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137 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
What are the Managerial functions in OB? (4)
Planning, Organizing, Controlling, and Leading
What does planning as a managerial function include?
defining goals and allocating resources
What does organizing as a managerial function include?
establishing rules and providing support
What does leading as a managerial function include?
encouraging workers and coordinating individuals and groups
What does controlling as a managerial function include?
evaluating achievements and taking corrective actions (if needed)
In order to perform functions effectively, what kinds of skills must a manager have?
Technical, conceptual, and human
Why are human skills required for managers to have?
Because they help to improve motivation in the workplace and to retain and attract the best employees
In OB, we study the effect of ______, _______, and _______ on _________ of people in the organization and in order to apply the ______ ________ on the improvement of the firm's performance.
individuals, groups, and structures ; behavior ; acquired knowledge
What are typical issues of OB?
- Motivation
- Leadership
- Personality
- Learning Processes
- Job Design
- Conflicts
HOw are most findings in OB occurring?
systematic study of a topic
What is intuition with regards to research in OB?
Informal method (based on “common sense”) to assign causes and effects, not supported by any research
What is systematic study with regards to research in OB?
Search for relationships between the variables that reflect topics of interest, assigning only causes and effects that can be “scientifically” supported
What is a scientific model?
... is simplification of real world that only includes the issues that we want to study.
Why do we use scientific models?
... allows us to make predictions about the effect of some independent variables on some dependent variable.
What the differences between dependent, independent, and moderating variables?
Dependent Variable: Factor to be explained ; Independent Variable: Factors that we expect to be causing a
change in the dependent variable ; Moderating Variables: Factors that regulate the intensity of
the effect of independent variables on dependent variables
The dependent variables in OB models are usually linked to what? Give four examples of what they could be
PERFORMANCE
Productivity ; Absenteeism ; Workers Turnover ; Job Satisfaction
What is productivity when it comes to OB?
A firm is productive to the extent that it meets its
goals, translating inputs to outputs at the lowest possible cost
What does productivity depend upon?
Efficiency and effectiveness
What is worker absenteeism?
Hours of lost work when workers fail to go to work (illness, accidents, etc.)
What does a high employee turnover rate imply? (3)
high recruiting and training costs ; it may be dangerous if it affects key jobs ; it may allow us to hire more trained and motivated employees
What is job satisfaction?
Attitude of a person with respect to his job
What are biographical characteristics?
Empirical evidence shows that behavior differs according to several individual basic characteristics:

age
gender
marital status
firm tenure
What are the biographical characteristics of older people?
(1) They tend to look for stability and thus their turnover rate is lower.
(2) “Unavoidable” absenteeism (health-related) is higher, but
“avoidable” absenteeism is lower.
The relationship between age and productivity depends on the ___________.


Job satisfaction seems to ______ with age unless _________________.
the job requirements of the job (strength, speed, etc)

increase ; (technological) changes bring frustration to older workers
More tenured workers have _____ turnover and absenteeism rates, and their productivity and job satisfaction is _______
lower ; higher
With respect to gender differences at work:

No clear difference has been found respect to productivity,
_______ and ________.
• ______ absenteeism rate is higher, mostly due to family
commitment
turnover ; job satisfaction ; women's
Married employees are

______ productive
______ satisfied with their job, and their absenteeism and turnover rate is _______
similarly ; more ; lower
What is ability and what is it a determinant of?
“what a person is capable of doing”, is an obvious
determinant of individual and organizational performance.
What is cognitive ability?
Cognitive Ability is defined by the competences in
different areas of mental functioning: Numerical Ability, Verbal Ability, Inductive and Deductive Reasoning, Memory
What is physicial ability?
Physical Ability (strength, fitness, dexterity, etc.) may affect productivity as well.
What "combination of ability" are specifically important?
Social Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, and Cultural Intelligence
What does personality refer to?
refers to the pattern of ways in which a person feels, thinks and interacts. It has been shown to influence the way a person behaves in an organization
A person's personality is determined by the interaction of which 2 elements?
Biological heritage ; life experiences...so nature versus nurture
What is an important variable to determine the extent to which personality affects behavior?
The individual's situation
What are the big 5 traits of personality?
extraversion
agreeableness
conscientiousness
emotional stability
openness
What is extraversion?
reflects the tendency to experience positive emotional states and feel good about oneself and the world around one.
Wat is agreeableness?
the tendency to get along well with others and cooperates.
What is conscientiousness?
the extent to which a person is careful, scrupulous,
and preserving.
What is emotional stability?
the degree to which someone is able to control their emotions when it comes to decision making, etc
What is openness to experience?
the extent to which a person is original, has broad interests, and is willing to take risks.
What is the effect of conscientiousness on performance?
predicts a high level of performance for most type of jobs: it is related to reliability, persistence and orientation to results.
Which personality dimension makes the best salesmen?
extraverts
Which personality dimension has higher returns from training experience?
openness
Which personality dimension leads to better working within groups, less deviant behavior?
agreeableness
What is locus of control?
Degree to which people believe they control what happens to them (internal locus) or believe that outside forces (external locus: fate, luck, God...) set it up.
Higher job satisfaction is linked to internal or external locus of control?
internal
Lower absenteeisn is linked to internal or external locus of control?
internal
Higher performance is linked to internal or external locus of control?
internal
When it comes to worker turnover, _______ (locus of control) are more satisfied and productive, but tend to quit more if unsatisfied.
internals
Self-esteem =
Degree to which a person likes himself.
People with high self-esteem are typically (3)
better at handling failure ; egotistical and boastful in pressure situations ; often more aggressive and prone to violence.
What is self-monitoring?
Extent to which people try to control the way they present themselves to others
"Chameleon-like" individuals are more likely to _________________ because they are very flexible and deal with different kinds of groups.
get promoted to managerial positions
What is a Type A personality? Type B?
Type A is people that have an intense desire to achieve, extremely competitive and with a strong sense of urgency ;;;; Type B is People that tend to be easygoing and relaxed
How do you identify Type A personalities?
1. They always move, eat and walk fast.
2. They try to do several things at the same
time.
3. They don’t know what to do with their free time.
How do you identify Type B personalities?
1. They don’t have a constant sense of urgency.
2. They don’t need to discuss their achievements or show their superiority
Because Type A personalities work so quickly, they often give up what?
creativity
What is the perception process?
the process by which individuals select, organize and interpret the input from their senses
What are three components that affect the perception process?
The perceiver’s schemas, motivations and mood;;;
The target’s characteristics, ambiguity or social status ;;; The social and cultural context of the process
What is the attribution?
When we try to determine whether a given behavior has an internal or an external cause.
What's the difference between an internal and external cause with respect to attribution?
InternalCause: Behavior is controlled by the individual ;;; External Cause: Situation forces a given behavior
The attribution of an internal or external cause of a behavior is dependent on
distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus
What is consensus with respect to attribution theory?
Consensus relates to whether an employee’s performance is the same as or different from other employees.
What is consistency with respect to attribution theory?
Consistency refers to whether the employee’s behavior is the same in most situations.
What is distinctiveness with respect to attribution theory?
Distinctiveness asks the question, “Does the employee act differently in other situa- tions?”
The process of attribution is biased by which two attributional tendencies?
Fundamental Attribution Bias ;;; Self-Serving Attribution Bias
What is Fundamental Attribution Bias?
Tendency to over-attribute people’s behavior to internal rather than to external causes
What is self-serving Attribution Bias?
Tendency to take credit for successes and avoid blame for failures
What are the shortcuts we use to perceiving with precision? (6)
Selective Perception, Halo Effect, Projection, Similar to me Effect, Contrast Effect, and Stereotyping
What is selective perception?
Selective perception occurs when an individual limits the pro- cessing of external stimuli by selectively interpreting what he or she sees based on beliefs, experience, or attitudes
What is the halo effect?
The halo effect occurs when an individual draws a general impression about another person based on a single characteristic, such as intelligence, so- ciability, or appearance. The perceiver may evaluate the other individual high on many traits because of his or her belief that the individual is high in one trait.
What is the opposite of the halo effect?
The horn effect. whereby a person eval- uates another as low on many traits because of a belief that the individual is low on one trait that is assumed to be critical
What is projection?
Projection is the attribution of one’s own attitudes and beliefs onto others. Projection can mean ascribing to others the negatives that we find inside ourselves, thereby protecting our self-esteem.
What is the similar-to-me effect?
People perceive others who are more like them in a more positive light.
What is the contrast effect?
Contrast effects relate to an individual’s evaluation of another person’s characteristics based on (or affected by) comparisons with other people who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics. If compared to a highly attractive person, a target person of average attractiveness is judged less attractive than he or she would have been if rated on his or her own.
What is stereotyping?
a conventional image applied to whole groups of people, and the treatment of groups according to a fixed set of generalized traits or characteristics. Can have a positive or negative effect.
What is the Peter Principle?
Giving someone a position that he/she cannot handle (e.g. giving someone a promotion based solely on how they perform in their current job)
What are the factors in practice that condition rational decision making in organizations?
Perception of different options ;
Rationality is bounded, and intuition may play a role ; Creativity allows to increase the number of possible alternatives ;
Results are frequently perceived in an asymmetric way ;
Rules of thumb are usually affected by biases ;
Ethical Restrictions
The Asymmetry in Gains and Losses model was proposed by who?
Kahneman & Tversky
What do we learn from the Kahneman & Tversky model?
That you always separate goods news from goods news and combine bad news with bad news. However, If you have very good news and small bad news, you should combine them. If you have very bad news and small good news, you should separate them.
Why are heuristic methods used?
When gathering and processing all the information needed for a decision is too costly, people use “rules of thumb” to approximate such information.
What happens when people use heuristic methods?
Some biases arise, making estimations to systematically deviate in the same way
What are the kinds of heuristic biases? (6)
(1) Representativity (2) Regression to the Mean (3) Availability (4) Anchoring and Adjustment (5) Perception Contrasts (6) Consideration of irrelevant alternatives
What is representativity?
Tendency to predict the likelihood of an event from the extent to which the event is typical of its kind. It may lead to a failure to estimate actual base rates

(someone with red hair and an accent you assume is scottish but it's actually more likely that they're from England based on base rates)
What is regression to the mean bias?
In presence of some randomness, exceptionally good situations may be expected to be followed by worse ones. It means that simple regression to the mean is frequently not taken into account. As a result, punishments may be wrongly considered more effective than positive reinforcements.
What is the availability bias?
Tendency to overestimate the frequency of vivid, extreme, or recent events and causes. (e.g. plane accidents) The problem with this that it can cause errors in subordinate’s performance evaluation and induce distortions in their behavior
What is the anchoring and adjustment bias?
Decisions or estimations how big an amount is or should be are usually made by making adjustments from some initial amount. The problem is that adjusting usually is not sufficient and the final result depends too much on the initial amount. (e.g. Overestimate the probability of success when it depends on the combination of many likely events.)
What are perception contrasts and whose law is it?
Ability to appreciate a change in an amount is proportional to the size of such amount. (Weber-Fechner law)
The same price decrease in a low value product seems more remarkable than the same decrease in a high value product.
What is the consideration of irrelevant alternatives bias?
The presence of irrelevant alternatives, in an election of completely dominated options, should not affect the final outcome. In practice, it favors the dominating option. It also generates incentives to manipulate actions. People will select from options remaining after the "phantom" has eliminated other options and will not return back to the full amount of options.
Work values refer to
“personal convictions about what outcomes one should expect from work and how one should behave at work”
Work values are __________ ideas as to what is "good" and "bad". They are basic to understand ______ and _______. They have an influence over ________. They may distort _________ and objectivity in decision-making.
pre-established ; attitudes and motivations ; perception ; rationality
Who classified values ?
Rokeach and Repertoire (RVR)
What are the two kinds of values they proposed?
Terminal values (a person's life objective) and instrumental values (the means that a person is prepared to get their terminal values)
RVR is typically different for different kinds of _______.
occupations
_______seem to be more focused on self-esteem, feeling of achievement and honesty
_______ usually put a higher stress on familiar security and responsibility
_______ affects especially terminal values and different cohorts have a different set of values
executives ; unionized workers ; age
What are cohort differences?
Recent studies on work-related values that create differences among people working together
What are the main values of each cohort:
veterans ; boomers ; Generation X ; Nexters
Veterans: Comfortable life, security, firm loyalty, hard work ;;
Boomers: Quality of life, ambition, career loyalty ;;
Generation X: Balance job-private life, team work, personal relations loyalty ;;
Nexters: Job satisfaction, self-loyalty
What are work attitudes?
collections of feelings, beliefs and thoughts about how to behave in one’s organization
The cognitive component of work attitudes condition the _______ component and that component determines the _______ component.
affective ;; behavioral
What is each component and what is each affected by?
Cognitive, affective, behavioral
Cognitive: What a worker thinks to be true. Is affected by values.
Affective: How a worker feels. Is essential of attitude.
Behavioral: What a worker thinks about how to behave. Most relevant part for OB.
What is job satisfaction? Job participation?
Job satisfaction is the general attitude of individuals toward their current jobs
• Job participation is the degree to which people get actively involved in their jobs and consider performance important for their self-esteem
HIgher job participation is typically associated with what?
Lower absenteeism and turnover
What is commitment to the organization and what is it a usually good predictor of?
the degree to which workers accept the organization and its goals. It's usually a good predictor of satisfaction
What is the relationship between job satisfaction and pay?
There is more variation in lower paying jobs than there is in higher paying jobs. But that means that some lower paying jobs have a much higher level of satisfaction.
What is cognitive dissonance?
a term used for the incompatibility between attitudes, values and behaviors
The desire to eliminate cognitive dissonance depends on the ________ of the incompatible elements, and the room for ________ and ________.
importance ; intervention ; rewards
What is self-perception theory?
People decide on their own attitudes and feelings from watching themselves behave in various situations (e.g. I've been doing this for 10 years, I must like it)
Which relationship is stronger: attitude to behavior or behavior to attitude?
Behavior to attitude
What is motivation?
Motivation is the set of processes that arouse, direct and maintain human behavior toward attaining a goal
What does "needs" theory do with respect to motivation? Which researchers are associated with it?
Determines (1) What needs may induce a given behavior? (2) What rewards are valuable to satisfy them? (3) Do they follow a constant pattern? ;; Associated with needs theory are Maslow, Alderfer, McClelland, Herzberg,
Who proposed a hierarchy of needs?
Maslow
What is the order of Maslow's needs and what does he say about the order? What does he say about needs in general?
(actually lays out the other way, but listed below from lowest to highest)
1. Physiological
2. Safety and Security
3. Belonging
4. Self-Esteem
5. Self-Actualization

;;;Maslow says that lower order needs must be satisfied before higher order needs

;;;Maslow says that needs not met will give a person a motivation which will determine their behavior
Whose theory collapses the maslow hierarchy into three
fundamental needs?
Alderfer
What are Alderfer's 3 fundamental needs?
existence, relatedness, and growth
What are 2 important features about Alderfer's 3 fundamental needs?
(1) some needs may co-exist
(2) Frustration in satisfying higher (growth) needs may result in motivation to satisfy lower level (relatedness) needs
What are existence needs?
concerned with sustaining human existence and survival, and cover physiological and safety needs of a material nature
What are relatedness needs?
Concerned with relationships to the social environment, and cover love or belonging, affiliation and meaningful interpersonal relationships of a safety or esteem nature.
What are growth needs?
Concerned with the development of potential, and cover self-esteem and self-actualization.
Who focused on higher-order needs that drive the behavior of most workers in developed countries?
McClelland
What are McClelland's proposed higher-order needs?
Need for Achievement: Need to accomplish and show competence or mastery
• Need for affiliation is a need for love, belonging and relatedness
• Need for power reflects a need for control over one’s own work or
even the work of others.
The intensity of these needs affects ______ and can be "learned" in training sessions.
performance
Who investigated how a job's content (in terms of needs) affects personal motivation?
Herzberg
What were Herzberg's 2 factors of job content that affected personal motivation?
Hygiene factors and motivator factors
What are hygiene factors?
prevent dissatisfaction  Related to satisfaction of lower-level needs  Conditioned by job environment
What are motivator factors?
promote effort and satisfaction  Related to a job’s potential to cover highest-order needs
 Can only have an effect once hygiene factors are ensured
What is equity theory?
states that people compare their effort (input) and the results (output) they obtain to that of “others”
Ways the employees react to any perceived inequities include the following:
1. Change inputs
2. Try to change results
3. Change self-perception
4. Change perception of others
5. Choose different references
6. Quit
What is Expectancy Theory? And whose theory is it?
Vroom's theory that motivation is a process of directed choices among alternative forms of voluntary activity or behavior. In his view, most behaviors are under voluntary control of an individual and are thus motivated. Motivation only happens, then, when employees feel able to change their behavior, employees feel confident that a change in their behavior will produce a reward, and they value the reward sufficiently to justify the change in behavior. As such, there is a link between effort, performance, and reward. People expect that a certain level of effort will give them a certain performance level and that performance level will be instrumental in giving them a certain reward, which has a subjective value.
What does the goal-setting theory for motivation say?
People are typically more motivated when they are required to meet specific goals
People are typically more motivated when they are required to meet specific goals especially when
(1) They believe in the usefulness of the goal (acceptation) (2) The assigned objectives are challenging but realistic
(3) Achievement can be measured and there is some clear way to reach it
Why is goal-setting a powerful motivator?
 It focus employee’s attention and helps him to self-control  It helps especially to sustain effort levels an fosters creativity
What is an acknowledgement program?
a program that sets up mechanisms (prizes, etc.) that express the organization’s esteem for a well-done job (ex: employee of the month, delivery of diplomas)
The acknowledgement program is consistent with ______ theory. The main advantage of it is that is a relatively _____ practice. The drawback is that is cannot be ________.
expectancy theory ;; cheap ;; a substitute for money
Pay per performance:
-provides incentives to put in____ and attracts ____ workers
- makes the wage to be seen as a compensation for _______ rather than a worker's right
- may help some firms to survive by _________ in recessive periods
- it may impose ______ risk over the more risk-averse party (worker) and it may substitute intrinsic _______.
effort ;; higher-quality ;; for the work work done ;; reducing labor costs ;; higher ;; motivation
What is the difference between piece rate and bonus for pay for performance?
Piece rate: paying an specific amount for each unit produced (typically complements a fixed wage) whereas Bonus are fixed amounts associated to specific goals (especially to managers...typical of goal setting)
What are profit sharing plans? What is another option to profit sharing that is thought to offer better incentives for long-term decision making
profit-sharing plans ;; stock options
When are direct productivity linked incentive mechanisms used?
when measurement is not a problem, as they involve lower risk for employees