational goals?
Elements of conventional strategy
decisions.
– Choosing the types of contributions the firm
intends to make to society.
– Precisely whom the firm will serve.
– Exactly what the firm will provide to others.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 525

Study Question 1: What is strategy and
how is it linked to different types of
organizational goals?
Societal goals.
– Reflect an organization’s intended contributions to the
broader society.
– Enable organizations to gain legitimacy, a social right
to operate, and more discretion for their non-societal
goals and operating practices.
– Enable organizations to make legitimate claims over
resources, individuals, markets, and products.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 526

Study Question 1: What is strategy and
how is it linked to different types of
organizational goals?
Societal contributions and mission
statements.
– A firm’s societal contribution is often part of
its mission statement.
• A written statement of organizational purpose.
– A good mission statement identifies whom the
firm will serve and how it will go about
accomplishing its societal purpose.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 527

Study Question 1: What is strategy and
how is it linked to different types of
organizational goals?
Output goals.
– Define the type of business the organization is
pursuing.
– Provide some substance to the more general
aspects of mission statements.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 528

Study Question 1: What is strategy and
how is it linked to different types of
organizational goals?
Systems goals.
– Concerned with the conditions within the organization
that are expected to increase the organization’s
survival potential.
– Typical systems goals include growth, productivity,
stability, harmony, flexibility, prestige, and human
resource maintenance.
– Systems goals must often be balanced against one
another.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 529

Study Question 1: What is strategy and
how is it linked to different types of
organizational goals?
Well-defined systems goals can:
– Focus managers’ attention on what needs to be
done.
– Provide flexibility in devising ways to meet
important targets.
– Be used to balance the demands, constraints,
and opportunities facing the firm.
– Form a basis for dividing the work of the firm.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 530

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Successful organizations develop a structure
consistent with the pattern of goals established by
senior management.
The formal structure shows the planned
configuration of positions, job duties, and the
lines of authority among different parts of the
organization.
The formal structure of the firm is also known as
the division of labor.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 531

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Vertical specialization.
– A hierarchical division of labor that distributes formal
authority and establishes where and how critical
decisions are to be made.
– Creates a hierarchy of authority.
• An arrangement of work positions in order of increasing
authority.
– Organization charts are diagrams that depict the
formal structures of organizations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 532

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 533

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Chain of command.
– A listing of who reports to whom up and down the
organization.
Unity of command.
– Each person has only one boss and each unit one
leader.
Span of control.
– The number individuals reporting to a supervisor.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 534

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Line units.
– Work groups that conduct the major business
of the organization.
Staff units.
– Work groups that assist the line units by
providing specialized expertise and services to
the organization.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 535

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Internal versus external units.
– Internal line units.
• Transform raw materials and information into products and
services.
– External line units.
• Maintain outside linkages.
– Internal staff units.
• Assist the line units in performing their functions.
– External staff units.
• Assist the line units with outside linkages and act to buffer
internal operations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 536

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 537

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Some firms are outsourcing many of their staff
functions.
Use of information technology to streamline
operations and reduce staff.
Most organizations use a variety of means to
specialize the vertical division of labor.
Best pattern of vertical specialization depends on
environment, size, technology, and goals.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 538

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Control.
– The set of mechanisms used to keep actions or
outputs within predetermined limits.
– Deals with:
• Setting standards.
• Measuring results against standards.
• Instituting corrective action.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 539

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Output controls.
– Focus on desired targets and allow managers
to use their own methods to reach defined
targets.
– Part of overall method of managing by
exception.
– Promote flexibility and creativity.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 540

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Process controls.
– Specify the manner in which tasks are
accomplished.
– Types of process controls.
• Policies, procedures, and rules.
• Formalization and standardization.
• Total quality management controls.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 541

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Policies, procedures, and rules.
– Policies.
• Guidelines for action that outline important
objectives and broadly indicate how activities are
to be carried out.
– Procedures.
• Identify the best method for performing a task,
show which aspects of a task are most important,
or outline how an individual is to be rewarded.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 542

