[notes] Organizational Behavior (raw)

These are my (un-revised) notes from the Organizational Behavior class at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The text for the class was called Organizational Behavior by Stephen Robbins and Timothy Judge. I had the 15th edition. Hopefully I’ll come back to these notes sometime in the future, and when I do I’ll clean them up.

1. What is Organizational Behavior? #

Managers get things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals.

Management Functions

• planning => defining an organization’s goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing a comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate activities
• organizing => designing an organization’s structure
• leading => direct and coordinate those people
• controlling => monitoring, comparing, and potential correcting

Minztberg’s Managerial Roles

• Interpersonal Roles: figurehead, leader, liaison
• Informational Roles: monitor, disseminator, spokesperson
• Decisional Roles: entrepreneur, disturbance handlers, resource allocators, negotiator

Management Skills

• Technical skills => the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise
• Human skills => understand, communicate with, motivate, and support other people, both individually and in groups
• Conceptual skills => understand, communicate with, motivate, and support other people, both individually and in groups

Fred Luthans’ Managerial Activities

1. Traditional management. Decision making, planning, and controlling
2. Communication. Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork
   1. Human resource management. Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training
   2. Networking. Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders
   3. successful managers (with upward mobility) do the most networking
   4. efficient managers (max output) do the most communication

“Organizational behavior (often abbreviated OB) is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness.”

“Evidence-based management (EBM) complements systematic study by basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence.”

Disciplines That Contribute to the OB Field

• Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Sociology
• Anthropology

“Because people are different, we need to look at OB in a contingency framework, using situational variables to explain cause-and-effect relationships.”

OB is good for:

Responding to Globalization

• Increased Foreign Assignments
• Working with People from Different Cultures
• Overseeing Movement of Jobs to Countries with Low-Cost Labor Managing Workforce Diversity
• “Whereas globalization focuses on differences among people from different countries, workforce diversity addresses differences among people within given countries.” Improving Customer Service Stimulating Innovation and Change Coping with “Temporariness"
• “Globalization, expanded capacity, and advances in technology have required organizations to be fast and flexible if they are to survive. The result is that most managers and employees today work in a climate best characterized as ‘temporary.’” Working in Networked Organizations Helping Employees Balance Work–Life Conflicts Creating a Positive Work Environment
• positive organizational scholarship => how organizations develop human strengths, foster vitality and resilience, and unlock potential Improving Ethical Behavior

A Basic OB Model

• Inputs -> Processes -> Outcomes -> Inputs …
• Inputs are the variables like personality, group structure, and organizational culture that lead to processes.
• Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes.
• inputs are like nouns, processes are like verbs
• Outcomes are the key variables that you want to explain or predict, and that are affected by some other variables.
  • Attitudes and Stress
  • Task Performance
  • Citizenship Behavior => discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job requirements
  • Withdrawal Behavior => behavior that in some way is below task requirements (“In Sweden, an average of 10 percent of the country’s workforce is on sick leave at any given time.”)
  • Group Cohesion => the extent to which members of a group support and validate one another at work
  • Group functioning => the quantity and quality of a group’s work output
  • Productivity => requires both effectiveness and efficiency
  • Survival => organization is able to exist and grow over the long term

5. Personality and Values #

[!!! top of pg 132 has a good source for our paper]

Personality => Enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior.

• Heredity (physical stature, facial attractiveness)

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

• Extraverted (E) versus Introverted (I). Extraverted individuals are outgoing, sociable, and assertive. Introverts are quiet and shy.
• Sensing (S) versus Intuitive (N). Sensing types are practical and prefer routine and order. They focus on details. Intuitives rely on unconscious processes and look at the “big picture.”
• Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F). Thinking types use reason and logic to handle problems. Feeling types rely on their personal values and emotions.
• Judging (J) versus Perceiving (P). Judging types want control and prefer their world to be ordered and structured. Perceiving types are flexible and spontaneous.

