BUSI 2101 Study Notes

Chapter 1 – The Psychological Contract and Commitment

Work Environment and Its Impact

• Everyone would prefer to work in a good working environment

• Since most people spend the majority of their waking hours at work, the quality of the
work experience has a big impact on their lives
• Everyone wants to look forward to going to work n the morning
• The quality of the workplace impacts directly on issues of customer service and
productivity
• Man increase in employee satisfaction at a store resulted in an increase in customer
satisfaction
• High staff turnover is very costly to any enterprise, because of the increased costs
associated with recruiting and training new staff
• Organizations with reputations as good employers also tend to attract high quality staff

Creating A “Great Place to Work”

• Employees insisted that the most important factor that distinguished their workplaces
was a very high level of trust between the employees and the management
• 2 aspects of trust:
- Credibility:
- what employees think about the management’s believability, competence, and
integrity
- if management’s word cannot be taken to be true, trust is impossible
• Things management goes out of its way to be believable by doing these:
- sharing information broadly
- accessibility to employees
- willingness to answer hard questions
- delivering on promises
- showing recognition and appreciation
- demonstrating personal concern
The Knowledge Base

• A positive relationship with employees is a competitive advantage

• The credibility and integrity this requires relates to the psychological contract they
develop
• Psychological Contract is defined as an individual’s beliefs, shaped by the organization,
regarding the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between
individuals and their organization
- this refers to the mutual expectations employees and employers have of each other
- such contracts help to predict both the type of outputs employers will get from
employees as well as the rewards employees will received for their efforts from the
organization
- based on people’s perception that they have been promised a future return for their
contributions, creating an obligation to reciprocate
• The Social Exchange Theory, which argues that people enter into relationships in which
not only economic but also social obligations play a role and that people are most
comfortable when the exchange is balanced
• Psychological contracts differ from employment contracts because they focus on a
dynamic relationship that defines the employee’s psychological involvement with their
employer
• The actions of both parties mutually influence the psychological contract
• Psychological contracts also differ from employment contracts because they reflect each
party’s perception of the expectations involved, which means their interpretations may
not be similar
• Even though expectations may never formally be stated, they do exist, and they have a
tangible impact on the relationship between employee and employer
• Broken psychological contracts occur when someone fails to fill an obligation, either by
reneging on a promise or due to incongruence in how the employee and employer
interpret the contract
• Violations cause less damage to the relationship if employees believe that employers
were unable, rather than simply unwilling, to keep a promise
• Realistic Job Previews (RJP) are a recruitment technique that gives accurate information
about job duties, and especially about the major sources of job satisfaction and
dissatisfaction prior to organizational entry
The Current Psychological Contract

• After WW2, the contract became relatively simple:

- employees are willing to work their way up the corporate ladder slowly in return for
the promise of a sufficiently high promotion in their middle age to allow them to live
comfortable during their retirement years
- this contract was somewhat unbalanced because the company was expected to be
loyal to employees ,while the employees could resign whenever they wished

Employee Commitment

• Scholarly definitions of commitment include these aspects: emotional attachment to the

organization; identification with the organization; involvement in the organization;
strong belief in, and acceptance of, the organization’s goals and values; a willingness to
exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization; and a strong desire to remain in
the organization
• Organizational citizenship behavior refers to “discretionary contributions that are
organizationally related, but are neither explicitly required nor contractually rewarded
by the organization, yet nevertheless contribute to its effective functioning”
• Employees perform better, are more committed, and demonstrate more citizenship
behavior when they have long term relationships with employers, when they work in
teams, and when employers invest in employee careers
• Incivility is defined as low-intensity deviant behavior that violates workplace norms for
mutual respect it may or may not be intended to harm the target
- this is experienced by 20% - 75% of employees
-e.g.: rudeness, sarcasm, public reprimands, refusing extra help
• Commitment is fostered by teamwork that builds important social relationships at work,
challenging jobs that develop employees and allow them to utilize their talents, and
pride in their organization
• 7 values found in organizations:
1. Commitment to self-knowledge and development (continuous learning)
2. Firm belief in decency (fair treatment, equity)
3. Respect for individual differences (celebration of diversity)
4. Spirit of partnership (strong belief in community, shared effort, teamwork,
widespread participation)
5. High priority for health and well-being
6. Appreciation for flexibility and resilience (change is managed well)
7. A passion for products and process (concern for both what is produced and how that
happens, balancing stake holder interests)
External Influences and Changing Expectations

• Labor market conditions and the employment rate influence both employer and
employee behavior
•

Cultural Differences

• In multicultural settings it quickly become apparent that cultures have different views of
psychological contracts, due to their values and ways of processing information
• Cultural differences also influence how employees react to violations, since they have
learned different scripts for handling conflict
• 3 Primary ways that psychological contracts vary internationally:
1. Promises mean different things in different cultures
2. The zone of negotiability refers to which employment conditions are under
negotiation in different countries
3. Group identity influences psychological contracts because the way that people define
“we” and “they” has a critical influence on trust and promise making

The Self Fulfilling Prophecy

• The self-fulfilling prophecy is the phenomenon that occurs when people perform in
accordance with a rater’s expectations of them
• A manager’s expectations for an employee cause the manager to treat the employee
differently; therefore, the employee response in a way that confirms the manager’s
initial expectations
• The Harvard mouse experiment
- teach mouse to run a maze
- 2 groups, 1 were told mouse are bright and the other dull
- different treatment between 2 groups
• New hires who are immediately given challenging jobs are more likely to show high
performance later on in their careers
- these people are referred as “fast trackers” or “high potentials”

A Model for Managing Psychological Contracts – The Pinch Model

• Other people’s expectations are not the same as our own

• The Pinch Model, describes the dynamic quality of psychological contracts and suggests
ways of minimizing the potentially dysfunctional consequences of shifting expectations
 • The Pinch Model:

•
• Pinch model:
- little pinches in a relationship, if ignored it will blow up eventually

• Iceberg:
- 10% visible (explicit)
- 90% not visible (implicit)
- only 10% of contracts and written out

Willing Not Willing

Able Inadvertent Breach
Not Able Disruption
Chapter 3 – Individual and Organizational Learning

The Knowledge Base

• A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring

knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights
• Characteristics of Adult Learning:
1. Psychological Contract of Reciprocity
- a basic building block of human interaction
- relationships that are based on a mutual and equal balance of giving and getting thrive
and grow
2. Experience Based
- motivation for learning comes from problems and opportunities arising from the
learner’s own life experience
3. Personal Application
- apply new knowledge, skills, and attitudes to the solution of the individual’s practical
problems
4. Individualized and Self Direct
- each person brings different learning goals and styles
- learning environments have to be flexible and meet the needs of different students
5. Integrates Learning and Living
- 2 goals:
- 1) learn about one’s own strengths and weaknesses as a learner
- 2) learn the specifics of a particular subject matter

A Model of the Learning Process

• Knowledge is defined as the condition of knowing something through experience

• Key observations about Kolb’s Learning Model:
1. The learning cycle is continuously recurring
2. The direction that learning takes is governed by one’s felt needs and goals
3. Learning styles become highly individual in both direction and process
Identifying your Learning Style Type

• 4 Quadrants:
• Divergent
- opposite strengths of the convergent style
- emphasizes concrete experience and reflective observation
- strengths lies in imaginative ability and awareness of meaning and values
- able to view concrete situations from many perspectives and to organize many
relationships into a meaningful gestalt
- imaginative and feeling oriented
- more towards humanities and liberal arts background
• Assimilation
- abstract conceptualization and reflective observation
- greatest strength lies in inductive reasoning (ability to create theoretical models and
assimilating disparate observations into an integrated explanation)
- important that the theory be logically sound and precise
- more towards basic sciences and mathematics rather than applied sciences
• Convergent
- opposite strengths of diverger style
- relies primarily on dominant learning abilities of abstract conceptualization and active
experimentation
- strength lies in problem solving, decision making, practical application of ideas
- do best when there is a single correct answer or solution ot a question or problem
- controlled in their expression of emotion
- prefer dealing with technical tasks and problems rather than with social and
interpersonal issues
- specialize in physical sciences
• Accommodative
- opposite strengths of assimilation
- emphasize on concrete experience and active experimentation /
- strength lies in doing things, carrying out plans and tasks, getting involved in new
experiences
- opportunity seeking, risk taking, and action
- solve problem in an intuitive trial and error manner, relying on other people for
information rather than on their own analytical ability
- technical or practical fields such as business
Adaptive and Generative Learning

• 2 types of theories:
- espoused theories: we profess to believe (do as I say, not as I do)
- theories in action: actually guide our behavior
• 2 types of learning:
- Single loop leaning: adaptive learning, which is defined as coping approach that
focuses on solving problems and making incremental improvements using the prevailing
mental model
- Double loop learning: generative learning consists of continuous experimentation and
feedback in an ongoing analysis of how organizations define and solve problems
• Some organizations employ parallel learning structures, which are defined as part of the
organization that operates alongside the normal bureaucracy with the purpose of
increasing organizational learning by creating and/or implementing new thoughts and
behaviors
• Parallel learning structures consist of “a steering committee and a number of small
groups with norms and operating procedures that promote a climate conducive to
innovation, learning, and group problem solving” that is not possible within the larger
bureaucracy
Knowledge

• Include facts, information and skills

• Is acquired through experience, education, training, etc
• Is an organizational resource and capability
• Is an outcome of learning
• Managing knowledge is an important:
- managerial and organizational function
- competitive advantage

Learning
• A relatively permanent change in:
- knowledge
- behavior
- skills
- values
- preferences
- understanding
• A process
• Changes in knowledge = learning
• Learning = Change
- an organization that is not learning is not changing

3 Kinds of Learning

• Cognitive – to learn to “know that” – to recall, analyze, synthesize, problem solve, etc
• Psychomotor – to learn “know how” – to learn a new skill, operate a machine, swim,
drive a car, ride a bike, etc
- muscle memory
- requires training
• Affective – to learn to like, fear, etc

Classical Conditioning

• Based on experiments of Ivan Pavlov

• Basic Idea:8
- this creates a conditioned response to an unconditioned stimulus
- making you react in a specific way to something that didn’t make you react that way
before
- eg: the airsoft gun experiment with the sound
Operant Conditioning

• Developed by B.F. Skinner

• Applies to voluntary behavior (different from classical)
• “learner” – involves
• 3 kinds of feed back:
- reinforcement
- punishment
- extinction

Operant Conditioning – Reinforcement

• Using rewards to increase the likelihood of repeating the behavior

• Positive reinforcement – rewarding a behavior with a favorable stimulus
• Negative reinforcement – rewarding a behavior with the removal of an aversive
stimulus

Operant Conditioning – Punishment

• Using punishment to decrease the likelihood of repeating the behavior

• Positive Punishment – punishing a behavior with an aversive stimulus
• Negative Punishment – punishing a behavior with the removal of a favorable stimulus

Operant Conditioning – Extinction

• Doing nothing to decrease the likelihood of repeating the behavior (this includes
stopping to provide the above reinforcements)
• Works the same for ignoring by rewarding or punishing
• Punishment and behavior is in the eye of the beholder

Cognitive Learning

• Cognition – the act or process of knowing

• Manifested by capacity and skills to learn better, or potential nehavioral changes
• Reinforcement could be:
- intrinsic rewards
- “knowledge of results” or “feeling of accomplishment”
- rather than extrinsic rewards
Social Learning

• Learning through the experience and observation of others

• We learn to anticipate consequences once we have observed them happening to others:
- Good consequences = good behavior
- Bad consequences = bad behavior
• Danger: consequences are in the eye of the beholder

Kolb’s Individual Learning Styles

• Everyone learns by going through a 4-step process

• Individuals put greater emphasis on some of the stages (we have stronger and weaker
stages or preferences)
• There are individual differences in learning
• 4 stages:
- Concrete Experience: activist – prefers doing and experiencing
- Reflective Observation: reflector – observes and reflects
- Abstract Conceptualization: theorist – wants to understand underlying reasons,
concepts, relationships
- Active Experimentation: pragmatist – likes to try things to see if they work
• People tend to start at the stage they are best at

What is Organizational Learning?

• A process
• An organization’s capacity to acquire, process, exploit/apply and disseminate knowledge
in order to ensure its success
• Basically: the concept of individual learning applied to the organization as a whole as
opposed to just individuals
- this approach is also one of the most criticized aspects of OL

Levels of Organizational Learning

• Learning levels
- Individual – exploration and development
- Group – sharing of ideas and collaboration
- Organizational – developing and capturing knowledge across groups
- Inter-organizational – learning from competitors and other organizations &
communities of practice
• As a total system – realizing how all of these levels work together to generate
knowledge
Organizational Learning Argyris and Schon (1978)

• Single loop learning: Adaptive Learning – coping

- changing according to existing procedures & strategies
- “inside the box”
• Double loop learning: generative learning – creating
- questioning and possibly altering the governing assumptions, policies, procedures, and
strategies and developing a new one
- “outside the box”
• Triple loop or Deutero learning: learning to learn

2 Types of Organizational Learning

• Exploration:
- search for and experiment with new kinds or forms of organizational activities and
procedures
• Exploitation:
- learn ways to refine and improve existing organizational activities and procedures

Organizational Learning as an Advantage

• All organizations change

• Organizational learning is:
- a type of change
- an approach to embracing (positive) change
- a strategic approach to competitive advantage
• Organizational learning has been identified as a strategic asset
• Knowledge can be the most strategically significant resource of the firm
- difficult to imitate and socially complex
- major determinants of sustained competitive advantage and superior corporate
performance
Learning Styles

• Different learning styles or modes are associated with each stage of this cycle
• People develop preferred modes, or ways of learning
• Effective learners develop some level of proficiency in each style/mode
• The Learning Style Inventory (LSI)
- indicates how different people are stronger at different stages of the cycle
- measures the extent that you prefer one mode of learning

Why are Learning Styles Important?

• They start to teach us about ourselves

• Part of the reflect mindset – gaining self-awareness
• They will help us understand one another’s preferences when working in teams

Accommodating Diverging
- Getting things done - Being imaginative
- Leading - Understanding people
- Taking risks - Recognizing problems
- Initiating - Brainstorming
- Being adaptable; practical - Being open-minded
Converging Assimilating
- Solving problems - Planning
- Making decisions - Creating models
- Reasoning deductively - Defining problems
- Defining problems - Developing theories
- Being logical - Being patient

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Chapter 4 – Decoding Human Behavior and Personality

The Knowledge Base

• Personality can be defined as an individual’s relatively stable characteristic patterns of

thought, emotion, and behavior, and the psychological mechanisms that support and
drive those patterns
• Refers to what a person is cable of/what a person prefers to do

Trait Models

• Traits refer to broad, relatively regular dimensions of individual behavior

• Trait models assume that personality is composed of a relatively stable set of traits or
dimensions
• Although all individuals have these traits, people vary in the degree to which they
exhibit specific dimensions
• 2 popular trait theories:
- The Big 5 Model
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

The Big 5 Model

• Compared to the search for the ultimate traits that define the human disposition
• Comprised of OCEAN dimensions
• Openness to Experience: refers to the extent that people actively seek out new and
varied experiences and the extent to which they are aware of their thoughts, feelings,
and impulses and are able to be attentive to many of them simultaneously
- May be a good selection criteria for international work
• Conscientiousness: people who are conscientious tend to be dependable and
trustworthy and conform to social norms
- Conscientiousness appears to have the strongest relation to overall job performance
across a wide variety of jobs
- Set higher goals for themselves
- Higher performance expectations for other people, greater motivation, more satisfied
in their jobs
• Extroversion: extroversion refers to how outgoing, sociable, and assertive people are.
Extroverts may also be very active and energetic, having many interests and hobbies
 - Negatively related to performance
- Related to performance in a sales job
• Agreeableness: this dimension captures the extent to which people are likeable,
cooperative, and considerate
- Related to performance in jobs where cooperation is necessary
• Neuroticism: neuroticism, also called emotional stability, in the Big 5 approach refers to
the tendency to experience chronic negative emotions such as worry, insecurity, self-
pity, poor self-image, and mood swings
• Big 5 has both merits and limitations
• This model may not apply to all cultures
- other culture may show 6, 7, or 9 dimensions

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

• Based on psychologist Carl Jung’s theory of personality

• 4 Components:
1. Extroversion/Introversion (E/I): refers to how the individual interacts socially.
Extroverts are outgoing and sociable, whereas introverts are shy and prefer to be alone
2. Sensing/Intuiting(S/N): this factor measures how people prefer to collect information.
Those who score toward the sensing end of the dimension prefer to use their 5 senses
to systematically obtain factual information. Intuitive individuals use instinct and
subjective perception
3. Thinking/Feeling (T/F): this dimension captures how people evaluate information.
Thinking types prefer to rely on logic and analysis, whereas feeling types rely more on
their own and other people’s reaction
4. Judging/Perceiving (J/P): refers to how people like to make decisions. Individuals who
score on the judging end of the dimension are planners and like to control the decision
making process. Perceivers are more flexible, spontaneous, and adaptive in their
decision style.
• NBTI scored by combining all 4 pairs of traits into a matrix of 16 personality types

Other Personality Traits

• Self Esteem
- the degree of regard people have for themselves
- more satisfied in their jobs
- tend to be more resistant to influence
• Machiavellianism
- people high in this believes that the ends justify the means and that manipulation is an
 acceptable way to influence other people
- emotionally distinct
• Locus of Control
- beliefs people have about why things happen to them
- internal locus of control: believe that they control their own fate and destiny
- external locus of control: think that luck, chance, or other factors control what
happens to them

Interactionist Models

• Hypothesize that personality is an important factor in determining an individual’s

behavior
• Situational factors can powerfully shape how that individual responds
• 2 models: conditional reasoning approach and cognitive affective processing system

Conditional Reasoning Approach

• Suggests that individuals interpret what happens in their social environment based on
their individual dispositions
• These dispositions are a type of mental map defining our assumptions, motives and how
we frame the world
• These differences result in different behaviors due to different justification systems
• A contingency model (assumes that responses to situations depend on the personality
of the individual faced with the situation)
• Underscores the importance of understanding individual motives and needs
• Does not allow us to fully understand how the same individual might act differently in
similar situations nor how dispositions change over time

Cognitive-Affective Processing System of Personality

• The personality system is comprised of mental representations called cognitive-affective

units (CAUs), which are defined as interpretations of people and situations, goals,
expectancies, memories, and feelings
• Behavior is best predicted from a comprehensive understanding of the person, the
situation and the interaction between the 2
• Individuals react according to if-then relations depending on their interpretation of the
situation
• This model suggests that people interpret situations differently
 • Different cues will activate different patterns of behavior
e.g.: being criticized by your peers or your boss
• In organizations, it is important to identify features of the situations which trigger
patterns of if-then relations and behavior
• This model is relatively comprehensive in its attempt to develop a model of personality
that draws on individual, situational, and cultural influences

Dealing with “Difficult” People

• 73% of managers said that building relationships with people they dislike was their most
worrying and troublesome chore
• What to do when you’re confronted with a “difficult” person?
1. Create a rich picture of the problem person
- remember we tend to think that people cause their own behavior, and we tend to
downplay other causes
- think about: the problem person, yourself and the situation
2. Reframe your goals
- try to think flexibly about what you want to happen
- by framing your goals, you can open up possibilities that you might have ignored
3. Stage the encounter
- schedule a face-to-face meeting to discuss the issues
- acknowledge the person’s values and then describe the problem behavior as you see it
in factual terms
4. Follow up
- set aside time to monitor and rewards progress or take corrective action

Big 5 Personality

Conscientiousness Agreeableness Neuroticism Openness Extroversion

Lazy Empathetic Cynical Sophisticated Confidence
Clumsy Sarcastic Selfish Creative Funny
Stubborn Kind Moody Imaginative Articulate
Dependable Cooperative Emotional Complex Outgoing
Organized Symphatethic Nervous Refined Social
Rreliavle Helpful Insecure Bold
Ambitious Courteous Jealous Assertive
Hardworking Warm Unstable Dominant
Conscientiousness

• Dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking, and persevering

• Strongest influence on performance of the Big 5
• Conscientious individuals prioritize accomplishment striving:
- spend more time on task
- build job knowledge
- goal setting and persistence
- exceed work requirements
• Also predicts other work/non-work outcomes:
- career success, health (eg: mortality)

Agreeableness

• Warm, kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, courteous

• Prioritize communion striving
- seek to gain acceptance in personal relationships
• Focus on “getting along”, not necessarily “getting ahead”
• Beneficial in many positions/roles but can be detrimental in others

Extraversion

• Talkative, sociable passionate, assertive, bold, dominant

• Draw energy from talking to other people, being outside
• Prioritize status striving:
- a strong desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure as means of
expressing personality
• Tend to be high in positive affectivity:
- tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm, excitement,
and elation
• Reports higher level of satisfaction (work, life)

Neuroticism (Emot. Stability)

• Nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, jealous

• Synonymous with negative affectivity:
- tendency to experience unpleasant moods such as hostility, nervousness, and
annoyance
• Associated with a differential exposure to stressors:
- neurotic people more likely to appraise day-to-day situations as stressful
• Associated with a differential reactivity to stressors:
-
Openness to Experience

• Curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, sophisticated

• Valuable in jobs that require high levels of creativity and spontaneity
• Predictive of cross-cultural sensitivity and success in international assignments
• More likely to migrate into artistic and scientific fields

Big 5 Recap

• 5 broad factors of personality

• Different measures of Big 5 (eg: NEO, IPIP)
• Conscientiousness is best predictor of job performance other constructs predictive for
certain jobs
• Big 5 constructs also predict various employee work attitudes, career preferences and
outcomes
• Impact of personality is not without contingencies
- eg: need to consider the situation/the individual’s overall profile

The Forgotten One? Honestly-Humility

• 4 dimensions (Ashton & Lee, 2008):

- sincerity – unwillingness to be manipulative, dishonest
- fairness – unwillingness to cheat, steal, use fraud
- greed avoidance – less concerned with wealth, status
- modesty – acknowledge limits, keep accomplishments in perspective, low self-esteem
• Predicts key aspects of work performance, particularly:
- counterproductive behaviors

Core Self-Evaluation (Positive Self-Concept)

• “Bottom line evaluations that represent one’s appraisal of people, events, and things in
relation to oneself”
• Encompasses 4 traits:
- self esteem
- self efficacy
- locus of control
- emot stability
• Linked to higher job satisfaction and performance
Proactive Personality

• Identifies opportunities, shows initiative takes action, and perseveres to completion

• Creates positive change in the work environment

Social Dominance Orientation

• A preference for hierarchy in a social system and inequality between groups

• Sample items from SDO Scale:
- “some groups of people are inferior to others”
- “to get ahead in life, sometimes it is necessary to step on other groups”
- “inferior groups should stay in their place”
• Associated with:
- right wing authoritarianism
- more prejudiced views
-more aggressive behavior in the workplace and group conflict

The “Dark Triad”

• 3 interrelated traits sharing a component of callousness and manipulative/exploitative

behavior
• linked to destructive workplace behaviors:
- workplace harassment & bullying, theft, white collar crime, etc
• Machiavellianism
- a pragmatic, emotionally distant power-player who believes that the ends justify the
means
- manipulative, deceptive, unethical
• Narcissism
- an arrogant, self-centered, entitled person who needs excessive admiration
• Psychopathy
- prone to deviant behavior partly due to high levels of thrill-seeking, impulsivity, and
selfishness
- tend to display a superficial charm, and lack of emotion and remorsefulness
- “workplace psychopath”

Myers Briggs Type Indicator

• Used to develop understanding of personality type

• 16 possible combinations
• should not be used as a selection test for job indicators
Emotional Intelligence

• The capacity to: “monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate
among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions”
• 4 core dimensions:
- self-awareness: the appraisal and expression of emotions in oneself
- other awareness: the appraisal and recognition of emotion in others
- emotional regulation: being able to recover quickly from emotional experiences
- use of emotions: being able to harness emotion to enhance performance
• Predicts key work/non-work-related outcomes:
- stronger social relationships
- higher well-being/life satisfaction
- higher job satisfaction and performance
- effective leadership
- elevated group performance
• EI predicts these outcomes above and beyond effects of IQ and personality

Interactionist Perspective

• More complex view of relationships between personality and behavior than trait theory
- these relationships contingent on the situation
• Theoretical Models/Frameworks:
- reciprocal determinism
- 3 way influence
• Conditional Reasoning
- people interpret and act on events differently depending on their personality
• Trait Activation
- certain situational cues are needed to evoke the display of personality traits – eg:
proactive personality
Chapter 5 – Individual and Organizational Motivation

How to Change your Boss

• Behavior modification – the power to change (modify) the way your bosses behaves
• 5 steps of positive reinforcement:
1. Understand the purposes of positive reinforcement
2. State the undesired behavior
3. State the desired behavior
4. Create an opportunity for the desired behavior
5. Give verbal praise

Understand the Purposes of Positive Reinforcement

• Means your “tool bag” is smaller than his and at times you have to be very skillful in
using the few tools that you have available
• To change an undesirable behavior to a desirable behavior

State the Undesired Behavior

• Clearly understand what behavior to change

• To linger will change the whole tone of this skill from “positive” to “negative”
• Key to successfully utilizing this procedures lies in accomplishing this step in the shortest
amount of time

State the Desired Behavior

• Specifically state the desired behavior that you want your boss to show
• These become your goals

Create an Opportunity for the Desired Behavior

• Accomplished in 2 ways:
- create an opportunity where your boss will show the desired behavior
- wait for it to occur naturally and then reinforce it
• Talk strictly about the behavior and refrain from discussing personality
• By talking about the observed behavior , you increase the likelihood that he can discuss
it without becoming emotionally involved
 • Let your boss knows how this makes you feel

Give Verbal Praise

• When the desired behavior is shown, giver positive reinforcement

- give it immediately after the desired behavior is shown
- give it every time the desired behavior is shown in order to change the behavior and
have it become second nature to him

The Knowledge Base

• One key factor that affects productivity is motivation

• Motivation – the psychological forces that determine the direction of people’s behavior,
their level of effort, and level of persistence
• Motivation has always been an issue of concern for managers
• Motivation is one of the basic managerial functions
• Misleading and Wrong notions about motivation:
1. There are persons who are not motivated
- this is wrong because every human is motivated
- means that a worker is not motivated to do what the manager wants the worker to do
- channeling and directing human energy toward the activates, tasks, and objectives that
further the organization’s missions
2. Managers “motivate” workers and that motivation is something you do to someone
else
- motivation is an internal state that directs individuals toward certain goals and
objectives
- managers can only create expectations on the part of employee that their motives will
be satisfied by doing the organization’s work and the provide the rewards hat satisfy the
employee’s needs
• Sources of motivation are both intrinsic and extrinsic
• Intrinsic behavior is performed for its own sake
- engage in an activity for the inherent satisfaction and pleasure derived from the
activity (i.e. feelings of achievement, accomplishment, challenge)
- motivation lies inside the person/activity = internally applied
- behavior is an end in itself
• Extrinsic behavior is performed because of the consequences it brings – material or
social rewards or even the avoidance of punishment
- engage in an activity to achieve a separate goal, such as receiving something positive
or avoiding something negative (i/e/ benefits, punishment)
 - motivation lies outside the person/activity = extremely applied
- behavior is a means to an end
• Performance = Ability x Motivation
• The most reliable predictor of job performance and career success is cognitive ability
- this means that intelligence should be a major criterion when we select job candidates

The Person Job Reward Fit

• Stop hiring people whose needs would never be met by this job and develop a hiring
profile more suited to the actual task
• A key step in understanding motivation problems is to identify the factors unique to an
individual that energize, direct, sustain, and stop behavior
• Content theories focus on the specific internal needs that motivate people
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
- McClelland’s need theory

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need

• Physiological needs refer to the basic needs like food, water, and shelter that are
necessary for survival
- salaries and wages provided so employees can live adequately
• Security needs are the need for security, stability, and protection from physical or
emotional harm
- providing pension and health care plans, career paths within the organization, and a
safe work environment
• Social belonging needs reflect the human need for social interaction, friendship,
affection, and love
- permitting interaction with colleagues, work team structures, social and sports
facilities, and parties
• Self-esteem needs is to feel good about oneself and to be respected, appreciated, and
recognized by others
- providing feedback and recognition for high performance and accomplishments,
seeking and respecting employee input, making employees visible to others and
promoting them
• Self-actualization needs is the need people have to realize their full potential
- allow employees to use their skills and talents fully at work
• Also known as the hierarchy of needs, because it stated that the needs are arranged in a
hierarchy
 - physiological → security → social belonging → self-esteem → self-actualization
- lower needs must be satisfied before higher level needs can be addressed
• Not everyone has the same needs, nor are these needs given equal importance in
different cultures

McClelland’s Need Theory

• 3 human motives:
- need for affiliation
- need for power
- need for achievement
• These motives are learned from our parents and culture
• The need for power is defined as the need to influence and lead others and be in control
of one’s environment
- common among middle and upper level managers
- their job is to influence people and organization’s
- 2 faces of the power need:
Positive: socialized power
- influence used for the good of others
- seek to make things better for others
Negative: personalized power
- an unsocialized concern for personal dominance
- impulsive, dictator-like
• The need for affiliation is the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships
- seek relationships involving a high degree of mutual understanding
- 2 faces of affiliation need:
Positive: affiliative interest
- a concern for interpersonal relationships but not at the expense of goal oriented
behavior
- value good relationships and work at maintaining them
- concern for relationships but not at expense of goals
-can still give negative feedback or make tough decisions
Negative: affiliative assurance
- a concern with obtaining assurance about the security and strength of one’s
relationships and avoiding rejection
- seeking approval at all costs
- avoid issues or conflicts that threaten relationships
• The need for achievement is a need to accomplish, goals, excel, and strive continually to
do things better
- want to take personal responsibility for their success or failure
 - like taking calculated risks
- prefer situations they can get immediate, concrete feedback
- task oriented

Job Design

• Job Characteristics Model:

1. Skill variety – the degree to which a a job requires a range of personal competencies
and abilities in carrying out the work
2. Task identity – the degree to which a job requires completion of a “whole” and
identifiable piece of work, that is, doing a good job from beginning to end with a visible
outcome
3. Task significance – the degree to which the job is perceived by the employee as
having a substantial impact on the lives of other people, whether those people are
within or outside of the organization
4. Autonomy – the degree to which the job provides freedom, independence, and
discretion to the employee in scheduling the task and in determining the procedure to
be used tin carrying out the task
5. Job feedback – the degree to which carrying out the job-related tasks provides the
individual with direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her
performance
 • Job rotation programs move people from one job to another periodically to decrease
their boredom and allow them to learn different skills
• Job enlargement policies increase the number of tasks performed by an individual
• Job enrichment methods attempt to change the nature of the job by broadening
responsibilities, giving more autonomy for decision making, creating client systems and
direct feedback systems, and generally enlarging the scope of jobs
• Sociotechnical system interventions attempt to match the necessary technology of the
job with the social needs of the employees
- goal: produce a fit or integration of these 2 components
- e.g.: autonomous work teams
- have the advantages of all the previous design systems plus the added benefit of group
membership
• Self-managed work teams emphasize skill variety, task identity, task significance,
autonomy, job feedback, and the social belonging that comes from group membership
- decide how they will accomplish the goals for which they are responsible and allocate
the necessary tasks
- responsible for planning, scheduling, organizing, directing, controlling, and evaluating
their own work process
• Good redesign and implementation can pay off in higher employee motivation

The Role of Leadership in Fostering Motivation

• Managers and team leaders can affect how employees perceive their environment
• Make sure there is a fit and a direct link between employee needs and rewards
• Leaders and managers must understand how employees are motivated and be sure that
their words and actions support employee motivation
• Process theories attempt to describe how personal factors and environmental factors
interact and influence each other to produce certain kinds of behavior

Goal Setting Theory

• Involves setting a clear objective and ensuring that every participant is aware of what is
expected from him or her, if this objective is to be achieved
• Groups that set goals have higher average performance than those that do not
• Goals provide direction and a sense of how much effort is needed to be successful
• Important lessons:
1. Specific goals increase performance
2. Compared to easy goals, difficult goals that are accepted by employees result in
higher performance
 3. Feedback leads to higher performance than nonfeedback
4. People are more committed to goals that are made public and that they themselves
set
• Goals should be challenging but feasible

Equity Theory

• The equity that people perceive in their situation also influences motivation
• Employees evaluate what they receive from a job (outputs such as pay, bonuses, job
security, promotions, recognition) in relation to what they contribute (inputs such as
time, skills, creativity, effort, etc.)
• Compare their own input-output ratio with:
1. Relevant others
2. System policies and precedents
3. Criteria related to the “self”, such as previous jobs or family commitments
• If there are no negative consequences for low performance, some will not be motivated
to work harder
• High performers who receive nothing more for their extra effort may eventually become
demotivated, unless they are motivated by other factors, such as intrinsic factors or
strong sense of professionalism

Expectancy Theory

• Assumes that motivation is a function of 3 linkages:

1. The effort-performance expectation – if a person makes an effort, it will result in
good performance
2. The performance-outcome expectation – good performances will result in a
particular outcome or reward
3. The valence (value) of the reward to the person
• Ability also influences how much effort is necessary
• Employees differ in their preference for extrinsic or intrinsic rewards

Reinforcement Theory

• This ignores internal motives and focuses instead on learned behavior

• Operant conditioning, the idea that people continue behavior that is rewarded and
suppress behavior that does not lead to desired consequences
 • The main tenets of reinforcement theory are that managers should reinforce desired
behavior and discourage undesirable behavior by negative reinforcement, extinction or
punishment
• Negative reinforce – desired behavior results in punishment
• Positive reinforcement involves giving people positive outcomes when they perform the
desired behavior
• Punishment is defined as administering an undesired or negative consequence in
response to undesired behavior
• Extinction occurs when the reinforcer for an undesired behavior is removed

The Leader Role: The Importance of Words and Actions

• Creating the right vision

- leaders set as vision that is inspiring and motivating
• Ensuring the employees are placed in the right jobs
- ensure that employees are placed in jobs that fir their unique needs and skills
• Setting challenging goals
- establish high standards
- set clear goals and performance expectation, with rewards as promised
• Monitoring and rewarding performance
- ensure that the organization’s reward stated is effective and fair
- reward good performance and punish inadequate performance
• Proactively managing low performers
- if low performance is caused by a lack of skill, they provide training for the employee
- if the reward system is reinforcing the wrong behavior, they change the reward
structure
• Creating a culture that values employees and performance
- show genuine concern about employee’s personal development
- invest in development through training and coaching
• Common demotivators: politics and favoritism, unclear expectations, unproductive
meetings, hypocrisy, constant excessive change, withholding information, excessive
criticism, low quality standards

The Role of the Organization in Fostering Motivation

• Many aspects that influence motivation:

- vision
- mission statement
- culture
 - policies
-HR Practices
• Employees have different needs and those needs can change over the course of their
career
• Some studies indicate that providing extrinsic rewards actually takes the intrinsic
pleasure out of performing a task
• Money is very motivating to some people, but not to everyone
• Not all rewards have to be extrinsic
Does money motivate?

• Yes, it does motivate

• Money is the vehicle by which important needs are satisfied
• Money is tied tour self-esteem/sense of self worth
• Money is a social commodity (affords as status, power, prestige)
• People say/believe money motivates them

Money as a Motivator

• Money must be important to that person (and it isn’t for everyone)

• Money must be perceived as being a direct reward for performance
• Managers must have the discretion to rewards performance with more money

Cautions

• Equity Theory & Social Comparisons

- resentment
- competition
• (In)Justice Perceptions
- reduced motivations
- workplace deviance/aggression
• Distributive Justice: perceived fairness concerning the amount and allocation of
rewards among individuals
• Procedural Justice: perceived fairness concerning the process used to determine the
distribution of rewards
• Interactional Justice: degree to which one perceives that they are treated with respect
and dignity

Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivators

• Extrinsic motivators work well in – structured, routinized, and repetitive tasks

• Intrinsic motivators work well in – unstructured, creative, problem solving tasks
• Functional Fixedness – blocks out abilities to see things in different perspectives
• Cognitive Evaluation Theory: offering extrinsic rewards (e.g. money) for work that was
previously rewarding intrinsically, will decrease the person’s motivation, and in turn,
his/her performance
- reduces sense of control/autonomy
- changes perceived explanation for one’s behavior (“cheapens” the experience)
Leading for Choice Leading for Competence
- Delegate authority - Knowledge/skill building
- Empower/trust employees - Assign challenging tasks
- Provide information employees will need to - Implement high standards
make good choices - Support & mentor employees/ provide
- Instill sense of security (i.e. no punishment) positive feedback
for honest mistakes
Leading for Meaningfulness Leading for Progress
- Communicating organizational - Celebrations
vision/mission - Milestones
- Access to output - Feedback/performance measures
- Consider person-job and/or person-
organization fit
- A non-cynical climate
- “Whole” tasks
Chapter 10 – Group Dynamics and Work Teams

Creating Hot Teams

• On hot teams, work is engaging (people look forward to tomorrow)

• Everyone gets more done on hot teams
• Hot teams trust their leaders
• Jot teams are vital when your big objectives have a high level of “task interdependency”
• Task interdependency measures just how much the actions of any single associate
influence the success of another’s and the team’s overall results

A Prototype for Creating Hot Teams

• Don’t let your group become rule-bound

- process is all about standardizing tasks – highlighting inefficiencies and inconsistencies
to reduce defects and increase reliability and repeatability
- process also helps create boundaries in the workplace so everyone can work together
more easily
• Don’t be mean
- humiliation and manipulation usually produces bad outcomes
- fine line between enough an too much accountability
• 4 Do’s for Hot Teams
- Like your people
- Listen to them
- Make Work Engaging
- Let them Decide

Hot Teams – Impractical or Practical?

• Bob and Doug lumberjack example

- where both work at the same rate
- Doug takes additional 10 min break and Bob has no breaks
- Doug still cuts more trees than Bob
- because Doug spends the 10 min sharpening his ax
What is Team Effectiveness?
1. Output: the productive output of the team
2. Social Processes: the social processes the team uses in carrying out the work enhance
members’ capability of working together interdependently in the future
3. Learning: the group experience contributes positively to the learning and personal well-
being of individual team members

Creating Effective Work Teams

• 4 Questions to ask:
• Is a team appropriate for this decision or task?
- not all decisions or projects should be assigned to a work group
- groups are more likely to be effective when conditions are right
- when tasks are uncertain, complex, large in scale or scope, or require inputs from
multiple sources, groups are likely to be an effective way to accomplish those tasks
- members must have the requisite interaction and task skills and be willing and able to
devote the necessary effort to accomplish the group task
- managers should trust that team members will solve the problem in ways that meet
organizational goals and not just team or personal goals
- teams must be provided with resources and must be given sufficient responsibility and
authority to accomplish their tasks
- group efficacy – a feeling that the team has the capability to successfully accomplish its
task and a shared mental model, which refers to members’ shared, organized
understanding and mental representation of task related and team related knowledge

• How can I most effectively manage the team context?

- a supportive organization context that recognizes and welcomes teamwork; provides
necessary resources such as information, technology, and raw materials; provides the
administrative and human resource infrastructure; and legitimizes team work through
top management support is a significant factor in ensuring team success

• How can I most effectively manage the team members?

- team members need to have the appropriate mix of necessary technical, social, and
team management skills to accomplish their tasks
- collaborative problem: ability to structure the team interaction to achieve the
appropriate amount f participation
- conflict resolution: skill in handling cognitive conflict (conflict about ideas) and
reducing emotional conflict (conflict about personalities, emotions)
- communication: ability to enhance open communication and use active listening
 techniques
- goal setting and performance management: skills in establishing goals and monitoring
and coaching performance
- planning and coordination: skill in coordinating tasks, establishing roles, balancing
workloads across members
• Social loafing – contribute less effort to group projects than when they work alone
• Social identity refers to the perception of members as a “group”, rather than as a set of
unique individuals, and a shared (usually positive) image of the group
•

• How can I most effectively manage the team task and processes?
- groups are not static
- they change and evolve over time

Group Development

• One of the factors that affects behavior is the group’s developmental age
• We act differently in a brand new group than we do in a group that has been functioning
for several years
• Most groups evolve through stages:
• Forming:
- focus on accepting each other and learning more about the group and its purpose
- a period of uncertainty, self-conscientiousness, and superficiality
- by the end, members feel like they belong to the group
• Storming:
- members confront the issues of how much individuality they must relinquish to belong
to the group and who will control the group
- tension, criticism, and confrontation are typical of this stage
- the group becomes polarized, subdivides into cliques, and challenges the leader and
others
- effective leadership involves helping the group focus on a common vision, modeling
constructive conflict management, and legitimizing expressions of individuality that do
not hinder productivity
- reassure members that storming is a normal stage in a group’s development, which
paves the way for later productivity
• Norming:
- members develop shared expectations about group roles and norms
- characterized by collaboration, commitment, increased cohesion, and identification
with the group
- effective leaders help set normas, provide positive feedback on the group’s progress,
 and prevent group think
- groupthink is the tendency for members of a highly cohesive group facing a collective
threat to seek consensus so strongly that they fail to explore alternative courses of
action
• Performing:
- the group focuses its energy on achieving its goals and being productive
- there is increased cohesion, acceptance of individual differences, and mutual support
during this stage
• Adjourning:
- temporary groups disband and focus less on performance and more on closure
- members struggle with holding on (nostalgia) and letting go (looking ahead to the
future)
- effective leaders encourage the group to reflect on, learn from, and celebrate its
achievements

Content and Process

• 2 types of group process: task process and maintenance process

• Task process focuses on how groups accomplish their work, including setting agendas,
figuring out time frames, generating ideas, choosing techniques for making decisions
and solving problems, and testing agreement
• Maintenance process concerns how groups function with regard to meeting group
members’ physiological and relationship needs
• Effective group members pay attention to both group content and process, so they can
intervene when necessary in an appropriate manner
• A failure to address process issues usually prevents a group from reaching its maximum
potential and accomplishing its task in a timely manner

Communication and Decision Making

• Group decisions are notoriously hard to undo

• We can undo the decision only if we reconstruct and understand how we made it and
test whether this method was appropriate or not
• Typical decision making seen in groups:
1. The plop
2. The self-authorized agenda
3. The handclasp
4. The minority decision
5. Majority-minority voting
 6. Polling
7. Consensus seeking
• Group decisions can be facilitated by altering the decision making procedures used by
the team
• Structured discussion principles
- establish guidelines that emphasize analysis
- solicitation of solutions, protection of individuals from destructive criticism
- keeping the discussion problem-centered
- list all solutions before evaluating them
• Second Solution
- require the team to generate at least 2 solutions
- enhance performance quality
• Procedures for generating and protecting alternative viewpoints
- ask group members to assume the perspective of other stakeholders or constituencies
- devil’s advocate ( a person assigned to specifically point out problems with the group
decision and plans)

Group Cohesion

• Group cohesion is the degree to which members are motivated to stay in the group
• Cohesiveness is a double-edged sword for managers because it can either enhance or
impede group performance
• Better at achieving their goals
• Group cohesion can be increased by:|
- small size
- success
- common threat
- exclusivity
- perceived similarity among members
- competition

Task, Maintenance, and Self-Oriented Behavior

• Behavior in the group can be viewed in terms of what is purpose or function seems to
be
• Types of behavior relevant to the group’s fulfillment of its task:
1. Initiating
2. Seeking information or opinions
3. Giving information or opinions
 4. Clarifying and elaborating
5. Summarizing
6. Consensus testing
7. Reality testing
8. Orienting
• Group maintenance roles help create a climate that permits maximum use of member
resources:
1. Gatekeeping
2. Encouraging
3. Harmonizing and compromising
4. Standard setting and testing
5. Using humor
• Both task-oriented behavior and maintenance-oriented behavior are needed for a group
to be effective

Emotional Issues: Causes off Self-Oriented Emotional Behavior

• Underlying emotional issues produce a variety of self-oriented behaviors that interfere

with or are destructive to effective group functioning
1. The problem of identity
2. The problem of control and power
3. The problem of goals
4. The problem of acceptance and intimacy
• Types of emotional behavior that result from tension and from the attempt to resolve
underlying problems:
1. Tender emotions
- love, sympathy, desire to help, need for affiliation with others
- supporting and helping others
- depending on others
- pairing up or affiliating with others
2. Tough emotions
- anger, hostility, self-assertiveness
- fighting with others
- punishing others
- controlling others
- counter dependency
3. Denial of all emotion
- withdrawing from others
- falling back on logic or reason
Group Norms

• A norm is an unwritten, often implicit rule that defines what attitudes and behaviors
characterize a “good” group member versus a “bad” group member or what constitutes
acceptable behavior, attitudes, and feelings
• Norms are the group’s shared beliefs about appropriate behavior, attitudes, and
perceptions concerning matters that are important to the group
• All groups create norms as they develop and mature

Teambuilding

• Most team building efforts encourage members to:

1. Establish their goals and priorities (What should we be working on?)
2. Define the roles that need to be performed (Who is going to do what?)
3. Examine and determine the procedures the team uses or should use (How are we
going to do the work and make decisions?)
4. Examine the team’s interpersonal relationships and norms (How are we going to treat
one another?)
• Common complaints about personality problems in teams often have their root in the
failure to clarify goals, roles, and procedures
Types of Teams in Organizations

• Self-managed teams
- determine how they will accomplish the goals they must achieve and how they will
allocate the necessary tasks
- responsible for an entire product or process
- rated as more effective in terms of productivity, costs, customer service, quality, and
safety than traditionally managed teams
- reduced absenteeism, lower turnover, increased employee motivation
• Virtual teams
- “temporary systems” in which a group of people join for a short-term task and then
disperse to form new and different task groups to tackle other problems
- geographically dispersed and seldom work face-to-face
- virtual teams are teams that work across space, time, and organizational boundaries
with links strengthened by webs of communication technologies
• Multicultural and multinational teams
- multicultural teams have representatives from various ethnic groups but share a
common nationality
- a collection of individuals, small in number, with representatives from more than one
national background among them, who are interdependent and mutually accountable
for accomplishing set of objectives, and how recognize themselves as a team
Teams vs. Groups

• A group is 2 or more people with a common relationship

• A team is “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a
common purpose, performance goals and approach which they hold themselves
mutually accountable
• Key parts:
- interdependent work vs. dependent work
- common goal vs. share goal
• Analogy: caterpillar will eventually turn into a butterfly, but a caterpillar is not a
butterfly
• Teams require a lot of practice, communication, resources to keep everyone on the
same page

When do Groups become Teams?

• Team members share leadership

• Individuals and the team share accountability
• Teams develop its own purpose
• Teams work on problem-solving continuously
• The team’s measure of effectiveness is the team’s outcomes and goals

Are Teams always the Answer?

• Can the work be done better by more than one person?

• Does the work create a common purpose or set of goals for the people in the group that
is more than the sum of individual goals?
• Are the members of the group interdependent

Problem-Solving Teams

• Typically made of 5-12c employees from the same department

• Typically meet for a few hours each week to discuss ways of improving quality,
efficiency and the work environment
• Rarely, however, are these teams given power to implement their ideas
• Example: Lean

Self-Managed Teams

• Typically made up of 10-15 employees

• The employees perform highly related or interdependent jobs and take on many of the
responsibilities of their former managers
 • Fully self-managed teams even select their own members and leader
• Example: Think-tanks
• Unique challenges: no managers

Cross Functional Teams

• Typically made up of employees from about the same hierarchical levels, but from
different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task
• Each individual would be expected to contribute knowledge of his or her field, and ways
to package together the knowledge in a more integrated fashion
• Example: team building an underwater vehicle
• Unique challenges: different terminology

Virtual Teams

• Typically use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in

order to achieve a common goal
• Example: taking an online course
• Unique challenges: different time zones, communication

Role Theory

• The idea that everyone has a different role

• Role Conflict – exists when a individual finds that complying with one role requirement
may make it more difficult to comply with another
• Role Ambiguity – exists when a person is unclear about the expectations of his or her
role
• Role Overload – exists when a person is overwhelmed by the number of things to do in
a certain amount of time
- too many things to do, not enough time

Norms

• Are acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by the group’s
members
• Examples: don’t shout out (ways of communicating), work towards a goal,
- performance
- appearance
- social arrangement
- allocation of resources
• How do norms develop?
- explicit statements made by a group member
 - critical events in the group’s history
- precedence
- carry over behaviors from previous situations
• Why are they enforced?
- facilitates group survival
- increases predictability of group member’s behavior
• - reduces embarrassing interpersonal problems
- allows members to express central values of the group

5 Stage Model

• Forming storming
- Individual: How do I fit in?
- Group: Why are we here?

• Storming
- Individual: What’s my role?
- Group: Who does what?

• Norming
- Individual: What do others expect of me?
- Group: Can we agree on roles?

• Performing
- Individuals: How do I best perform?
- Group: Can we do the job properly?

• Adjourning/Transforming
- Individuals: What is next?
- Groups: How do we disband?
• Team development does not necessarily follow this cycle
• This cycle may not run the whole way, but start from the middle of the cycle
Chapter 13 – Conflict and Negotiations

The Knowledge Base

• The process that begins when one party perceives that the other has negatively affected,
or is about to negatively affect, something that he or she cares about

Sources of Conflict

• Inevitable and comes from several sources

• Conflict is likely to occur anywhere in the organization where there are “joints” a=or
interdependent interfaces between different functions
• Differences in values, interests, personalities, education, culture, perceptions, goals, and
expectations
• Result from deficient information that causes misunderstandings or when there are
power or status differences
• Ambiguity
• Competition over scarce resources in whatever form (recognition, money, offices with
windows)

Functional and Dysfunctional Conflict

• Conflict can play both a positive or negative role in organizational life

• Functional conflict can force us to articulate our views and positions, which usually
results in greater clarification and understanding
• Conflict helps preserve groups when it serves as a safety valve that allows people to
blow off steam and still maintain their relationships
• 2 types of conflict can be beneficial if properly managed:
- task conflict refers to conflict about the work itself such as its substance and goals
- process conflict focuses on how the work gets done
• Both task and process conflict can lead to better performance if employees have the
appropriate resolution skills
• People often feel compelled to take sides and adopt extreme positions at the opposite
poles of an argument, called polarization
• Relationship conflict involves disagreements about interpersonal relations
Levels of Conflict

• Conflict may be intrapersonal or within the individual

• Intrapersonal conflict can occur when an individual’s roles, values, or goals conflict
• Many organizations suffer from intergroup conflict

Conflict-Handling Modes

• Developed by Thompson
• Assertiveness – the degree to which the individual wants to satisfy his or her own
concerns
• Cooperativeness – the degree to which he or she wants to satisfy the concerns of the
other party
• Competition: winning at other’s expense (win-lose)
• Accommodation: appeasement, satisfy other party’s concerns (lose-win)
• Compromise: midway point, involves give and take by both parties (50-50)
• Collaboration: creative problem solving approach with desire to satisfy both parties
(win-win)
• Avoidance: unwillingness to take action (lose-lose)
• Effective managers are capable of employing more than one mode and know which one
to use in a given situation
A Bias toward Collaboration

• Advantages to collaborative approach to conflict:

- results in greater satisfaction and self-esteem
- relationships characterized by trust, respect, and affection
- results in more open exchanges of information and better decisions
• Collaboration does not work if there are competitive incentives and procedures already
in place
• Collaboration is the direction in which modern businesses are moving
• Steps to prevent conflict:
1. Relatively greater emphasis is given to total organizational effectiveness
2. High interaction and frequent communication
3. Frequent rotation of members
4. Win-lose situations are avoided
Bargaining Approaches

• Distributive bargaining is the classical win-lose approach in which a fixed amount of

resources is divided
- competitive conflict management style
- winning battle, losing war
• Integrative bargaining is a win-win approach that is more suitable to maintaining long
term relationships; it does not assume that there is a fixed amount of resources to be
divided because the parties search for various settlements that would be agreeable to
both parties
- settlements often consist of creative solutions

Principled Negotiation

• Fisher and Ury observed that some people are too soft and accommodating when they
negotiate while others are too hard and competitive
• Based on integrative bargaining (win-win)
1. People: Separate the People from the Problem
- be soft on people; hard on problem
- maintain relationships with other party
- accept human problems concerning perception, emotions, and communications will
emerge
2. Focus on Interests, not Positions
- focusing on a predetermined position makes it more difficult to achieve what their
underlying interests are
- parties should present own interests and identify commonalities and differences
3. Invent options for Mutual Gain
- brainstorm options that are favorable to both parties; have several options
- focus on creativity with a commitment to joint problem solving
4. Insist on Objective Criteria
- both parties should agree to objective standards that everyone considers fair
- allows negotiators to respect principles rather than pressures to reach agreements
• Another aspect to principled negotiation is the concept of BATNA
• BATNA: Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement
• 3 criteria determine whether or not a negotiation has been successful:
1. It should produce a wise agreement if agreement is possible
2. It should be efficient and not waste time
3. It should improve or at least not harm the relationship between the parties
Emotion and Negotiation

• Negotiation is the process in which at least 2 parties with different needs + viewpoints
try to reach agreement on matters of mutual interest
• Traditionally, emotions have been viewed as obstacles that hinder effective conflict
resolution
• Researchers now suggest that emotions can play both positive and negative roles in
conflict and negotiations
• Rational:
- suggests that controlling and suppressing emotional expression is important
• Positive:
- “sweeten the pot”
1. Feeling positive emotion
2. Expressing it
3. Engendering it the opposing parties
- result in more creative outcomes and greater joint gains
• Negative:
- anger, rage, irritation are deliberately expressed by the negotiator in hopes of
obtaining a more favorable outcome

• Key to managing emotions during negotiation is to proactively address core concerns as

opposed to only addressing expressed emotion
• 5 concerns:
- Appreciation (do I feel valued?)
- Affiliation (do I feel treated as a colleague?)
- Autonomy (is my independence validated?)
 - Status (am I being treated appropriately according to the differences in our standings?)
- Fulfilling roles and responsibilities (am I able to feel fulfilled and feel like I am
contributing?)

Culture and Conflict

• Cultural assumptions affect our approaches to conflict as well as our expectations and
behaviors in conflict situations
• Low-context communication – a communication system that utilizes explicit verbal
messages
• High-context communication – transmitting intention or meaning via the context and
nonverbal communication
• Conflict is instrumental in low-context cultures (the world is viewed in analytic, linear,
logical terms)
• Face is defined as “upholding a claimed sense of positive public image in any social
interaction”
• In high-context cultures, conflict is indirect to preserve face and the relationship
Approaches to Conflict

• Avoidance - I don’t like conflict and try to avoid it whenever possible.

• Accommodation - I find it easier to give in than to try to change the other person’s point
of view.
• Compromise - I generally meet the other person half way even if I don’t get everything I
want.
• Competition - It is really important to me to win an argument even if the other person is
unhappy.
• Collaboration – I work hard to find a mutually satisfactory solution to conflict.

Resolution Strategies

• Key factors to examine in determining an appropriate conflict resolution strategy are:

- source of conflict
- importance of the conflict issue
- importance of long term interpersonal relationship
- speed required in resolving conflict

Potential Benefits of Conflict

• Enhanced understanding of the problem

• More alternatives
• Increased engagement
• Critical discussion of flaws
• Integration through comparison of goals
• Cohesiveness within groups
• Correction of power imbalances

Conflict and Performance

• Inverted U shape
• Conflict → Change → Adaptation → Survival

How Managers View Conflict

• 1/3 of managers would rather parachute from an airplane than investigate a conflict
situation
• 10% of managers ould rather eat “bush tucker” bugs rather than deal with conflict
• Only 37% of manages feel they are adequately trained to handle conflict
The Importance of Conflict

• Managers spend an average of 42% of their time dealing with conflict.

- Lower level managers spend more time dealing with conflict than higher level
managers.
• Conflict affects:
- employee job satisfaction
-productivity
- effectiveness.

The Cost of Conflict

• Approximately $25,000 per year per employee is spent on dealing with conflict
• A 2011 estimate suggests that in the UK, conflict costs C$53 billion per year
• 8 out of 10 conflicts disrupt organizational functioning

Potential Negative Consequences of Conflict

• Inhibits collaboration
• Takes up too much time
• May be perceived by outsiders as damaging
• Leads to the identification of winners and losers

Destructive Conflict

• Concentrate on narrowly defined goals and short term solutions

• Focus on personalities instead of behavior
• Centre on face saving and the preservation of power
• Infringe on individual freedom and dignity
• Aim at compromising interdependence
• Are part of repeated cycles of retaliation or avoidance

Constructive Conflicts

• Focus on issues rather than personalities or power

• Are discussed openly
• Are capable of fostering interdependence
• Focus on flexible means of solving the dispute
• Involve commitment

Barriers to Constructive Conflict Resolution

 • Personalization
• Skewed Perceptions
• Advocacy
• Lack of Creative Thinking

The Phases of Conflict

• Latent – potential opposition or incompatibility

• Perceived – incompatibility is recognized
• Felt – emotional involvement
• Manifest – behavior
• “Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional” – Max Lucade

Retaliatory Cycle
1. Trigger
2. Perceived Threat
3. Anger
4. Acting Out
5. Repetition
• Anger is an expression of fear

Communication in Conflict Situations

• 2 major types of communication:

- Advocacy = statement of opinions
- Inquiry = asking questions to enhance understanding
• in conflict situations, people often engage in advocacy versus inquiry
• Joint problem solving requires shifting the communication to inquiry

Confrontation Communication

• Natural tendency in confrontation is to match emotional tone and intensity

• This perpetuates the cycle of confrontation
• Instead, remain still, composed, calm and quiet
• Break the confrontation cycle by following 4 steps:
- inquire
- empathize
- Ask permission
- Explain or offer choices
Step 1: Inquire

• Focus on the other person’s concerns

• Ask open-ended questions
• Nod
• Maintain eye contact as much as possible
• Take brief notes if appropriate
• DO NOT interrupt until the other

Step 2: Empathize

• Relate “I” to “You” and name the motion:

- I appreciate
- I understand
- I share

• Share “I too” feelings

Step 3: Ask Permission

• Ask permission to share info:

- Would it be helpful for you to know what we have done thus far
- What info can I provide you?
• If the answer to these questions is “no” then ask:
- what, then, would be helpful
• Asking permission gives other person a sense of control and reduces their tension.
• Asking permission signals you are a reasonable person doing your best to reach an
understanding.

Step 4: Explain or Offer Choices

• Once permission is granted to explain, keep it short and simple

• Offer choices when feasible
• Offering choices enhances the other persons control and indicates your willingness to
solve the problem together

Confrontation Communication Conclusion

• Demonstrate sincerity, consistency and flexibility in your behavior

• Recognize the process is not always linear and anger may break through again even
when you think the problem has been solved
• Remain still, calm and quiet at all times
How to Remain Calm and Cool

• Reflect on yourself
- pay attention to what sparks your emotions
- notice your attributions
- view your attributions with skepticism
- ask yourself: “How am I interpreting the situation such that I’m reacting this way?”
• Reframe the discussion
- recognize that the other party sees things you do not
- try to learn from each other

The Role of Creativity in Conflict Resolution

• Collaborative conflict resolution requires creativity

- if there was already a solution that made both parties happy, the conflict would not
have arisen in the first place
- a new alternative will typically be required to each a solution that meets both parties’
needs

Defining Negotiation

• Negotiation is:
- an interdependent decision process
- whereby 2 or more parties
- decide what each will give and take
- in a relationship

2 types of Negotiation

• Integrative
- collaborative
- win-win
- non zero sum (non fixed amount of resources)
- common problem
• Distributive
- competitive
- win-lose
- zero sum (fixed amount of resources)
- own problem

The Fundamental Negotiation Problem

 • Your negotiation problem is to understand and shape your counterpart’s perceived
decision so that the other side chooses in its own interest what you want

Economics versus Emotion

• People care about much more than the absolute level of their own economic outcome;
competing interest s include relative results, perceived fairness,

Positions and Interests

• Position = one party’s stand on an issue

• Interests = underlying concerns that would be affected by the resolution
• Inexperienced negotiators focus on the “dance of positions” (offer, counter offer)
• Experienced negotiators focus on the reconciliation of underlying interests

Potentially Valuable Differences

• Look for differences in:

- underlying interests
- priorities
- forecasts
- risk aversion
- timing

BATNA

• BATNA = Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement

• Often more potent than ability to inflict damage
- eg: compensation negotiation for loss

The Practices of Skilled Negotiators

• Explore twice as many options

• Spend 3 times as much time exploring common ground
• Make twice as many comments related to the long-term
• Are more likely to think of ranges rather than fixed points
• Are more likely to view issues as independent rather than linked in sequence
• Use fewer loaded terms
• Make fewer immediate counter proposals

Other Common Negotiation Pitfalls

 • Assuming the pie is fixed
• Stating demands so forcefully that you cant back down
• Being overly concerned about saving face
• Not communicating your concerns accurately and effectively
• Not listening actively to the other party’s concerns
• Not practicing empathy

Effective Conflict Resolution and Negotiation

1. De-personalization
2. Empathy
3. Inquiry
4. Creative thinking
Chapter 8 – Interpersonal Communication

Keeping in the Best Performance State

• The first key to maintaining and improving excellent communication is to take your
physical and emotional health seriously
• How you feel can impact your ability to assess accurately and respond effectively to
situations in the workplace

The Wrong Professional Attitude

• An ineffective communication style is the result of years of conditioning

- smart people is lead to believe that being smart is the only measure of success, usually
because he or she was rewarded for succeeding at taking tests or advancing through a
hierarchical workplace
• How to prevent yourself from becoming sucked into a meaningless caste system:
- get a life outside or work
- seek out activities where you are going to meet people from different backgrounds

The Clueless Factor

• The most difficult flaw to self-diagnose and self-correct in the smart person is the
conviction that one’s failings are actually virtues
• List of typical “smart” flaws
- I don’t talk too much. I simply have more to say
- I do not use sarcastic humor to hurt people. If my wit causes someone pain, perhaps it
is deserved
- I do not indulge in chit chat because it is a waste of time, not because I am not
interested in other people
- The only reason I am asking that the rules be suspended for me is because I am more
deserving

The Knowledge Base

• Communication is an essential skill at all levels of business

• Poor written communication carries a high price tag for organizations
• Communication is the process by which information is exchanged between
communicators with the goal of achieving mutual understanding
The Communication Model

• Communication is viewed as a transactional process

• The transactional model acknowledges that our responses to speakers’ messages lead
them to modify what they say next
• Different time periods reflect the changing nature of communication over time
• Communication occurs within social systems, and each communicator has a personal
context, a field of experience
• Our individual backgrounds and personality cause us to encode and decode messages in
a unique fashion
- this makes mutual understanding more challenging and explains why the 2
communicators must find a shared field of experience
• Noise is defined as anything that interferes with the intended communication
• 3 types of noises:
1. Environmental
2. Physiological
3. Emotional
• The arc of distortion is the difference between what the sender intended to communicate
and what the receiver actually understood
• All behavior communicates a message even when it is not verbal
• Communication is the process vehicle through which relationships form, are managed,
and, occasionally, dissolve
Barriers to Communication

• There are numerous causes of distortion that function as barriers to mutual

understanding
• Poor Relationships
- communication can be understood within the context of the interpersonal relationship
- we communicate in a different, more effective manner with people who are
supportive than with people who are not
- poor relationships and poor communication go hand in hand when trust is lacking
- e.g.: Emotional Bank Account
• Lack of Clarity
- the way a person encodes a message may not accurately reflect the message he or she
wants to transmit
- failure to consider how one’s audience will perceive the message can result in unclear
messages
- ambiguous language causes confusion and jargon (technical language and acronyms)
• Individual Differences in Encoding and Decoding
- the way person A encodes messages and the way person B decodes them is strongly
related to their individual field of experience
- both encoding and decoding are heavily influenced by personal factors such as
education ,personality, socioeconomic level, family and child rearing, work history,
culture, personal experience, and organizational role
- gender influences how we encode communication
- women are more concerned with connecting to others and maintain the relationship
with the person they are speaking to
- women focus on seeking and giving confirmation and support
- men tend to be more concerned with status and trying to achieve or maintain the
upper hand in a conversation
•
• Perception
- people pay selective attention to the communication that comes their way and only
hear some of the message
- they may hear what they wish to hear or only hear messages that reinforce their own
beliefs
- people are likely to interpret messages they hear subjectively rather than objectively
• Culture
- differences in cultural backgrounds that can be another barrier to achieving a shared
experience and mutual understanding
- the ability to speak another language fluently does not guarantee that one
understands all the nuances involved in a particular context
- words can have different meaning in different languages, and some concepts are
nonexistent
• High Context versus Low Context
• Low context communication:
- individualistic cultures: Germany, Switzerland, United States
- vary in the extent to which they use language itself to communicate the message
- low context communication relies on explicit verbal messages to convey intention or
meaning
- email is the ultimate example of low context communication because the message
consists only of words
• High context communication:
- Asia and Latin America
- information is either contained in the physical context or internalized in the person
- very little information lies in the coded or explicit part of the message
• Silence
- perceived and used differently according to cultural norms
- silence plays an important role in high context cultures in Southeast Asia, such as China,
Japan, Korea
• Direct versus Indirect Communication
- refers to the extent to which language and tone of voice reveals or hides the speaker’s
intent
• Direct style:
- specify their intentions in a forth right manner
• Indirect style:
- hide their meaning in nuances in their verbal statements
 • Self-enhancement versus self-effacement style
• Self enhancement style:
- emphasize the importance of boasting about or drawing attention to one’s
accomplishments and abilities
• Self-effacement verbal style:
- emphasizes the importance of humbling oneself via verbal restraints, hesitations,
modest talk, and the use of self-deprecation concerning one’s effort or performance
• Misinterpretation of Nonverbal Communication
- nonverbal communications convey important messages and are produced more
automatically than words
- include body movements/gestures, facial expressions/facial gazing, tone of voice and
emphasis of certain words
• Defensiveness
- one of the most common barriers to good communication
- once people become defensive, they have difficulty hearing or interpreting messages
accurately
- defensives in communication is usually caused by the sender’s poor communication
skills or by the receiver’s low self-concept
• Lack of Feedback and Clarification
- because the communication process is fraught with potential for distortion, the
feedback aspect of communication is crucial
- feedback refers to the person’s attempt to ensure that the message he or she decoded
is what the sender really meant to convey
- the purpose of communication is mutual understanding
• Poor Listening Skills
- clarifying the message and active listening are ways to avoid communication failures
- when communication breaks down, people often waste time and energy trying to
determine who is at fault, which provokes a defensive reaction that further inhibits
mutual understanding
- if we accept misunderstandings as a basic reality or communication, we can stop
looking for blame and start seeking better ways to communicate
Responding Styles

• 5 categories:
1. Evaluative
- listener has made a judgement of the relative goodness, appropriateness,
effectiveness, or rightness of the speaker’s statement or problem
- reflect either a positive or negative assessment
- listener implies what the sender should do
2. Interpretive
 - indicates that the listener’s intent is to teach
- listener implies what the sender should think
3. Supportive
- indicates the listener’s intent is to reassure, to pacify, and to reduce the sender’s
intensity of feeling
- implies that the sender need not feel as he or she does
4. Probing
- indicates that the listener’s intent is to seek further information, provoke further
discussion along a certain line, and question the sender
- listener implies a sender needs to develop or discuss a point further
5. Understanding
- listener’s intent is only to ask the sender whether the listener correctly understands
what the sender is saying, how sender feels about the problem, how sender sees the
problem
- listener implies nothing but concern that the sender’s message is accurately received
• The most common responses are evaluative, even though they are not always the most
effective type of response to employ

Assertiveness

• Communication that is p[perceived as overly aggressive can provoke a defensive

reaction
• An assertive style that is neither too aggressive nor passive is most likely to produce the
desired results when we need to stand up for ourselves, express honest feelings, or
exercise our rights
• Assertiveness is the ability to communicate clearly and directly what you need or want
from another person in a way that does not deny or infringe upon the other’s rights

Communication via Electronic Media

• Rich communication, such as face-to-face communication, involves multiple channels –

verbal, visual, nonverbal, and emotional
• Lean communication involves limited channels – language alone, with the possible
addition of emoticons
- b/c of this, email messages are more likely to be misinterpreted because there are
fewer cues to observe
Chapter 9 – Perception and Attribution

The Knowledge Base

• No individuals perceive stimuli in the exact same fashion

• Human behavior is a response to an objective reality
• Perception is the process by which we select, organize, and evaluate the stimuli in our
environment to make it meaningful for ourselves
• Perception serves as a filter or gatekeeper so that we are not overwhelmed by all the
stimuli that bombard us
• 3 stages of perceptual process:
• Selection
- a key aspect of the perceptual process is selective process – the process of filtering the
information our senses receive
- we simply do not see or hear everything that goes on around us
- both internal and external factors determine what sensory impressions we pay
attention to
- internal factors: motives, values, interests, attitudes, past experiences, expectations
- selective attention – people attend to only the stimuli that interest them or support
what they are looking for
- selective attention explains why 2 people can attend the same meeting or event and
have contradictory stories about what occurred
- external factors: motion, intensity, size, novelty, salience
- external factors that influence perception are characteristics of the target we perceive
- salience is the extent to which a given object or event stands out from the others
around it
- the salient object or event is the “figure” that dominates what we see; the rest is
“ground” or background
• Organization
- 2nd stage in the perceptual process
- the organization of the stimuli that has been selected to make it simpler
- our thought processes automatically structure stimuli into patterns that make sense to
us
- Common thought process:
- cause and effect relationships (“if… then”)
- patterns of antithesis (opposites)
- schemas are mental maps of different concepts, events, or types of stimuli that contain
both the attributes of the concept and the relationship among the attributes
- schemas are representations of reality but not reality itself
- everyone’s map is different
 - once schemas have been established, they affect how we handle future information
because they determine what we attend to and what we remember
• Evaluation
- final stage in perceptual process
- we interpret stimuli in a subjective rather than objective fashion
- our conclusions are biased by our individual attitudes, needs, experiences,
expectations, goals, values, and physical condition at the time
- not only do interpretations differ from person to person, but the same person can
have diverse perceptions of the same stimuli at different points in time
- people who are frightened about the changes are more likely to make negative
inferences about the announcements than people who are looking forwards to what
they see as a much needed improvement

Social Identity

• No 2 people perceive the world exactly the same, social groups and cultures have
shared perception
• The higher degree of similarity of perception among individuals, the easier
communication among them is likely to be, and the more communication among them
is likely to occur
• We communicate more with people we perceive to be like us
• Social identity theory is based on the belief that people:
1. Tend to perceived themselves and others in terms social categories rather than as
individuals (social categorization)
2. To assess the relative worth of groups as well as individuals by comparing them (social
comparison)
3. To perceive and respond to the world not as detached observers but in terms of their
identity, which depends on the social groups to which they belong (social identification)
• Sharing a social identity means that people perceive themselves as similar along
important dimensions (such as similar disposition, similar attitudes) and define
themselves in terms of the groups in which they are members
• The more we perceive others as similar to us, the more likely we are to trust them as
well as cooperate and exchange information with them
Stereotyping

• Stereotyping occurs when we attribute behavior or attitudes to a person on the basis of

the group to which the person belongs
• Research shows that stereotypes are based on relatively little information, resistant to
change even in light of new information, and rarely accurately applied to specific
individuals
• Stereotyping is often viewed negatively as a source or excuse for social injustice
• The process of stereotyping is “a neutral, subconscious cognitive process that increases
the efficiency of interpreting environmental information”
• Stereotypes can be helpful if they are used effectively
• Perception helps us to make sense of a world full of stimuli in 3 ways:
1. By limiting the amount of information that enters our mind to prevent overload
2. By selecting what input we will attend to
3. By organizing and classifying the input we receive so we do not waste valuable time
trying to make sense of behavior and situations that are in fact similar

Impact of Perception in the Workplace

• Situations that are perceived to be real are real in their consequences

• E.g.: paychecks are correlated with beauty

Perceptual Distortions

• The halo effect occurs when our evaluation of others is dominated by only one of their
traits
• The primary effect means one’s perception is dominated by the first impression of
another person
- the initial impression of the person is never adjusted in light of more information
about him or her
• When one’s perception is overly dominated by the most recent interactions with a
person, this is called the recency effect
• Central tendency is a perceptual distortion that occurs when a person avoids extreme
judgments and rates everything as average
-e.g.: managers rating employees as “3s” when some deserve a “1” or “5”
• Contrast effects are present when our evaluations are affected by comparisons with
other people we have recently encountered who are either better or worse in terms of
this characteristic
 • Projection is the tendency to attribute one’s personal attitudes or feelings to another
person, thereby relieving one’s own sense of guilt or failure
- projection is a defense mechanism that protects people from confronting their own
feelings
• Perceptual defense act as a screen or filter, blocking out that which we do not want to
see and letting through that which we wish to see
The Johari Window

• The Johari Window is an information processing model that consists of 4 regions

determined by whether information about oneself is known or unknown to oneself and
others

Known to Self Not Known to

Self
Known to Arena Blind spot
Others
Not Known to Façade Unknown
Others

• When a person’s arena is very small, communication is greatly hindered

• The more we know ourselves and allow others to know us, the greater the potential for
effective communication
• 2 ways to increase our arena:
- self disclosure: sharing information about oneself, which moves information from
façade to arena
- feedback from others: move information in our blind spot to arena
• Trust and psychological safety are prerequisites for both self-disclosure and feedback

Cultural Influence on Perception

• Different groups see and interpret the world in different wats than when we deal with
people from different cultures or ethnic groups
• 3 sources of misinterpretation in cross cultural interaction:
1. Subconscious cultural blinders – we use our own cultural assumptions to interpret
the events and behavior of a foreign culture
2. Lack of cultural awareness – we are unaware of our cultural values and norms and
the way that other cultures perceive us. Without understanding our own culture, we
cannot adapt our behavior so that it is perceived more accurately by others
3. Projected similarity – we assume that people from other cultures are more similar to
 us than they really are or that situations are similar when they are not. This is based on
the ethnocentric view that there is only one way to be – like me

D.I.E Model

• The D.I.E model was developed to teach more accurate perceptions and attributions in
cross cultural interactions
• D.I.E stands for:
Description – refers to what you see (only observed facts)
Interpretation – references, or what you think about what you see
Evaluation – judgments, what you feel about what you think

Attribution

• The most pertinent aspect of perception in terms of organizational behavior is social

perception – how we perceive and judge other people
• Attribution theory states that when people observe behavior, they attempt to determine
whether it is internally or externally caused

• Self-serving bias is the tendency for people to attribute their successes to internal factors
while blaming external factors for the failures
• Fundamental attribution error is the tendency to underestimate the influence of external
factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about
the behavior of others
Communication: Why is it Important

• Process of information exchange between communicators with the goal of achieving

mutual understanding
• Essential skill for anyone in business manager or entry level worker
• Most frequent/important for managerial activities
• Basis for almost all other activities people in business sector engage in
•

Transactional Model of Communication

• Pg 195

Distortion in Communication

• Pg 196
• E.g.: A tells B he likes to watch soccer, and B assumes that A likes soccer/play soccer,
that’s why A is watching soccer

Perception

• Process by which we select, organize and evaluate the stimuli in our environment to
make meaningful for ourselves
• Benefits:
- helps us make sense of a world full stimuli by acting as a filter to prevent overload,
selecting what input we will attend to and organizing the input into categories
• Drawbacks:
- prevents us from taking everything in
- makes out interpretations open to question
- can promote stereotypes
•

3 Stages of the Perceptual Process

1) Selection
- taking everything in
- sometimes people are not aware of this
2) Organization
- how you organize perceptions
- mental maps groups these perceptions together
 3) Evaluation
- how we evaluate perceptions we have
- evaluative in a subjective manner

Perceptual Distortion
1) Stereotyping
- Canadians stereotype as loves hockey, maple syrup, too nice
2) Halo Effect/Horns Effect
- one trait about someone is dominating your entire perception of them
- all it takes is one quick look
3) Central Tendency
- people’s tendency to rate things as average to avoid extreme
4) Contrast Effects
- when you evaluate 2 things, evaluation based on someone else
- e.g.: rating teachers: gives prof you enjoy a higher rating
5) Projection
- tendency to attribute their insecurities onto someone else
- e.g.: bullies pick on things they are insecure about
6) Perceptual Defense
- when consumers have a strong belief about something
- strong belief leads to defense and omit the thing
• Cycle: Assumption/Belief → Congruent Behavior → Observation of Consequences

Johari Window

• An information processing model

• Consists of 4 regions determined by whether information about oneself is known or
unknown to oneself and others

Known to self Unknown to self

Known to others Arena Blind spot
Unknown to others Façade Unknown
Key Points

• A small arena hinders communication

• It is better to expand your arena (leads to better communication)
• 2 ways to increase arena:
a) Self Disclosure (façade to arena)
b) Feedback from others (blind spot to arena)
• Must have trust and psychological safety first
Chapter 17 – Decision Making

The Knowledge Base

• To a manager executive or administrator, no other job function encapsulates the

frustration and joys of leadership more dramatically than decision making
• 2 things wrong with using this admittedly powerful subjective experience of decision
making as the focus for analyzing and improving the decision making process:
1. Experiences suggest that decisions can be thought of as independent, solitary events
that are relatively unconnected to other decisions and the process that brought the
decision point to a head
2. Decision making is an individual process and, therefore, the skills of logical analysis
and problem solving should be sufficient to produce high quality decisions
• 2 tactics commonly used by managers:
1. Persuasion:
- selling expert opinions to convince employees about a decision
2. Edicts:
- directives that announce decisions on which employees have not been consulted
• The repeated use of edicts depletes a manager’s social credit – the store of goodwill
created by honest dealings and positive accomplishments
- result in sabotage, token compliance, delays, refusals to comply
• Employees are more likely to overlook the merits of a decision made by edict and
devote their energies to complaining about how the decision was made
• Set of tactics with high success rate:
1. Setting realistic objectives for the decision
- e.g.: lower costs, higher market share
2. Intervention
- pointing out performance gaps and the need for the decision
- networking
- calling attention to ideas that might work
- identifying and justifying new performance norms
3. Participation
- task forces with key individuals
4. Integrated Benchmarking
- studying several organizations to learn from their best practices
• Decisions are more likely to be successful if managers involve themselves in the
implementation process
Models of Decision Making
The Rational Decision Making Process

• Process of Rational Decision Making:

1. Recognize and define the problem
2. Identify the objective of the decision and the decision criteria
3. Allocate weights to the criteria
4. List and develop the alternatives
5. Evaluate the alternatives
6. Select the best alternative
7. Implement the decision
8. Evaluate the decision

Bounded Rationality

• Theory of bounded rationality by Herbert Simon

• Bounded rationality – maintains that people are restricted in the information they
possess to make decisions, engage in limited search for solutions, and settle for less than
optimal solutions
- there are limits or bounds on rationality
• Bounded rationality is based on these assumptions:
1. Managers select the first alternative that is minimally acceptable, which is called
satisficing
2. Both the available information and the definition of the situation are incomplete and
inadequate to some degree
3. Managers are comfortable making decisions without first determining all the
alternatives
4. Managers use judgement shortcuts to make decisions, which are called heuristics
• Managers satisfice (accept a decision that is “good enough”) because the costs of
maximizing are too great
• Bounded discretion – limits decision alternatives to those that fall within the bounds of
current moral and ethical standards
• Heuristics are rules of thumb based on past experience that managers use to simplify
decision making
Garbage Can Model

• 4 factors:
- problems
- participants
- solutions
- choice opportunities
• In the garbage can model, these 4 factors float randomly inside an organization
- if these factors connect, a decision results
• The garbage model assumes that decision making is haphazard, chaotic, unpredictable,
and sometimes depends on sheer luck
Factors that Influence Decisions

• Decisions are affected by individual differences and biases

• Choice shift – the determining factor is the premeeting position of the members; group
discussion seems to cause individuals to exaggerate their initial stance and move toward
extremes
• Groupthink refers to the tendency for members of a highly cohesive group to seek
consensus so strongly that they fail to do a realistic appraisal of other alternatives, which
may be more correct
- when groupthink occurs, members censor their misgivings about a decision, or they
pressure dissenters to stifle their opinions
 - pressure toward uniformity and an illusion of unanimity that does not really exist
- illusion of invulnerability that makes the group overly optimistic and more likely to
make high risk decisions
• To avoid groupthink, groups can:
1. Encourage all members to express their doubts
2. Assign a devil’s advocate in each meeting who challenges assumptions and arguments
3. Adopt the perspectives of other constituencies with a stake in the decision
4. Bring in qualified outsiders to discuss decisions
5. After a tentative decision has been reached, schedule a “let’s sleep on it one last time”
meeting for final concerns and doubts
• 2 approaches to prevent poor performance:
1. Provide ways for the group to maintain its positive image while also focusing on
performing well
- providing groups with face saving mechanism that reduces the risk of poor
performance
- providing excuse for potential poor performance to reduce the group’s needs to focus
solely on ways to maintain the group image or identity
2. Allow groups to evaluate different decision alternatives fully and to engage in
constructive conflict about ideas and solutions

• Multiple role playing procedure – group members assume the perspectives of other
constituencies with a stake in the decision or of another group member
• Escalation of commitment occurs when people continue to commit resources to a failing
course of action
• 2 examples:
- countries that continue wars they cannot win (argue it makes death of soldiers/money
spent “in vain”)
- people persist in buying failing stocks (based on rationale they already invested so
much money)

The Leader Participation Model

• The leader-participation model is based on evidence that the choice of leadership style
can affect these 4 outcomes of decision making process:
1. Decision Quality
- quality of decision relates to how wise, well-reasoned, and sound it is
-
2. Decision Implementation
- many high quality decisions are never implemented because employees are not
 committed to doing so
- allowing people to participate in decisions yields greater acceptance and commitment
3. Costs of Decision Making
- decision quality and decision implementation refer to a decision’s effectiveness
- more participative decisions require more time and utilize more person hours than
autocratic decisions
4. Development
- greater costs of participative decision making are offset by the development
opportunity they offer
• Victor Vroom developed a formal model that helps us to analyze specific decision
situations and to determine the decision making approach that is likely to be most
effective
• The model is constructed in the form of a decision matrix based on 6 rules:
1. The leader information rule
2. The goal congruence rule
3. The acceptance rule
4. The conflict rule
5. The fairness rule
6. The acceptance priority rule
• 7 questions for managers to ask about a decision:
1. Decision Significance
- how significant is the decision to the success of the project or organization?
2. Importance of Commitment
- how important is the team members’ commitment to the decision?
3. Leader’s Expertise
- does the leader (you) possess the knowledge or expertise related to this problem
4. Likelihood of Commitment
- if you were to make the decision yourself, what is the likelihood that the team would
commit itself to the decision
5. Group Support for Objectives
- to what degree does the team support the organization’s objectives at stake in this
problem?
6. Group Expertise
- do team members’ possess the knowledge or expertise related to this problem
7. Team Competence
- do team members have the ability to work together in solving problems?
• By answering these questions sequentially and tracing the answers through the model’s
decision matrix, managers are led to the most effective leadership alternative for the
problem
• The time driven model emphasizes efficiency rather than employee development
 • Structured problems are repetitive and routine problems for which a definite procedure
has been developed
- e.g.: repairing an airplane
• Unstructured problems are novel, and no procedures have been developed to handle
them because they occur infrequently and/or are very complex
- e.g.: designing a completely new space ship
• Vroom and Jago’s latest version of the leadership participation model includes 4 new
contingencies:
- time constraints
- geographical dispersion (acknowledges the difficulty of getting people together for a
decision)
- motivation to minimize the time needed to make the decision (so time can be
devoted to more pressing items)
- motivation to develop subordinates

The Zone of Indifference and Cultural Differences in Decision Making

• Chester Barnard introduced the concept of zone of indifference

• Zone of Indifference – the range within each individual in which he or she willingly
accepts orders without consciously questioning authority
- when applied to decision making, employees willingly accept decisions made by their
boss on topics that fall within their zone of indifference
- employees do want to have a voice in decisions that lie outside their zone of
indifference
• In high power distance cultures (Korea), employees are less likely to expect influence
decisions and more likely to expect bosses to make autocratic decisions
- larger zone of indifference
• Participative decision making is more likely in cultures with low power distance, as well
as in individualistic cultures in which individual opinions are valued (Netherlands)
• E.g.: Japan is known for ringisei
- ringisei is the decision making by consensus
- employees can voice an opinion before a manager makes the final decision
- ringisei is time consuming up front, but this participative process eliminates resistance
to decisions
Intuition and Decision Making: The Recognition Primed Decision Model

• Cultures vary in the way they search for information pertaining to a decision, which
relates to the value given to rationality
• Cultures that value rationality rely more on their senses (facts) while others rely on
intuition (ideas, images, possibilities)
• Intuition is a cognitive conclusion based on a decision maker’s previous experiences and
emotional inputs
Groupthink
What is it?

• Pg. 471
• Making wrong decision
• Members thinking about the same thing
• Drowns out other opinions
• Agree just to please the group

How do you recognize it?

• Things getting messed up

• No discussions
• Doing it for convenience
•

Avoiding Groupthink
1. Encourage others to express doubts
2. Devil’s advocate
- assign someone to oppose the ideas
3. Adopt perspective of other stakeholders
4. Bring in qualified outsiders
- seek advice from someone who knows the thing
- e.g.: professors
5. “Let’s sleep on it”
- give members time to think through the idea

Vroom’s Leader – Participation Matrix

• Pg. 475
• Determine how much employee participation to use in decision making in a given
situation
• Answer each question “high or low”
• Arrive at the appropriate level of employee participation

Time Driven Model

• Pg. 475
 • 8used to determine how much employee participation to use in decision making

Models of Decision Making

• Pg. 468
• Rational Decision Making
- going through a step by step process to get to the solution you want
- go through a list of questions
• Bounded Rationality
- set limits to a list
- can’t always have a structure when making decisions
- decisions can’t always be black and white
- e.g.: going to a party for only 20 minutes then go home to study instead of going for
the whole night
• Garbage Can
- things somehow work out
- things work out by luck
-when factors align with one another
Chapter 18 – Power and Influence

The Knowledge Base

• Power and influence have negative connotations for many people

• Managers need a certain degree of power and influence to obtain the necessary
resources for their units, to ensure that good ideas are heard and decisions are
implemented, and to place competent people in key positions
• Another advantage of power is having access to top decision makers and receiving early
information on decisions and policy shifts
• Successful Executives Characteristics:
1. Energy, endurance, physical stamina
2. The ability to focus their energy and avoid wasted effort
3. Sensitivity so they can read and understand others
4. Flexibility – the ability to consider different means to achieve goals
5. Personal toughness – a willingness to engage, when necessary, in conflict and
confrontation
6. The ability to submerge one’s ego and be a good subordinate or team player to enlist
the help and support of others
• Unsuccessful Executives Characteristics:
1. Insensitive, abrasive, and intimidating
2. Cold, aloof, and arrogant
3. Betrayed others’ trust
4. Overly ambitious and political
5. Unable to delegate or build a team
6. Overly dependent on others (e.g. a mentor)
• The power and status differences that exist in hierarchies, between supervisors and
subordinates are real and natural
• Your role as a manager is to make a difference in the behavior of your subordinates
• Your responsibility as a manager is to behave in ways that add to your subordinates’
ability to do their jobs effectively and efficiently
• Power is defined as the capacity to influence the behavior of others
• Influence is the process by which people successfully persuade others to follow their
advice, suggestions, or orders
• 3 possible outcomes to an influence attempt:
- commitment: internal agreement
- compliance: going along with a request or demand without believing in it
- resistance: when a person’s influence attempt is rejected
Sources of Power

• Traditionally, managers have relied almost exclusively on the power inherent in their
position
e.g. “I’m the boss. I have the right and responsibility to tell you what to do, and if you
don’t perform, I retain the ultimate power of rewards and punishment”
• The greater need for different forms of influence is a result of:
1. A shifting value structure among younger generations who have less respect for
traditional authority
2. Rapid organizational change
3. The diversity of people, goals, and values
4. Increased interdependence
• Power comes from expertise, effort, and relationships, rather than one’s position or
ability to reward or punish others (coercive power)
• Charisma is an extension of referent power, which is based on desirable personal traits
or resources
• Power also comes from “being in the right place”
- a good location provides:
1. Control over resources
2. Control and access to information
3. Formal authority (position)
• Units that cope with the critical uncertainties facing an organization also acquire a
measure of power that they would not otherwise have; this is termed the strategic
contingency model of power

Influence Tactics

• In addition to understanding the sources of power, effective managers need to know

what influence behavior looks like
• Researchers identified 9 generic influence tactics:
- rational persuasion
- inspirational appeals
- consultation
- ingratiation
- personal appeals
- exchange
- coalition tactics
- legitimating tactics
- pressure
 • Managers who use a variety of tactics tend to be more successful than those who rely
on a single tactic
• Effective managers understand that there is a continuum of influence attempts, and
they use the appropriate degree of “muscle” when influencing others
• Muscle Levels:
- muscle level 1: a polite request
- muscle level 2: a request that is stronger in word choice, voice characteristics and body
language
- muscle level 3: a statement of consequences if the behavior doesn’t change
- muscle level 4: the application of the consequences stated in level 3
• If you escalate too quickly to the higher muscle levels, you can casue a backlash or ruin
relationships
• If you fail to escalate at all, the other person will simply continue with the unacceptable
behavior and you may be perceived as weak and ineffectual

Influence Styles

• Effective managers need to develop the capacity to analyze a situation and determine
which influence tactic will be most effective
• Although people often use a combination of influence tactics, we tend to be
predisposed to certain styles that feel more natural
Assertive Persuasion

• Pushing style
• In the assertive persuasion style, we “push” others with our intellect
• The essential quality of assertive persuasion as an influence style is the use of facts, logic,
rational argument, and persuasive reasoning
• Although the influencer may argue forcefully with great élan and spirit, the power of
assertive persuasion does not come from an emotional source
• Facts and logic are, by definition, emotionally neutral
• People using assertive persuasion to persuade others are usually highly verbal and
articulate
• They structure their arguments and enumerate the points they want to make so
listeners can follow their logic
• This style is most appropriate when the issue in question is suited to a logical approach,
which is not the case with emotional or value laden issues
• Works best when the person exerting influence is already respected and enjoys a certain
prestige

Reward and Punishment

• Pushing style
• Involves the use of bargaining, incentives, and pressures, and demanding certain
behavior from other people
• People who use this style state their expectations for how others will behave and also
evaluate the behavior
• Rewards may be offered for compliance, and punishment or deprivation may be
threatened for noncompliance
• Both reward and punishment and assertive persuasion involve agreeing and disagreeing
with others
• People using reward and punishment are very comfortable, generally, in conflict
situations
- they are comfortable giving clear feedback – both positive and negative, and are very
direct about prescribing their goals and expectations
- they are comfortable evaluating the work of others and saying what they like and don’t
like about it
• People who use this style should state their expectations clearly in a direct manner
• This style is not appropriate with individuals or groups who have a strong need to be in
control or not be controlled by a strong desire to others
Participation and Trust

• Pulls others toward what is desired or required by involving them

• By actively listening to an involving others, an influencer using participation and trust
increases the commitment of others to the target objective or task
• People who use participation and trust are generally rather patient and have developed
the capacity to be very effective listeners
- they are good at reflecting back to people (paraphrasing) both the content and feelings
of what the person has said
- they build on others’ ideas and are quick to credit others for their contribution
• People who use participation and trust as an influence style also effectively use personal
disclosure
• People who use this style readily admit their own areas of uncertainty and mistakes

Common Vision

• Pulls rather than pushes

• Aims to identify a common vision for the future and to strengthen the group members’
belief that through their collective efforts, the vision can become a reality
• This style appeals to people’s emotions and values, activating their personal
commitment to private hopes and ideals and channeling that energy into working
toward a common purpose
• People use this style clearly articulate goals and the means to achieve them
• People who use common vision are generally emotionally expressive
- they are enthusiastic and skilled at projecting and communicating their feelings in an
articulate manner
- they talk in emotionally vivid imagery and metaphors
- look for common ground and the synergy that can result from working together
• People who use this style well are described as charismatic leaders

The Value Issues – Positive versus Negative Power

• None of the 4 styles is inherently right or wrong

• The key to effectiveness is using them in the appropriate situation and paying attention
to how others experience your use of power
- e.g.: when people are uplifted by an inspiring vision or when their competence,
however, when the use of power and influence makes others feel weak and powerless
• Assertive persuasion, reward and punishment, participation and trust, and common
vision can be used in a way that results in other people feeling stronger
• Effective persuasion in successful managers includes 4 steps:
1. Establish credibility
2. Frame goals in a way that identifies common ground with those you intend to
persuade
3. Reinforce your position using vivid language and compelling evidence
4. Connect emotionally with your audience
• McClelland identified a need for power as a basic motivator
• 2 faces of power:
- personal power:
- an unsocialized concern for personal dominance
- characterized by an I win-you lose perspective
- a need to dominate others
- socialized power:
- show a concern for group goals, empowering others
- win-win approach
- required for long term success in organizations
• Some managers mistakenly believe that the more power they give to their employees,
the less power they have for themselves
- only true if using win-lose situation
• Power is often paradoxical – the more one gives away, the more one has for oneself
• Steps to establish sustained managerial influence:
1. Develop a reputation as a knowledgeable person or an expert
- most commonly reported form of gaining influence
- keeping up to date in one’s field or area
2. Balance the time spent in each critical relationship according to the needs of the
work rather than on the basis of habit or social performance
- managers should spend their time where it will do the most good in advancing
organizational goals
3. Develop a network of resource persons who can be called on for assistance
- people who take time to cultivate good relationships within the organization usually
receive better service and cooperation than those who do not
- networking is “socializing/politicking and interacting with outsiders”
4. Implement influence tactics with sensitivity, flexibility, and adequate levels of
communication
- it is necessary to understand one’s audience and do no harm to the long term
relationship with the other party
- good influencers analyze the target and use the communication style that will be most
effective with him or her
Do Men and Women Differ in their Influence Styles and Use of Power?

• Women and men view and utilize power in different ways

• Women see it as a “resource” that can be used to influence outcomes on the job and to
focus the competencies of the people who work for them
• Men tend to think of power more as an end in itself, as something they can use to react
against or take power away from others in authority
• Men saw power as a way to supersede others in power, women rarely did

Sexual Harassment and Power

• Sexual harassment refers to unwelcome advances, requests for sexual favors, and other
verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature
• Subjects of harassment find themselves in especially difficult situations when their
superiors, with their power to reward and punish them, are the ones doing the
harassing
• Power can be a factor in sexual harassment when those in higher positions abuse their
power to harass people in lower ranking positions
• Sexual harassment is both illegal and unethical

Cultural Differences

• Power is perceived and exercised differently around the world

• In any setting, it is important to decipher who has the power
• Different cultures and organizations use various artifacts and symbols to designate
power
- office size
- private space
- immediate access to important people
• Decoding symbols and behaviors that indicate the location of power is an important skill
Power

• The capacity to influence the behavior of others

Influence

• The process by which people successfully persuade others to allow their advice
suggestions or orders

Influence Styles: Pushing Energy (Yield=Compliance)

• Assertive persuasion:
- “pushing” others with our intellect using facts, logic rational argument
• Reward and Punishment:
- “pushing” your will onto others using bargaining, incentives, pressures

Influence Styles: Pulling Energy (Yield=Commitment)

• Participation + Trust:
- “pulls” others toward what is desired by involving them
• Common Vision:
- identifies a common vision for the future to strengthen the groups beliefs that vision
can become a reality

Influence at tempts will have both content and relationship outcomes

• Content can be satisfied but relationship will be damaged if manipulated/correct

• Plan both content and relationship outcomes in advance
- what do I want out of this in terms of content
- what do I want the other party to have of me (relationships)

Influence Tactics

• Rational Persuasion
• Inspirational Appeals
• Consultation
• Ingratiation
• Personal Appeals
• Exchange
• Coalition Tactics
• Legitimating Tactics
• Pressure
Chapter 6 – Value and Workplace Ethics

The Knowledge Base

• Some people have a mistaken perception that firms that act ethically have lower profits
• Companies that engage in unethical practices make themselves vulnerable to lawsuits,
boycotts, governmental restrictions and regulations, and loss of reputation
- endanger profits
• Growing evidence that good corporate citizenship correlates with higher financial
performance
• Ethical practices pay off in the long run as trusting relationship with employee,
stockholders, and well-satisfied customers are the basis of business success
• When the profit motive is untampered by ethical values, white collar crime and
corporate scandal result
• Intellectual property theft (failure to respect patents and copy right laws or pay for using
what other firms or individuals have created
• Privacy (making imitations of band name goods)
• Significant costs of unethical behavior:
- losses in revenue due to customer defections and lost sales
- revenue loss due to product recall and withdrawal
- operational expenses to correct past errors
- higher funding costs imposed by lenders and investors
- decreased ability to borrow money
- lower share price as shareholders opt to invest in more trustworthy firms
- legal expenses
- consulting expenses related to investigating allegations
- fines, penalties, damages, and settlement costs
- increased marketing and PR expenses to counteract the negative publicity of scandal
- higher turnover due to employee defections
- higher recruiting costs due to the firm’s damaged reputation
• When the business sector does not police itself, governments and international
regulating bodies are more likely to intervene with laws and regulations that impact all
companies, guilty and innocent alike
• Business scandals in developed countries result in less stock market participation due to
lack of trust
• Boards of directors are responsible for ensuring that the organizations comply with laws
and ethical codes
- take governance role more seriously
- providing more oversight and insisting that firms have ethics programs
• Ethics officers:
- responsible for developing ethics programs
- ensuring the company is in compliance with legal requirements
- the higher up, the greater likelihood that ethics is a serious concern
- some ethics are just for show (known as “window dressing” or “green washing”)
- some are a serious effort to respect the spirit of the law
• Both business and governments are lobbied by a growing number of NGOs and activists
whose mission is to promote more socially responsible corporate behavior
• The “CNN effect” – rapid international media coverage of corporate transgressions
• 2 of the most prominent theories in business education:
- transaction cost analysis
- agency theory
- assume that humans are ruthless, motivated solely by greed, opportunism and
selfishness
• Ethics refers to “standards of conduct that indicate how one should behave based on
moral duties and virtues rising from principles about right and wrong”
• The very nature of business means that managers may be confronted with numerous
ethical questions without the benefit of a professional code of ethics
• Companies deal with:
- internal issues: employee safety, discrimination/sexual harassment, theft of property
- external issues: balancing profit with environmental protection, consumer safety,
doing business in cultures where bribes are commonplace
• Factors that lead to questionable business practices:
1. Overemphasis on both individual and firm performance
2. Mission statements, evaluation systems, and organizational cultures that focus on
profit as the organization’s sole objective
3. Intense competition among firms, departments, and individuals
4. Management concern for the letter of the law rather than the spirit
5. Ambiguous policies that employees interpret as “window dressing” for outsiders
rather than clear expectations for ethical behavior
6. Inadequate controls so that managers get away with violating standards, allowing
them to pursue greater sales and profits for personal benefit
7. Expediency and indifference to the customers’ best interest
8. Management’s failure to comprehend the public’s ethical concerns
9. Custom and local practice says “let the buyer beware”
10. A “groupthink” mentality that fosters group decisions that individual members
would not support
• Companies that want to encourage ethical behavior need to:
1. Communicate their expectations that employees will behave ethically and define
what that means
 2. Hire top executives who set an example of moral behavior
3. Reward ethical behavior and punish unethical behavior
4. Teach employees the basic tools of ethical decision making
5. Encourage the discussion of ethical issues
• Ethical mistakes are responsible for ending careers more quickly and more definitively
than any other errors in judgment or accounting
• Reasons for avoiding moral talks:
- people do not like to appear judgmental or intrusive, or lay themselves open to
countercharges of wrongdoing
- moral talks threatens efficiency when it simply muddies the waters and distracts
attention from problem solving
- managers worry that it may be self-serving, simplistic, inflexible, or inexact
- some managers fear that the esoteric and idealistic nature of moral talk is not in
keeping with the image they want to convey, and they are leery about exposing their
lack of training in ethics

Values

• Both individuals and organizations have code of ethics that are rooted in their values
• One of the first steps in teaching ethics is to help people identify and articulate their
own values
• Values are core beliefs or desires that guide or motivate attitudes and actions
- the study of ethics is concerned with how a moral person should behave
- values concern the various beliefs and attitudes that determine how a person actually
behaves
• Our values are shaped early in life
- learn from parents, friends, teachers, church, and culture that surrounds us
• Shared systems of values between 2 entities is called value congruence
• Many business people work in organizations whose values differ from their own
• Employees may also choose to work in environments that match their ethical
preferences
- the better the ethical fit, the morel likely employees are to continue with the
organization and be committed to it
• Within our personal value system, some values are more important than others
• Rokeach developed the list of values that we rate
- believes that people possess a relatively small number of values that they hold to
varying degrees
• Classifies key values into 2 types:
- terminal values are desirable end states of existence or the goals that a person would
like to achieve during his or her lifetime
 - 2 categories of terminal values: personal values (comfortable life, freedom, salvation)
and social values (world peace, equality, national security)
- instrumental values are preferable modes of behavior or the means to achieving one’s
terminal values
- 2 types of instrumental values:
- moral values (cheerful, courageous, honest) have an interpersonal focus. If violated,
we feel pangs of conscience or guilt
- competence values (ambitious, capable, and intellectual) have a personal focus. If
violated, we feel ashamed of our personal inadequacy rather than guilty about wrong
doing
• Rokeach looked for a relationship between terminal and instrumental values and found
that all combinations are possible
• Schwartz and Bilsky created a universal psychological structure of human values that
applies to people from all cultures
• 7 types of values that motivate behavior:
- prosocial – active protection or enhancement of the welfare of others
- restrictive conformity – restraint of actions and impulses likely to harm others and to
violate sanctioned norms
- enjoyment – pleasure, sensuous and emotional gratification
- achievement – personal success through demonstrated competence
- maturity – appreciation, understanding, and acceptance of oneself, others, and the
surrounding world
- self direction – independent thought and action – choosing, creating, exploring
- security – safety, harmony and stability of society, of groups with whom one identifies,
of relationships, and of self
• These values have hold varying degrees of importance in different cultures
Ethical Versus Non-Ethical Values

• Ethical values directly relate to beliefs concerning what is right and proper or that
motivate a sense of moral duty
• Core ethical values that transcend cultural, ethic and socioeconomic differences in the
United States are:
1. Trustworthiness
2. Respect
3. Responsibility
4. Justice and fairness
5. Caring
6. Civic virtue and citizenship
• Non-ethical values deal with things we like, desire, or find personally important
- examples: money, fame, status, happiness, fulfillment, pleasure, personal freedom,
being liked

Moral Reasoning

• Values alone do not determine our actions

• Our behavior is influenced by our moral reasoning, organizational culture, culture,
influence of others, type of harm that could result from decision involving ethics and
who might be harmed
• Kohlberg identified 3 different levels of moral development:
- self-centered
- conformity
- principled
• The progression through these levels can be summarized as moving from:
1. A self-centered conception of right and wrong
2. An understanding of the importance of conformity and social accord
3. Universal principles of justice and rights

Self-Centered Level (Preconventional)

• A personal focus and an emphasis on consequences

• Usually found among children who seem oral issues in the black and white terms of
“good and bad” and “right and wrong”
• Actions are judged either by their consequences (punishment, reward, exchange of
favors) or in terms of the physical power of those who lay down the rules
• Divided into 2 stages:
Stage 1: The Obedience and Punishment Orientation
 - physical consequences determine its goodness or badness
-
Stage 2: Instrumental Purpose and Exchange (Instrumental Relativist Orientation)
- interest in satisfying one’s own needs is the most important consideration
- elements of fairness, reciprocity, and equal sharing are present, but are always
interpreted in a physical or pragmatic way

Conformity Level (Conventional)

• There is group focus and an emphasis on social harmony

• People are concerned with meeting the expectations of their family, group, or nation
• Moved beyond a preoccupation with consequences to focus on conformity and loyalty
to the social order
• Find the following 2 stages:
Stage 3: Interpersonal Accord, Conformity, and Mutual Expectations (“Good Boy – Nice
Girl” Orientation)
- good behavior is defined as behavior that pleases or helps others and is approved by
them
- conformity to stereotypical images of what is “natural behavior” is a common guide
- the “golden rule” – do unto others as you would have others do unto you is a common
at this stage of moral reasoning
Stage 4: Social Accord and System Maintenance (The Law and Order Orientation)
- individual takes the perspective of a member of society
- perceives the social system as a consistent set of codes and procedures that applies
impartially to all members in a society

Principled Level (Post-Conventional)

• A more universal focus that emphasizes internalized ethical standards, rights, or duties
• Examine society’s rules and laws and then develop their own set of internal principles
• 2 stages:
Stage 5: Social Contract and Individual Rights (The Social Contract Legalistic Orientation)
- individuals realize that there is an arbitrary element to rules and law
- right is relative and perceived as a matter of personal values and opinion
Stage 6: The Universal Ethical Principles Orientation
- right is defined by decisions of conscience, in accord with self-chosen ethical principles
that are logically comprehensive, universal, and consistent
Ethical Frameworks

• Most helpful frameworks for guiding business decisions involve ethics

1. Utilitarianism
- a moral act produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people
- the good of the group takes precedence over consideration for individuals
- common approach in business decisions
- examples: managers maximize profit, opt for efficiency and productivity
- disadvantage: rights of minority groups can be easily overlooked and the means used
to produce the greatest good may not be viewed as ethical by everyone
- often used with environmental issues
2. Individual Rights Principle
- emphasizes personal entitlements in the form of the legal and human rights of
individuals
- examples: person’s right to privacy, free speech, due process
- difficulty with this approach is that the rights of different groups may be in conflict
3. Justice Principle
- people are guided by fairness, equity, and impartiality when treating both individuals
and groups
- fairness is the criterion for distributing the benefits and burdens of society
- appropriate for uses such as employment and discrimination
4. Caring Principle
- focus on the well-being of another person
- an ethical person is aware of the needs and feelings of others and takes the initiative
to respond to that need
- criteria: “who will be harmed and what will happen to existing relationships”
5. Environmentalism
- extends the boundary to include the person-land relationship
- belief that people have an obligation and a duty to act as stewards who protect the
earth and its resources and keeping them intact for future generations

Ethical Decision Making

• 12 questions for examining ethics of a business decision:

1. Have you defined the problem accurately? What are the factual implications of the
situation rather than a biased perspective that reflects your loyalties?
2. How would you define the problem if you stood on the other side of the fence?
3. How did this situation occur in the first place? What is the historical background of
events leading up to this situation?
 4. To whom and what do you give your loyalty as a person and as a member of the
corporation?
5. What do you want to accomplish in making this decision?
6. How does this intention compare with the probable results?
7. Whom could your decision or action injure?
8. Can you discuss the problem with the affected parties before you make your decision?
9. Are you confident that your position will be as valid over a long period of time as it
seems now?
10. Could you disclose without qualms your decision or action to your boss, your CEO, the
board of directors, your family, and society as a whole?
11. What would this decision symbolize for others if they interpret it correctly? What could
it symbolize if the decision symbolize if the decision is interpreted by others?
12. Under what conditions would you allow exceptions to your stand?

International Ethics

• The difficulty of making ethical decisions is exacerbated in international business due to

different value systems and practices
- e.g.: bribery is frowned upon in many cultures where as it is a daily way of life in others
• Ethical behavior is viewed as a competitive advantage in global business because it
builds trust
• A common definition of corruption is the abuse of public power for private gain
• The degree of corruption in a country is determined primarily by cultural values
- corruption more likely in power distance cultures: subordinates are less likely to
question authority
- achievement cultures (masculinity) correlate with higher corruption because
individuals are encouraged to be successful, ambitious and competitive
- corruption is less likely when economic activity is moderately regulated
- corruption is less likely in countries with socio-political stability and a tradition of
abiding by well-establish law and order
• Corruption is a complex social phenomenon, it is difficult to eradicate with laws alone
• One of the common dilemmas in international business is whether or not to subscribe to
cultural relativism
• It’s important to identify the cultural values, historical precedents, and legal
requirements that are involved
• Helpful to consult with various people from the other culture to make sure you
understand the foreign viewpoint

Corporate Social Responsibility

• Companies that demonstrate good corporate citizenship (an intangible asset) are likely
to have a competitive advantage in business and in their ability to attract and retain
employees
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS) is broadly defined as a company’s commitment and
contribution to the quality of life of employees, their families and the local community
and society overall to support sustainable economic development
• Although CSR programs seem to be proliferating, not everyone believes that business
should use shareholder wealth for any purpose other than business
Definition of Values

• Core beliefs or desires that determine attitudes and actions

Value Congruence

• Shared systems of values between 2 entities

• When 2 people share same values

Terminal Values

• Desirable end states of existence or goals that a person would like to achieve during his
or her lifetime
- personal values
- social values
• E.g.: completing your undergraduate degree – there’s an end state

Instrumental Values

• Preferable modes of behavior or the means to achieving one’s terminal values

• Little steps that gets you to your terminal value
- moral value:
- competence: more about personal values

Ethical vs. Non Ethical Values

• “What is right vs. What I want”

• Ethical values:
- relate to beliefs concerning what is right and proper
• Non-Ethical values:
- deal with things we like, desire or find personally important
- non ethical does not necessary mean it’s wrong (e.g.: procrastination)

Kohlberg’s Moral Reasoning Framework

• Level 1: Self-Centered
Stage 1: Obedience and Punishment
- acting based on negative consequences
Stage 2: Instrumental
- what’s in it for me?
- positive rewards
• Level 2: Conformity
Stage 3: Conformity
- conforming to be a good person
Stage 4: Law & Order
- doing your duty and following the law
• Level 3: Principled
Stage 5: Social Contract/Individual Rights
- example: the gay rights movement where some countries allow it and some don’t
- understand what’s right socially but stand firm to your own personal beliefs
Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principles
- going off your conscience, taking it one step further
• Wouldn’t skip a stage
• But doesn’t have to go through all the stage
• Everyone goes through this framework (no teaching required)
Chapter 16 – Organizational Culture

The Knowledge Base

• Organizational culture is one of the key elements that determine organizational

performance
- can either facilitate or impede the organization’s mission as well as change efforts to
improve performance
• Many companies identify and communicate their values and try to develop a culture
that will help them achieve their strategy
- high performance cultures
- customer oriented cultures
• More and more firms use selection practices that identify prospective employees who
fit the culture
• Cultural values and traditions can be a roadblock to achieving strategic goals and
needed organizational changes
• Understanding organizational culture and how it is created, maintained, and changed
has become a necessity for all organization members
- especially managers and leaders (who are stewards)
• Organizational culture is the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has
invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external
adaptation and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be considered
valid, and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think,
and feel in relation to those problems
• Organizational culture is the pattern of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs that lead
to certain norms of behavior
- “the way we do things around here”
• 3 levels of culture (Schein):
1. Artifacts that are visible or tangible (organizational stories, buildings, rituals and
ceremonies, stories, language)
2. Espoused values, such as strategies, goals, and philosophies (company mission)
3. Assumptions, which are unconscious, taken for granted beliefs, perceptions,
thoughts, and feelings (it’s more important to save face than correct a problem)
• Many organizations have a list of values posted on their walls
• “The Fabric of Creativity”
- fairness to each other and everyone with whom we come in contact
- freedom to encourage, help, and allow other associates to grow in knowledge, skill,
and scope of responsibility
- the ability to make one’s own commitments and keep them
 - consultation with other associates before undertaking actions that could impact the
reputation of the company
• In large organizations, there is usually a dominant culture accompanied by various
subcultures
• Dominant culture manifests the values shared by a majority of the organizations’
members
• Subcultures usually share the dominant culture’s core values as well as other values that
characterize their own department, geographical unit, and so on
• Countercultures, whose values are in opposition to those of the dominant culture
• We should be on the lookout for subcultures and countercultures and try to figure out
why they exist and what function they serve
• Function of organizational culture:
- culture serves as glue that holds the organization together
- culture provides members with a sense of identity, generates commitment to
something larger than self-interest
- culture helps people make sense of what occurs in the organization and the
environment
• Cultures that promote ethical behavior were high in both risk and conflict tolerance and
have members who identify with the professional standards of their job

Sources of Organizational Culture

• Sources of organizational culture:

1. The beliefs, values, and assumptions of the founders
2. The learning experiences of group members as their organization evolves
3. New beliefs, values, and assumptions brought in by new members and leaders
- other factors: specific industry, environment, national culture
• Many organizational cultures reflect the personalities and values of their founders
- founders are natural role models for their employees
- founders of ten start with a theory of how to succeed; have a cultural paradigm in their
heads, based on their experience in the culture they grew up in
- founders hire and retain people who think like they do and take steps to socialize
employees into this way of thinking and behaving
• Organizational effectiveness is more likely to occur when these are in alignment:
- the people in the organization, and their abilities and motives
- the organization’s tasks and the kinds of behavior needed to accomplish those tasks
most effectively
- the organization’s external environment and the demands it makes on the organization
for creativity, flexibility, quality, and so on
- the strategy, which dictates how an organization attempts to position itself in relation
 to its competitors
- the organization’s culture as determined by the leadership styles of management and
the organization’s structure and values
• The goal of organization design is to match people with tasks that inspire them and best
utilize their abilities and to design tasks and a strategy that can cope with environmental
demands and opportunities
• 2 important aspects of culture:
- integration of new members
- external adaptation to the environment
• Internal Integration and Strong Culture:
- foster internal integration of new members
- ensure its members fit the culture
- strong cultures have core values and beliefs that are intensely held, more widely shared
and more ordered
• External Adaptation:
- lack of external adaptation or fit was the impetus for some of the widespread
restructuring that industries have undergone in recent years
- companies with strong cultures perform better than companies with weak cultures
-
• Organizations need people who question cultural values and suggest different
assumptions
• Leaders can affect an established organizational culture, but they cannot unilaterally
determine what that culture should be

Transmitting Culture

• Culture is transmitted through various mechanisms:

- socialization
- stories
- symbols
- jargon and language
- rituals and ceremonies
- statements of principles

Socialization

• Socialization is the systematic process by which organizations bring new members into
their cultures
 • The process of becoming a member of a group, learning the ropes, and being taught
how to communication and interact to get things done
• Strong cultures that use a socialization process consists of 7 steps:
1. Careful selection of entry level candidates
- candidates who do not fit the culture are encouraged to deselect themselves and apply
elsewhere
2. Humility inducing experiences that cause newcomers to question prior behavior
beliefs, and values
- businesses may put employees through extensive and demanding training programs
that leave them with no time to do anything else
3. In the trenches training that leads to mastery of one of the business’s core
disciplines
- employees work their way up the ranks, and promotion depends on a proven track
record
4. Meticulous attention given to rewards and control systems
- the company’s critical success factors and corporate values are monitored
5. Careful adherence to the firm’s core values
- managers ensure that their own decisions and actions are consistent with stated
values
6. Reinforcing folklore
- the company stories and legends told to newcomers always reinforce the values of the
corporate culture
7. Consistent role models
- cultural heroes and “winners” consistently exhibit the traits valued by the
organization’s culture

Stories

• All organizations have stories that are repeated to newcomers

- explain what’s important in the culture and legitimize how the organization does
things
- stories contain a moral that prescribes how members should act
- describe how the organization overcame hardship or the shining moments that make
members proud
Symbols

• Symbols transmit culture and convey meaning

• Company slogans also communicate the company’s values

Jargon and Language

• Organizations sometimes develop their own language or slang

- use many acronyms that outsiders and newly hired employees don’t understand what
they are talking about
- the employees’ use of shorthand form of communication identifies them as members
of the culture
• Choice of language that organizations use is another indication of its culture

Rituals and Ceremonies

• Rituals are programmed routines of daily life that reflect he values of a corporate
culture
- e.g.: how employees communicate with one another and how meetings are run
• Ceremonies are planned events for the benefit of audiences
- e.g.: induction ceremonies for new members or graduation like ceremonies when
members pass to another level

Statements of Principles

• Many organizations create and distribute a list of their values and basic assumptions
- principles displayed on office walls
- included in a firm’s code of ethics

Organizational Justice

• One of the most important values of organizational cultures is fairness

• Employees are concerned about 3 types of justice in the workplace:
- Organizational Justice (combined):
- distributive justice: fairness regarding the distribution of resources (pay, rewards,
promotions, and dispute resolutions)
- procedural justice: describes the fairness of decision making procedures that are used
to determine how resources are distributed
 - interactional justice: refers to the treatment employees receive from others,
particularly authority figures
• When employee expectations about justice are disappointed, negative outcomes result
- take the form of: higher turnover, absenteeism, employee silence

Mergers

• The failure rate for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is roughly 50%
• The reasons behind failed mergers range from economic problems or a lack of fit, to
poor implementation in getting the merger to work
• Mergers often fail due to cultural clashes
• Many acquiring firms assumed that that merged firm should adapt to their culture
because they are the buyers

Managing Organizational Culture

• Creating, maintaining, or changing a corporate culture that employees value is an

important managerial task
• Changing an organizational culture is not a quick process because of all the
organizational elements that are aligned with the values that are targeted for change

Primary Mechanisms
1. What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis
2. How leaders react to critical incidents and organizational crises
3. How leaders allocation scarce resources
4. Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching
5. How leaders allocate rewards and status
6. How leaders recruit, select, promote, and excommunicate

Secondary Mechanisms
1. Organizational design and structure
2. Systems and procedures
3. Rites and rituals
4. Design of physical space, facades, and buildings
5. Stories about important events and people
6. Formal statements of organizational philosophy, creeds, and charters
 • Successful cultural changes usually involve effective leaders
- with either an outsider’s perspective or an insider’s long term view of the culture’s
strengths and weaknesses
- important to “honor the past” and maintain some aspects of a culture for the sake of
continuity

Service Cultures and Alignment

• Many service firms today are trying to develop or maintain organizational cultures that
result in excellent customer service
The Organizational Life Cycle

• The leader’s role in managing culture varies according to the stages of organizational
growth
• Organizations (like people) go through stages of growth and development
• Stages in Organizational Life Cycle:
1. Entrepreneurial Stage
- startup phase
- driven by an entrepreneur with a vision, energy, and a strong desire to succeed
- goal: create a product and survive
- communication is informal and face to face
- creativity and morale are high
2. Collectivity Stage
- some form of hierarchical authority has to be defined so employees know whom to go
to for decisions and orders
- formal aspects of organization are beginning to appear
- employees identify with the organization and its mission
- refers to the sense of a highly committed group that is working together to make the
organization succeed
3. Formalization Stage
- a greater degree of formalized organization and bureaucratization (in form of rules,
policies, control systems)
- management style is less entrepreneurial and more professional, relying on analytical
tools and focusing on efficiency
- morale and excitement are high in early years, but may start to disappear
- top management concentrates on strategy rather than operations
4. Elaboration Stage
- the mature stage
- communication became very formal
- numerous rules and regulations concerning the planning process
• The elaboration stage can result in continuing maturity, organizational decline, or
renewal
• 9 early warnings signals of organizational decline:
1. Excess personnel
2. Tolerance of incompetence
3. Cumbersome administrative procedures
4. Disproportionate staff power
5. Replacement of substance with form (e.g.: the planning process is more important
than results)
6. Scarcity of clear goals and decision benchmarks
7. Fear of embarrassment and conflict prevents problem identification
 8. Loss of effective communication
9. Outdated organizational structure
• Decline is almost inevitable unless management takes steps to avoid it
• Each stage requires a different type of leadership that is capable of tackling the major
growth challenges
• Probability of renewal of mature organizations increases if:
1. Mature organizations renew by instilling a customer perspective and focusing on
customer demands
- seeking a sustained competitive advantage that comes from understanding and
meeting customer needs in unique ways
2. Mature organizations renew by increasing their capacity for change
- focus more on alignment so that all aspects of the organization are moving toward
consistent and shared goals
3. Mature organizations renew by altering both the hardware and software within the
organization
- hardware is where many renewal programs begin
4. Mature organizations renew by creativity empowered employees who act as
leaders at all levels of the organizations
- individuals have both responsibility and accountability in their areas
Organizational Culture

• Pattern of shared values + beliefs held by members that produce particular norms of
behavior that can distinguish 1 organization from another

3 Levels of Culture - Schein

• Artifacts:
- visible organizational structures and processes
• Espoused Values:
- strategies, goals, and philosophies
• Basic Underlying Assumptions:
- unconscious, taken for granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts and feelings

Mechanisms for Transmitting Culture

1. Socialization
- bring in new members into your organization
- e.g.: Sprosh at Carleton
2. Stories
- narratives repeated overtime by people in culture
- e.g.: turkey at Carleton last year
3. Symbols
- a sign that everyone knows about it in the organization
- e.g.: Sprott logo, Dunton Tower
4. Jargon
- slang/shorthand used among culture
- e.g.: Panda Game only known in Ottawa
5. Rituals + Ceremonies
- used to reinforce culture
- happens regularly
6. Statements of Principles
- values that are usually written out
- where values stand
- e.g.: academic integrity
7. Heroes
- people they look up to reinforce the culture
-e.g.: profs, coaches, TAs

Organizational Culture Increases Organization Effectiveness when:

• Internal Integration:
- people in the organization can easily identify the dominant values
 • External Adaptation:
- policies and adaptations aligning with external culture

Socialization Processes in “Strong Cultures”

a. Selection of entry-level candidates
b. Humility inducing experiences
- bringing people into the organization
- have people do things the organization wants
c. In the trenches training
- when the person goes into the organization and works the wall up the ladder
d. Rewards and control systems
- reward of reaching their goals
e. Adherence to the firm’s core values
- upper level management insure that people are following through with the
organization’s culture/goals
f. Reinforcing folklore
- passing down stories
- reinforcing core values
g. Consistent role models
- people everyone looks up to

Advantages and Disadvantages of Strong Culture

• Advantages:
- clear sense of purpose
- employee commitment and loyalty
- pride in working for the organization
- constitute a competitive advantage
- high performance
• Disadvantages:
- resistance to change
- pressure for conformity
- Inward focus (focus on self)

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