Thanks to the authors

1. CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY
Individual behavior is influenced by motivation, ability, role perceptions, and situational
factors (MARS). Motivation consists of internal forces that affect the direction, intensity,
and persistence of a person’s voluntary choice of behavior. Ability includes both the
natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task. Role
perceptions are a person’s beliefs about what behaviors are appropriate or necessary in a
particular situation. Situational factors are environmental conditions that constrain or
facilitate employee behavior and performance.
Five types of behavior are discussed most often in the organizational behavior
literature. Task performance represents physical behaviors as well as mental processes
that support the organization’s objectives. Organizational citizenship refers to behaviors
that extend beyond the employee’s normal job duties. Counterproductive work behaviors
are voluntary and potentially harm the organization by directly affecting its functioning
or property, or by hurting employees in away that will reduce their effectiveness. Joining
and staying with the organization is a fourth category of work-related behavior. The fifth
type of work-related behavior is work attendance.
Values are stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or
courses of action in a variety of situations. They influence our decisions and
interpretation of what is ethical. People arrange values into a hierarchy of preferences,
called a value system. Shalom Schwartz grouped the dozens of individual values
described by scholars over the years into 10 broader domains, which are further reduced
to four quadrants of a circle. Organizations need to pay attention to values congruence –
the similarity of values across systems (such as individual with organizational values).

2. Six values that differ across cultures are individualism, collectivism, power distance,
uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-femininity, and long/short term orientation. Four
values that guide ethical conduct are utilitarianism, individual rights, distributive justice,
and care. Three other factors that influence ethical conduct are the extent that an issue
demands ethical principles (moral intensity), the person’s ethical sensitivity to the
presence and importance of an ethical dilemma, and situational factors that cause people
to deviate form their moral values. Companies improve ethical conduct through a code of
ethics, ethics training, ethics ombuds offices, and the conduct of corporate leaders.
Personality refers to the relatively stable pattern of behaviors and consistent internal
states that explain a person’s behavioral tendencies. Psychologists continue to debate the
origins of personality, but most believe it is shaped by both heredity and environmental
factors. Most personality traits are represented within the ‘Big Five’ personality
dimensions (CANOE): conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to
xperience, and extroversion. Conscientiousness is a relatively strong predictor of job
performance.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator measures how people prefer to focus their
attention, collect information, process and evaluate information, and orient themselves to
the outer world. Another popular personality trait in organizational behavior is locus of
control, which is a generalized belief about the amount of control people have over their
own lives. Another trait, called self-monitoring, refers to an individual’s level of
sensitivity and ability to adapt to situational cues. John Holland developed a model of
vocational choice that defines six personalities and their corresponding work
environments.