Chapter 1

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Define organizational behavior and organizations and discuss the importance of this
field of inquiry.
2. Diagram an organization from an open-systems perspective.
3. Define intellectual capital and describe the organizational learning perspective of
organizational effectiveness.
4. Diagnose the extent to which an organization or one of its work units applies high-
performance work practices.
5. Explain how the stakeholder perspective emphasizes the importance of values, ethics,
and corporate social responsibility.
6. Summarize the five types of individual behavior in organizations.
7. Debate the organizational opportunities and challenges of globalization, workforce
diversity, and virtual work.
8. Discuss how employment relationships are changing and explain why these changes
are occurring.
9. Discuss the anchors on which organizational behavior knowledge is based.

Summary
Organizational behavior is the study of what people think, feel, and do in
and around organizations. Organizations are groups of people who work
interdependently toward some purpose. Although OB doesn’t have a specific
career path, it offers knowledge and skills that are vitally important to anyone
who works in organizations. OB knowledge also has a significant effect on the
success of organizations. This book takes the view that OB is for everyone, not
just managers.
Organizational effectiveness is a multidimensional concept represented by
four perspectives: open systems, organizational learning, high-performance
work practices, and stakeholder. The open-systems perspective says that
organizations need to adapt to their external environment and configure their
internal subsystems to maximize efficiency and responsiveness. For the most
part, the other perspectives of organizational effectiveness are detailed
extensions of the open-systems model. The organizational learning perspective
states that organizational effectiveness depends on the organization’s capacity to
acquire, share, use, and store valuable knowledge. Intellectual capital is
knowledge that resides in an organization, including its human capital, structural
capital, and relationship capital. Effective organizations also “unlearn,” meaning
that they remove knowledge that no longer adds value.
The high-performance work practices (HPWP) perspective states that
effective organizations leverage the human capital potential of their employees.
Specific HPWPs have been identified, and experts in this field suggest that they
need to be bundled together for maximum benefit. The stakeholder perspective
states that effective organizations take into account how their actions affect
others, and this requires them to understand, manage, and satisfy the interests of
their stakeholders. This perspective incorporates values, ethics, and corporate
social responsibility into the organizational effectiveness equation.
The five main types of workplace behavior are task performance,
organizational citizenship, counterproductive work behaviors, joining and
staying with the organization, and work attendance. These represent the
individual-level dependent variables found in most OB research.
Three environmental shifts that are challenging organizations include
globalization, increasing workforce diversity, and emerging employment
relationships. Globalization refers to economic, social, and cultural connectivity
with people in other parts of the world. Workforce diversity includes both
surface-level and deep-level diversity. Two emerging employment relationship
changes are demands for work–life balance and virtual work.
Several conceptual anchors represent the principles on which OB
knowledge is developed and refined. These anchors include beliefs that OB
knowledge should be multidisciplinary and based on systematic research, that
organizational events usually have contingencies, and that organizational
behavior can be viewed from three levels of analysis (individual, team, and
organization).
Chapter 2
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Describe the four factors that directly influence voluntary individual behavior and
performance.
2. Define personality and discuss what determines an individual’s personality
characteristics.
3. Summarize the “Big Five” personality traits in the five-factor model and discuss their
influence on organizational behavior.
4. Describe self-concept in terms of selfenhancement, self-verification, and self-
evaluation.
5. Explain how social identity theory relates to a person’s self-concept.
6. Distinguish personal, shared, espoused, and enacted values and explain why value
congruence is important.
7. Summarize five values commonly studied across cultures.
8. Explain how moral intensity, ethical sensitivity, and the situation influence ethical
behavior.