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Policies, procedures, and rules (cont.).
– Rules.
• Describe in detail how a task or a series of tasks is
to be performed, or indicate what cannot be done.
– Policies, procedures, and rules are often used
as substitutes for direct managerial
supervision.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 543

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Formalization.
– The written documentation of policies,
procedures, and rules to guide behavior and
decision making.
Standardization.
– The degree to which the range of allowable
actions in a job or series of jobs is limited so
that uniform actions occur.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 544

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Deming’s 14 points for achieving total quality
management.
– Create a consistency of purpose in the company to
innovate; put resources into research and education,
and into maintaining equipment and new production
aids.
– Learn a new philosophy of quality to improve every
system.
– Require statistical evidence of process control and
eliminate financial controls on production.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 545

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Deming’s 14 points for achieving total quality
management (cont.).
– Require statistical evidence of control in purchasing
parts.
– Use statistical methods to isolate the sources of
trouble.
– Institute modern on-the-job training.
– Improve supervision to develop inspired leaders.
– Drive out fear and instill learning.
– Break down barriers between departments.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 546

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Deming’s 14 points for achieving total quality
management (cont.).
– Eliminate numerical goals and slogans.
– Constantly revamp work methods.
– Institute massive training programs for employees in
statistical methods.
– Retrain people in new skills.
– Create a structure that will push, every day, on the
above 13 points.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 547

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Centralization and decentralization.
– Centralization.
• Degree to which the authority to make decisions is
restricted to higher levels of management.
– Decentralization.
• Degree to which the authority to make decisions is
given to lower levels in an organization’s
hierarchy.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 548

Study Question 2: What are the basic
attributes of organizations?
Benefits of decentralization.
– Higher subordinate satisfaction.
– Quicker response to a series of unrelated
problems.
– Assists in on-the-job training of subordinates
for higher-level positions
– Encourages participation in decision making.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 549

Study Question 3: How is work
organized and coordinated?
Horizontal specialization.
– A division of labor that establishes specific
work units or groups within an organization.
– Often referred to as departmentation.
– Whenever managers divide tasks and group
similar types of skills and resources together,
they must also be concerned with
coordination.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 550

Study Question 3: How is work
organized and coordinated?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 551

Study Question 3: How is work
organized and coordinated?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 552

Study Question 3: How is work
organized and coordinated?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 553

Study Question 3: How is work
organized and coordinated?
Coordination.
– The set of mechanisms that an organization
uses to link the actions of its units into a
consistent pattern.
– Within a unit, much of the coordination is
handled by its manager.
– Smaller organizations rely on management
hierarchy for coordination.
– As the organization grows, more efficient and
effective methods of coordination are required.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 554

Study Question 3: How is work
organized and coordinated?
Personal methods of coordination.
– Produce synergy by promoting dialogue, discussion,
innovation, creativity, and learning, both within and
across units.
– Common personal methods of coordination are direct
contact between and among organizational members
and committee memberships.
– Mix of personal coordination methods should be
tailored to subordinates, skills, abilities, and
experiences.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 555

Study Question 3: How is work
organized and coordinated?
Impersonal methods of coordination.
– Produce synergy by stressing consistency and
standardization so that individual pieces fit together.
– Often are refinements and extensions of process
controls.
– Historical use of specialized departments to coordinate
across units.
– Contemporary use of matrix departmentation and
management information systems for coordination.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 556

Study Question 4: What are bureaucracies and
what are the common structures?
Bureaucracy.
– An ideal form of organization, the
characteristics of which were defined by the
German sociologist Max Weber.
– Relies on a division of labor, hierarchical
control, promotion by merit with career
opportunities for employees, and
administration by rule.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 557

Study Question 4: What are bureaucracies and
what are the common structures?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 558

Study Question 4: What are bureaucracies and
what are the common structures?
Mechanistic type of bureaucracy (machine
bureaucracy).
– Emphasizes vertical specialization and control.
– Stresses rules, policies, and procedures;
specifies techniques for decision making; and
use well-documented control systems.
– Often used with a low cost leader strategy.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 559