The Big Five Personality Model

• Extraversion. The extraversion dimension captures our comfort level with relationships. Extraverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
• Agreeableness. The agreeableness dimension refers to an individual’s propensity to defer to others. Highly agreeable people are cooperative, warm, and trusting. People who score low on agreeableness are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
• Conscientiousness. The conscientiousness dimension is a measure of reliability. A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent. Those who score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
• conscientiousness is most consistently related to job performance
• Emotional stability. The emotional stability dimension—often labeled by its converse, neuroticism—taps a person’s ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with high negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.
• emotional stability is most strongly related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and low stress levels
• Openness to experience. The openness to experience dimension addresses range of interests and fascination with novelty. Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically sensitive. Those at the other end of the category are conventional and find comfort in the familiar.

Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB

• Core Self-Evaluation => Bottom-line conclusions individuals have about their capabilities, competence, and worth as a person.
• Machiavellianism => An individual high in Machiavellianism is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes ends can justify means.
• Narcissism => a person who has a grandiose sense of self-importance, requires excessive admiration, has a sense of entitlement, and is arrogant
• Self-Monitoring => an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors
• Risk Taking
• Proactive Personality => identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs, compared to others who passively react to situations
• Other-orientation => naturally seem to think about other people a lot being concerned about their well-being and feelings

entrepreneurs => want high openness and high conscientiousness, but risk taking doesn’t matter

Values => Basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.

• Values have both content and intensity attributes.
• Rokeach Value Survey
  • terminal values => desirable end-states (e.g. the goals a person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime)
  • instrumental values => preferable modes of behavior, or means of achieving the terminal values

[!!! pg 146 has some definitions for generations]

John Holland’s Personality–Job Fit Theory

• Realistic, Investigative, Social, Conventional, Enterprising, Artistic
• pg 149

Person–Organization Fit

• people are attracted to and selected by organizations that match their values, and they leave organizations that are not compatible with their personalities
• Geert Hofstede analyzing variations among cultures:
  • Power distance => the degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally (high => accepting of large power inequalities)
  • Individualism versus collectivism => the degree to which people prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups
  • Masculinity versus femininity => degree to which the culture favors traditional masculine roles such as achievement, power, and control
  • Uncertainty avoidance => the degree to which people in a country prefer structured over unstructured situations (high => high levels of anxiety in ambiguous situations)
  • Long-term versus short-term orientation => a society’s devotion to traditional values vs accepting change more readily

[!!! millennials are more narcissistic on pg 155]

6 (185-191). Perception #

Perception => a process by which individuals organize and interpret their
sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.

• Individuals base their behavior not on the way their external environment actually is but rather on what they see or believe it to be

Factors That Influence Perception

• personal characteristics of the perceiver
• characteristics of the target
• situational context

Attribution Theory

• internally => under control of individual
• external => forced by situation
• how do we decide which is is?
  • distinctiveness of action (compared to other situations)
  • consensus of action (from other people in similar circumstance)
  • consistency of action (in same scenario at different times)
• self-serving bias => attribute ambiguous information as relatively flattering and accept positive feedback while rejecting negative feedback

Biases:

• Selective Perception => we can’t take in everything so we have to prioritize
• Halo Effect => draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic
• Contrast Effects => judgements influenced by recent events
• Stereotyping => judge someone on the basis of our perception of the group to which he or she belongs
• Overconfidence Bias
• Anchoring bias => a tendency to fixate on initial information and fail to adequately adjust for subsequent information
• Confirmation Bias => bias from selectively gathering information
• Availability Bias => tendency to base judgments on information readily available
• Escalation of Commitment => staying with a decision even when there is clear evidence it’s wrong
• Randomness Error => tendency to believe we can predict the outcome of random events
• Risk Aversion => the tendency to prefer a sure gain of a moderate amount over a riskier outcome, even if the riskier outcome might have a higher expected payoff.
• Hindsight Bias => tendency to believe falsely, after the outcome is known, that we’d have accurately predicted it

Self-fulfilling prophecy (or Pygmalion effect) describe how an individual’s behavior is determined by others’ expectations.

Creative Potential
[!!!??? pg 188 How much creativity is good for society?]

[!!!??? better to max know you know or know you don’t know?]

