ORGB 1135

Chapter 1

Organizational behaviour: the study of what people think, feel, and do in and around organizations.

-encompasses the study of how organizations interact with their external environment

Looks at:

 Employee behaviours
 Decisions
 Perceptions
 Emotional Responses

Organizations: groups of people who work interdependently toward some purpose

Key Features of An Organization:

1. Key Feature

-an organization consist of human beings who interact with each other in an organized way

-all organizational members show degrees of interdependence > accomplish goals by sharing materials,
information, or expertise with co-workers.

2. Key Feature

-members have a collective sense of purpose

Historical Foundations Of Organizational Behaviour

 (400 BCE) Greek Philosopher Plato: wrote about essence of leadership

 (500 BCE) Chinese Philosopher Confucius: extolled the virtues of ethics and leaderships
 (1700s) Economist Adam Smith: discussed the benefits of job specialization and division of
labour
 (1900s) German Sociologist Max Weber: wrote about rational organizations, the work ethic, and
charismatic leadership.
 (1900s) Industrial Engineer Fredrick Winslow Taylor: proposed systematic ways to organize work
processes and motivate employees through goal setting and rewards
  William Lyon Mackenzie King
 Harvard Professor Elton Mayo
 Telephone Executive & Harvard Associate Chester Barnard
 Political Scientist Mary Parker Follet

Importance of OB for You

OB is important for everyone.

Employers say OB skills are most important.

• Problem solving (analytic thinking and strategic thinking)

• Working in teams (collaboration, interpersonal skills, and people management)
• People management (communication)

This course explains (theory) behavior. You may see yourself and strengthen your strengths.

• Understand workplace events.

• Predict workplace events.

• Get things done by influencing and coordinating with others

Importance of OB for Organizations

OB theories improve the organization’s effectiveness.

Organizational effectiveness is an ideal state in which the organization:

• Has a good fit with its external environment (open system).

• Open Systems: an organization that lives within an external environment

• “good-fit” exists when the organizations inputs, processes, and outputs

are aligned with the resources that are available in the external
environment

• Closed Systems: Operate without dependence on or interaction with an external

environment

• Effectively transforms inputs to outputs (human capital).

• Satisfies the needs of key stakeholders.

Organizations as Open Systems

Knowledge, skills, abilities, creative thinking, and other valued resources that employees bring to the
organization.

Human capital is:

• Essential for survival/success.

• Difficult to find or copy.

• Difficult to replace employees with technology.

Human capital improves organizational effectiveness.

• Directly improves individual behaviour and performance.

 • Performing diverse tasks in unfamiliar situations. (better at adapting to risk)

• Company’s investment or rewards into employees motivates them.

Organizations and Their Stakeholders

Stakeholders: customers, suppliers, the local community, national security, interest groups,
shareholders, governments, and many other entities that affect or are affected by the company’s
objectives and actions.

-personal values play a key role in stakeholder relations

Values: stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes

Corporate Social Responsibility: organizational activities intended to benefit society and the
environment beyond the firm’s financial interests.

Triple-bottom—line philosophy: a firm that wants to be profitable (economic), social, and environmental

Anchors of Organizational Behaviour Knowledge

Systematic Research Anchor: involves research questions. Collecting data, and testing hypotheses
against those data

Supports evidence based management which involves making decision and taking actions
guided by research evidence
 Reasons for Overlooking Evidence-Based Knowledge

Difficulty of figuring out if evidence is solid when bombarded with ideas from newspaper
articles, consultant reports, popular business books, and other sources.
OB research is rather broad than specific on what needs to be resolved within the organization

Fields lacking research evidence gain popularity due to rewards for marketing ideas rather than
testing to see if it works
Human beings are affected by perceptual errors and decision-making bias (opposing evidence
that goes against beliefs)

Ways to Create a More Evidence-Based Organization:

Be skeptical of the hype of an idea that portrays to be “new”, “proven”, and “revolutionary”.
Be open to collective expertise rather than a sole opinion
Stories should not be a main foundation to support management action
Take a neutral stance toward popular trends and ideologies as it may have no relevance to your
organization or have minor benefit.

The Practical Orientation Anchor

OB theories need to be useful in practice

The Multidisciplinary Anchor

Organizations should accept new theories and knowledge from other disciplines not just from its
own isolated research base.

The Contingency Anchor

A single outcome or solution rarely exists; a particular action may have different consequences
under different conditions

The Multiple Levels of Analysis Anchor

Ob events happen from three levels of an organization individual, team, and organization

Emerging Workplace: Inclusive Workplace

Inclusive workplace:

• Values people of all identities.

• Views diversity as a valued resource.

• Evidence at individual (enables people, irrespective of their backgrounds, feel

psychological safe, engaged, valued, authentic, listened to and respected. At a
collective level (diverse groups have a voice through formal structures, diversity
councils, and representation in teams and casual gatherings

Surface-level diversity.: observable demographic based of features such as race, ethnicity, gender, age,
and physical capabilities.

Deep-level diversity: diversity based on personalities, beliefs, values and attitudes that one can’t directly
see.

Benefits of diversity:

• Better decisions, employee attitudes, team performance.

• More team creativity, better decisions in complex situations.

• Better representation of community needs.

• Moral/legal imperative. (what is right morally and legally)

• Inclusive workplace develops a culture of respect.

Challenges of diversity:

• Team takes longer to perform effectively together. 

• Higher dysfunctional conflict, lower info sharing and morale.

Emerging Workplace: Work-Life Integration

Work-life integration: refers to the extent to which people are effectively engaged in their various work
and nonwork roles

Effectively engaged in work and nonwork roles with low role conflict.

Problem: Depleting personal resources in one role starves other roles.

Practising work-life integration.

• Literally integrate two or more roles at once (eg: on a call while on a walk)
 • Flexible work scheduling.

• Align work and nonwork roles with personal characteristics.

• Boundary management. (the right to aside time for work-free activities)

Work-life conflict: when your work is an obstacle with other aspects in your personal life

Emerging Workplace: Remote Work

Performing the job away from the organization’s physical work site.

Usually working from home or other non-client site.

Remote employees are connected through information technology.

Some companies are completely remote (distributed organization)

Remote Work Benefits and Risks

Remote work benefits:

• Better work-life integration.

• Valued job benefit, less turnover.

• Higher productivity.

• Better for environment.

• Lower corporate costs.

Remote work disadvantages:

• More social isolation.

• Less informal communication.

• Lower team cohesion.

• Weaker organizational culture.

Remote Work Contingencies

Employee characteristics:

• High self-motivation.

• High self-organization.
 • High need for autonomy.

• Good information technology skills.

• Fulfill social needs outside work.

Job characteristics:

• Tasks don’t require office resources.

• Low task interdependence.

• Task performance is measurable.

Organizational characteristics:

• Reward performance, not presence.

• Maintaining team cohesion and psychological connectedness

Emerging Workplace: Employment Relationships

Three main employment relationships:

1. Direct employment: Employee working directly with employer.

2. Indirect employment: Outsourced or agency work.

3. Contract employment: Worker is one firm serving a client.

Consequences of emerging employment relationships:

• Direct employment: (full time/permeant jobs)

- Higher work quality, innovation, and agility.

- Lower satisfaction, commitment when working with indirect workers.

• Indirect employment:

- Lower job satisfaction than other employment types.

• Teams with direct and indirect workers.

- Weaker social networks, less information sharing.

• Ambiguous manager roles, less discretion over indirect workers.

MARS Model of Individual Behaviour

Mars model: stands for motivation ability, role perceptions, and situational factors
 1. Performance = person x situation: a persons includes individual characteristics and situation
represents external influences on the individuals behaviour
2. Performance = ability x motivation: known as the skill-and-will model, which identifies two
characteristics (ability and motivation) that influence individual performance
3. Ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) Model: three variable model with limited interpretation
of the situation
4. Role perception: individual behaviour is inhibited by role obligations (what is expected of him to
do)

Employee Motivation

Motivation: represents the forces within a person that affect the direction, intensity, and persistence of
effort for voluntary behaviour

Internal forces that affect a person’s voluntary choice of behaviour.

• Direction: path at which individuals steer their efforts

• Intensity: amount of effort allocated to a specific goal

• Persistence: the length of time an individual is willing to exert effort toward an objective

Employee Ability

Ability: Aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task.

Learned capabilities: the skills and knowledge that people acquire such as training, practice, and other
forms of learning.

Aptitudes: the natural talents that help employees learn specific tasks more quickly and perform better

Person–job matching.

• Selecting: pick applicants that demonstrate the required abilities

• Developing: train employees who lack specific knowledge or skills

• Redesigning: employees are given tasks within their current abilities

Employee Role Perception

Understand the job duties expected of us.

Role perceptions are clearer when we:

• understand our tasks or accountable consequences.

 • understand task/performance priorities.

• understand the preferred behaviours/procedures.

Benefits of clear role perceptions:

• Higher proficient job performance.

• Better coordination with others.

• Higher motivation.

Situational Factors

Conditions beyond person’s short-term control that constrain or facilitate behaviour.

• Constraints/facilitators – time, budget, facilities, etc that may hinder performance

• Cues – e.g. signs warning of nearby hazards. (that may inhibit employees to proceed with their
work)

Types of Individual Behaviour

Task performance:

• Voluntary goal-directed behaviours that contribute to an organizations objectives

• Three types of performance:

1. Proficient: performing the work efficiently and accurately

2. Adaptive: performing in a workspace that is progressively changing

3. Proactive: refers to how well employees will participate and introduce new work
patterns that benefit the organization

Organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs):

• Various forms of Cooperation with or helpfulness, to others that support the

organization

• OCBs are directed toward individuals (assisting work problems) and organization.

• Some OCBs are discretionary (employee’s don’t have to perform them) others implicit
job requirement that may not be stated in the job description

• OCBs may have negative consequences.

• Ocb take time away from performance

 • Counterproductive work behaviours.

• Voluntary behaviours that may harm the organization.

• Joining and staying with the organization.

• Problems with skills shortages and high turnover.

• Maintaining work attendance.

• Absences due mainly to situation and motivation.

• Presenteeism: attending scheduled work during significantly reduced capacity (illness,

injury).

Chapter 2

Personality in Organizations

Relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that characterize a person, along
with the psychological processes behind those characteristics.

Personality traits -- discernible patterns to label and understand individual differences.

Nature vs. Nurture of Our Personality

Influenced by nature.

• Nature refers to our genetic or hereditary origins

• Heredity explains up to 50 percent of behavioural tendencies.

Influenced by nurture.

• Influenced by socialization, life experiences and other forms of interaction with the
environment

Personality stabilizes in young adulthood.

• Self-concept gets clearer, more stable with age.

• Executive function is a part of our brain that monitors and regulates behaviour to keep it
consistent with our self concept

• But some traits change throughout life due to work and age (openness to experiences in
your youth & agreeableness in your adult years)
Five-Factor Personality Model (CANOE)

Conscientiousness: organized, dependable, thorough

Agreeableness: trusting, helpful, good-natured

Neuroticism: anxious, insecure, self conscious

Openness to experience: imaginative, creative, curious

Extraversion: outgoing, talkative, energetic

o Opposite is introversion, which characterizes those who are quiet, cautious and
less interactive with others

Five-Factor Personality and Individual Behaviour

Five Factor Model and Behaviour: Further Information

• Personality affects behaviour and performance through motivation, specifically by

influencing the choice of goals and persistent to reach those goals.

Effective leaders, salespeople are somewhat more extraverted.

Openness to experience may predict a creative work performance.

Conscientiousness is a weak predictor of adaptive, proactive performance.

• Conscientiousness is the best overall personality predictor of proficient task

performance for most jobs

Agreeableness:
 • Predicts team member, customer service performance.

• Weak predictor of proficient, proactive performance.