Study Question 4: What are bureaucracies and
what are the common structures?
Benefits of the mechanistic type.
– Efficiency.
Limitations of the mechanistic type.
– Employees dislike rigid designs, which makes work
motivation problematic.
– Unions may further solidify rigid designs.
– Key employees may leave.
– Hinders organization’s capacity to adjust to subtle
environmental changes or new technologies.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 560

Study Question 4: What are bureaucracies and
what are the common structures?
Organic type of bureaucracy (professional
bureaucracy).
– Horizontal specialization.
– Procedures are minimal, and those that do
exist are not highly formalized.
– Used to pursue strategies that emphasize
product quality, quick response to customers,
or innovation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 561

Study Question 4: What are bureaucracies and
what are the common structures?
Benefits of the organic type.
– Good for problem solving and serving individual
customer needs.
– Centralized direction by senior management is less
intense.
– Good at detecting external changes and adjusting to
new technologies.
Limitations of the organic type.
– Less efficient than mechanistic type.
– Restricted capacity to respond to central management
direction.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 562

Study Question 4: What are bureaucracies and
what are the common structures?
Common types of hybrid structures.
– Divisional firm.
• Composed of quasi-independent divisions so that
different divisions can be more or less organic or
mechanistic.
– Conglomerate.
• A single corporation that contains a number of
unrelated businesses.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 563

Study Question 4: What are bureaucracies and
what are the common structures?
The conglomerate simultaneously
illustrates three key points that will be the
focus of Chapter 18.
– All structures are combinations of the basic
elements.
– There is no one best structure.
– The firm does not stand alone but is part of a
larger network of firms that compete against
other networks.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 17 564

Chapter 18 Study Questions
What is organizational design and how is it
linked to strategy?
What is information technology and how is it
used?
Can the design of the firm co-evolve with the
environment?
How does a firm learn and continue to learn over
time?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 565

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
Organizational design.
– The process of choosing and implementing a
structural configuration.
– The choice of an appropriate organizational
design depends on the firm’s:
• Size.
• Operations and information technology.
• Environment.
• Strategy for growth and survival.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 566

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
The structural configuration of organizations
should:
– Enable senior executives to emphasize the skills and
abilities that their firms need to compete, and to
remain agile and dynamic in a rapidly changing world.
– Allow individuals to experiment, grow, and develop
competencies so that the strategy of the firm can
evolve.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 567

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
Co-evolution.
– The firm can adjust to external changes even
as it shapes some of the challenges facing it.
– Shaping capabilities via the organization’s
design is a dynamic aspect of co-evolution.
– Even with co-evolution, managers must
maintain a recognizable pattern of choices in
organizational design.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 568

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
Organizational size.
– As the number of employees increase, the
possible interconnections among them
increase even more.
– The design of small firms is directly
influenced by core operations technology.
– Larger firms have many core operations
technologies in a variety of specialized units.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 569

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
The simple design for smaller units and firms.
– A configuration involving one or two ways of
specializing individuals and units.
– Vertical specialization and control emphasize levels of
supervision without elaborate formal mechanisms.
– Appropriate for many smaller firms because of
simplicity, flexibility, and responsiveness to a central
manager.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 570

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
Organizational design must be adjusted to fit
technological opportunities and requirements.
– Operations technology.
• The combination of resources, knowledge, and techniques
that creates a product or service output.
– Information technology.
• The combination of machines, artifacts, procedures, and
systems used to gather, store, analyze, and disseminate
information for translating it into knowledge.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 571

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
Thomson’s view of technology.
– Technologies classified according to the
degree of specification and degree of
interdependence of work units.
– Intensive technology.
• Uncertainty as to how to produce desired
outcomes.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 572

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
Thomson’s view of technology (cont.).
– Mediating technology.
• Links parties that want to become interdependent.
– Long-linked technology.
• The way to produce desired outcomes is known
and broken down into a number of sequential steps.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 573