Summary
Individual behavior is influenced by motivation, ability, role perceptions, and
situational factors (MARS). Motivation consists of internal forces that affect the
direction, intensity, and persistence of a person’s voluntary choice of behavior. Ability
includes both the natural aptitudes and the learned capabilities required to successfully
complete a task. Role perceptions are a person’s beliefs about what behaviors are
appropriate or necessary in a particular situation. Situational factors are environmental
conditions that constrain or facilitate employee behavior and performance.
Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors
that characterize a person, along with the psychological processes behind those
characteristics. Most experts now agree that personality is shaped by both nature and
nurture. Most personality traits are represented within the five-factor model, which
includes conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and
extroversion. Another set of traits, measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,
represents how people prefer to perceive and judge information. Conscientiousness and
emotional stability (low neuroticism) stand out as the personality traits that best predict
individual performance in almost every job group. The other three personality
dimensions predict more specific types of employee behavior and performance.
 Self-concept includes an individual’s self-beliefs and self-evaluations. It has three
structural dimensions: complexity, consistency, and clarity. People are inherently
motivated to promote and protect their self-concept; this is self-enhancement. At the
same time, people are motivated to verify and maintain their existing self-concept; this
is self-verification.
Self-evaluation, an important aspect of self-concept, consists of self-esteem, self-
efficacy, and locus of control. Self-esteem is the extent to which people like, respect,
and are satisfied with themselves. Self-efficacy is a person’s belief that he or she has
the ability, motivation, correct role perceptions, and favorable situation to complete a
task successfully; general self-efficacy is a perception of one’s competence to perform
across a variety of situations. Locus of control is defined as a person’s general belief
about the amount of control he or she has over personal life events. Self-concept
consists of both personality identity and social identity. Social identity theory explains
how people define themselves in terms of the groups to which they belong or have an
emotional attachment.
Values are stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or
courses of action in a variety of situations. People arrange values into a hierarchy of
preferences, called a value system. Espoused values—what we say and think we use as
values—are different from enacted values, which are values evident from our actions.
Values have been organized into a circle with 10 clusters. Value congruence is the
similarity of value systems between two entities.
Five values that differ across cultures are individualism, collectivism, power
distance, uncertainty avoidance, and achievement-nurturing orientation. Three values
that guide ethical conduct are utilitarianism, individual rights, and distributive justice.
Three factors that influence ethical conduct are the extent to which an issue demands
ethical principles (moral intensity), the person’s ethical sensitivity to the presence and
importance of an ethical dilemma, and situational factors that cause people to deviate
from their moral values. Companies improve ethical conduct through a code of ethics,
ethics training, ethics hotlines, and the conduct of corporate leaders.
Chapter 3
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Outline the perceptual process.
2. Explain how social identity and stereotyping influence the perceptual process.
3. Describe the attribution process and two attribution errors.
4. Summarize the self-fulfilling-prophecy process.
5. Explain how halo, primacy, recency, and false-consensus effects bias our
perceptions.
6. Discuss three ways to improve social perception, with specific application to
organizational situations.
7. Describe the A-B-C model of behavior modification and the four contingencies of
reinforcement.
8. Describe the three features of social learning theory.
9. Outline the elements of organizational learning and ways to improve each element.

Summary
Perception involves selecting, organizing, and interpreting information to make
sense of the world around us. Perceptual organization engages categorical thinking—
the mostly nonconscious process of organizing people and objects into preconceived
categories that are stored in our long-term memory. Mental models—internal
representations of the external world—also help us to make sense of incoming stimuli.
Social identity theory explains how we perceive people through categorization,
homogenization, and differentiation. Stereotyping is a derivative of social identity
theory, in which people assign traits to others based on their membership in a social
category. Stereotyping economizes mental effort, fills in missing information, and
enhances our selfperception and social identity. However, it also lays the foundation for
prejudice and systemic discrimination.
The attribution process involves deciding whether an observed behavior or event is
caused mainly by the person (internal factors) or the environment (external factors).
Attributions are decided by perceptions of the consistency, distinctiveness, and
consensus of the behavior. This process helps us to link together the various pieces of
our world in cause-effect relationships, but it is also subject to attribution errors,
including fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias.
 Self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when our expectations about another person cause
that person to act in a way that is consistent with those expectations. Essentially, our
expectations affect our behavior toward the target person, which then affects that
employee’s opportunities and attitudes, which then influences his or her behavior. Self-
fulfilling prophecies tend to be stronger when the relationship begins (such as when
employees first join the department), when several people hold the expectations toward
the employee, and when the employee has a history of low achievement.
Four other perceptual errors commonly noted in organizations are the halo effect,
primacy effect, recency effect, and false-consensus effect. We can minimize these and
other perceptual problems through awareness of perceptual bias, self-awareness, and
meaningful interaction.
Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior (or behavior tendency) that
occurs as a result of a person’s interaction with the environment. Much of what we
learn is tacit knowledge, which is embedded in our actions without conscious
awareness.
The behavior modification perspective of learning states that behavior change
occurs by altering its antecedents and consequences. Antecedents are environmental
stimuli that provoke (not necessarily cause) behavior. Consequences are events
following behavior that influence its future occurrence. Consequences include positive
reinforcement, punishment, negative reinforcement, and extinction. The schedules of
reinforcement also influence behavior.
Social learning theory states that much learning occurs by observing others and
then modeling the behaviors that seem to lead to favorable outcomes and avoiding
behaviors that lead to punishing consequences. It also recognizes that we often engage
in self-reinforcement. Behavior modeling is effective because it transfers tacit
knowledge and enhances the observer’s confidence in performing the task.
Many companies now use experiential learning because employees do not acquire
tacit knowledge through formal classroom instruction. Experiential learning begins with
concrete experience, followed by reflection on that experience, formation of a theory
from that experience, and then testing of that theory in the environment.
Organizational learning is any structured activity that improves an organization’s
capacity to acquire, share, and use knowledge in ways that improve its survival and
success. Organizations acquire knowledge through individual learning and
experimentation. Knowledge sharing occurs mainly through various forms of
communication and training. Knowledge use occurs when employees realize that the
knowledge is available and that they have enough freedom to apply it.
Chapter 4
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Explain how emotions and cognition (conscious reasoning) influence attitudes and
behavior.
2. Identify the conditions that require, and the problems associated with, emotional
labor.
3. Describe the four dimensions of emotional intelligence.
4. Summarize the consequences of job dissatisfaction in terms of the exitvoice-loyalty-
neglect model.
5. Discuss the effects of job satisfaction on job performance and customer service.
6. Distinguish affective and continuance commitment and discuss their influence on
employee behavior.
7. Describe five strategies for increasing organizational (affective) commitment.
8. Define stress and describe the stress experience.
9. Explain why a stressor might produce different stress levels in two people.
10. Identify five ways to manage workplace stress.

