Understanding Individual Behavior Flashcards
What is the focus of Organizational Behavior?
Individual behavior
-Attitudes, learning, motivation, and perception
Group behavior
-Norms, roles, team building, leadership, etc.
Organizational Aspect
-Structure, culture, and human resource policies and practices
Define: Organizational Behavior
The actions of people at work
Name the six important employee behaviors.
Employee Productivity
-A performance measure of both efficiency and effectiveness
Absenteeism
-The failure to report to work when expected
Turnover
-The voluntary and involuntary
permanent withdrawal from
an organization
Organizational Citizenship
Behavior
-Discretionary behavior that is not a part of an employee’s formal job requirements, but which promotes the effective functioning of the organization
Job Satisfaction
-The individual’s general attitude toward his or her job
Workplace Misbehavior
-Any intentional employee behavior that has negative consequences for the organization or individuals within the organization.
What are the goals of OB?
To explain, predict, and influence behavior.
Components of an Attitude
Cognitive component: the beliefs, opinions, knowledge, or information held by a person.
Affective component: the emotional or feeling part of an attitude.
Behavioral component: the intention to behave in a certain way.
Define: Job Involvement
The degree to which an employee identifies with his or her job, actively participates in it, and considers his or her performance to be important to his or her self-worth.
Define: Organizational Commitment
Is the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization.
*Lower rates of turnover and absenteeism
Define: Perceived Organizational Support
Is the general belief of employees that their organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being.
Define: Employee Engagement
When employees are connected to, satisfied with, and enthusiastic about their jobs.
Define: Cognitive Dissonance
Any incompatibility or inconsistency between attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.
How hard we’ll try to reduce dissonance is determined by:
The [important] of the factors creating the dissonance
The degree of [influence] the individual believes he or she has over those factors
[Rewards] available to compensate for the dissonance
MBTI classification
Social interaction: Extrovert or Introvert (E or I)
Preference for gathering data: Sensing or Intuitive (S or N)
Preference for decision making: Feeling or Thinking (F or T)
Style of decision making: Perceptive or Judgmental (P or J)
The Big-Five Model
Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Emotional Stability Openness to Experience
Additional Personality Insights
Locus of Control
Machiavellian
-pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and seeks to gain and manipulate power; ends can justify means.
Self-Esteem
Self Monitoring
Risk Taking
Proactive Personality
-Individuals who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere
Resilience
-Ability to overcome challenges
Define: Emotional Intelligence
The ability to notice and to manage emotional cues and information.
Hollands Personality-Job Fit Theory
Helps in understanding employee behavior(s). By understanding others’ behavior(s), can work better with them
Types of personalities based on the Holland Personality-Job Fit
Realistic
Investigative
Social
Conventional
-Perfers rule-regulated orderly, and unambiguous activities
Enterprising
-Prefers verbal activities
Artistic
Define: Perception
A process by which individuals give meaning (reality) to their environment by organizing and interpreting their sensory impressions.
Define: Attribution Theory
How the actions of individuals are perceived by others depends on what meaning (causation) we attribute to a given behavior.
Internally caused behavior: under the individual’s control
Externally caused behavior: due to outside factors
Source of behaviors:
Distinctiveness: different behaviors in different situations
Consensus: behaviors similar to others in same situation
Consistency: regularity of the same behavior over time
Define: Fundamental attribution error
The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and to overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors.
Define: Self Serving Bias
The tendency of individuals to attribute their successes to internal factors while blaming personal failures on external factors.
Shortcuts used in judging others
Assumed Similarity
Assuming that others are more like us than they actually are.
Stereotyping
Judging someone on the basis of our perception of a group he or she is a part of.
Halo Effect
Forming a general impression of a person on the basis of a single characteristic of that person.
Define: Operant Conditioning
The theory that behavior is a function of its consequences and is learned through experience.