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
Woodward’s view of technology.
– Small-batch production.
• The organization tailor makes a variety of custom
products to fit customer specifications.
– Mass production.
• The organization produces one or a few products
through an assembly line system.
– Continuous-process technology.
• The organization produces a few products using
considerable automation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 574

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
Woodward’s view of technology (cont.).
– The proper matching of structure and
technology is critical to organizational
success.
• Successful small-batch and continuous-process
plants have flexible structures with small work
groups at the bottom.
• Successful mass production operations are rigidly
structured and have large work groups at the
bottom.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 575

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
Adhocracy.
– An appropriate structural design when
managers and employees do not know the
appropriate way to service a client or produce
a particular product.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 576

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
An adhocracy is characterized by:
– Few rules, policies, and procedures.
– Substantial decentralization.
– Shared decision making among members.
– Extreme horizontal specialization.
– Few levels of management.
– Virtually no formal controls.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 577

Study question 1: What is organizational
design and how is it linked to strategy?
An adhocracy is useful when:
– The tasks facing the firm vary considerably
and provide many exceptions.
– Problems are difficult to define and solve.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 578

Study Question 2:What is information
technology and how is it used?
Why IT makes a difference.
– IT provides a partial substitute for:
• Some operations.
• Some process controls.
• Some impersonal methods of coordination.
– IT provides a strategic capability.
– IT provides a capability for transforming
information to knowledge for learning.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 579

Study Question 2:What is information
technology and how is it used?
Information technology as a substitute.
– Initial implementation of IT often displaced
routine, highly specified, and repetitious jobs.
• Did not alter fundamental character or design of
the organization.
– A second wave of substitution replaced
process controls and informal coordination
mechanisms with IT.
• Brought some marginal changes in organizational
design.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 580

Study Question 2:What is information
technology and how is it used?
Information technology as a strategic capability.
– IT has been used to improve the efficiency, speed of
responsiveness, and effectiveness of operations.
– IT provides individuals the information they need to
plan, make choices, coordinate with others, and
control their own operations.
– This new strategic IT capability resulted from IT
being broadly available to everyone.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 581

Study Question 2:What is information
technology and how is it used?
IT and learning.
– IT systems empower individuals and expand
their jobs.
– IT encourages the development of a “virtual”
network.
– IT transforms how people manage.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 582

Study Question 2:What is information
technology and how is it used?
IT and e-business.
– Many dot-com firms adopted some variation
of adhocracy.
– As the dot-coms grew, the adhocracy design
became problematic.
• Limits on the size of an effective adhocracy.
• Actual delivery of products and services rested
more on responsiveness to clients and maintaining
efficiency than on continual innovation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 583

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Understanding the environment is important
because an organization is an open system.
General environment.
– The set of cultural, economic, legal-political, and
educational conditions found in the areas in which the
organization operates.
Specific environment.
– The owners, suppliers, distributors, government
agencies, and competitors with which an organization
must interact to grow and survive.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 584

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Environmental complexity.
– The magnitude of problems and opportunities
in the organization’s environment, as reflected
in:
• Degree of richness.
• Degree of interdependence.
• Degree of uncertainty.
– More complex environments provide more
problems and opportunities.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 585

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Environmental richness.
– The environment is richer when:
• The economy is growing.
• Individuals are improving their education.
• Those on whom the organization relies are
prospering.
– A rich environment has more opportunities
and dynamism.
– The opposite of richness is decline.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 586

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Environmental interdependence.
– Linkage between environmental independence
and organization design may be subtle and
indirect.
• Organization may co-opt powerful outsiders.
• Organization may absorb or buffer demands of
powerful external elements.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 587

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Environmental uncertainty.
– Uncertainty and volatility can be particularly
damaging to large bureaucracies.
– A more organic form is the appropriate
organizational design response to uncertainty
and volatility.
– Adhocracy may be needed extreme
uncertainty and volatility.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 588

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
In a complex global economy, firms must
learn to co-evolve by altering their
environment.
Two important ways of co-evolution:
– Management of networks.
– Development of alliances.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 589

