IV.G.1: How Much Do I Know About Organizational Behavior? Instrument Below are a number of statements about research findings in organizational behavior. For each statement, indicate whether you think it is true or false. O=false I=true 50, Leadership training is ineffective because good leaders are born, not made. 51. The most important requirement for an effective leader is to have an outgoing, enthusiastic personality. 52. Once employees have mastered a task, they perform better when they are told to “do their best” than when they are given specific, difficult performance goals. 53. On average, encouraging employees to participate in decision making is more effective for improving organizational performance than setting performance goals. 54. Teams with members from different functional areas are likely to reach better solutions to complex problems than teams from a single area. 55. There is very little difference among personality measures in terms of how well they predict an applicant’s likely job performance. 56. Being very intelligent is actually a disadvantage for performing well on a low-skilled job. 57. Companies that screen job applicants for values have higher performance than those that screen for intelligence 58. Groups tend to arrive at decisions faster than individuals on simple tasks. 59. When negotiating with another person, it’s more effective to let the other person make the first offer because it reveals what the other person wants. 60. Employees who feel that they have been treated unfairly by their employer tend to steal more than employees who feel that they have been treated fairly. 61. A happy worker is not a productive worker. Source: Based on: 8. L. Rynes, A. E. Colbert, and K. G. Brown, “HR Professionals’ Beliefs About Effective Human Resource Practices: Correspondence Between Research and Practice,” Human Resource Management, (Summer, 2002), pp. 149-174. Scoring Key To score the measure, compute the number of correct responses. Correct answers to the 12 questions are as follows: 1: False (0), 2: False (0), 3: False (0), 4: False (0), 5: True (1), 6: False (0), 7: False (0), 8: False (0), 9: False (0), 10: False (0), 11: True (1), 12: False (0). Compute whether each response matches the correct response; matches should be counted as one, while discrepancies should be counted as zero. Scores will range from zero (all responses incorrect) to 12 (all responses correct). Analysis and Interpretation How much do you know about organizational behavior? That’s what this scale measures. Your score can range from zero to 12, where 12 is a perfect score. If you aced this test, you can 128congratulate yourself, but there is still a lotto learn ~ the above questions represent only a small part of the field of organizational behavior. If you didn’t score that well, don’t worry. Many people come to a class on organizational behavior with preconceived notions that they believe are true. This is different than what you probably experienced in classes such as calculus or organic chemistry, where you came in without a lot of “facts” about the class. You'll find that some of your preconceived notions hold, while others don’t. Many of your preconceived notions may be based on common sense. Common sense tells us things such as “two heads are better than one,” “opposites attract,” and “a happy worker is a productive worker.” Sometimes, research supports common wisdom and tells us what we thought we already knew. Other times, research is directly opposite to what we believe to be common sense. Many times, research tells us that the answer “depends.” The interesting part ‘comes when we understand exactly what the answer depends on, and research can tell us that, too. Thus, relying solely on common sense can be problematic. ‘The field of organizational behavior has been built from decades of research. Flip to the end of each chapter sometime and look at the endnotes ~ you'll find numerous citations of studies that ‘generated the content of this book. As you go through this book, note the instances where the research tells you something you didn’t know before; you may be surprised at how many times this will happen! 129