Notes on:

ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
 CHAPTER -1
What Is Organizational Behavior?
The Importance of Interpersonal Skills
• Interpersonal skills involve the ability to communicate and build relationships with
others. Often called ‘people skills’, they tend to incorporate both your innate personality
traits and how have learned to handle certain social situations.
• Developing managers’ interpersonal skills helps organizations attract and keep high-
performing employees
• Having managers with good interpersonal skills is likely to make the workplace more
pleasant, which in turn makes it easier to hire and keep qualified people

Management & Organizational Behavior

• Manager:
An individual who achieves goals through other people. They make decisions, allocate
resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals.
• 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.

Functions of Management
• Planning: Planning function encompasses defining an organization’s goals,
establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing a
comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate activities.
• Organizing: It includes determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how
the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.
• Leading: When managers motivate employees, direct their activities, select the most
effective communication channels, or resolve conflicts among members, they’re
engaging in leading
• Controlling: To ensure things are going, as they should, management must monitor the
organization’s performance and compare it with previously set goals. If there are any
significant deviations, it is management’s job to get the organization back on track. This
monitoring, comparing, and potential correcting is the controlling function.

Management Roles
Henry Mintzberg said that managers perform ten different, highly interrelated roles—or sets
of behaviours. These ten roles are primarily (1) interpersonal, (2) informational, or (3)
decisional.

1
Management Skills:
• Technical skills:
Technical skills encompass the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise.
When you think of the skills of professionals such as civil engineers or oral surgeons,
you typically focus on the technical skills they have learned through extensive formal
education
• Human skills:
The ability to understand, communicate with, motivate, and support other people, both
individually and in groups, defines human skills.

2
 • Conceptual skills:
Managers must have the mental ability to analyse and diagnose complex situations.
These tasks require conceptual skills. The ability to integrate new ideas with existing
processes and innovate on the job are also crucial conceptual skills for today’s
managers.

Effective versus Successful Managerial Activities

Fred Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers. All engaged in four
managerial activities:
1. Traditional management. : Decision making, planning, and controlling.
2. Communication.: Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork.
3. Human resource management. Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and
training.
4. Networking.: Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders
• The “average” manager spent 32 percent of his or her time in traditional management
activities, 29 percent communicating, 20 percent in human resource management
activities and 19 percent networking.
• Among managers who were successful (defined in terms of speed of promotion within
their organization), networking made the largest relative contribution to success, and
human resource management activities made the least relative contribution
• Among effective managers (defined in terms of quantity and quality of their
performance and the satisfaction and commitment of employees), communication made
the largest relative contribution and networking the least

Organizational Behavior:
• Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals,
groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for applying such
knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness.
• OB is the study of what people do in an organization and how their behavior affects the
organization’s performance.
•

Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study

• Systematic study :
Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and drawing
conclusions based on scientific evidence.

• Evidence-based management (EBM):

The basing of managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence.

• Intuition :

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 A gut feeling not necessarily supported by research.

Disciplines That Contribute to OB

• Psychology
Psychology seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans
and other animals. Those who have contributed and continue to add to the knowledge
of OB are learning theorists, personality theorists, counseling psychologists, and, most
important, industrial and organizational psychologists.

• Social Psychology
Social psychology, generally considered a branch of psychology, blends concepts from
both psychology and sociology to focus on peoples’ influence on one another. One
major study area is change —how to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its
acceptance. Finally, they have made important contributions to our study of group
behavior, power, and conflict.

• Sociology
Sociology studies people in relation to their social environment or culture. Sociologists
have studied organizational culture, formal organization theory and structure,
organizational technology, communications, power, and conflict.

• Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
Anthropologists’ work on cultures and environments has helped us understand
differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior between people in different
countries and within different organizations.

Challenges and Opportunities for OB

• Economic pressures:
Managing employees well when times are tough is just as hard as when times are
good—if not more so. However, the OB approaches sometimes differ. 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 fore.

• Globalization:
Increased Foreign Assignments
Working with People from Different Cultures
Overseeing Movement of Jobs to Countries with Low-Cost Labor

• Managing Workforce Diversity:

4
 Workforce diversity acknowledges a workforce of women and men; many racial and
ethnic groups; individuals with a variety of physical or psychological abilities; and
people who differ in age and sexual orientation. Managing this diversity is a global
concern

• Customer service:
Many an organization has failed because its employees failed to please customers.
Management needs to create a customer-responsive culture. OB can provide
considerable guidance in helping managers create such cultures—in which employees
are friendly and courteous, accessible, knowledgeable, prompt in responding to
customer needs, and willing to do what’s necessary to please the customer

• People Skills

• Networked Organizations
Networked organizations allow people to communicate and work together even though
they may be thousands of miles apart. The manager’s job is different in a networked
organization. Motivating and leading people and making collaborative decisions online
requires different techniques than when individuals are physically present in a single
location. As more employees do their jobs by linking to others through networks,
managers must develop new skills. OB can provide valuable insights to help with
honing those skills.

• Positive Work Environment

Positive organizational scholarship (also called positive organizational behavior),
which studies how organizations develop human strengths, foster vitality and resilience,
and unlock potential. Researchers in this area say too much of OB research and
management practice has been targeted toward identifying what is wrong with
organizations and their employees. In response, they try to study what is good about
them. Some key independent variables in positive OB research are engagement, hope,
optimism, and resilience in the face of strain

• Ethical Behavior:
Today’s manager must create an ethically healthy climate for his or her employees,
where they can do their work productively with minimal ambiguity about what right
and wrong behaviors are. Companies that promote a strong ethical mission, encourage
employees to behave with integrity, and provide strong ethical leadership can influence
employee decisions to behave ethically

5
Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model
Model:
An abstraction of reality. A simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon. OB
model proposes three types of variables (inputs, processes, and outcomes) at three levels of
analysis (individual, group, and organizational). The model proceeds from left to right, with
inputs leading to processes and processes leading to outcomes.

Inputs:
Inputs are the variables like personality, group structure, and organizational culture that lead to
processes. These variables set the stage for what will occur in an organization later
Processes:
Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in because of inputs
and that lead to certain outcomes.
Outcomes:
Outcomes are the key variables that you want to explain or predict, and that are affected by
some other variable
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.

6
Task performance:
The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks.
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 citizenship
behavior.
Withdrawal behavior:
It is the set of actions that employees take to separate themselves from the organization. There
are many forms of withdrawal, ranging from showing up late or failing to attend meetings to
absenteeism and turnover.
Group cohesion:
The extent to which members of a group support and validate one another while at work.
Group functioning:
The quantity and quality of a work group is output.
Productivity:
The combination of the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization.
Organizational survival:
The degree to which an organization is able to exist and grow over the long term.

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 CHAPTER 2
Diversity in Organizations
Levels of Diversity
• Surface-level diversity:
Differences in easily perceived characteristics, such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, or
disability, that do not necessarily reflect the ways people think or feel but that may
activate certain stereotypes.
• Deep-level diversity:
Differences in values, personality, and work preferences that become progressively
more important for determining similarity as people get to know one another better.

Discrimination
Although diversity does present many opportunities for organizations, effective diversity
management also means working to eliminate unfair discrimination. It is noting of a difference
between things; often we refer to unfair discrimination, which means making judgments about
individuals based on stereotypes regarding their demographic group.

Biographical Characteristics
Personal characteristics—such as age, gender, race, and length of tenure—that are objective
and easily obtained from personnel records. These characteristics are representative of surface-
level diversity.

Age:
The relationship between age and job performance is likely to be an issue of increasing
Importance during the next decade for at least two reasons:
• Belief is widespread that job performance declines with increasing age.
• The workforce is aging.
Employers hold mixed feelings. They see a number of positive qualities older workers bring to
their jobs, such as experience, judgment, a strong work ethic, and commitment to quality.
However, older workers are also perceived as lacking flexibility and resisting new technology.