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Networks and alliances around the world.
– Informal combines or cartels exist in Europe
but are illegal in the United States except in
rare cases.
– Networks are called keiretsu in Japan.
• Bank-centered keiretsu.
• Vertical keiretsu.
– In the United States, outsourcing is developing
as a specialized form of network organization.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 590

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Interfirm alliances.
– Announced cooperative agreements or joint
ventures between two independent firms.
– Alliances are quite common in high
technology industries.
– Since firms cooperate rather than compete;
consequently, both the alliance managers and
sponsoring executives must be patient,
flexible, and creative in pursuing goals.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 591

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Virtual organization.
– An ever-shifting constellation of firms, with a
lead corporation, that pool skills, resources,
and experiences to thrive jointly.
– A design option when internal and external
contingencies are changing quickly.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 592

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Key to making a virtual organization work.
– The production system needs to be in a partner
network bound together by mutual trust and survival.
– The partner network needs to develop and maintain an
advanced IT, trust and cross-owning of problems and
solutions, and a common shared culture.
– The lead firm must take responsibility for the whole
network and coordinate member firm actions.
– The lead corporation and the partners need to rethink
how they are internally organized and managed.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 593

Study Question 3: Can the design of the
firm co-evolve with the environment?
Boundaryless organization.
– A design option that eliminates vertical,
horizontal, external, and geographic barriers
that block desired action.
– Actions to create a boundaryless organization.
• Executives should systematically examine the
organization and its processes.
• Organization members should initiate a process of
improving their cooperation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 594

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Organizational learning.
– Process of knowledge acquisition, information
distribution, information interpretation, and
information retention in adapting successfully to
changing circumstances.
– Adjustment of organization’s and individual’s actions
based on experience.
– The key to successful co-evolution.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 595

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Mimicry.
– Occurs when managers copy what they believe
are the successful practices of others
– Is important to new firms.
• Provides workable, if not ideal, solutions to many
problems.
• Reduces the number of decisions that need to be
analyzed separately.
• Establishes legitimacy or acceptance and narrows
the choices requiring detailed explanation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 596

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Experience.
– A primary way to acquire knowledge.
– Besides learning by doing, managers can also
systematically embark on structured programs
to capture the lessons to be learned.
– The major problem with emphasizing learning
by doing is the inability to precisely forecast
changes.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 597

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 598

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Scanning.
– Involves looking outside the firm and bringing
back useful solutions.
Grafting.
– The process of acquiring individuals, units, or
firms to bring in useful knowledge.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 599

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Common problems in information
interpretation.
– Self-serving interpretations.
• People seeing what they want to see, rather than
seeing what is.
– Managerial scripts.
• A series of well-known routines for problem
identification and alternative generation and
analysis that are commonly used by a firm’s
managers.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 600

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Organizational myths.
– Commonly held cause-effect relationships or
assertions that cannot be empirically
supported.
– Common myths.
Single organizational truth.
Presumption of competence.
Denial of tradeoffs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 601

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Information retention mechanisms.
– Individuals.
– Organizational culture.
– Transformation mechanisms.
– Formal organizational structures.
– Ecology.
– External archives.
– Internal information technologies.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 602

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Deficit cycles.
– A pattern of deteriorating performance that is
followed by even further deterioration.
– Factors associated with deficit cycles.
• Organizational inertia.
• Hubris.
• Detachment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 603

Study Question 4: How does a firm learn
and continue to learn over time?
Benefit cycles.
– A pattern of successful adjustment followed
by further improvements.
– Firms can successfully co-evolve by initiating
a benefit cycle.
– The firm develops adequate mechanisms for
learning.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 18 604

Chapter 19 Study Questions
What is organizational culture?
How do you understand an organizational
culture?
How can the organizational culture be
managed?
How can you use organizational
development to improve the firm?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 605

