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Question 1 : Why is Organizational Behaviour not a scientific discipline ?

A- HBO is defined as a field of study that investigate the impact that individuals, groups and structure have on
behaviour within organisations for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an
organisation’s effectiveness.
B- In simple Words, OB is the study of people’s behaviour in an organizational setting especially.
C- Though : OB as a subject as well a field of study can provide insights about all individuals in general and is
great source for awakening self-awareness.
D- OB as a field of study does have some aspects of becoming a scientific discipline improves process and
tests that lead to an evidence- based systematic study of people.
E- IB itself uses contributions from multiple disciplines such as psychology and anthropology.
F- In my opinion, OB despite having ingredients of scientific discipline, is not a scientific discipline because
then it would limit the classification of people who can study it as a ?? in their curriculum
G- For instance the knowledge of both low and medicine is essential for all people but medicine is a scientific
discipline and law is not therefore lesser people have knowledge from medicine in comparison.
H- OB like law is all ?? and should be known to all and therefor it is not wise to pursue it as a scientific even
though it is in a way a behavioural science.

2 theories of motivation that will be in discussion here re:

- Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory
- Expectancy Theory

Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior?

1. Demonstrate the Importance of Interpersonal Skills in the Workplace

Interpersonal skills are important because…

• ‘Good places to work’ have better financial performance.
• Better interpersonal skills result in lower turnover of quality employees and higher quality applications for
recruitment.
• There is a strong association between the quality of workplace relationships and job satisfaction, stress,
and turnover.
• It fosters social responsibility awareness.
2. Describe the Manager’s Functions, Roles, and Skills

Manager: Someone who gets things done through other people in organizations.
• Organization: A consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people that functions on a
relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.
– Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
• Mintzberg concluded that managers perform ten different, highly interrelated roles or sets of behaviours
attributable to their jobs.

Exhibit 1-1 Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles

 • Management Skills
– Technical Skills – the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. All jobs require some
specialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on the job.
– Human Skills – the ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people.
– Conceptual Skills – the mental ability to analyse and diagnose complex situations.
3. Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities
• Luthans and his associates found that all managers engage in four managerial activities:
– Traditional management
– Communication
– Human resource management
– Networking

Exhibit 1-2 Allocation of Activities by Time

4. Some facts about life at work
1. Organizations are complex systems.
2. At times, human behaviour in organizations is unpredictable
3. Human behaviour in an organization can be partially understood.
4. No perfect solution to organizational problems
5. In an organization, employees do not have the luxury of not working with or not relating to other
people.
5. Define Organizational Behaviour

Organizational behavior (OB) is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals,
groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such
knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness.
Copyright © 2019 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
6. Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study
• Systematic Study of Behavior
– Behavior generally is predictable if we know how the person perceived the situation and what
is important to him or her.
• Evidence-Based Management (EBM)
– Complements systematic study.
– Argues for managers to make decisions based on evidence.
• Intuition
– Systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut feelings” about “why I do what I do”
and “what makes others tick.”
– If we make all decisions with intuition or gut instinct, we’re likely working with
incomplete information.
7. Big Data
• Background:
– The use of Big Data for managerial practices is a relatively new area, but one that holds
convincing promise.
• Current Usage:
– The reasons for data analytics include predicting any event, detecting how much
risk is incurred at any time, and preventing catastrophes.
• New Trends:
– The use of Big Data for understanding, helping, and managing people is
relatively new but holds promise.
• Limitations:
– Use evidence as much as possible to inform your intuition and experience.
8. Identify the Major Behavioural Science Disciplines That Contribute to OB
• Organizational behaviour is an applied behavioural science that is built upon contributions from a
number of behavioral disciplines:
– Psychology
– Social psychology
– Sociology
– Anthropology
Exhibit 1-3 Toward an OB Discipline

• • Psychology
– seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behaviour of humans and
other animals.
Social psychology
– blends the concepts of psychology and sociology.

• Sociology
– studies people in relation to their social environment or culture.
• Anthropology
– is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
9. Demonstrate Why Few Absolutes Apply to OB

There are few, if any, simple and universal principles that explain organizational behaviour.
• Contingency variables situational factors are variables that moderate the relationship between the
independent and dependent variables.
10. Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Exhibit 1-4 Employment Options

 • Responding to economic pressure
– In tough economic times, effective management is an asset.
– In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy, and retain employees is at a
premium.
– In bad times, issues like stress, decision making, and coping come to the forefront.
• Responding to globalization
– Increased foreign assignments.
– Working with people from different cultures. – Overseeing movement of jobs to
countries with low cost labor.
– Adapting to differing cultural and regulatory norms.

OB POLL Percentage of Men and Women Working

• Managing workforce diversity

– Workforce diversity – organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of
gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and inclusion of Workforce other
diverse groups.
• Improving customer service
– Service employees have substantial interaction with customers.
– Employee attitudes and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction.
– Need a customer-responsive culture.
• Improving people skills
– People skills are essential to managerial effectiveness. – OB provides the concepts and
theories that allow managers to predict employee behavior in given situations.
• Working in networked organizations
– Networked organizations are becoming more pronounced.
– A manager’s job is fundamentally different in networked organizations.
– Challenges of motivating and leading “online” require different techniques.
• Using social media at work
– Policies on accessing social media at work.
o ▪ When, where, and for what purpose.
– Impact of social media on employee well-being.
 • Enhancing employee well-being at work
– The creation of the global workforce means work no longer sleeps.
– Communication technology has provided a vehicle for working at any time or any place.
– Employees are working longer hours per week. – The lifestyles of families have
changed—creating conflict.
– Balancing work and life demands now surpasses job security as an employee priority.
• Creating a positive work environment
– Positive organizational scholarship is concerned with how organizations develop human
strength, foster vitality and resilience, and unlock potential.
– This field of study focuses on employees’ strengths versus their limitations, as employees
share situations in which they performed at their personal best.
• Improving ethical behavior
– Ethical dilemmas and ethical choices are situations in which an individual is required to
define right and wrong conduct.
– Good ethical behavior is not so easily defined. – Organizations distribute
codes of ethics to guide employees through ethical dilemmas.
– Managers need to create an ethically healthy climate.
11. Three Levels of Analysis in This Text’s OB Model

Exhibit 1-5 A Basic OB Model

• Inputs
– Variables like personality, group structure, and organizational culture that lead to processes.
– Group structure, roles, and team responsibilities are typically assigned immediately before or
after a group is formed.
– Organizational structure and culture change over time.
• Processes
– If inputs are like the nouns in organizational behavior, processes are like verbs.
– Defined as actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of inputs, and
that lead to certain outcomes.
• Outcomes
– Key variables that you want to explain or predict, and that are affected by some other variables.
12. Outcome Variables
• Attitudes and stress
– Employee attitudes are the evaluations employees make, ranging from positive to negative,
about objects, people, or events.
– Stress is an unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to environmental
pressures.
• Task performance
 – The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks is a
reflection of your level of task performance.
• Organizational citizenship behavior
– The discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job
requirements, and that
 contributes to the psychological and social environment of the workplace, is called
organizational citizenship behavior.
• Withdrawal behavior
– Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that employees take to separate
themselves from the organization.
• Group cohesion
– Group cohesion is the extent to which members of a group support and validate one
another at work. • Group functioning
– Group functioning refers to the quantity and quality of a group’s work output.
• Productivity
– An organization is productive if it achieves its goals by transforming inputs into outputs at the
lowest cost. This requires both effectiveness and efficiency.
• Survival
– The final outcome is organizational survival, which is simply evidence that the organization is
able to exist and grow over the long term.

13. The Plan of the Text

Exhibit 1-6 The Plan of the Text

14. Implications for Managers

• Resist the inclination to rely on generalizations; some provide valid insights into human
behavior, but many are erroneous.
• Use metrics and situational variables rather than “hunches” to explain cause-and-
effect relationships.
• Work on your interpersonal skills to increase your leadership potential.
• Improve your technical skills and conceptual skills through training and staying current with OB trends
like big data and fast data.
• OB can improve your employees’ work quality and productivity by showing you how to
empower your employees, design and implement change programs, improve customer
service, and help your employees balance work-life conflicts.
Perception
1. Explain the Factors That Influence Perception

• Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions to give meaning
to their environment.
• It is important to the study of OB because people’s behaviors are based on their perception of what reality is,
not on reality itself.
Exhibit 5-1 Factors That Influence Perception

2. Explain Attribution Theory

 Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual’s
behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or
externally caused.
 Determination depends on three factors:
– Distinctiveness
– Consensus
– Consistency

 Clarification of the differences between internal and external causation

– Internally caused – those that are believed to be under
the personal control of the individual.
– Externally caused – resulting from outside causes.
Exhibit 5-2 Attribution Theory

 Fundamental attribution error

– We have a tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the
influence of internal or personal factors.
 Self-serving bias
– Individuals attribute their own successes to internal factors.
 Common Shortcuts in Judging Others
– Selective perception
 Any characteristic that makes a person, object, or event stand out will increase the probability that it will
be perceived.
 Since we can’t observe everything going on around us, we engage in selective perception.
 Halo effect
– The halo effect occurs when we draw a general impression based on a single characteristic.
 Contrast effects
– We do not evaluate a person in isolation.
– Our reaction to one person is influenced by other persons we have recently encountered.

 Stereotyping – Judging someone based on one’s perception of the group to which that person belongs.
  We have to monitor ourselves to make sure we’re not unfairly applying a stereotype in our
evaluations and decisions.
 Applications of Shortcuts in Organizations
– Employment Interview
 Evidence indicates that interviewers make perceptual judgments that are often inaccurate.
 Interviewers generally draw early impressions that become very quickly
entrenched.
–Studies indicate that most interviewers’ decisions change very little after the first four
or five minutes of the interview.
 Performance Expectations
– Evidence demonstrates that people will attempt to validate their perceptions of reality, even
when those perceptions are faulty.
 Self-fulfilling prophecy, or the Pygmalion effect, characterizes the fact that people’s expectations
determine their behavior.
 Expectations become reality.

 Performance Evaluation
– An employee’s performance appraisal is very much dependent upon the perceptual process.
 Many jobs are evaluated in subjective terms.
 Subjective measures are problematic because of selective perception, contrast effects, halo effects, and so
on.
Personality
1. Describe Personality, the Way It Is Measured, and the Factors that Shape It
• Defining Personality
– Personality is a dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a
person’s whole psychological system.
– The sum of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others.
• Measuring Personality
– Managers need to know how to measure personality.
 Personality tests are useful in hiring decisions and help managers forecast who is
best for a job.
– The most common means of measuring personality is through self-report surveys.
• Personality Determinants
– Is personality the result of heredity or environment? – Heredity refers to those factors that were
determined at conception.
 The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an
individual’s personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in
the chromosomes.
• Early research tried to identify and label enduring personality characteristics.
– Shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal, and timid.
 These are personality traits.
2. Strengths and Weakness of the MBTI and Big Five Model
• The most widely used personality framework is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI).
• Individuals are classified as:
– Extroverted or Introverted (E or I)
– Sensing or Intuitive (S or N)
– Thinking or Feeling (T or F)
– Perceiving or Judging (P or J)
• INTJs are visionaries.
• ESTJs are organizers.
• ENTPs are conceptualizers.
• The Big Five Model
– Extraversion
– Agreeableness
– Conscientiousness
– Emotional stability
– Openness to experience
Exhibit 4-1 Traits That Matter Most to Business Success at Buyout Companies
Most Important Less Important

Persistence Strong oral communication

Attention to detail Teamwork

Efficiency Flexibility/adaptability

Analytical skills Enthusiasm

Setting high standards Listening skills

- 2 Model of How Big Five Traits Influence OB Criteria

• The Dark Triad

– Machiavellianism: the degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and
believes that ends can justify means.
– Narcissism: the tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-importance, require
excessive admiration, and have a sense of entitlement.
– Psychopathy: the tendency for a lack of concern for others and a lack of guilt or remorse when their
actions cause harm.
• An emerging framework to study dark side traits: – First, antisocial people are indifferent and
callous toward others.
– Second, borderline people have low self-esteem and high uncertainty.
– Third, schizotypal individuals are eccentric and disorganized.
– Fourth, obsessive compulsive people are perfectionists and can be stubborn, yet they
attend to details, carry a strong work ethic, and may be motivated by achievement.
– Fifth, avoidant individuals feel inadequate and hate criticism.
3. CSE, Self-Monitoring, and Proactive Personality
• Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB
– Core Self-Evaluation: bottom line conclusions individuals have about their
capabilities,
 competence, and worth as a person.
– Self-Monitoring: measures an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behavior to external,
situational factors.
– Proactive Personality: people who identify opportunities, show initiative,
take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs.
• The Situation, Job Search, and Unemployment
• What personality characteristics predict job search behaviors among the
unemployed?
– Conscientiousness and extraversion are the two strongest predictors of job search
behavior, ▪ Self-esteem and self-efficacy (parts of CSE) are also important.
• The Situation, Personality, and Behavior (1 of 3)
• Situation strength theory: indicates that the way personality translates into behavior
depends on the strength of the situation.
– The degree to which norms, cues, or standards dictate appropriate behavior.
 Clarity
 Consistency
 Constraints
  Consequences
Exhibit 4-3 Trait Activation Theory: Jobs in Which Certain Big Five Traits Are More Relevant
Detail Orientation Social Skills Competitive Innovation Dealing with Time Pressure
Required Required Work Required Angry People (Deadlines)

Jobs scoring blank blank blank blank blank

high (the traits
listed here
should predict
behavior in
these jobs)

Air traffic Clergy Coach/scout Actor Correctional Broadcast

controller officer news analyst

Accountant Therapist Financial Systems Telemarketer Editor

manager analyst

Legal secretary Concierge Sales Advertising Flight attendant Airline pilot

representative writer

Jobs scoring low blank blank blank blank blank

(the traits listed
here should not
predict behavior
in these jobs)

Forester Software Postal clerk Court Composer Skincare

engineer reporter specialist

Masseuse Pump Historian Archivist Biologist Mathematician

operator

Detail Orientation Social Skills Competitive Innovatio Dealing with Time Pressure
Required Required Work n Angry People (Deadlines)
Required

Model Broadcast Nuclear Medical Statistician Fitness trainer

technician reactor technicia
operator n

Jobs that score blank blank blank blank blank

high activate
these traits
(make them
more relevant to
predicting
behavior)

Conscientiousness Extraversion (+) Extraversion Openness Extraversion (+) Conscientiousn

(+) (+) (+) ess (+)

Blank Agreeableness Agreeablenes Blank Agreeableness Neuroticism (–)

(+) s (–) (+)

Blank Blank Blank Blank Neuroticism (–) Blank

 Motivation:
1. Describe the Three Key Elements of Motivation
• Motivation is the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of
effort toward attaining a goal.
• The level of motivation varies both between individuals and within individuals at different times.
• The three key elements of motivation are:
o Intensity: concerned with how hard a person tries.
o Direction: the orientation that benefits the organization.
o Persistence: a measure of how long a person can maintain his/her effort.

2. Compare the Early Theories of Motivation

• Maslow’s need theory has received wide recognition, particularly among practicing managers.
– It is intuitively logical and easy to understand and some research has validated it.
– However, most research does not, and it hasn’t been frequently researched since the 1960s.
Exhibit 7-2 Comparison of Satisfiers and Dissatisfiers

Exhibit 7-3 Contrasting View of Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction

• Criticisms of Herzberg’s theory:

– Limited because it relies on self-reports. – Reliability of methodology is
questioned. – No overall measure of satisfaction was utilized.
• McClelland’s Theory of Needs
 – The theory focuses on three needs:
o Need for achievement (nAch): drive to excel, to achieve in relation to a set of standards, to
strive to succeed.
o Need for power (nPow): need to make others behave in a way that they would not have
behaved otherwise.
o Need for affiliation (nAfl): desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships.
• McClelland’s theory has had the best support. – It has less practical effect
than the others.
– Because McClelland argued that the three needs are subconscious—we may rank high on them
but not know it—measuring them is not easy.
– It is more common to find situations in which managers aware of these motivational drivers label
employees based on observations made over time.
3. Self-Determination Theory vs. Goal-Setting Theory (1 of 9)
• Self-Determination Theory
– People prefer to feel they have control over their actions.
 ▪ Focus on the beneficial effects of intrinsic motivation and harmful effects of extrinsic
motivation.
 ▪ Cognitive evaluation theory - When people are paid for work, it feels less like
something they want to do and more like something they have to do.
– Proposes that in addition to being driven by a need for autonomy, people seek ways to achieve
competence and positive connections to others.
• When extrinsic rewards are used as payoffs for performance, employees feel they are doing a good
job. – Eliminating extrinsic rewards can also shift an individual’s perception of why he or she works
on a task from an external to an internal explanation.
• Self-determination theory acknowledges that extrinsic rewards can improve even intrinsic
motivation under specific circumstances.
• What does self-determination theory suggest for providing rewards?
• Self-concordance: considers how strongly people’s reasons for pursuing goals are consistent
with their interests and core values.
• What does all of this mean?
– For individuals:
 ▪ Choose your job for reasons other than extrinsic rewards.
– For organizations:
 Provide intrinsic as well as extrinsic incentives.
• Goal-Setting Theory
– Goals tell an employee what needs to be done and how much effort is needed.
• Evidence suggests:
– Specific goals increase performance.
– Difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than do easy
goals.
– Feedback leads to higher performance than does non-feedback.
• Three other factors influencing the goals-performance relationship:
– Goal commitment
– Task characteristics
– National culture
• People differ in the way they regulate their thoughts and behaviors.
– Those with a promotion focus strive for advancement and accomplishment and approach conditions
that move them closer toward desired goals.
– Those with a prevention focus strive to fulfill duties and obligations and avoid conditions that
pull them away from desired goals.
–
 Exhibit 7-4 Cascading of Objectives

• Goal Setting and Ethics

– The relationship between goal setting and ethics is quite complex: if we emphasize the
attainment of goals, what is the cost?
– We may forgo mastering tasks and adopt avoidance techniques so we don’t look bad, both of
which can incline us toward unethical choices.
4. Self-Efficacy, Reinforcement, and Expectancy Theory
• Self-efficacy theory is an individual’s belief that he or she is capable of performing a task.
– Enactive mastery
– Vicarious modeling
– Verbal persuasion
– Arousal
• Also known as social cognitive theory and social learning theory.

Exhibit 7-5 Joint Effects of Goals and Self-Efficacy on Performance

• Implications of self-efficacy theory:

– The best way for a manager to use verbal persuasion is through the Pygmalion effect.
 A form of self-fulfilling prophecy – believing in something can make it
true.
 – Training programs often make use of enactive mastery by having people practice and build their
skills.
• Reinforcement theory: behavior is a function of its consequences.
– Reinforcement conditions behavior.
– Behavior is environmentally caused.
• Goal setting is a cognitive approach: an individual’s purposes direct his or her action.
• Operant conditioning theory: people learn to behave to get something they want or to avoid something
they don’t want.
– B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism.
• Social-learning theory: we can learn through both observation and direct experience.
– Models are central, and four processes determine their influence on an individual:
 Attentional processes
 Retention processes
 Motor reproduction processes
 Reinforcement processes
• Expectancy theory: a tendency to act in a certain way depends on an expectation that the act will be followed
by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual.
• Three relationships:
– Effort-performance relationship
– Performance-reward relationship
– Rewards-personal goals relationship
Exhibit 7-6 Expectancy Theory

• Expectancy theory helps explain why a lot of workers aren’t motivated and do only the
minimum.
• Three questions employees need to answer in the affirmative if their motivation is to be
maximized: – If I give maximum effort, will it be recognized in my performance appraisal?
– If I get a good performance appraisal, will it lead to organizational rewards?
– If I’m rewarded, are the rewards attractive to me?
5. Forms of Organizational Justice
Exhibit 7-7 Equity Theory
Ratio Comparisons* Perception

IA<OIB O Inequity due to being underrewarded

IA=OIB O Equity

IA>OIB O Inequity due to being overrewarded

*Where IArepresents the employee and OIBrepresents relevant others
O

• When employees perceive an inequity, they can be predicted to make one of six choices:
– Change inputs.
– Change outcomes.
– Distort perceptions of self.
– Distort perceptions of others.
– Choose a different referent.
 – Leave the field.

Exhibit 7-8 Model of Organizational Justice

• Justice Outcomes
– All the types of justice discussed have been linked to higher levels of task performance and
citizenship. – Third-party, or observer, reactions to injustice can be substantial.
• Promoting Justice
– Adopting strong justice guidelines in an attempt to mandate certain managerial behavior isn’t
likely to be universally effective.
• Culture and Justice
– Inputs and outcomes are valued differently in various cultures.

6. Implications of Job Engagement for Management

• Job engagement: the investment of an employee’s physical, cognitive, and emotional
energies into job performance.
– Gallup organization: more engaged employees in successful organizations than in
average organizations.
– Academic studies: job engagement is positively associated with performance and citizenship
behaviors.
• What makes people more engaged in their job? – The degree to which an employee
believes it is meaningful to engage in work.
– A match between the individual’s values and the organization’s.
– Leadership behaviors that inspire workers to a greater sense of mission.
• Are highly engaged employees getting “too much of a good thing?”
– Construct is partially redundant with job attitudes. – It may have a “dark side.”
 Positive relationships between engagement and work-family conflict.

7. Compare Contemporary Theories of Motivation

Exhibit 7-9 Integrating Contemporary Theories of Motivation
 8. Implications for Managers
• Make sure extrinsic rewards for employees are not viewed as coercive, but instead provide
information about competence and relatedness.
• Either set or inspire your employees to set specific, difficult goals and provide quality,
developmental feedback on their progress toward those goals.
• Try to align or tie in employee goals to the goals of your organization.
• Model the types of behaviors you would like to see performed by your employees.
• Expectancy theory offers a powerful explanation of performance variables such as employee
productivity, absenteeism, and turnover.
• When making decisions regarding resources in your organization, make sure to consider how the resources
are being distributed (and who’s impacted), the fairness of the decision, along with whether your actions
demonstrate that you respect those involved.
Foundations of Group Behavior
1. Distinguish Between Different Types of Groups
• A group is defined as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have
come together to achieve particular objectives.
• Groups can be either formal or informal.
– Formal groups: those defined by the organization’s structure.
– Informal groups: alliances that are neither formally structured nor organizationally
determined.
• Social identity theory: considers when and why individuals consider themselves members of
groups. – People have emotional reactions to the failure or success of their group because
their self-esteem gets tied into the performance of the group.
– Social identities help us understand who we are and where we fit in with people.
OB Poll Most People Report Drinking with Coworkers is Acceptable

Note: Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) survey of 501 individuals and how drinking is
viewed in their organization at a range of workrelated activities.
• Ingroups and Outgroups
o Ingroup favoritism occurs when we see members of our group as better than other
people, and people not in our group as all the same.
o Whenever there is an ingroup, there is by necessity an outgroup, which is sometimes
everyone else, but is usually an identified group known by the ingroup’s members.
• Social Identity Threat
o Ingroups and outgroups pave the way for social identity threat, which is akin to
stereotype threat. – Individuals believe they will be personally negatively evaluated due
to their association with a devalued group, and they may lose confidence and
performance
o effectiveness.
2. Describe the Punctuated Equilibrium Model
Exhibit 9-1 The Punctuated-Equilibrium Model
 Show How Role Requirements Change
• Role: a set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a
social unit. – Role perception: one’s perception of how to act in a given situation.
– Role expectations: how others believe one should act in a given situation.
 ▪ Psychological contract
• Role conflict: situation in which an individual faces divergent role expectations.
– We can experience interrole conflict when the expectations of our different,
separate groups are in opposition.
• Role Play and Assimilation
– Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment.
 ▪ Participants easily and rapidly assumed roles that were very different from their
inherent personalities.
3. Show How Norms Exert Influence On An Individual’s Behavior
• Norms:
– Acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by the group’s members.
• Norms and Emotions
– A recent study found that, in a task group, individuals’ emotions influenced the group’s
emotions and vice versa.
– Researchers have also found that norms dictated the experience of emotions for the
individuals and for the groups – in other words, people grew to interpret their shared
emotions in the same way.
Exhibit 9-2 Examples of Cards Used in Asch’s Study

• Norms and Emotions

– A recent study found that, in a task group, individuals’ emotions influenced the group’s
emotions and vice versa.
– Researchers have also found that norms dictated the experience of emotions for the
 individuals and for the groups – in other words, people grew to interpret their shared
emotions in the same way.
• Positive Norms and Group Outcomes
– One goal of every organization with corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives is for its
values to hold normative sway over employees.
– If employees aligned their thinking with positive norms, these norms would become stronger and
the probability of positive impact would grow exponentially.
– Positive group norms may well beget positive outcomes, but only if other factors are present.

Exhibit 9-3 Typology of Deviant Workplace Behavior

Category Examples

Production Leaving early

Blank Intentionally working slowly

Blank Wasting resources

Property Sabotage

Blank Lying about hours worked

Blank Stealing from the organization

Political Showing favoritism

Blank Gossiping and spreading rumors

Blank Blaming coworkers

Personal aggression Sexual harassment

Blank Verbal abuse

Blank Stealing from coworkers

• Norms and Culture

– Do people in collectivist cultures have different norms than people in individualist cultures? Of
course they do. – But did you know that our orientation may be changed, even after years of living
in one society.
4. Show How Status and Size Differences Affect Performance
• Status: a socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others.
– Status characteristics theory: status is derived from one of three sources:
 The power a person wields over others.
 ▪ A person’s ability to contribute to a group’s goals. ▪ An individual’s personal
characteristics.
• Status and Norms: high status individuals often have more freedom to deviate from norms.
• Status and Group Interaction: high status people are often more assertive.
• Status Inequity: perceived inequity creates disequilibrium and can lead to resentment and corrective
behavior.
• Status and Stigmatization: stigma by association.
• Group Status: “us and them” mentality and ensuing polarization.
• Group size affects the group’s overall behavior. – Large groups are good for gaining diverse input. –
Smaller groups are better doing something with input.
• Social loafing: the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than
alone.

5. Integrating Cohesiveness and Diversity for Group Effectiveness

Exhibit 9-4 Relationship Between Group Cohesiveness, Performance Norms, and Productivity

• Diversity: degree to which members of the group are similar to, or different from, one
another.
– Increases group conflict, especially in the short term.
• Culturally and demographically diverse groups may perform better over time.
– May help them be more open-minded and creative.
• Faultlines
6. Group Decision Making
• Strengths of group decision making: – More complete information and
knowledge – Increased diversity of views
– Increased acceptance of solutions
• Weaknesses of group decision making: – Time consuming
– Conformity pressures
– Dominance of a few members
– Ambiguous responsibility
• Effectiveness and efficiency of group decisions: – Accuracy
– Speed
– Creativity
– Acceptance
• Groupthink: situations in which group pressures for conformity deter the group from
critically appraising unusual, minority, or unpopular views.
• Groupshift: a change between a group’s decision and an individual decision that a member
within the group would make.
• Most group decision making takes place in interacting groups.
– Members meet face-to-face and rely on both verbal and nonverbal interaction to
communicate with each other.
• Interacting groups often censor themselves and pressure individual members toward conformity of
opinion.
• Brainstorming can overcome pressures for conformity. – In a brainstorming session:
 ▪ The group leader states the problem.
 ▪ Members then “free-wheel” as many alternatives as they can.
  ▪ No criticism is allowed.
 ▪ One idea stimulates others, and group members are encouraged to “think
the unusual.”
• The nominal group technique: restricts discussion or interpersonal communication during the
decision making process.
– Group members are all physically present, but members operate
independently.
– Permits the group to meet formally but does not restrict independent thinking, as does the
interacting group.
• Nominal groups outperform brainstorming groups.
• Steps for a nominal group:
– Each member independently writes down his/her ideas on the problem.
– After this silent period, each member presents one idea to the group.
– The ideas are discussed for clarity.
– Each group member rank-orders the ideas.
– The idea with the highest aggregate ranking determines the final decision.

Exhibit 9-5 Evaluating Group Effectiveness

Blank Blank Type of Group Blank

Effectiveness Criteria Interacting Brainstorming Nominal

Number and quality of ideas Low Moderate High

Social pressure High Low Moderate

Money costs Low Low Low

Speed Moderate Moderate Moderate

Task orientation Low High High

Potential for interpersonal conflict High Low Moderate

Commitment to solution High Not applicable Moderate

Development of group cohesiveness High High Moderate

7. Implications for Managers
• Recognize that groups can have a dramatic impact on individual behavior in organizations, to either
positive or negative effect. Therefore, pay special attention to roles, norms, and cohesion—to
understand how these are operating within a group is to understand how the group is likely to
behave.
• To decrease the possibility of deviant workplace activities, ensure that group norms do not support
antisocial behavior.
• Pay attention to the status aspect of groups. Because lower-status people tend to participate
less in group discussions, groups with high status differences are likely to inhibit input from
lower-status members and reduce their potential.
• Use larger groups for fact-finding activities and smaller groups for action-taking tasks. With
larger groups, provide measures of individual performance.
• To increase employee satisfaction, make certain people perceive their job roles accurately.
Understanding Work Teams
1. Analyze the Growing Popularity of Teams in Organizations
• Why are teams popular?
– Teams can achieve feats an individual could never accomplish.
– Teams are flexible and responsive to changing events. – They can quickly assemble, deploy,
refocus, and disband.
– They are an effective means to democratize organizations and increase employee
involvement. – They introduce a collaborative mindset.

2. Differences Between Groups and Teams

Exhibit 10-1 Comparing Workgroups and Work Teams from.

Contrast the Five Types of Teams

Exhibit 10-2 Four Types of Teams

3. Identify the Characteristics of Effective Teams

Exhibit 10-3 Team Effectiveness Model

• Team Context: What factors determine whether teams are successful?

 – Adequate Resources
– Leadership and Structure
– Climate of Trust
– Performance Evaluations and Rewards
• Team Composition: How should teams be staffed? – Abilities of members
– Personality
– Allocating roles
– Diversity
• ▪ Organizational demography
– Cultural differences
– Size of teams
– Member preferences

Exhibit 10-4 Key Roles of Teams

Exhibit 10-5 Effects of Group Processes

• Team Processes
– Common Plan and Purpose
 ▪ Reflexivity
– Specific Goals
– Team Efficacy
– Team Identity
– Team Cohesion
– Mental Models
– Conflict Levels
– Social Loafing
4. Explain How Organizations Can Create Team Players
• Creating Team Players
– Selecting: hire team players
 – Training: create team players
– Rewarding: incentives to be a good team player
5. Decide When to Use Individuals Instead of Teams
• When not to use teams…
• Ask:
– Can the work be done better by one person? – Does the work create a common
goal or purpose? – Are the members of the group interdependent?
6. Implications for Managers
• Effective teams have adequate resources, effective leadership, a climate of trust, and a performance
evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions. These teams have individuals with
technical expertise, and the right traits and skills.
• Effective teams tend to be small. They have members who fill role demands and who prefer to be part
of a group.
• Effective teams have members who believe in the team’s capabilities, are committed to
a common plan and purpose, and have an accurate shared mental model of what is to
be accomplished.
• Select individuals who have the interpersonal skills to be effective team players, provide
training to develop teamwork skills, and reward individuals for cooperative efforts.
• Do not assume that teams are always needed. When tasks will not benefit from
interdependency, individuals may be the better choice.