Summary
Emotions are physiological, behavioral, and psychological episodes experienced
toward an object, person, or event that create a state of readiness. Emotions differ from
attitudes, which represent a cluster of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral intentions toward
a person, object, or event. Beliefs are a person’s established perceptions about the
attitude object. Feelings are positive or negative evaluations of the attitude object.
Behavioral intentions represent a motivation to engage in a particular behavior with
respect to the target.
Attitudes have traditionally been described as a purely rational process in which
beliefs predict feelings, which predict behavioral intentions, which predict behavior.
We now know that emotions have an influence on behavior that is equal to or greater
than that of cognitions. This dual process is apparent when we internally experience a
conflict between what logically seems good or bad and what we emotionally feel is
good or bad in a situation. Emotions also affect behavior directly. Behavior sometimes
influences our subsequent attitudes through cognitive dissonance.
Emotional labor consists of the effort, planning, and control needed to express
organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions. It is more common
in jobs requiring a variety of emotions and more intense emotions, as well as in jobs
where interaction with clients is frequent and has a long duration. Cultures also differ
on the norms of displaying or concealing a person’s true emotions. Emotional
dissonance occurs when required and true emotions are incompatible with each other.
Deep acting can minimize this dissonance, as can the practice of hiring people with a
natural tendency to display desired emotions.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate
emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in
oneself and others. This concept includes four components arranged in a hierarchy:
self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
Emotional intelligence can be learned to some extent, particularly through personal
coaching.
Job satisfaction represents a person’s evaluation of his or her job and work context.
The exit-voice-loyalty-neglect model outlines four possible consequences of job
dissatisfaction. Job satisfaction has a moderate relationship with job performance and
with customer satisfaction. Affective organizational commitment (loyalty) is the
employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in a
particular organization. This contrasts with continuance commitment, which is a
calculative bond with the organization. Companies build loyalty through justice and
support, shared values, trust, organizational comprehension, and employee
involvement.
Stress is an adaptive response to a situation that is perceived as challenging or
threatening to a person’s wellbeing. The stress experience, called the general adaptation
syndrome, involves moving through three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
Stressors are the causes of stress and include any environmental conditions that place a
physical or emotional demand on a person. Three stressors that have received
considerable attention are harassment and incivility, work overload, and low task
control.
Two people exposed to the same stressor may experience different stress levels.
Many interventions are available to manage work-related stress, including removing the
stressor, withdrawing from the stressor, changing stress perceptions, controlling stress
consequences, and receiving social support.
 Key Terms Chapter 1
absorptive capacity, p. 11
corporate social responsibility (CSR), p. 16
counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), p. 18
deep-level diversity, p. 21
ethics, p. 15
evidence-based management, p. 24
globalization, p. 20
high-performance work practices (HPWPs), p. 12
human capital, p. 12
intellectual capital, p. 12
lean management, p. 9
open systems, p. 7
organizational behavior (OB), p. 4
organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), p. 17