Managerial Exam 1

Question 1

Organizational Behavior as a field

Answer 1

Organizational behavior is
a social science where researchers
try to understand how people and organizations operate to
help them become more efficient, effective, purposeful,
healthy, sustainable, etc

Question 2

Why OB matters

Answer 2

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Question 3

Job Performance (Task performance, Organizational Citizenship, Counterproductive Behavior)

Answer 3

Task performance - The behaviors directly involved in transforming organizational resources into organizational products or services
(i.e. the behaviors included in different job descriptions)

Organizational Citizenship - Voluntary activities that may or may not be rewarded but that contribute to the
organization by improving the quality of the setting where work occurs

Counterproductive Behavior- Employee behaviors that intentionally hinder organizational goal accomplishment

Question 4

How companies manage performance

Answer 4

Management By Objectives (MBO):
Performance evaluation system that evaluates people on
whether or not they have met pre‐established goals

Behavior Anchored Rating Scales (BARS):
BARS look at job behaviors directly
 Critical incidents are used to develop evaluation tool that contains behavioral
descriptions of good and poor performance (chart of data)

360‐degree feedback: Performance evaluation system that
includes performance information from
anyone who has firsthand experience with an employee
 including subordinates, peers, and customers

Question 5

Organizational commitment (Affective, Continuous, Normative)

Answer 5

OC: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization
Affective: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member
of an organization because of an emotional attachment
to, or involvement in that organization
Continuous: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member
of an organization because of an awareness of the costs
associated with leaving
Normative: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member
of an organization because of a feeling of obligation

Question 6

Responses to negative events

Answer 6

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Question 7

Personality and where it comes from

Answer 7

Nature: Is our personality hard-wired into us genetically
Nurture: Is our personality something that we develop as a function of our surroundings?

Personality is influenced by BOTH!
It is difficult to tease apart the impact of nature and nurture on personality
The effects of nature and nurture act in combination

Question 8

Taxonomies of personality (Type A/B, MBTI, Big 5)

Answer 8

Big 5 (OCEAN): Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
There are 1,710
adjectives to describe
personality.
 Most of these
adjectives can be
categorized along these
five dimensions.

Type A vs. Type B: A is highly competitive, works fast, strong desire to succeed, likes control, prone to suffer stress. B is non-competitive, works more slowly, lacks desire to succeed, does not enjoy control, less prone to stress

Myers Briggs Type Indicator: Combination of 4 traits out of Introverted/Extroverted, Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling, Judging or Perceiving (ex. ISTJ)

Question 9

Perception

Answer 9

A mental process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment
Why perception matters: People’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself
Perception is what’s behaviorally important

Question 10

Attribution Theory

Answer 10

• when individuals observe behavior, they attempt to determine if it was caused by internal or external factors

Internal attribution:
 Under the personal control of the individual
 Blame is on the individual: “It’s their fault!”

External attribution:
Outside causes impacted the behavior
 Blame is not on the individual: “It’s not their fault!”
 There must have been some other reason!

Question 11

Perception biases and errors

Answer 11

Contrast Effects:
 Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that are affected by comparisons with other people who differ on those characteristics

Projection bias:
The faulty perception by decision makers that others think, feel, and
act the same way as the individual.
 Assumes that everyone’s criteria will be just like theirs and that everyone will
behave or react to a decision just as they would.

Stereotyping:
Judging someone on the basis of your perception of the group to
which that person belongs
 Older workers can’t learn new skills.
 Men aren’t interested in child care.

Question 12

Decision making

Answer 12

the process of generating and choosing from a set of
alternatives (to solve a problem) or Choosing between 2 or more alternatives

Question 13

Decision making models

Answer 13

Perfect World Model: The rational decision‐making model describes a series of steps that decision
makers should consider if their goal is to maximize the quality of their outcomes.