Sex:
Workers who experience sexual harassment have higher levels of psychological stress, and
these feelings in turn are related to lower levels of organizational commitment and job
satisfaction, and higher intentions to turn over. As with age discrimination, the evidence
suggests that combating sex discrimination may be associated with better performance for the
organization as a whole.

Race and Ethnicity:

Race: the biological heritage people use to identify themselves.
Ethnicity: the additional set of cultural characteristics that often overlaps with race.

Disability:
The impact of disabilities on employment outcomes has been explored from a variety of
perspectives. On the one hand, a review of the evidence suggests workers with disabilities

8
receive higher performance evaluations. However, this same review found that despite their
higher performance, individuals with disabilities tend to encounter lower performance
expectations and are less likely to be hired.

Other Biographical Characteristics: Tenure, Religion,

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Tenure:
• If we define seniority as time on a particular job, the most recent evidence demonstrates
a positive relationship between seniority and job productivity. Therefore, tenure,
expressed as work experience, appears to be a good predictor of employee productivity.
• Tenure is also a potent variable in explaining turnover. The longer a person is in a job,
the less likely he or she is to quit.
• Evidence indicates tenure and job satisfaction are positively related. In fact, when age
and tenure are treated separately, tenure appears a more consistent and stable predictor
of job satisfaction than age.

Religion:
Faith can be an employment issue when religious beliefs prohibit or encourage certain
behaviours. For instance, Many Christians do not believe they should work on Sundays, and
many conservative Muslims believe they should not work on Fridays.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity:

While much has changed, the full acceptance and accommodation of gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender employees remains a work in progress. While times have changed, sexual
orientation and gender identity remain; individual differences that receive very different
treatment are accepted quite differently in different organizations.

Cultural Identity:
A company seeking to be sensitive to the cultural identities of its employees should look
beyond accommodating its majority groups and instead create as much of an individualized
approach to practices and norms as possible.

Ability:
It is an individual’s capacity to perform the various tasks in a job.
Intellectual abilities: The capacity to do mental activities—thinking, reasoning, and problem
solving.
General mental ability (GMA): An overall factor of intelligence, as suggested by the positive
correlations among specific intellectual ability dimensions.
Physical abilities: The capacity to do tasks that demand stamina, dexterity, strength, and
similar characteristics.

The Role of Disabilities:

Recognizing that individuals have different abilities that can be taken into account when
making hiring decisions is not problematic. However, it is discriminatory to make blanket
assumptions about people based on a disability. It is also possible to make accommodations for
disabilities.

Implementing Diversity Management Strategies:

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Diversity management:
The process and programs by which managers make everyone more
Aware of and sensitive to the needs and differences of others
.
Attracting, Selecting, Developing, and Retaining Diverse Employees:
One method of enhancing workforce diversity is to target recruiting messages to specific
demographic groups underrepresented in the workforce. This means placing advertisements in
publications geared toward specific demographic groups .

Diversity in Groups
Most contemporary workplaces require extensive work in-group settings. Regardless of the
composition of the group, differences can be leveraged to achieve superior performance.
Groups of diverse individuals will be much more effective if leaders can show how members
have a common interest in the group’s success.

Effective Diversity Programs:

Effective, comprehensive workforce programs encouraging diversity have three distinct
components.
• First, they teach managers about the legal framework for equal employment opportunity
and encourage fair treatment of all people regardless of their demographic
characteristics.
• Second, they teach managers how a diverse workforce will be better able to serve a
diverse market of customers and clients.
• Third, they foster personal development practices that bring out the skills and abilities
of all workers, acknowledging how differences in perspective can be a valuable way to
improve performance for everyone.

CHAPTER -3
Attitude & job satisfaction
Attitudes

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Attitudes are evaluative statements- either favourable or unfavourable about objects, people,
or events. They reflect how we feel about something. Viewing attitudes as having three
components—cognition, affect, and Behaviour- is helpful in understanding their complexity
and the potential

Relationship between attitudes and behaviour:

The desire to reduce dissonance depends on moderating factors, including the importance of
the elements creating it and the degree of influence we believe we have over them. While
Festinger argued that attitudes follow behaviour, other researchers asked whether there was
any relationship at all.

Moderating Variables
The most powerful moderators of the attitudes relationship are the importance of the attitude,
its correspondence to behaviour, its accessibility, the presence of social pressures, and whether
a person has direct experience with the attitude.

What Are the Major Job Attitudes?

We each have thousands of attitudes, but OB focuses our attention on a very limited number
of work-related attitudes. These tap positive or negative evaluations that employees hold about
aspects of their work environment. A few other important attitudes are-

Perceived Organizational Support Perceived organizational support (POS)

is the degree to which employees believe the organization values their contribution and cares
about their well-being.
Employees with strong POS perceptions have been found more likely to have higher levels of
organizational citizenship behaviours, lower levels of tardiness, and better customer service.

Employee Engagement
It is an individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for, the work she does.
We might ask employees whether they have access to resources and the opportunities to learn
new skills, whether they feel their work is important and meaningful, and
whether their interactions with co-workers and supervisors are rewarding.

Job Satisfaction
When people speak of employee attitudes, they usually mean job satisfaction, which describes
a positive feeling about a job, resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.

Personality
People who have a positive core self-evaluation (CSE), who believe in their inner worth and
basic competence are more satisfied with their jobs than people with negative CSE.

Pay
Pay does correlate with job satisfaction and overall happiness for many people, but the effect
can be smaller once an individual reaches a standard level of comfortable living.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

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An organisations commitment to CSR or its self-regulated actions to benefit society or the
environment beyond what is required by law, increasingly affects employee job satisfaction .

Job Involvement
Related to job satisfaction is job involvement, which measures the degree to which people
identify psychologically with their job and consider their perceived performance level
important to self-worth.

Organizational Commitment
In organizational commitment , an employee identifies with a particular organization and its
goals and wishes to remain a member.

Measuring Job Satisfaction

Our definition of job satisfaction—a positive feeling about a job resulting
From an evaluation of its characteristics—is clearly broad. An employee’s assessment of his
satisfaction with the job is a complex summation of many discrete elements .

What Causes Job Satisfaction?

Interesting jobs that provide training, variety, independence, and control satisfy most
employees. There is also a strong correspondence between how well people enjoy the social
context of their workplace and how satisfied they are overall.

The Impact of Satisfied and Dissatisfied Employees on the Workplace

• Exit
The exit response directs behaviour toward leaving the organization, including looking
for a new position as well as resigning.
• Voice
The voice response includes actively and constructively attempting to improve
conditions, including suggesting improvements, discussing problems with superiors,
and undertaking some forms of union activity.
• Loyalty
The loyalty response means passively but optimistically waiting for conditions to
improve, including speaking up for the organization in the face of external criticism
and trusting the organization and its management to “do the right thing.”
• Neglect
The neglect response passively allows conditions to worsen and includes chronic
absenteeism or lateness, reduced effort, and increased error rate.

Job Satisfaction and Job Performance

As several studies have concluded, happy workers are more likely to be productive workers.
Job Satisfaction and OCB It seems logical to assume job satisfaction should be a major
determinant of an employee’s organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB).

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Job Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction
Employees in service jobs often interact with customers. Because service organization
managers should be concerned with pleasing those customers. Satisfied employees increase
customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism

We find a consistent negative relationship between satisfaction and absenteeism, but it is
moderate to weak.

Job Satisfaction and Turnover

The relationship between job satisfaction and turnover is stronger than between satisfaction
and absenteeism. Job dissatisfaction is more likely to translate into turnover when employment
opportunities are plentiful because employees perceive it is easy to move.

Job Satisfaction and Workplace Deviance

Job dissatisfaction and antagonistic relationships with co-workers predict a variety of
behaviours organizations find undesirable, including unionization attempts, substance abuse,
stealing at work, undue socializing, and tardiness.

Managers Often “Don’t Get It”

Given the evidence we have just reviewed, it should come as no surprise that job satisfaction
can affect the bottom line.

Summary
Managers should be interested in their employees’ attitudes because attitudes give warnings of
potential problems and influence behaviour. Evidence strongly suggests that whatever
managers can do to improve employee attitudes will likely result in heightened organizational
effectiveness. Some takeaway lessons from the study of attitudes include the following:

• Satisfied and committed employees have lower rates of turnover, absenteeism, and
withdrawal behaviours. They also perform better on the job. Given that, managers want
to keep resignations and absences down—especially among their most productive
employees—they will want to do things that generate positive job attitudes.
• Managers will also want to measure job attitudes effectively so they can tell how
employees are reacting to their work. As one review put it, “A sound measurement of
overall job attitude is one of the most useful pieces of information an organization can
have about its employees.”
• The most important thing managers can do to raise employee satisfaction is focus on
the intrinsic parts of the job, such as making the work challenging and interesting.
Chapter: 04
EMOTIONS AND MOODS
Affect:
Abroad range of feeling that people experience. It can be experienced in the form of emotions
and moods.

13
Emotions:
Intense, discrete and short-lived feeling that is often caused by a specific event.
• Caused by a specific event
• Very brief in duration
• Specific and numerous in nature (sadness, fear, anger surprise)
• Action-oriented in nature
• Usually accompanied by different facial expression
Moods:
Feeling that tend to live longer and less intense than emotions and lack a contextual stimulus.
• Cause is often general and unclear
• Last longer than emotions
• More general
• Generally not inclined by distinct expression
• Cognitive in nature
Moral Emotions
Emotions that have moral implication because of our instant judgement of the situation that
evokes them. For example-It includes the sympathy for others, guilt about our immoral
behaviour, anger about injustice done to others and contempt for them who work unethically.
One more norm we feel about violation of moral norms called moral disgust. It is unique in
another form of disgust for example if you step in cow dung by mistake you might feel
disgusted by it but you would not feel moral disgust you probably would not make a moral
judgement.
The Basic Moods: Positive and Negative Affects
Positive emotions s join gratitude Express our favourable evaluation of feeling negative
emotions s anger and Express the opposite. Emotion cannot be neutral.
• Positive affect is a mood dimension consisting of positive emotion such as excitement
enthusiasm and elation at the high end.
• Negative affect is a motivation consisting of nervousness, stress and anxiety at the high end.

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Sources of Emotions
1. Personality
People also experience the same emotions with different intensities; the degree to which they
experience them is called their affect intensity.

2. Time and Day of a week

There is a common pattern for all of us
•Happier in the midpoint of the daily awake period
•Happier toward the end of the week
3. Weather
Illusory correlation-, which occur when we associate two events that in reality have no
connection, explains why people tend to think weather influences them.
4. Stress
Even low level of continuous stress can break the person and worsen the situation.
5. Social activities
Activities that are physical (skiing and hiking with friends) informal (going to a party) or
epicurean (eating with others) are more strongly associated with increased positive know that
event that are formally attending a meeting of sedentary watching TV with friends.
6. Sleep:
Poor sleep quality increases negative affect.
7. Exercise:
Does somewhat improve mood, especially for depressed people.
8. Age:
Older folks experience fewer negative emotions.

15
9. Gender:
Women tend to be more emotionally expressive, feel emotions more intensely, have longer-
lasting moods, and express emotions more frequently than do men express.
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
A person’s ability to:
-Be self-aware
•Recognizing own emotions when experienced
–Detect emotions in others
–Manage emotional cues and information
•EI plays an important role in job performance
•EI is controversial and not wholly accepted
–Case for EI:
•Intuitive appeal; predicts criteria that matter; is biologically based.
–Case against EI:
•Too vague a concept; cannot be measured; its validity is suspect.
Component of Emotion Regulation:

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Ob Application of Emotions and Moods
The Selection Process
Emotional Intelligence should be the hiring factor in case of employees, especially the job that
requires a high degree of social interaction.
Decision Making
Emotions and moods affect decision making that managers should understand Positive
Emotion help people makes sound decisions also known as problem-solving skill.
Creativity
Creativity is influence by emotion and moods but it has been discovered that good people in
good mood is more creative than bad mood. Positive feedback makes people more creative.
Other believes that people who worry more may perform better than those who worry less.
However, conclusively, Positive mood and emotions are more flexible and open up their
thinking.
Motivation
It is the process of stimulating people to actions to accomplish their goals. Positive mood affect
the expectation of success and feedback intensifies this effect.
Leadership
Leaders to focus on inspirational goals generate greater optimism, corporation and enthusiasm
in employees leading to positive social interaction with co-worker and customer. Leaders are
perceived as more effective when they share positive emotions and followers are more creative
and positive emotional environment.
Negotiation
Emotions if skilfully displayed can affect negotiation. Angry negotiators who have less
information on less power than other opponent have a significantly worse outcome. The best
negotiators are probably those who remain emotionally detached.
Customer Service
Emotions affect service quality delivery to the customer, which, in turn, affect the customer-
relationships.
Emotional Contagion: “catching” emotions from others.
Work-Life Satisfaction
The relationship between moods and work-life satisfaction is that both are affected by work
and home events. The good news is that a positive mood at work can spill over to your off-
work hours, and a negative mood at work can be restored to a positive mood after a break.

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 Chapter-5
PERSONALITY
Personality
The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others .

Measuring Personality
Personality tests are useful in hiring decisions and help managers forecast who is best for the
job. It is done by two methods:
1) Self-report method
• Most common means in which individuals evaluate themselves on a series of factors.
It is of questionnaire form with lots of questions about oneself.
• Main problem is that when people know this test would be used for hiring decision,
they rate themselves as half a standard deviation more conscientious and emotionally
stable. In addition, accuracy is questionable as a bad mood can affect the survey.
• Acc. to research, Culture influences our self-rating too. E.g., People in Individualistic
countries trend towards self-enhancement while in collectivist countries (China,
Taiwan, and S. Korea) trend towards self-diminishment.
2) Observer rating method
• Here some other person keeps an eye on you and observer reports about personality of
the other person.
• Provide independent assessment of personality.

Personality determinants
It has always been a matter of debate whether a person acquires his/her personality from
heredity or environment.
1) Heredity
It refers to factors determined at conception, one’s biological, physiological, and inherent
psychological makeup. It argues that ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality is the
molecular structure of genes. Personality is more changeable in adolescence and more stable
among adults.
• Personality traits:
These enduring characteristics describe an individual’s behaviour. Our personality
changes as we grow up. When anyone exhibits any particular characteristics frequently
and they are relatively enduring, we call them personality trait.

Personality frameworks
Most widely used and best-known personality frameworks are MBTI and the Big Five
Personality Model.

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MBTI- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator:
A personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies people into 1 to 16 personality
types.
These four characteristics are:
1) Extraverted (E) versus Introverted (I)
Extraverted individuals are outgoing, social and assertive. Introverts are quiet and shy.
2) Sensing (S) versus Intuitive (N)
Sensing types are practical and prefer routine and order. Intuitive rely on unconscious processes
and look at the “big picture”.
3) Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F)
Thinking types use reason and logic to handle problems. Feeling types rely on their personal
values and emotions.
4) Judging (J) versus Perceiving (P)
Judging types want control and prefer order and structure. Perceiving types are flexible and
spontaneous.
Main drawback with MBTI model is that it talks about extreme characteristics and so results
are not accurate in many cases, though it can be a valuable tool for increasing self-awareness
and providing career guidance.
The Big 5 Personality Model: Talks about those five basic dimensions, which underlie all
others and encompass most of the significant variation in human personality.
i) Extraversion
A personality dimension describing someone who is sociable, gregarious and assertive.
ii) Agreeableness
A personality dimension that describes someone who is good natured, cooperative and trusting.
iii) Conscientiousness
A personality dimension that describes someone who is responsible, dependable, persistent and
organized.
iv) Emotional Stability
A personality dimension that characterizes someone as calm, self-confident, secure (positive)
versus nervous, depressed and insecure (negative)
v) Openness to Experience
A personality dimension that characterizes someone in terms of imagination, sensitivity and
curiosity.

19
Based on the characteristics any individual’s behaviour is predicted at work, for example;
extroverts are generally leaders in groups, they are more impulsive, assertive and socially
dominant.

The Dark Triads:

A constellation of negative personality traits, which researchers have found to be socially
undesirable traits. They consist of following:
i) Machiavellianism
The degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes
that ends can justify means.
ii) Narcissism
The tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-importance, require excessive
admiration and have a sense of entitlement.
iii) Psychopathy
The tendency for a lack of concern for others and a lack of guilt or remorse when their actions
cause harm.
Other traits – one additional frameworks incorporated five more traits based on the Big Five.
These are Antisocial, borderline, schizotypal, obsessive - compulsive.

Other personality traits relevant to OB:

Other that big five and dark triad there are many other traits to define one’s personality. These
are as follows:
i) Core Self-Evaluation (CSE): Bottom-line conclusions individuals have about their
capabilities, competence and worth as a person.
ii) Self-Monitoring A personality trait that measures an individual’s ability to adjust
his or her behaviour to external, situational factors.
iii) Proactive Personality People, who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action
and persevere until meaningful change occurs.

Personality and Situations:

Increasingly, we are learning situation also affects and individual’s behaviour in any
organization. Two theoretical frameworks help explain how this works.

1. Situation-Strength Theory: A theory indicating that the way personality translates

into behaviour depends on the strength of situation. Researchers have analysed
situation strength in organizations in terms of 4 elements:
a) Clarity: The degree to which cues about work duties and responsibilities are available
and clear.
b) Consistency: The extent to which cues regarding work duties and responsibilities are
compatible with one another.
c) Constraints: forces outside their control limit the extent to which individual’s freedom
to decide or act.

20
d) Consequences: The degree to which decisions or actions have important applications
for the organization or its members, clients, supplies and so on.

2. Trait Activation Theory (TAT): A theory that predicts that some situations, events
or interventions “activate” a trait more than others do.

21
 LEARNINGS
Definition:
A relatively permanent change in behaviour that occurs because of experience.

Theories of learning:
1. Classical conditioning :

• Conducted by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov in 1900s.

• An experiment to teach dogs to salivate in response to the ringing of a bell.
• It is a type of conditioning in which an individual responds to some stimulus that would
not ordinarily produce such a response.
• Learning a conditioned response involves building up an association between a
conditioned & an unconditioned stimulus.
• When the stimuli, one compelling & the other one neutral, are paired, the neutral one
becomes a conditioned stimulus and, hence, takes on the property of a conditioned
stimulus.
• Classical conditioning is passive. It explains the reflexive response to a specific
identifiable event.
Example: At one manufacturing plant, every time the top executives from the head
office were scheduled to make a visit, the plant management would clean up the
administrative offices and wash the windows. This went on for years. Eventually,
employees would turn on their best behaviour & look prim & proper whenever the
windows were cleaned- even in those occasional instances when the leaning was not
paired with a visit from the top brass. People had learned to associate the cleaning of
the windows to a visit from the head office.

2) Operant Conditioning
• Conducted by Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner.
• A type of conditioning in which desired voluntary behaviour leads to a reward or
prevents a punishment.

22
 • It tells that behaviour is a function of its consequences & and explains voluntary or
learned behaviour.
• He demonstrated that people will most likely engage in desired behaviours if they
are positively reinforced for doing so; that rewards are most effective if they
immediately follow the desired response; and that behaviour that is not rewarded,
or is punished, is less likely to be repeated.
• It is a sub-concept of behaviourism, according to which, behaviour follows stimuli
in a relatively unthinking manner.
3) Social learning
• The view that people can learn through observations & direct experiences.
• It acknowledges the existence of observational learning & the importance of
perception in learning.
• Four processes have been found to determine the influence that a model will have
on an individual.
a) Attentional Processes
recognising & paying attention to the critical features of the model
b) Retention Processes
Remembering the model’s actions after the model is no longer readily available.
c) Motor Reproduction Processes
Converting the watching into doing, performing the modelled activities.
d) Reinforcement Processes
Behaviours that are positively reinforced are given more attention, learned better,
and performed more often.

Shaping Behaviour:
It is an attempt to mould individuals by guiding their learning in in graduated steps. It is done
by systematically reinforcing each successive step that moves the individual closer to the
desired response.
Methods of shaping behaviour:
a) Positive Reinforcement
Following a response with something pleasant.
b) Negative Reinforcement
Following a response by the termination or withdrawal of something unpleasant.
c) Punishment
Causing an unpleasant condition in an attempt to eliminate an
undesirable behaviour.
d) Extinction
Eliminating any reinforcement that is maintaining a behaviour.
Both positive and negative reinforcement strengthen a response and increase the probability
of repetition.
Both punishment and extinction weaken behaviour and tend to decrease its subsequent
frequency.

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Kolb’s Learning Styles
David Kolb published his learning styles model in 1984 from which he developed his learning
style inventory.
Kolb's experiential learning theory works on two levels: a four-stage cycle of learning and four
separate learning styles. Much of Kolb’s theory is concerned with the learner’s internal
cognitive processes.
Kolb states that learning involves the acquisition of abstract concepts that can be applied
flexibly in a range of situations. In Kolb’s theory, the impetus for the development of new
concepts is provided by new experiences. “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is
created through the transformation of experience”.
The Experiential Learning Cycle Kolb's experiential learning style theory is typically
represented by a four stage learning cycle in which the learner 'touches all the bases

1. Concrete Experience
A new experience of situation is encountered, or a reinterpretation of existing experience.
2. Reflective Observation
Of the new experience. Of particular importance are any inconsistencies between experience
and understanding.
3. Abstract Conceptualization
Reflection gives rise to a new idea, or a modification of an existing abstract concept.
4. Active Experimentation

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The learner applies them to the world around them to see what results.
Effective learning is seen when a person progresses through a cycle of four stages: of (1) having
a concrete experience followed by (2) observation of and reflection on that experience which
leads to (3) the formation of abstract concepts (analysis) and generalizations (conclusions)
which are then (4) used to test hypothesis in 1/4 future situations, resulting in new experiences.
Kolb (1974) views learning as an integrated process with each stage being mutually supportive
of and feeding into the next. It is possible to enter the cycle at any stage and follow it through
its logical sequence. However, effective learning only occurs when a learner is able to execute
all four stages of the model. Therefore, no one stage of the cycle is an effective as a learning
procedure on its own.

Learning Styles
Diverging (feeling and watching - CE/RO)
These people are able to look at things from different perspectives. They are sensitive. They
prefer to watch rather than do, tending to gather information and use imagination to solve
problems. They are best at viewing concrete situations at several different viewpoints.
Kolb called this style 'diverging' because these people perform better in situations that require
ideas-generation, for example, brainstorming.
People with a diverging learning style have broad cultural interests and like to gather
information. They are interested in people, tend to be imaginative and emotional, and tend to
be strong in the arts. People with the diverging style prefer to work in groups, to listen with an
open mind and to receive personal feedback.
Assimilating (watching and thinking - AC/RO)
The Assimilating learning preference is for a concise, logical approach. Ideas and concepts are
more important than people are. These people require good clear explanation rather than
practical opportunity. They excel at understanding wide-ranging information and organizing it
in a clear logical format. People with an assimilating learning style are less focused on people
and more interested in ideas and abstract concepts.
People with this style are more attracted to logically sound theories than approaches based on
practical value. This learning style is important for effectiveness in information and science
careers. In formal learning situations, people with this style prefer readings, lectures, exploring
analytical models, and having time to think things through.
Converging (doing and thinking - AC/AE)
People with a converging learning style can solve problems and will use their learning to find
solutions to practical issues. They prefer technical tasks, and are less concerned with people
and interpersonal aspects. People with a converging learning style are best at finding practical
uses for ideas and theories. They can solve problems and make decisions by finding solutions
to questions and problems.
People with a converging learning style are more attracted to technical tasks and problems
than social or interpersonal issues. A converging learning style enables specialist and

25
technology abilities. People with a converging style like to experiment with new ideas, to
simulate, and to work with practical applications.
Accommodating (doing and feeling - CE/AE)
The Accommodating learning style is 'hands-on', and relies on intuition rather than logic.
These people use other people's analysis, and prefer to take a practical, experiential approach.
They are attracted to new challenges and experiences, and to carrying out plans. They
commonly act on 'gut' instinct rather than logical analysis.
People with an accommodating learning style will tend to rely on others for information than
carry out their own analysis. This learning style is prevalent within the general population.

VALUES
Definition
Basic conventions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or
socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct.
They are judgemental because they carry an individual’s ideas about what is right, good, or
desirable. However, they tend to be relatively stable and enduring.
They have two attributes:
• Content attribute- says a mode of conduct is important
• Intensity attribute- says how important it is.
Value System
When we rank values in terms of intensity, we obtain that person’s value system.

Importance of Values
Values lay the foundation for understanding attitude, motivation, and they influence our
perceptions. They contain our interpretations of right and wrong and our preferences
behaviours or outcomes. Our values influence our attitude at work.
Values can sometimes augment decision-making; at times, they can cloud objectivity and
rationality.

Organization of Values
We can separate values into two categories:
1) Terminal Values
Desirable end-states of existence; the goals a person would like to achieve during his
or her lifetime. Example- prosperity, economic success, freedom, health and well-
being, world peace and meaning in life.
2) Instrumental Values

26
 Preferable modes of behaviour or means of achieving one’s terminal values. Example-
autonomy and self-reliance, personal discipline, kindness, and goal-orientation.

The Barrett Model of seven Values

The Barrett Seven Levels Model is the breakthrough work of Richard Barrett. Inspired by
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and tested over more than two decades of real-world
experience with thousands of organisations, the model identifies the seven areas that comprise
human motivations. These range from basic survival at one end, to service and concern for
future generations at the other. It provides a proven and extraordinarily useful map for
understanding the values of your employees, leaders, and stakeholders. It offers a means for
creating more supportive and productive relationships between them, and a deeper alignment
of purpose across your organisation

27
7 LEVELS OF PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

28
 7 LEVELS OF LEADERSHIP CONSCIOUNESS

7 LEVELS OF ORGANISATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

29
 Chapter-6
PERCEPTION AND INDIVIDUAL DECISION MAKING

Perception:

Individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their
environment by a process.

Factors That Influence Perception

A number of factors operate to shape and sometimes distort perception.

1) Perceiver From perceiver’s point of view following factors influence perception

• Attitudes
• Motives
• Interests
• Experience
• Expectations

2) Target Following factors influence perception

• Novelty
• Motion
• Sounds
• Size
• Background
• Proximity
• Similarity

3) Context Situational factors affecting perception are

• Time
• Work setting
• Social setting

4) Person Perception

It includes perceptions that people form about each other by first impressions or small cues
that has little supporting evidence.

Attribution theory

Attribution theory tries to explain the ways in which we judge people differently, depending
on the meaning we attribute to a given behavior.

Three factors of attribution theory are:

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 1) Distinctiveness

Distinctiveness refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different

situations.

2) Consensus

If everyone who faces a similar situation responds in the same way, we can say the
behavior shows consensus

3) Consistency

It determines if the person respond the same way over time. The more consistent the
behavior, the more we are inclined to attribute it to internal causes.

Differences between internal and external causation

• Internal causation

Internally caused behaviors are those we believe to be under the personal control of the
individual.

Egg: If one of your employees is late for work, you might attribute that to his partying
into the wee hours and then oversleeping. This is an internal attribution.

• External causation
Externally caused behavior is what we imagine the situation forced the individual to
do.

EGFI you attribute lateness to an automobile accident that tied up traffic, you are making
an external attribution.

Errors and Biases in Attribution:

• Fundamental Attribution error:

Tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the

influence of internal or personal factors when making judgments about the behavior of
other people

• Self -Serving Bias:

Tendency for individuals to attribute their own success to internal factors and put
blame for failures on external factors.

• Common shortcuts in judging others:

1) Selective perception

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 The tendency to selectively interpret what one sees based on one’s interests,
background, experience, and attitudes.

2) Halo effect

The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual based on a single

characteristic.

3) Horn effect

The tendency to draw a negative general impression about an individual based on

single characteristics.

4) Contrast effect

Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that is affected by comparisons with other

people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.

5) Stereotyping

Judging someone based on one’s perception of the group to which that person
belongs.

Specific Applications of shortcuts in organizations:

• Employment Interview

Perceptual biases affect the accuracy of interviewers’ judgments towards applicants.

Early impressions are formed1/10th of a second.

• Self -fulfilling prophecy (Pygmalion Effect)

A situation in which a person inaccurately perceives a second person, and the resulting
expectations cause the second person to behave in ways consistent with the original
perception.

▪ Performance Evaluations

Appraisals, pay raises are often by perceptions of appraisers of another employee’s

job performance. They have critical impact on employees

Decision making in organizations

1) Rational model

Rational is characterized by making consistent, value-maximizing choices within specified

constraints. A decision-making model that describes how individuals should behave in order
to maximize some outcome is called rational decision-making model.

32
2) Bounded Rationality

A process of making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract the essential
features from problems without capturing all their complexity.

3) Intuition

An unconscious process created out of distilled experience.

Common biases and errors in decision-making:

• Anchoring bias: A tendency to fixate on initial information, from which one then
fails to adequately adjust for subsequent information.
• Confirmation bias: The tendency to seek out information that reaffirms past
choices and to discount information that contradicts past judgments
• Availability bias: The tendency for people to base their judgments on information
that is readily available to them.
• Escalation of commitment: An increased commitment to a previous decision in
spite of negative information.
• Randomness error: The tendency of individuals to believe that they can predict
the outcome of random events
• Risk aversion: The tendency to prefer a sure gain of a moderate amount to a riskier
outcome, even if the riskier outcome might have a higher expected payoff.
• Hindsight bias: The tendency to believe falsely, after an outcome of an event is
actually known, that one would have accurately predicted that outcome.

Influences on Decision Making

Individual differences such as personality, gender, mental ability, cultural differences

influence the way people make decisions.

Individual Differences

▪ Personality

• Conscientiousness can effect escalation of commitment

• People striving for achievement are likely to have increased commitment
• Dutiful people are more inclined to do things in best interest of organizations and
are likely to have this bias

▪ Self-Esteem

• People with High self-esteem use self-serving bias and blame others for failure
while taking credit for success.

33
▪ Gender:

• Women analyses decisions more than men in stressful situations

• Organizational constraints:
• Performance Evaluation

▪ Organizational Constraints:
• Performance Evaluation systems
• Reward Systems
• Formal Regulations
• System-Imposed Time Constraints
• Historical Precedents

➢ Ethics in decision making:

• Utilitarianism: A system in which decisions are made to provide the greatest good
for the greatest number.
• Whistle-blowers: Individuals who report unethical practices by their employer to
outsiders.
• Deonance: A perspective in which ethical decisions are made because you ought to
in order to be considered with moral norms, principles, standards, rules, or laws.
• Behavioral ethics: Analyzing how people behave when confronted with ethical
dilemmas.

➢ Creative Decision Making: The core of model is creative behavior which

occurs in four steps:
• Creativity: The ability to produce novel and useful ideas.
• Problem formulation: The stage of creative behavior that involves identifying a
problem or opportunity requiring a solution that is yet unknown.
• Information gathering: The stage of creative behavior when possible solutions to
a problem incubate in an individual’s mind.
• Idea generation: The process of creative behavior that involves developing possible
solutions to a problem from relevant information.
• Idea evaluation: The process of creative behavior that involves evaluating possible
solutions to a problem to identify best one.

➢ Causes of Creative Behavior

▪ Creative Potential

• Intelligence and Creativity-Smart people are more creative because they are
better at solving complex problems and have greater working memory.
• Personality and Creativity-traits of creative people include proactive
personality, self-confidence, risk taking, tolerance for ambiguity.
• Expertise and Creativity- The potential for creativity enhances with increased
abilities and skills.
• Ethics and Creativity-According to research people who are less ethical are
more creative.

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▪ Creative Environment

• Environment where creative potential can be realized is important.

• Motivation, good leadership are important factors for promoting creativity.

▪ Creative Outcomes

• Implementing creative ideas to produce innovative outcomes

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 Chapter-7

Motivation Concepts
We define motivation as the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and
persistence of effort toward attaining a goal. The three key elements in our definition are
intensity, direction, and persistence. Intensity describes how hard a person tries. Most of us
focus on when we talk about motivation this element. However, high intensity is unlikely to
lead to favourable job-performance outcomes unless the effort is channelled in a direction that
benefits the organization. Therefore, we consider the quality of effort as well as its intensity.
Effort directed toward, and consistent with, the organization’s goals is the kind of effort we
should be seeking. Finally, motivation has a persistence dimension. This measures how long a
person can maintain effort. Motivated individuals stay with a task long enough to achieve their
goal.

Early Theories of Motivation:

Hierarchy of Needs Theory: The best-known theory of motivation is Abraham Maslow’s

hierarchy of needs.

Maslow hypothesized that within every human being, there exists a hierarchy of five needs:
1. Physiological. Includes hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, and other bodily needs.
2. Safety. Security and protection from physical and emotional harm.
3. Social. Affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship.
4. Esteem. Internal factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement, and external
factors such as status, recognition, and attention.
5. Self-actualization. Drive to become what we are capable of becoming; includes growth,
achieving our potential, and self-fulfilment.

Two-Factor Theory:
Believing an individual’s relationship to work is basic, and that attitude toward work can
determine success or failure, psychologist Frederick Herzberg wondered, “What do people
want from their jobs?” He asked people to describe, in detail, situations in which they felt
exceptionally good or bad about their jobs. The responses differed significantly and led
Hertzberg to his two-factor theory —also called motivation-hygiene theory.

Intrinsic factors such as advancement, recognition, responsibility, and achievement seem

related to job satisfaction. Respondents who felt good about their work tended to attribute these
factors to themselves, while dissatisfied respondents tended to cite extrinsic factors, such as
supervision, pay, company policies, and working conditions.

To Hertzberg, the data suggest that the opposite of satisfaction is not dissatisfaction, as was
traditionally believed. Removing dissatisfying characteristics from a job does not necessarily
make the job satisfying. Herzberg proposed a dual continuum: The opposite of “satisfaction”
is “no satisfaction,” and the opposite of “dissatisfaction” is “no dissatisfaction.”

36
According to Herzberg, the factors that lead to job satisfaction are separate and distinct from
those that lead to job dissatisfaction. Therefore, managers who seek to eliminate factors that
can create job dissatisfaction may bring about peace, but not necessarily motivation.

McClelland’s theory of needs:

It was developed by David McClelland and his Seth W associates. It looks at three needs:

● Need for achievement (nAch) is the drive to excel, to achieve in relationship to a set of
standards.
● Need for power (nPow) is the need to make others behave in a way they a high degree of
personal responsibility would not have otherwise.
● Need for affiliation (nAff) is the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships.
McClelland and subsequent researchers focused most of their attention on nAch. High
achievers perform best when they perceive their probability of success as 0.5—that is, a 50–50
chance. They dislike gambling with high odds because they get no achievement satisfaction
from success that comes by pure chance. Similarly, they dislike low odds (high probability of
success) because then there is no challenge to their skills. They like to set goals that require
stretching themselves a little.

Contemporary Theories of Motivation:

Early theories of motivation either have not held up under close examination or have fallen out
of favour. In contrast, contemporary theories have one thing in common: each has a reasonable
degree of valid supporting documentation. This does not mean they are unquestionably right.
We call them “contemporary theories” because they represent the current state of thinking in
explaining employee motivation.

Self-Determination Theory:
It which proposes that people prefer to feel they have control over their actions, so anything
that makes a previously enjoyed task feel more like an obligation than a freely chosen activity
will undermine motivation. Much research on self-determination theory in OB has focused on
cognitive evaluation theory, which hypothesizes that extrinsic rewards will reduce intrinsic
interest in a task. When people are paid for work, it feels less like something they want to do
and more like something they have to do.

Goal-setting theory: A theory that says that specific and difficult goals, with feedback,
lead to higher performance than does non- feedback.

Implementing Goal Setting:

A more systematic way to utilize goal setting is with management by objectives (MBO),
which emphasizes participative set goals that are tangible, verifiable, and measurable.

37
Other contemporary theories of motivation:

Self-Efficacy Theory
• Self-efficacy (also known as social cognitive theory or social learning theory) refers to
an individual’s belief that he or she is capable of performing a task.

• The higher your self-efficacy, the more confidence you have in your ability to succeed.

• Therefore, in difficult situations, people with low self-efficacy are more likely to lessen
their effort or give up altogether.

• Self-efficacy can create a positive spiral in which those with high efficacy become more
engaged in their tasks and then, in turn, increase performance, which increases efficacy
further.

• Changes in self-efficacy over time are related to changes in creative performance as

well.

• Individuals high in self-efficacy also seem to respond to negative feedback with

increased effort and motivation, while those low in self-efficacy are likely to lessen
their effort after negative feedback.

Four ways self-efficacy can be increased:

1. Enactive mastery: gaining relevant experience with the task or job. If you have been able
to do the job successfully in the past, you are more confident, you will be able to do it in the
future.

2. Vicarious modelling: becoming more confident because you see someone else doing the
task. If your friend slims down, it increases your confidence that you can lose weight, too.
Vicarious modelling is most effective when you see yourself as similar to the person you are
observing.

3. Verbal persuasion: becoming more confident because someone convinces you that you
have the skills necessary to be successful. Motivational speakers use this tactic.

4. Arousal: It leads to an energized state, so the person is “psyched up” and performs better.

Chapter 8
38
 Motivation from concepts and applications
• Motivating by job design: The job characteristics model
A model proposing that any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions: skill
variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback
The five core job dimensions:
1. Skill variety is a degree to which a job requires different activities using specialized
skills and talents. The work of a garage owner-operator, who does electrical repairs,
rebuilds engines, does bodywork, and interacts with customer’s scores high on skill
variety.
2. Task identity is a degree to which a job requires completion of a whole and identifiable
piece of work. A cabinetmaker who designs furniture, selects the wood, builds the
furniture, and finishes the pieces has a job that scores high on task identity.
3. Task significance is a degree to which a job affects the lives or work of other people.
The job of a nurse helping patients in a hospital intensive care unit scores high on task
significance.
4. Autonomy is the degree to which a job provides the worker freedom, independence,
and discretion in scheduling work and determining the procedures for carrying it out.
A sales manager who schedules his own work and tailors his sales approach for each
customer without supervision has a highly autonomous job. An account representative
who is required to follow a standardized sales script with potential customers has a job
low on autonomy.
5. Feedback is a degree to which carrying out work activities generates direct and clear
information about your performance. A job with high feedback is testing and
inspecting.
The first three dimensions—Skill variety, task identity, and task significance—combine to
create meaningful work the employee will view as important, valuable, and worthwhile. The
JCM proposes that individuals obtain internal rewards when they learn that they have
performed well on a task that they care about.
The more these three psychological states are present, the greater will be employees’
motivation, performance, and satisfaction, and lower their absenteeism and likelihood of
leaving.

• Motivating potential score(MPS)

It is combination of core dimensions of JCM into a single predictive index, called the
motivating potential score (MPS) and calculated as follows:
MPS= skill variety + task identity + task significance *autonomy*feedback
If jobs score high on motivating potential, the model predicts that motivation, performance,
and satisfaction will improve and that absence and turnover will be reduced.

• Job rotation: The periodic shifting of an employee from one task to another.
• Job enrichment- Adding high-level responsibilities to a job to increase intrinsic
motivation.

39
• Relational job design- Constructing jobs so employees see the positive difference they
can make in the lives of others directly through their work.
• Job sharing- An arrangement that allows two or more individuals to split their job.
• Employee involvement and participation (EIP) - A participative process that
uses the input of employees to increase employee commitment to organizational success.

Chapter-9

40
 FOUNDATIONS OF GROUP BEHAVIOUR
GROUP:
Two or more individuals interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve
particular objectives. Groups can be either formal or informal.
Formal group: A designated work group defined by an organization’s structure.
Informal group: A group that is neither formally structured nor organizationally determined;
such a group appears in response to the need for social contact.

SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY:

Perspective that considers when and why individuals consider themselves members of groups.
It proposes that people have emotional reactions to the failure or success of their group because
their self-esteem is tied to whatever happens to the group.

In-groups favouritism: Perspective in which we see members of our in-group as better

than other people and people not in our groups as all the same.

Outgroup: The inverse of an outgroup, which can mean everyone outside the group but is
more usually an identified group.

STAGES OF GROUP DEVELOPMENT

Punctuated equilibrium model:
1) The first meeting sets the group’s direction
2) The first phase of group activity is one of inertia and thus slower progress.
3) A transition takes place exactly when the group has used up half its allotted time
4) This transition initiates major changes
5) A second phase of inertia follows the transition
6) The group’s last meeting is characterized by markedly accelerated activity.

GROUP PROPERTY:
1) Roles
A set of expected behaviour patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a
social unit.
• Role Perception
• Role Expectations
• Role Conflict
• Role Play and Assimilation

2) Norms

41
Acceptable standards of behaviour within a group that are shared by the group’s members.
• Norms and Emotions
• Norms and Conformity
• Norms and Behaviour
• Positive Norms and Group Outcomes
• Negative Norms and Group Outcomes
• Norms and Culture

3) Status
A socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others.
• Status and Norms
• Status and Group Interaction
• Status Inequity
• Status and Stigmatization
• Group Status

4) Size and Dynamics: Ideal group consists of 7 to 9 members.

Social loafing: The tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively
than when working individually.

5) Cohesiveness
The degree to which group members are attracted to each other and are motivated to stay in the
group.

6) Diversity
The extent to which members of a group are similar to or different from one another.

GROUP versus the INDIVIDUAL:

Strengths of Group Decision Making:
• More complete information and knowledge
• Increased diversity of views
• Increased acceptance of a solution
Weakness of Group Decision Making:
• Time consuming
• Conformity pressures
• Dominated by one or a few members
• Ambiguous responsibility

GROUPTHINK AND GROUPSHIFT:

42
Groupthink is a phenomenon in which the norm for consensus overrides the realistic appraisal
of alternative courses of action.
Group shift is a change between a group’s decision and an individual decision that a member
within the group would make; the shift can be toward either conservatism or greater risk but it
generally is toward an extreme version of the group’s original position.

GROUP DECISION-MAKING TECHNIQUES:

• Brainstorming: An idea-generation process that specifically encourages all
alternatives while withholding any criticism of those alternatives.
• Nominal Group Technique: A group decision making method in which individual
members meet face-to-face to pool their judgments in a systematic but independent
fashion.

CHAPTER 10

43
 LEADERSHIP

Leadership – The ability to influence a group towards the achievement of a vision or set of
goals.

Trait theories

Trait theories of leadership: Theories that consider personal qualities and characteristics that
differentiates a leader from non-leaders.

Behavioural Theories: Theories proposing that specific behaviours differentiate leaders

from non-leaders.
Consideration: The extent to which a leader is likely to have job relationships characterized
by mutual trust, respect for subordinates’ ideas, and regard for their feelings.

Initiating structure: The extent to which a leader is willing to define and structure the role of
himself and that of his subordinates in search for goal attainment.

Employee-oriented leader: A leader who emphasizes interpersonal relations, takes a personal

interest in the needs of employees, and accepts individual differences among members.

Production-oriented leader: A leader who emphasizes on technical or task aspects of the job.

Contingency Theories
Fiedler contingency model: The theory that effective groups depend on a proper match
between a leader’s style of interacting with subordinates and the degree to which the situation
gives control and influence to the leader.
Least preferred co-worker (LPC) questionnaire: An instrument that purports to measure
whether a person is task oriented or relationship oriented.
• Task structure: The degree to which job assignments are proceduralised.
• Position power: Influence derived from one’s formal structural position in the
organization; includes power to hire, fire, discipline, promote, and give salary increases.

Other Contingency Theories:

• Situational leadership theory (SLT): A contingency theory that focuses on followers’
readiness.
• Path–goal theory: A theory that states that it is the leader’s job to assist followers in
attaining their goals and to provide the necessary direction and/or support to ensure that
their goals are compatible with the overall objectives of the group or organization.
• Leader-participation model: A leadership theory that provides a set of rules to
determine the form and amount of participative decision making in different situations.
• Leader–member exchange (LMX) theory: A theory that supports leaders’ creation
of in-groups and out-groups; subordinates with in-group status will have higher
performance ratings, less turnover, and greater job satisfaction.

44
Charismatic leadership:
• A leadership theory that states that followers make attributions of heroic or
extraordinary leadership abilities when they observe certain behaviours.
• Vision: A long-term strategy for attaining a goal or goals.
• Vision statement: A formal articulation of an organization’s vision or mission.

Transformational leadership:
• Leaders who guide or motivate their followers in the direction of established goals by
clarifying role and task requirements.
• Leaders who inspire followers to transcend their own self-interests and who are capable
of having a profound and extraordinary effect on followers.
Authentic Leadership: Ethics and Trust:
• Leaders, who know who they are, know what they believe in and value, and act on those
values and beliefs openly and candidly. Their followers would consider them ethical
people.

Socialized charismatic leadership: A leadership concept that states that leaders convey
values that are other-centred not self-centred and who model ethical conduct.

Servant leadership: A leadership style marked by going beyond the leader’s own self-
interest and instead focusing on opportunities to help followers grow and develop.

Trust: A positive expectation that another will not act opportunistically.

What Are the Consequences of Trust?
Trust between supervisors and employees have a number of important advantages. Here are
just a few that research has shown:
• Trust encourages taking risks.
• Trust facilitates information sharing.
• Trusting groups are more effective.
• Trust enhances productivity.

Leading for the Future: Mentoring

Mentor: A senior employee who sponsors and supports a less experienced employee, called
a protégé or mentor

Attribution theory of leadership: A leadership theory that says that leadership is merely
an attribution that people make about other individuals.

Challenges to the Leadership Construct:

• Substitutes: Attributes, such as experience and training that can replace the need for a
leader’s support or ability to create structure.
• Neutralizers: Attributes that make it impossible for leader behaviour to make any
difference to follower outcomes.
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 • Identification-based trust: Trust based on a mutual understanding of each other’s
intentions and appreciation of each other’s wants and desires.

Finding and Creating Effective Leaders:

• Selecting Leaders: The entire process organizations go through to fill management
positions is essentially an exercise in trying to identify effective leaders. The
organizations might begin by reviewing the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to
do the job effectively.
• Training Leaders: Leadership training of any kind is likely to be more successful with
high self-monitors. Firstly, such individuals have the flexibility to change their
behaviour. Secondly, organizations can teach implementation skills. Thirdly, we can
also teach skills such as trust building and mentoring. Fourthly, behavioural training
through modelling exercises can increase an individual’s ability to exhibit charismatic
leadership qualities.

Chapter-12
Contemporary theories of leadership
Leader member exchange theory:
A theory that supports leaders creation of in groups and outgroups ;subordinates with in-group
status and have higher performance ratings ,less turnover and greater job satisfaction.

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LMX theory proposes that early in the history of the interaction between a leader and a given
follower,
• The leader implicitly categorises the follower as an in or an out;
• That relationship becomes relatively stable over time.
• Leaders induce LMX by rewarding employees with whom they want a closer linkage
and punishing those with whom they do not.
• For the LMX relationship to remain intact, the leader and the follower must invest in
the relationship.
LMX influences the work outcomes by improving employee trust, motivation, empowerment
and job satisfaction.

Charismatic Leadership:
Who are charismatic leaders?
Sociologist Max Weber defines charisma as a certain quality of an individual personality by
virtue of which he or she is set apart from ordinary people and treated as endowed with
supernatural or at least specifically exceptional qualities.

Charismatic Leadership Theory:

As defined by Robert House, Leadership theory states that followers make attribution of heroic
or extraordinary leadership abilities when they observe certain behaviours in others.
Key Characteristics of a charismatic Leader
1) Vision & articulation :- able to clarify the importance of vision in terms that are
understandable to others
2) Personal risk: - Willing to take on high personal risk, incur high costs & engage in self-
sacrifice to achieve the vision.
3) Sensitivity to follower need :- Perceptive of others abilities and responsiveness to their
needs and feelings
4) Unconventional Behaviour:- Engages in behaviours that are perceived as novel and
counter to norms

Does Effective Charismatic Leadership Depend on the situation?

One factor that enhances charismatic leadership is stress. People are especially receptive to
charismatic leadership when they sense a crisis or when they are under stress, perhaps because
we think bold leadership is needed

Dark Side of Charismatic Leadership:

Unfortunately, charismatic leaders who are larger than life do not necessary act in the best
interests if the organisation. Research has shown that individuals who are narcissistic are also
higher in some behaviours associated with charismatic leadership.

Transactional and Transformational Leadership:

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 • Transactional Leaders are leaders who guide or motivate their followers
in the direction of the established goals by clarifying roles and tasks
opportunities.
• Transformational leaders are those who inspire, act as role models and
intellectually stimulate, develop or mentor their followers, thus having a
profound and extraordinary effect on them.
Full Range of Leadership Model:
A model that depicts seven management styles on a continuum; laisse faire, management by
exception, contingent reward leadership, individualised consideration, intellectual stimulation,
inspirational motivation and idealised influence.

Chapter-13

POWER AND POLITICS

POWER AND LEADERSHIP:

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Power is the capacity that A has to influence the behavior of B, so that B acts in accordance
with A's wishes. Power may exist but not be used - it is a capacity or potential.

Ex- If you want a college degree and have to pass a certain course and your current instructor
is the only faculty member in the college who teaches that course, she has power over you
because your alternatives are highly limited & you place a high degree of importance on the
outcome.

Power, as opposed to leadership, has focused on tactics for gaining compliance. Leaders use
power as a means of attaining group goals. Power does not require goal compatibility, but relies
on dependency. While leadership focuses on the downward influence of one's followers, power
also deals with lateral and upward influence.

BASES OF POWER: Power emanates from both formal and personal bases.

Formal power include coercive, reward, and legitimate power.

• Coercive power is dependent upon fear and rests on the threat to dismiss, suspend, or
demote.
• Reward power is derived from the ability to distribute or withhold rewards, such as pay
rates, raises, promotions, work shifts, or sales territories.
• Legitimate power stems from one's position in formal hierarchy of an organization.

Personal power comes from an individual's unique characteristics - it includes both expert and
referent power

• Expert power is the influence based on expertise, special skill, or knowledge.

• Referent power is based on identification with a person who has desirable resources or
personal traits

Which Bases of Power are most effective?

➢ Of the five bases of power, the two personal sources (expert and referent power) are
most effective. Both are positively related to employees' satisfaction with supervision,
their organizational commitment, and their performance.

GENERAL DEPENDENCY POSTULATE states that the greater B's dependency

on A, the greater the power A has over B. Dependency is inversely proportional to the
alternative sources of supply. Dependency is increased when the resource controlled is
important, scarce, and nonsubstitutable.’

SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS is a tool to assess the exchange of resources and

dependencies within an organization. Networks can create substantial power dynamics. Leader

POWER TACTICS are strategies that people may use to influence their bosses,
coworkers, and employees. Research has identified nine distinct influence tactics:

• Legitimacy

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 • Rational persuasion
• Inspirational appeals
• Consultation
• Exchange
• Personal appeals
• Ingratiation
• Pressure,
• Coalitions.

Evidence indicates that rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, and consultation tend to be
the most effective, while pressure tends to be the least effective of the nine. Situational and
cultural factors also affect the effectiveness of power tactics.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT is any unwanted activity of a sexual nature that affects an

individual's employment. Data from the EEOC suggest that sexual harassment is decreasing
Sexual harassment claims now make up all discrimination claims, compared with 20 percent
in the mid-1990s.One problem with sexual harassment is that it is a matter of perception. While
some behaviors indisputably constitute harassment, men and women continue to differ to some
degree on what constitutes harassment. Sexual harassment is related to the concept of power,
as sexual harassment is most likely to occur when there is a large power differential.

Manager’s role is critical here to ensure an active policy regarding sexual harassment, reassure
employees that they will not encounter retaliation if they file complaint, investigate every
complaint, ensure offenders are disciplined or terminated and setup in-house seminars to raise
employee awareness of harassment issues.

POLITICS: POWER IN ACTION

Political behavior consists of activities that are not required as part of one's formal role in the
organization, but that influence, or attempt to influence, the distribution of advantages and
disadvantages within the organization. Political behavior includes legitimate activities
(complaining to one's supervisor, bypassing the chain of command, forming coalitions,
obstructing organizational politics, excessively adhering to rules, developing contacts outside
the organization) and illegitimate political activities (sabotage, whistle blowing, and symbolic
protests).

Individual factors: Employees who are high self-monitors, possess an internal locus of
control, and have a high need for power are more likely to engage in political behavior. An
individual's investment in the organization, perceived alternatives, and expectations of success
will influence the degree to which he or she will pursue illegitimate means of political action.

Organizational factors: politics are more likely to occur when organizational resources are
scarce, trust is low, roles are ambiguous, performance evaluation systems are unclear, high
pressures for performance exist, self-serving senior managers are in charge, and zero-sum
performance evaluation system is existing.

Employee Responses to Organizational Politics:

• Decreased Job Satisfaction

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 • Increased Anxiety and Stress
• Increased turnover
• Reduced performance

IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT is the process by which individuals attempt to control

the impression others form of them. High self-monitors are more likely to engage in impression
management, moulding their image to fit the situation.

Defensive Behaviors

• Avoiding Action:Overconforming.Buck passing ,Playing dumb,Stretching,Stalling

• Avoiding Blame: Bluffing, Playing safe, Justifying, Scapegoating, and
Misrepresenting.
• Avoiding Change: Prevention, Self-protection

Impression management techniques:

• Conformity
• Favours
• Excuses
• Apologies
• Self-promotion
• Enhancement
• Flattery
• Exemplication.

In job interviews, self-promotion appears to be particularly effective, while ingratiation is more

effective than self-promotion in the performance evaluation process.

The Ethics of Behaving Politically:

To make a favorable impression, one thing to keep in mind is whether it is worth the risk.
Another issue to consider is whether the utility of engaging in the political behavior will
balance out harm to others. Finally, does the political activity conform to standards of equity
and justice?

Political behavior has the potential to cross generally accepted standards of equity and justice,
particularly for those in positions of power.

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