Study Question 1: What is
organizational culture?
Organizational culture.
– The system of shared actions, values, and
beliefs that develops within an organization
and guides the behavior of its members.
– Called corporate culture in the business
setting.
– No two organizational cultures are identical.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 606

Study Question 1: What is
organizational culture?
External adaptation.
– Involves reaching goals and dealing with
outsiders regarding tasks to be accomplished,
methods used to achieve the goals, and
methods of coping with success and failure.
– Important aspects of external adaptation.
• Separating eternal forces based on importance.
• Developing ways to measure accomplishments.
• Creating explanations for not meeting goals.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 607

Study Question 1: What is
organizational culture?
External adaptation involves answering important
goal-related questions regarding coping with
reality.
– What is the real mission?
– How do we contribute?
– What are our goals?
– How do we reach our goals?
– What external forces are important?
– How do we measure results?
– What do we do if specific targets are not met?
– How do we tell others how good we are?
– When do we quit?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 608

Study Question 1: What is
organizational culture?
Internal integration.
– Deals with the creation of a collective identity
and with finding ways of matching methods of
working and living together.
– Important aspects of working together.
• Deciding who is a member and who is not.
• Developing an understanding of acceptable and
unacceptable behavior.
• Separating friends from enemies.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 609

Study Question 1: What is
organizational culture?
Internal integration involves answering important
questions associated with living together.
– What is our unique identity?
– How do we view the world?
– Who is a member?
– How do we allocate power, status, and authority?
– How do we communicate?
– What is the basis for friendship?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 610

Study Question 1: What is
organizational culture?
Subculture.
– A group of individuals with a unique pattern
of values and philosophy that are not
inconsistent with the organization’s dominant
values and philosophy.
Counterculture.
– A group of individuals with a pattern of values
and philosophy that outwardly reject the
surrounding culture.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 611

Study Question 1: What is
organizational culture?
Problems associated with subcultural divisions
within the larger culture.
– Subordinate groups are likely to form into a
counterculture pursuing self-interests.
– The firm may encounter extreme difficulty in coping
with broader cultural changes.
– Embracing natural divisions from the larger culture
may lead to difficulty in international operations.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 612

Study Question 1: What is
organizational culture?
Taylor Cox’s five step program.
– Step 1: The organization should develop pluralism.
– Step 2: The organization should fully integrate its
structure.
– Step 3: The organization must integrate the informal
networks.
– Step 4: The organization should break the linkage
between naturally occurring group identity and
organizational identity.
– Step 5: The organization must actively work to
eliminate identity-based interpersonal conflict.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 613

Study Question 2: How do you
understand an organizational culture?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 614

Study Question 2: How do you
understand an organizational culture?
Sagas.
– Heroic accounts of organizational accomplishments.
Rites.
– Standardized and recurring activities that are used at
special times to influence organizational members.
Rituals.
– Systems of rites.
Cultural symbols.
– Any object, act, or event that serves to transmit
cultural meaning.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 615

Study Question 2: How do you
understand an organizational culture?
Culture often specifies rules and roles.
– Rules.
• The various types of actions that are appropriate.
– Roles.
• Where individual members stand in the social
system.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 616

Study Question 2: How do you
understand an organizational culture?
Shared values.
– Help turn routine activities into valuable and
important actions.
– Tie the organization to the important values of
society.
– May provide a very distinctive source of
competitive advantage.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 617

Study Question 2: How do you
understand an organizational culture?
Characteristics of strong corporate
cultures.
– A widely shared real understanding of what
the firm stands for, often embodied in slogans.
– A concern for individuals over rules, policies,
procedures, and adherence to job duties.
– A recognition of heroes whose actions
illustrate the company’s shared philosophy
and concerns.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 618

Study Question 2: How do you
understand an organizational culture?
Characteristics of strong corporate cultures
(cont.).
– A belief in ritual and ceremony as important to
members and to building a common identity.
– A well-understood sense of the informal rules
and expectations so that employees and
managers know what is expected of them.
– A belief that what employees and managers do
is important and that it is essential to share
information and ideas.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 619