Rational Model:
Assumptions
 1. Problem clarity ‐ the problem is clear and unambiguous
 2. Known options ‐ the decision‐maker can identify all relevant criteria and
viable alternatives.
 3. Clear preferences ‐ the criteria and alternatives can be ranked and weighted
 4. Constant preferences ‐ specific decision criteria are constant and the
weights assigned to them are stable over time
 5. No time or cost constraints ‐ full information is available because there are no
time or cost constraints
 6. Maximum payoff – there is a best alternative that will yield the highest
perceived value

Real World Model:
- We intentionally construct simplified models that extract essential features
of the problem without capturing all of the potential complexity. We
acknowledge that we cannot formulate and solve complex problems with full
rationality, therefore we look for and accept satisfactory, informed decisions.

Question 14

Decision making biases: Anchoring effect

Answer 14

The tendency to rely too heavily on one piece of information (often the first) when making decisions even when the anchor might be unreliable or irrelevant

Question 15

Decision making biases: Framing effect

Answer 15

The tendency to make different decisions based
on how a question or situation is phrased.

Question 16

Decision making biases: Representativeness effect

Answer 16

The tendency to assess the likelihood of an event/behavior by comparing it
to a similar event/behavior and assuming they will be similar
 The mistake of believing that two similar people, things, or events are more
closely correlated than they actually are

Question 17

Decision making biases: Contrast effect

Answer 17

The tendency to mentally upgrade or downgrade an object when
comparing it to a contrasting object
 In an interview process, is it better to go first or last?

Question 18

Decision making biases: Recency effect

Answer 18

The tendency to weigh recent events more
than earlier events

Question 19

Decision making biases: Ratio effect

Answer 19

The tendency to judge the likelihood of an
unlikely event as lower when the probability
is presented in the form of a ratio of smaller
rather than larger numbers

Question 20

Different ways we experience emotions (affect, emotion/feelings, moods)

Answer 20

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Question 21

Affective Events Theory

Answer 21

• Emotions are negative or positive responses to work events
   Personality & mood determine the intensity of the emotional
  response
   Emotions influence a broad range of performance and
  satisfaction variables

Question 22

Emotional labor

Answer 22

the effort, planning, and control needed to express
organizationally desired emotion during interpersonal transactions

Question 23

Emotional contagion

Answer 23

People are hard‐wired to pick up
emotional signals from others
 People “catch” the emotions of
others
 This has a strong impact on
behavior

Question 24

Stress

Answer 24

A psychological response to demands where there is something
at stake and where coping with the demands taxes or exceeds a
person’s capacity or resources

Question 25

Job satisfaction and dissatisfaction

Answer 25

Observational Behavior view: A “good feeling” resulting from a positive appraisal of your job itself
and/or your job experiences
 It is based on both affect (how you feel about your job) AND cognition
(what you think about your job)

Sources of dissatisfaction/satisfaction:
- Physical Environment
 Social Environment
 Personal Dispositions
 Organizational Tasks
 Organizational Roles
 Compensation

Question 26

***Motivation (what is it and why is it important)

Answer 26

The processes (int and ext) that initiate work-related effort and account for an employee’s direction, intensity, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal

Why it is important:

Question 27

Content theories of motivation

Answer 27

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory, Herzberg’s Two‐Factor Theory, Theory X & Theory Y, McClelland’s Theory of Needs, Compensation as a motivator

Similarities: They all believe that workers have needs and when these needs are not met,
the unmet needs decrease motivation.
 They suggest specific things that management can do to help their
employees become self‐actualized.
 They believe that there is a reason for human specific behavior.
 They also suggest differences in humans in terms of need. Different things
motivate different people.

Question 28

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory

Answer 28

Motivation is a function of five
basic needs.
 Human needs emerge in a
predictable stair‐step fashion
 People are motivated by their
lowest unsatisfied need.

Assumptions
 Only unsatisfied needs can influence behavior, satisfied needs
do not act as motivators.
 Needs are arranged in an order of importance or hierarchy
from the basic physiological to the complex self‐actualization
needs.
 An individual’s need at any level on the hierarchy emerges only
when the lower needs are reasonably satisfied.

