Subject: OB.

Title: Summary of key points.

CHAPTER 4:

1. Describe the importance of attitudes and emotions to behavior in organizations?

Ans: Attitudes influence organizational behavior in many ways. The three components of
attitudes are cognitive, affective, and behavioral. A state of cognitive dissonance leads people
to reduce their internal conflict when they experience a clash between the information they
receive and their actions or attitudes. An emotion consists of three interacting components:
internal physiological arousal, expressive behavior, and a cognitive appraisal. Emotional labor
takes place when workers adjust their feelings and expressions to meet organizational goals,
such as pleasing customers. Managers should make good use of emotions. Two key steps are to
establish a friendly emotional climate and to include a positive attitude as one factor in
selecting individuals and teams.

Emotional labor involves both surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting means faking
expressions, such as smiling, whereas deep acting involves controlling feelings, such as
suppressing anger toward a customer whom you perceive to be uncivil.

Three outcomes of emotional labor were studied: (a) job satisfaction, (b) stress and exhaustion
from work, and (c) job performance.

2. Describe the nature of and contributors to job satisfaction?

Ans,: Attitudes are especially important because they are the basis for job satisfaction. Workers
will have high job satisfaction when they have positive attitudes toward job factors such as the
work itself, recognition.

A practical view of job satisfaction is that it centers on employees having fun in their jobs.
Satisfaction is linked to important consequences such as loyalty, absenteeism and turnover,
and job stress. Loyalty is important for avoiding costly involuntary turnover.
3. Describe how organizational citizenship behavior contributes to individual and organizational
effectiveness?

Ans: Job satisfaction also contributes to organizational citizenship behavior. The good
organizational citizen goes above and beyond the call of duty, or engages in extra role behavior.
A Personality factors, such as service orientation and empathy, contribute to organizational
citizenship behavior. Low organizational citizenship behavior has been linked to turnover.

When workers perceive their organizational support to be high, they are less likely to be
fatigued by engaging in citizenship behavior. Being too strong an organizational citizen by taking
on extra work can lead to conflict in personal life, and also to the neglect of regular job
responsibilities.

new affiliation-oriented OCBs that are particularly relevant for knowledge workers:

A .... Employee sustainability refers to participating in activities to maintain and improve one’s
health and well-being, or to support others’ efforts to maintain their health and well-being.

B. Social participation refers to taking part in social activities during the workday that are not
directly related to core job tasks.

4. Describe three ethical decision-making criteria, along with several explanations for the
existence of ethical problems?

Ans: A philosophical approach to understanding ethics gives three possible focuses: on

consequences; on duties, obligations, and principles; or on integrity. When focusing on
consequences:When attempting to decide what is right and wrong, people sometimes focus on
the consequences of their decision or action. According to this criterion, if nobody gets hurt,
the decision is ethical . The deontological approach focuses on the rights of individuals and is
based on universal principles such as honesty, fairness, justice, and respect for persons and
property.

The integrity, or virtue, criterion focuses on the character of the ethical action.

Major causes of ethical problems include an individual’s greed and gluttony; an individual’s
level of moral development; a culture that condones unethical behavior; pressure from higher
management including unrealistic goals; and unconscious biases.
5. Describe the eight-step guide to ethical decision making.

Ans: An eight-step guide to ethical decision making follows these steps: (1) gather the facts, (2)
define the ethical issues, (3) identify the affected parties, (4)identify the consequences, (5)
identify the obligations,

(6) consider your character and integrity, (7) think creatively about potential actions, and
(8)check your intuition. Choosing between two rights, or defining moments, may require an
ethical test.

6. Describe what organizations can do to enhance ethical and socially responsible behavior?

Ans: Managers can develop strategies and programs to enhance ethical and socially responsible
attitudes and behaviors. Among these approaches are:

 Focus on the triple bottom line.

 leading by example and establishing an ethical culture.
 establishing written codes of ethical conduct.
 accepting whistle-blowers.
 giving training in ethics and social responsibility.
 engaging in social entrepreneurship.
 gaining awareness of cross-cultural influences on ethics. The preceding initiatives often lead
to improved organizational performance, including profits.

Chapter 3.
1. Explain the basics of modeling and shaping, cognitive learning, and e-learning?
Ans: Modeling and shaping, and cognitive learning are two ways of learning complex material.
Modeling involves imitating another person performing the task correctly, and then repeating
the task. Modeling can be considered part of social cognitive learning.

Shaping: Occurs when a person learns through the reinforcement of small steps that build up to
the final or desired behavior.

Cognitive learning: is a theory emphasizes that learning takes place in a complicate manner
involving much more than acquiring habits and small skills.

they use many aspects of their personality (e.g., openness to experience) in acquiring
knowledge.

factor influencing how much cognitive learning takes place is the orientation of the learner. A
mastery orientation relates to a dedication to increase one’s competence with a task.
performance orientation, learners focus on how well they perform a task and make
comparisons with others.

An important innovation in learning is e-learning, whereby the learner studies independently

outside a classroom setting and interacts with a computer in addition to studying course
material. E-learning is a web-based form of computer-based training.

2. Describe how learning styles influence workplace learning?

Ans: People learn best in different ways; for example, some people acquire information best
through passive learning. A preference for working alone versus cooperatively is another
difference in learning style. A basic approach to learning styles is to divide them into three
categories—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Most people combine the three learning styles.
In general, people with higher cognitive intelli-gence and personality traits that allow them to
concentrate better acquire knowledge and skills more readily.

3. Describe key aspects of the perceptual process, along with common perceptual problems.

Ans: Perception deals with the various ways in which people interpret things in the outside
world and how they act on the basis of these perceptions. Perceptual problems are most likely
encountered when interpreting meanings rather than tangible physical phenomena. Mental
process of people,The devices people use to deal with sensory information play a major role in
creating perceptual problems. Among these devices are denial, stereotyping, the halo effect,
projection, and selective perception.

4. Describe how attribution theory and blaming others contribute to an understanding of

human behavior in the workplace;

Ans. Attribution theory is the process by which people ascribe causes to the behavior they
perceive. The fundamental attribution error is to attribute behavior to internal causes when
focusing on the behavior of others. This self-serving bias leads us to attribute good results to
ourselves, and poor results to the environment.

people attribute causes after gathering information about three dimensions of behavior:
consensus, consistency, and distinctivenes

Blame is an important part of attribution that sometimes blocks problem solving, yet

at other times leads to positive change.

blame: The tendency to place the responsibility for a negative outcome on a person, a thing, or
the environment.

locus of control The way in which people look at causation in their lives.

5.Summarize why values are an important part of organizational behavior.?

Ans: A value refers to the importance a person attaches to something that serves as a guide to
action. Many values are acquired early in life, often through modeling. The values a person
develops early in life are directly related to the kind of person he or she is now and will be, as
well as the quality of his or her personal relationships. Job performance tends to be higher
when there is congruence between individ-ual and organizational values.

6. Differenciate between internal locus control and external locus of control?

Ans: Internal locus of control:

 Internal locus of control they perceive their outcomes as being controlled internally.
 Result they generally feel in control of their lives.
 They create their own opportunities in life.
 External locus of control:
 External locus of control they perceive much of what happens to them as being
controlled by other people.
 External locus attribute much of their success and failure to luck.

Wrote by: kulmiye