Study Question 2: How do you
understand an organizational culture?
Organizational myths.
– Unproven and often unstated beliefs that are
accepted uncritically.
– Myths enable managers to redefine impossible
problems.
– Myths can facilitate experimentation and
creativity.
– Myths allow managers to govern.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 620

Study Question 2: How do you
understand an organizational culture?
National culture influences.
– Widely held common assumptions may be
traced to the larger culture of the host society.
– National cultural values may become
embedded in expectations of organization
members.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 621

Study Question 3: How can the
organizational culture be managed?
Strategies for managing corporate culture.
– Managers help modify observable culture,
shared values, and common assumptions
directly.
– Use of organizational development techniques
to modify specific elements of the culture.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 622

Study Question 3: How can the
organizational culture be managed?
Why a well-developed management
philosophy is important.
– Establishes generally understood boundaries
on all members of the firm.
– Provides a consistent way for approaching
new and novel situations.
– Helps hold individuals together by showing
them a known path to success.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 623

Study Question 3: How can the
organizational culture be managed?
Strategies for building, reinforcing, and changing
organizational culture.
– Directly modifying the visible aspects of culture.
– Changing the lessons to be drawn from common
stories.
– Setting the tone for a culture and for cultural change.
– Fostering a culture that addresses questions of external
adaptation and internal integration.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 624

Study Question 3: How can the
organizational culture be managed?
Mistakes that managers can make in building,
reinforcing, and changing culture.
– Trying to change people’s values from the top
down:
• While keeping the ways in which the organization
operates the same.
• Without recognizing the importance of individuals.
– Attempting to revitalize an organization by
dictating major changes and ignoring shared
values.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 625

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Organization development (OD).
– The application of behavioral science
knowledge in a long-range effort to improve
an organization’s ability to cope with change
in its external environment and to increase its
internal problem-solving capabilities.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 626

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Organizational development.
– Designed to work on both issues of external
adaptation and internal integration.
– Used to improve organizational performance.
– Seeks to achieve change so the organization’s
members maintain the culture and longer-run
organizational effectiveness.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 627

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Underlying assumptions of OD.
– Individual level.
• Respect for people and their capabilities.
– Group level.
• Belief that groups can be good for both people and
organizations.
– Organizational level.
• Respect for the complexity of an organization as a
system of interdependent parts.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 628

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Organization development goals.
– Outcome goals.
• Mainly deal with issues of external adaptation.
– Process goals.
• Mainly deal with issues of internal integration.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 629

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
In pursuing outcome and process goals, OD helps
by:
– Creating an open problem solving climate.
– Supplementing formal authority with knowledge and
competence.
– Moving decision making where relevant information
is available.
– Building trust and maximizing collaboration.
– Increasing the sense of organizational ownership.
– Allowing people to exercise self-direction and self-
control.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 630

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Action research.
– The process of systematically collecting data
on an organization, feeding it back to the
members for action planning, and evaluating
results by collecting and reflecting on more
data after the planned actions have been taken.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 631

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 632

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 633

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Organizationwide OD interventions.
– Survey feedback.
• Collection and feedback of data to organization
members for action planning purposes.
– Confrontation meetings.
• Activities for quickly determining how an
organization can be improved and taking initial
actions for betterment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 634

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Organizationwide OD interventions
(cont.).
– Structural redesign.
• Realigning the organization’s structure or major
subsystems.
– Collateral organization.
• Using representative organizational members in
periodic small group problem-solving sessions.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 635

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Group and intergroup OD interventions.
– Team building.
• Activities to improve the functioning of a group.
– Process consultation.
• Activities to improve the functioning of key group
processes.
– Intergroup team building.
• Activities to improve the functioning or two or
more groups.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 636

Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?
Individual OD interventions.
– Role negotiation.
• Clarifying expectations in working relationships.
– Job redesign.
• Creating long-term congruence between individual
goals and organizational career opportunities.
– Career planning.
• Structured opportunities for individuals to work
with managers or staff experts on career issues.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19 637

Thank You
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 638
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