Question 29

Theory X & Theory Y

Answer 29

X: - Dislike their work.
- Avoid responsibility and need constant direction.
- Have to be controlled, forced and threatened to deliver work.
- Need to be supervised at every step.
- Have no incentive to work or ambition, and therefore need to be enticed by rewards to achieve goals.

Y: - Happy to work on their own initiative.
- More involved in decision making.
- Self-motivated to complete their tasks.
- Enjoy taking ownership of their work.
- Seek and accept responsibility, and need little direction.
- View work as fulfillling and challenging.
- Solve problems creatively and imaginatively.

Question 30

Herzberg’s Two‐Factor Theory

Answer 30

Job characteristics that satisfy/motivate are different from job characteristics
that dissatisfy/demotivate
 Motivators – Intrinsic factors that increase satisfaction
 Work itself, promotion opportunities, personal growth opportunities, recognition,
responsibility, achievement
 Hygiene factors – Extrinsic factors that decrease dissatisfaction
 Pay, quality of supervision, company policies, physical working conditions, job security

Question 31

McClelland’s Theory of Needs

Answer 31

Acquired Needs Theory is based on a belief that our needs are
shaped over time and formed by our experiences and cultural
background. McClelland classified needs into three main categories:
* Need for achievement (nACH)
* Need for affiliation (nAFF)
* Need for power (nPOW)
McClelland theorized that the degree to which particular needs
motivate varies tremendously from person to person, with some
people being motivated primarily by achievement and others by
power or affiliation.

Question 32

Compensation as a motivator

Answer 32

 “Employees earning salaries in the top half of our data range reported similar levels
of job satisfaction to those employees earning salaries in the bottom‐half of our data
range” (Judge et al, 2010, p.162)
 meta‐analysis found less than a 2% overlap between pay and job satisfaction
 Do higher salaries create higher levels of motivation?
 “strategies that focus primarily on the use of extrinsic rewards do, indeed, run a
serious risk of diminishing rather than promoting intrinsic motivation”

Question 33

Contemporary theories of motivation

Answer 33

• Contingencies of Reinforcement
   Job Characteristics Theory
   Goal‐Setting Theory
   Expectancy Theory
   Equity Theory

Question 34

• Contingencies of Reinforcement

Answer 34

Managers/organizations can choose to add or remove consequences that
reinforce behavioral outcomes
 There are 4 total approaches.
 2 are intended to promote desired employee behaviors.
 2 are intended to decrease unwanted employee behaviors.

Question 35

Job Characteristics Theory

Answer 35

Job Characteristics Model (JCM) (a.k.a. Job Characteristics Theory)
 The way different elements in a job are organized (job design)
impacts motivation, satisfaction, and performance.

5 core characteristics:
skill variety, task identity, task significance, task autonomy, feedback

3 critical psychological states: meaningfulness of work, responsibility of outcomes, knowledge of results

Question 36

Goal‐Setting Theory

Answer 36

Goals
 defined as the objective or aim of an action and typically refer to attaining a
specific standard or proficiency, often within a limited time
 primary drivers of the intensity and persistence of effort
 tell employees what needs to be done and how much effort is needed
 Specific & difficult goals  higher performance than without goals

Question 37

**Expectancy Theory

Answer 37

Effort -> Performance -> Outcome

Victor Vroom at the Yale School of Management was the first to put forward the Expectancy Theory (1964) defined as behavior motivated by consequences or anticipated results. He postulated that you make a decision to behave in a specific way based on what you think will result from the executed behavior. An example of this is a person who chooses to work harder because they think the effort expended will, subsequently, be rewarded.

Question 38

Equity Theory

Answer 38

• acknowledges that motivation does not just depend on your own
  beliefs and circumstances but also on what happens to other people.
   Key Components:
   Beliefs about fairness of outcomes
   Comparisons with others based on a simple ratio: