Download Chapter Fifteen - University of Mississippi

Mgmt 371
Chapter Fifteen
Basic Elements of Individual Behavior
in Organizations
1
Understanding Individuals in
Organizations
 The Psychological Contract
 The overall set of expectations held by an
individual with respect to what he or she will
contribute to the organization and what the
organization will provide in return.
 The unwritten expectations that employees and
employers have about the nature of their work
relationships
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Quid pro quo
Loosely defines what actions are “fair” in the
workplace.
Both tangible items and intangible items can affect
the psychological contract.
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Psychological Contracts
(Employee Expectations)
 Generally, employees expect employers to
provide:
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Competitive wages
Competitive benefits
Job security
Career development opportunities
Flexibility to balance family and work
 If the psychological contract is not altered,
the employer may expect greater employee
commitment (loyalty).
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Psychological Contracts
(Employer Expectations)
 Generally, employers expect employees to
provide:
 Effort.
 Ability.
 Loyalty.
 Skills.
 Time.
 Competencies.
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Factors Adversely Affecting
Individual & Organizational Relations
 Mergers and acquisitions
 Self-employment and contingent work
 Less management job tenure
 Job insecurity (economic anxiety)
 Downsizing
 Global
competition
 Job obsolescence
 Executive pay v. the plight of the workers.
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Understanding Individuals in
Organizations (Person-Job Fit)
 The Person-Job Fit

Reasons for poor person-job fit:
 Organizational selection procedures are
imperfect.
 Both people and organizations change over
time.
 Adopting new technologies changes the skills
needed by employees.
 Each individual is unique and each job is
unique.
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Understanding Individuals in
Organizations (Individual Differences)
 Individual Differences
 Personal attributes that vary from one
person to another.
 Physical
 Psychological
 Emotional.
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Personality and Individual
Behavior
 Personality
 The
relatively stable set of psychological
and behavioral attributes that distinguish
one person from another.
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The “Big Five” Personality Traits
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Agreeableness—a person’s ability to get along
with others.
Conscientiousness—the number of goals on
which a person focuses.
Negative emotionality—the extent to which a
person is calm, resilient, and secure.
Extraversion—a person’s comfort level with
relationships.
Openness—a person’s rigidity of beliefs and
range of interests.
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The “Big Five” Model of
Personality
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The Myers-Briggs Framework
 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
 A popular questionnaire that some organizations use to
assess personality types.
Is a useful method for determining
communication styles and interaction
preferences.
 Has questionable validity and reliability.
 Personality Types
 Extraversion (E) versus Introversion (I)
 Sensing (S) versus Intuition (N)
 Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F)
 Judging (J) versus Perceiving (P)

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Other Personality Traits at Work
 Locus of Control (J.B. Rotter)

The extent to which people believe that their
behavior has a real effect on what happens to
them.
 Internal locus of control—individuals who
believe they are in control of their lives.
 External locus of control—individuals
believe that external forces dictate what
happen to them.
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Other Personality Traits at Work
 Self-Efficacy (Albert Bandura)

A person’s belief about his or her capabilities
to perform a task. High self-efficacy individuals
believe they can perform well while low selfefficacy individuals doubt their ability to
perform.
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Other Personality Traits at Work
 Authoritarianism

The extent to which an individual believes that
power and status differences are appropriate
within hierarchical social organizations.
 Machiavellianism

Behavior directed at gaining power and
controlling the behavior of others.
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Other Personality Traits at Work
 Self-Esteem

The extent to which a person believes she/he
is a worthwhile individual.
 Risk Propensity

The degree to which an individual is willing to
take chances and make risky decisions.
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Emotional Intelligence
 Emotional intelligence, or EQ
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The extent to which people are self-aware, can
manage their emotions, can motivate themselves,
express empathy for others, and possess social
skills.
Dimensions of EQ
 Self-awareness
 Managing emotion
 Motivating oneself
 Empathy
 Social skill
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Attitudes and Individual Behavior
 Attitudes - Complexes of beliefs and feelings that
people have about specific ideas, situations, or other
people. Attitudinal components:
 Affective component
 Feelings and emotions toward a situation (i.e.,
how we feel).
 Cognitive component
 Perceived knowledge (i.e., why we feel the way
we feel).
 Intentional component
 Expected behavior in a given situation (i.e.,
what we intend do about the situation).
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Attitudes and
Individual Behavior
 Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger)
 The conflict individuals experience among their
own attitudes caused by holding two
contradictory ideas simultaneously.
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The affective and cognitive components of the
individual’s attitude are in conflict with intended
behavior.
The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes
that people have a fundamental cognitive drive
to reduce this dissonance by modifying an
existing belief, or rejecting one of the
contradictory ideas.
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Work-Related Attitudes
 Job Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction
 An attitude that reflects the extent to which an
individual is gratified or fulfilled by his or her work.
 Job Satisfaction and Work Behaviors
 Job satisfaction is influenced by personal, group, and
organizational factors.
 Satisfied employees are absent less often, make
positive contributions, and stay with the organization.
 Dissatisfied employees are absent more often, may
experience stress which disrupts coworkers, and may
be continually looking for another job.
 High levels of job satisfaction do not necessarily lead
to high job performance.
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Work-Related Attitudes
 Organizational Commitment - An attitude
that reflects an individual’s identification with
and attachment to an organization.
 Organizational Commitment and Work Behaviors

Employee commitment strengthens with an
individual’s age, years with the organization,
sense of job security, and participation in decision
making.

Committed employees have highly reliable habits,
plan a longer tenure with the organization, and
muster more effort in performance.
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Affect and Mood in Organizations
 Positive Affectivity
 A tendency to be relatively upbeat and optimistic,
have an overall sense of well-being, see things in
a positive light, and seem to be in a good mood.
 Negative Affectivity
 A tendency to be generally downbeat and
pessimistic, tend to see things in a negative way,
and seem to be in a bad mood.
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Perception and Individual
Behavior
 Perception
The set of processes by which an
individual becomes aware of and interprets
information.
 Selective Perception
 The process of screening out information
that we are uncomfortable with or that
contradicts our beliefs.
 If selective perception causes someone to
ignore important information it can become
quite detrimental.

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Perceptual Processes
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Perception and Individual
Behavior
 Stereotyping
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The process of categorizing or labeling people
on the basis of a single attribute (gender, race,
profession, school, e.g.).
Stereotyping may cost the organization
valuable talent, violate federal anti-bias laws,
and is likely unethical.
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Perception and Attribution
 Attribution

A mechanism through which we observe
behavior and attribute a cause to it.
 Ways in Which Attributions Are Formed:
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Consensus
Consistency
Distinctiveness
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Stress and Individual Behavior
 Stress
 A person’s response to a strong stimulus (i.e.,
a stressor).
 General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
 The general cycle of the stress process.
 Stage 1 Alarm
 Stage 2 Resistance
 Stage 3 Exhaustion
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The General Adaptation Syndrome
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Causes of Work Stress
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Causes and Consequences of Stress
 Consequences of Stress
 Negative personal consequences
 Behavioral
 Psychological
 Medical
 Negative work-related consequences
 Poor quality work output and lower productivity.
 Job dissatisfaction, low morale, and a lack of
commitment.
 Withdrawal through indifference and absenteeism.
 Burnout
 A feeling of exhaustion that may develop when
someone experiences too much stress for an
extended period of time.
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Stress and Individual Behavior
(Type A Personality)
 Personality Types
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Type A personality
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Extremely competitive (aggressive), devoted
to work, have a strong sense of time
urgency (impatient).
Have a lot of drive and want to accomplish
as much as possible as quickly as possible.
Prone to stress.
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Stress and Individual Behavior
(Type B Personality)
 Personality Types
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Type B Personality
 Less competitive, less devoted to work, have
a weaker sense of time urgency.
 Less likely to experience personal stress or
to come into conflict with other people.
 More likely to have a balanced, relaxed
approach to life.
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Managing Stress
 Stress Management Strategies for Individuals
 Regular exercise
 reduces tension and stress, and improves selfconfidence and feelings of optimism.
 Relaxation
 allows individuals to adapt and better deal with their
stress.
 Time management
 reduces stress by prioritizing activities to accomplish
them in their order of importance.
 Support groups
 socializing away from work reduces stress.
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Managing Stress
 Stress Management Strategies for Organizations
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Organizations are partly responsible for stress.
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Organizations also bear the costs of stress-related
claims.
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Organizational wellness/stress management programs
can be used to promote healthful employee activities
and derive the benefits of increased organizational
productivity.
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Creativity in Organizations
 Creativity
The ability of an individual to generate new ideas
or to conceive of new perspectives in existing
ideas.
 The Creative Individual
 Background experiences and creativity
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Many creative individuals were reared in
creative environments.
Personal traits and creativity
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Creative persons have personal traits of
openness, an attraction to complexity, high
levels of energy, independence, autonomy,
strong self-confidence, and a strong belief
in their own creativity.
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Creativity in Organizations
 The Creative Individual
 Cognitive
abilities and creativity
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Most creative people are highly
intelligent.
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They are both divergent and convergent
thinkers, a skill they use to see
differences and similarities in situations,
phenomena, and events.
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The Creative Process
 Preparation
 Formal education and training is used to “get up to
speed.”
 Experiences on the job provide additional
knowledge and ideas.
 Incubation
 A period of less intense conscious concentration
during which knowledge and ideas acquired,
during reparation,
mature and develop.
 Incubation can be helped by pauses in rational
thought.
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The Creative Process
 Insight
 A spontaneous breakthrough in which the creative
person achieves a new understanding of some
problem or situation.
 Patterns of thought coalesce into a new
understanding.
 Verification
 Determines the validity or truthfulness of the
insight.
 Tests are conducted and prototypes are built to
see if the insight leads to the expected results.
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The Creative Process
 Enhancing Creativity in Organizations
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Make creativity part of the organization’s
culture.
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Set goals for revenues from creative products
and services.
Reward creativity; refrain from punishing
creative failures.

Some ideas work out as expected, others don’t
work out as intended.
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Types of Workplace Behavior
 Workplace Behavior

A pattern of action by the members of an
organization that directly or indirectly
influences organizational effectiveness.
 Performance Behaviors

The total set of work-related behaviors an
organization expects an individual to display.
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Types of Workplace Behavior
 Withdrawal Behaviors
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Absenteeism occurs when an individual does
not show up for work when expected for
legitimate or feigned reasons.
Absenteeism may be a symptom of other
work-related problems.
Turnover occurs when individuals quit their
jobs for work-related or personal reasons.
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Types of Workplace Behavior
 Organizational Citizenship

The behavior of individuals that makes a positive
overall contribution to the organization.
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The determinants of organizational citizenship is a
complex mosaic of individual, social, and
organizational variables.
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The personality, attitudes, and needs of the
individual.
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The social context, or work group, in which the
individual works.
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An organization (and its culture) capable of
rewarding citizenship behaviors.
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