Self-Concept => An individual’s self-beliefs and self-evaluations

• want: complexity, consistency, clarity
• Complexity: multiple self-views (distinct self-perceived roles or identities)
• Consistency: similar personality and values across multiple selves
• Clarity: clearly and confidently described, internally consistent and stable across time

Self-Concept Processes

• Self-enhancement => Promoting and protecting our positive self-view
• Self-verification => Affirming our existing self-concept
• Self-evaluation => Evaluating ourselves through self-esteem, self-efficacy and locus of control
• Social self (social identities) => Defining ourselves in terms of group membership
  • categorization => categorizing people into distinct groups
  • homogenization => ascribing similar characteristics to people within a group
  • differentiation => assigning more favorable characteristics to your own groups

Johari window

• know you know
• know you don’t know
• don’t know you know
• don’t know you don’t know (dangerous)

3. Attitudes and Job Satisfaction #

Attitudes => Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events.

What Are the Main Components of Attitudes?

• cognitive (evaluative) component => a description of or belief in the way things are
• affective component => emotional or feeling segment of an attitude
• behavioral component => describes an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something

Cognitive Dissonance => any incompatibility an individual might perceive between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes

[!!! Cognitive Dissonance as a way of learning about yourself]

Moderating Variables

• importance
• correspondence to behavior => Specific attitudes tend to predict specific behaviors, whereas general attitudes tend to best predict general behaviors.
• accessibility => Attitudes that our memories can easily access are more likely to predict our behavior.
• direct experience => The attitude–behavior relationship is likely to be much stronger if an attitude refers to something with which we have direct personal experience.

Job Satisfaction => A positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.

• Interesting jobs that provide training, variety, independence, and control
• Enjoyable social context of the workplace
• Interdependence, feedback and social support
• Enjoyable interaction with co-workers outside the workplace

Responses to Job Satisfaction - EVLN model

• Exit => quit
• Voice => complain
• Loyalty => wait for situation to improve
• Neglect => reduce work effort, absenteeism

4. Emotions and Moods #

Affect => A broad range of feelings that people experience.

• expressed in form of emotions or moods Emotions => Intense feelings that are directed at someone or something.
• Physiological, behavioral, and psychological episodes experienced toward an object, person, or event that create a state of readiness
• caused by a specific event
• action oriented in nature
• emotions can be dimensionalized by activation (e.g. level of arousal) and evaluation (e.g. positive/negative) Moods => Feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus.
• tend to have a longer time period than emotions
• cognitive in nature

[!!! pg 101 diagram of classifications of mood along two positive and negative dimensions]

Positivity offset => The tendency of most individuals to experience a mildly positive mood at zero input (when nothing in particular is going on).

Sources of Emotions and Moods

• Personality
• Affect intensity => strength with which individuals experience their emotions
• Stress
• Situational context
• Sleep
• Social activities

“We estimate people to experience more positive emotions than they do.”

• People generally experience more negative emotions when they are by themselves
• People generally experience more negative emotions when they are by themselves

Are Emotions Good?

• traditionally thought no
• modern thought yes
• research shows link between emotion and cognition

Attitudes vs Emotions

• attitudes are judgements towards an object
• emotions are experiences towards an object
• attitudes based on rational logic
• emotions based on awareness of our senses
• attitudes are stable for days or longer
• emotions occur briefly, usually lasting minutes

“Emotions and cognition influence attitudes and behavior”

• (in general there’s an interesting relationship between cognition and emotion, and how both in turn affect behavior)

Emotional Labor => Effort, planning and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions

• higher when job requires:
  • Frequent and long duration display of emotions
  • Displaying a variety of emotions
  • Displaying more intense emotions

Emotional Dissonance => contradiction between emotions people feel and emotions people project

• can be very damaging and lead to burnout
• Surface acting => hiding one’s inner feelings and foregoing emotional expressions in response to display rules
• Deep acting => trying to modify one’s true inner feelings based on display rules

Emotional intelligence (EI) => a person’s ability to (1) perceive emotions in the self and others, (2) understand the meaning of these emotions, and (3) regulate one’s emotions accordingly in a cascading model

Motivation (Chapter 7)

What is Organizational Behavior? #

• how we influence and are influenced by others
• how individual, team, and organizational-level characteristics influence behavior within work settings

Manager

• performs POLC functions
  • Planning => defining goals, establishing strategy, developing plans
  • Organizing => determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how tasks grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made
  • Leading => motivating subordinates, directing others, selecting effective communication channels, resolving conflicts
  • Controlling => monitoring activities to ensure accomplishment as planned, correcting significant deviations
• plays key roles
  • interpersonal roles (e.g. figurehead, liaison)
  • information-processing roles (e.g. monitor, disseminator)
  • decision-making roles (e.g. resource allocator, negotiator)
• through various skills
  • technical skills => the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise
  • human skills => the ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people
    
  • conceptual skills => the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations
• managerial activities
  • traditional management => decision making, planning, and controlling
  • communication => exchanging in routine information and processing paperwork
  • human resource management => motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training
  • networking => socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders
• successful managers spend the most time networking

Workforce diversity

• benefits => understand customer needs
• challenges => conflict, miscommunication, discrimination

Robbins & Judge’s OB Model

• Inputs -> Processes -> Outcomes -> Inputs …
• Inputs
  • Individual =>

Personality #

Situation strength theory => the way personality translates into behavior depends on the strength of the situation (e.g. the degree to which norms, cues, or standards dictate appropriate behavior)

• personality predicts behavior better in weak situations

Trait Activation Theory => some situations, events, or interventions “activate” a trait more than others.

Value Difference Across Cultures

• individualism and collectivism => the degree to which people prefer to act as individuals versus as members of groups
• power distance => the degree to which people accept an unequal distribution of power in society
• uncertainty avoidance => the degree that people tolerate ambiguity (low) or feel threatened by ambiguity (high)
• achievement-nurturing orientation => competitive versus cooperative view of relations with other people

Motivation is the processes that account for an
individual’s initiation (arousal), direction (focus), intensity (level of effort), and persistence (in face of failure/setbacks) of effort toward attaining a goal

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Theory X and Theory Y

• Theory X => assumptions basically negative (dominated by lower order needs)
• Theory Y => assumptions basically positive (dominated by higher order needs)

Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory

1. Motivators
2. Hygiene Factors

McClelland’s Theory of Needs

1. Need for achievement (nAch): drive to excel, to achieve in relation to a set of standards, to strive to succeed.
2. Need for power (nPow): need to make others behave in a way that they would not have behaved otherwise.
3. Need for affiliation (nAfl): desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships.

(MIDTERM)

Individual decision making (Ch. 6, 191-208) #

“Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.”

167 - factors that influence perception

Attribution theory tries to explain the ways in which we judge people differently, depending on the meaning we attribute to a given behavior. It suggests that when we observe an individual’s behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused. That determination, however, depends largely on three factors: (1) distinctiveness, (2) consensus, and (3) consistency.

Internally => under the person’s control
Externally => caused by the situation
Distinctiveness => whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations
Consensus => everyone who faces a similar situation responds in the same way

fundamental attribution error => When we make judgments about the behavior of other people, we tend to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors.

self-serving bias => People also tend to attribute ambiguous information as relatively flattering and accept positive feedback while rejecting negative feedback.

Common Shortcuts in Judging Others #

Because we can’t observe everything going on about us, we engage in selective perception.

halo effect => When we draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic, such as intelligence, sociability, or appearance.

contrast effects => We don’t evaluate a person in isolation. Our reaction is influenced by other persons we have recently encountered.

stereotyping => When we judge someone on the basis of our perception of the group to which he or she belongs.

self-fulfilling prophecy, Pygmalion effect => how an individual’s behavior is determined by others’ expectations.

Decision making occurs as a reaction to a problem. That is, a discrepancy exists between the current state of affairs and some desired state, requiring us to consider alternative courses of action.

Rational Decision-Making Model
1. Define the problem.

1. Identify the decision criteria.
2. Allocate weights to the criteria.
3. Develop the alternatives.
4. Evaluate the alternatives.
5. Select the best alternative.

bounded rationality => many problems don’t have an optimal solution because they are too complicated to fit the rational decision-making model. So people satisfice; they seek solutions that are satisfactory and sufficient.

intuitive decision making => an unconscious process created from distilled experience

Common Biases and Errors in Decision Making #

• Overconfidence Bias => Individuals whose intellectual and interpersonal abilities are weakest are most likely to overestimate their performance and ability.
• anchoring bias is a tendency to fixate on initial information and fail to adequately adjust for subsequent information
• confirmation bias represents a specific case of selective perception: we seek out information that reaffirms our past choices, and we discount information that contradicts them
• availability bias is our tendency to base judgments on information readily available
• Escalation of commitment refers to staying with a decision even when there is clear evidence it’s wrong.
• randomness error => Our tendency to believe we can predict the outcome of random events
• risk aversion => This tendency to prefer a sure thing over a risky outcome
• hindsight bias is the tendency to believe falsely, after the outcome is known, that we’d have accurately predicted it

Foundations of groups (Ch. 9, 276-294) #

We define a group as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives.

social identity theory => we define ourselves with respects to the groups we are a part of

Ingroup favoritism means we see members of our ingroup as better than other people, and people not in our group as all the same.

five-stage group-development model

1. forming stage, is characterized by a great deal of uncertainty about the group’s purpose, structure, and leadership
2. storming stage is one of intragroup conflict over hierarchy of leadership
3. norming stage is complete when the group structure solidifies and the group has assimilated a common set of expectations of what defines correct member behavior
4. performing the task at hand
5. adjourning stage is for wrapping up activities and preparing to disband

punctuated-equilibrium model

• for groups with deadlines
• performance goes from low to high at about half way point

Group Properties: roles, norms, status, size, cohesiveness, diversity

Group Property 1: Roles #

• role => a set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a social unit
• role perception => Our view of how we’re supposed to act in a given situation
• Role expectations => the way others believe you should act in a given context
• role conflict => compliance with one role requirement may make it difficult to comply with another

Group Property 2: Norms #

• norms => acceptable standards of behavior shared by their members that express what they ought and ought not to do under certain circumstances
• Conformity => Considerable evidence (Asch experiments) suggests that groups can place strong pressures on individual members to change their attitudes and behaviors to conform to the group’s standard
• Deviant workplace behavior (also called antisocial behavior or workplace incivility) => voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and, in doing so, threatens the well-being of the organization or its members

Group Property 3: Status #

• Status => a socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others
• High-status people tend to be more assertive group members
• status differences actually inhibit diversity of ideas and creativity in groups, because lower-status members tend to participate less actively in group discussions
• It is important for group members to believe the status hierarchy is equitable

status characteristics theory => status tends to derive from one of three sources:

1. The power a person wields over others.
2. A person’s ability to contribute to a group’s goals.
3. An individual’s personal characteristics.

Group Property 4: Size #

• Smaller groups are faster at completing tasks than larger ones, and individuals perform better in smaller
• in problem solving, large groups consistently get better marks than their smaller counterparts
• social loafing => the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than alone (also social loafing is more likely in individualistic cultures)

Group Property 5: Cohesiveness #

• cohesiveness => the degree to which members are attracted to each other and motivated to stay in the group
• relationship between cohesiveness and productivity depends on the group’s performance-related norms (e.g. makes group members more likely to stick to their performance related norms)

Group Property 6: Diversity #

• diversity => the degree to which members of the group are similar to, or different from, one another
• diverse groups may perform better over time—if they can get over their initial conflicts
• Surface-level diversity—in observable characteristics such as national origin, race, and gender—alerts people to possible deep-level diversity—in underlying attitudes, values, and opinions.

Group decision making (Ch. 9, 294-298) #

Groups versus the Individual #

• Groups generate more complete information and knowledge
• Groups offer increased diversity of views
• Groups lead to increased acceptance of a solution
• Groups typically take more time to reach a solution
• conformity pressures squash any overt disagreement
• group decisions suffer from ambiguous responsibility
• Group decisions are generally more accurate than the decisions of the average individual in a group, but less accurate than the judgments of the most accurate
• Individuals are superior at speedy decision making
• Groups are better at creativity and degree of acceptance

groupthink describes situations in which group pressures for conformity deter the group from critically appraising unusual, minority, or unpopular views

groupshift describes the way group members tend to exaggerate the initial positions they hold when discussing a given set of alternatives and arriving at a solution

• e.g. discussion leads members toward a more extreme view of the position they already held

nominal group technique (for making group decisions)

• basically everybody writes theres ideas down independently, and then everybody votes

Conflict (Ch. 14, 432-443) #

conflict => a process that begins when one party perceives another party has or is about to negatively affect something the first party cares about

traditional view of conflict => all conflict was bad and to be avoided

interactionist view of conflict encourages conflict on the grounds that a harmonious, peaceful, tranquil, and cooperative group is prone to becoming static, apathetic, and unresponsive to needs for change and innovation

functional conflict supports the goals of the group and improves its performance
dysfunctional conflict hinders group performance

managing conflict strategy => focus on minimizing negative effects of conflict

conflict process

1. Potential Opposition or Incompatibility (communication, structure, and personal variables)
2. Cognition and Personalization (recognize/define the conflict)
3. Intentions (decide what you want)
4. Behavior (do things to get what you want)
5. Outcomes (consequences)

(3) five conflict-handling intentions

1. competing/forcing/assertive (assertive and uncooperative)
2. collaborating/problem solving (assertive and cooperative)
3. avoiding (unassertive and uncooperative)
4. accommodating/yielding (unassertive and cooperative)
5. compromising (midrange on both assertiveness and cooperativeness)

(4) conflict management techniques
problem solving, expansion of resources, authoritative command, altering the human variable

Creating effective teams (Ch. 10, 306-320) #

work group => a group that interacts primarily to share information and make decisions to help each member perform within his or her area of responsibility
work team => generates positive synergy through coordinated effort

Problem-Solving Teams => authority to unilaterally implement any of their suggestions

Self-Managed Work Teams => perform highly related or interdependent jobs and take on many of the responsibilities of their former supervisors

Cross-Functional Teams => made up of employees from about the same hierarchical level but different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task

Virtual Teams => use computer technology to unite physically dispersed members and achieve a common goal.

What Factors Determine Whether Teams Are Successful #

• Context: adequate resources, leadership and structure, climate of trust, performance evaluation and reward systems
• Team Composition: abilities of members, personality of members, allocation of roles, diversity of members, size of teams, member preferences, size of teams, member preferences
• Team Processes: member commitment to a common purpose, establishment of specific team goals, team efficacy, shared mental models, a managed level of conflict, and minimized social loafing

personality of members

• teams that rate higher on mean levels of conscientiousness and openness to experience tend to perform better
• the minimum level of team member agreeableness also matters

pg 317 (10-4) Key Roles of Teams

reflexivity => reflect on and adjust their master plan when necessary

Communication (Ch. 11) #

communication includes both the transfer and the understanding of meaning

communication process: (1) the sender, (2) encoding, (3) the message, (4) the channel, (5) decoding, (6) the receiver, (7) noise, and (8) feedback

Formal channels are established by the organization and transmit messages related to the professional activities of members
Other channels are informal channels

In downward communication, important to explain why
Upward communication provides feedback to higher-ups
Lateral communication saves time and facilitates coordination.

Nonverbal Communication:
body language conveys: (1) the extent to which we like another and are interested in his or her views and (2) the perceived status between a sender and receiver

Common Small-Group Networks
Chain => strict hierarchical
Wheel => central figure acts as conduit
All Channel => everyone talks to everyone

Rumors emerge as a response to situations that are important to us, when there is ambiguity, and under conditions that arouse anxiety.

Downsides to Email: Risk of misinterpreting the message, Drawbacks for communicating negative messages, Time-consuming nature, Limited expression of emotions, Privacy concerns

Problems with Communication

• Dealing with Information Overload
• Threats to Information Security

face-to-face scores highest in channel richness

high-context cultures such as China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, people rely heavily on nonverbal and subtle situational cues in communicating with others, and a person’s official status, place in society, and reputation carry considerable weight. What is not said may be more significant than what is said.

low-context cultures rely essentially on spoken and written words to convey meaning; body language and formal titles are secondary

Distortions, ambiguities, and incongruities between verbal and nonverbal messages all increase uncertainty and reduce satisfaction.

Leadership (Ch. 12) #

leadership => the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals

Trait theories of leadership focuses on personal qualities and characteristics.

Leaders who like being around people and are able to assert themselves (extraverted), who are disciplined and able to keep commitments they make (conscientious), and who are creative and flexible (open) do have an apparent advantage when it comes to leadership

Another trait that may indicate effective leadership is emotional intelligence (EI)

“traits do a better job predicting the emergence of leaders and the appearance of leadership than actually distinguishing between effective and ineffective leaders.”

behavioral theories of leadership implied we could train people to be leaders.

• Initiating structure is the extent to which a leader is likely to define and structure his or her role and those of employees in the search for goal attainment.
• Consideration is the extent to which a person’s job relationships are characterized by mutual trust, respect for employees’ ideas, and regard for their feelings.
• Employee-oriented leader is a leader who emphasizes interpersonal relations, takes a personal interest in the needs of employees, and accepts individual differences among members.
• Production-oriented leader emphasized the technical or task aspects of the job, focusing on accomplishing the group’s tasks.

Fiedler contingency model proposes that effective group performance depends on the proper match between the leader’s style and the degree to which the situation gives the leader control.

Defining the Situation

1. Leader–member relations is the degree of confidence, trust, and respect members have in their leader.
2. Task structure is the degree to which the job assignments are procedurized (that is, structured or unstructured).
3. Position power is the degree of influence a leader has over power variables such as hiring, firing, discipline, promotions, and salary increases.

task-oriented leaders perform best in situations of high and low control, while relationship-oriented leaders perform best in moderate control situations.

Situational leadership theory (SLT) focuses on selecting the right leadership style contingent on the extent to which followers are willing and able to accomplish a specific task.

• unable and unwilling => clear and specific directions
• unable and willing => high task orientation
• able and unwilling => supportive and participatory
• able and willing => nothing

Path–Goal Theory

• Directive leadership yields greater satisfaction when tasks are ambiguous or stressful than when they are highly structured and well laid out.
• Supportive leadership results in high performance and satisfaction when employees are performing structured tasks.
• Directive leadership is likely to be perceived as redundant among employees with high ability or considerable experience.

leader-participation model relates leadership behavior and participation in decision making. It’s focuses on how the leader makes decisions.

(now on to contemporary leadership theories)

charismatic leadership theory, followers attribute heroic or extraordinary leadership abilities when they observe certain behaviors (vision, personal risk, sensitive to follower needs, unconventional behavior).

How Charismatic Leaders Influence Followers? With vision

Transactional leaders guide their followers toward established goals by clarifying role and task requirements

Transformational leaders inspire followers to transcend their self-interests for the good of the organization and can have an extraordinary effect on their followers

The best leaders are transactional and transformational.

Characteristics of Transactional and Transformational Leaders (from transaction to transformative)

• laissez-faire (=> does nothing)
• management by exception (passive) (=> intervenes if standards not met)
• management by exception (active) (=> watches for deviations from the norm)
• contingent reward
• individualized consideration
• intellectual stimulation
• inspirational motivation (=> express important purposes in simple ways)
• idealized influence (=> vision and sense of purpose)

servant leadership => leaders that go beyond their own self-interest and focus on opportunities to help followers grow and develop.

attribution theory examines how people try to make sense of cause-and-effect relationships.

attribution theory of leadership says leadership is merely an attribution people make about other individuals

Substitutes for and Neutralizers of Leadership

• Experience and training are among the substitutes that can replace the need for a leader’s support or ability to create structure.
• Organizational characteristics such as explicit formalized goals, rigid rules and procedures, and cohesive work groups can also replace formal leadership, while indifference to organizational rewards can neutralize its effects.