Five Factor Model Issues

1. Higher Big Five scores aren’t always better.

1. The relationship between personality and performance is non linear

2. Perosnality scores might not correlate with scores

2. Specific traits may predict better than their overall Big Five factor.

1. Specific traits are better to predict behaviour than the broader factor

3. Personality isn’t static.

1. Personality is constantly changing based on numerous factors (age, work, culture)

4. The five-factor model doesn’t cover all personality concepts.

1. There are several perspectives or approaches to a personality, each with a different view
or emphasis

The Dark Triad

-three socially undesirable personalities – Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, all of which
have a “dark core” consisting of low humility/honesty or a tendency to undermine others for own
personal gain.

Machiavellianism:

• Strong motivation to get what one wants at the expense of others.

• Believe that deceit is natural and acceptable to achieve goals.

• Take pleasure in misleading, outwitting, controlling others.

• Seldom empathize with or trust coworkers.

Narcissism.

• Obsessive belief in one’s own superiority, entitlement.

• Excessive need for attention.

 • Intensely envious.

Psychopathy.

• Social predators -- ruthlessly dominate and manipulate others.

• Mask of psychopathy: superficial charm, but selfish self-promoters.

• Engage in antisocial, impulsive, and often fraudulent thrill-seeking behaviour.

Dark Triad and Workplace Behaviour

1. Organizational politics: using influence tactics for personal gain at the expense of others and the
interests of the entire organization
2. Ineffective team behavious
3. Serious white collar crime activity: non-violent crimes committed through deceptive
practices, for the purpose of financial gain
4. Workplace aggression or bullying
5. Risky decision making – predicted by psychopathy

6. Dark triad may have some positive outcomes (e.g., promotions).

• Being manipulative occasional helps employees move into higher positions

Jungian & Myers-Briggs Types

Personality is based on an individual’s preferences regarding perceiving information

Perceiving function occurs through two competing orientations:

1. Sensing: perceiving information through our five senses

2. Intuition: relies more on insight and subjective experience to see relationship among
variables

Judging function – how people prefer to make decisions based on what they have perceived consists
of two competing processes:

1. Thinking: rely on rational cause-effect logic and systematic data collection to make decisions
2. Feeling: give an emotional response to options that are presented, as well as how those
choices affect others

Perceiving & Judging

Perceiving orientation: those with this orientation are open, curious, and flexible

Judging orientation: those with this orientation prefer order and structure and want to resolve
problems quickly
Evaluating the MBTI

Most widely used personality test.

Most widely studied measure of cognitive style.

Adopts a neutral view of score results.

Improves self-awareness and mutual understanding.

Poor at predicting job performance, effective leadership, or team development.

Values in the Workplace

Stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences.

• Define right/wrong, good/bad – what we “ought” to do in situations.

• Direct our motivation, potentially decisions/behaviour.

• Values system – a person’s hierarchy of values.

• Developed from parents, religious institutions, friends, personal experiences and the
society they live in.

• Values system is relatively stronger (studies show it stayed consistent from

adolescent years till 20 years later in adult years)

Compared with personality, values are:

• Evaluative (what we ought to do instead of what we naturally do in personality)

• May conflict strongly with each other.

• Affected more by nurture (hereditary) than nature.

Schwartz’s Values Model

-a model of personal values

57 values clustered into 10 categories, further clustered into four quadrants

• Openness to change

- motivated to pursue innovative ways

 • it include the values categories of self-direction (independent thought,
creativity), stimulation (excitement and challenge), and hedonism
(pursuit of pleasure, enjoyment and gratification of desires)

• Conservation

- motivated to preserve the status quo

- includes the value categories of conformity (adherence to social norms and

expectations), security (safety and stability), and tradition (moderation and
preservation of the status quo)

• Self-enhancement

- motivated by self-interest

- includes the values categories of achievement (pursuit of personal success),

power (dominance over others), and hedonism (a values category shared with
openness to change)

• Self-transcendence

- motivated to promote welfare of others and nature

- includes value categories of benevolence (concern for others in ones life) and
universalism (concern for the welfare of all people and nature)

How Values Influence Decisions and Behaviour

1. Values affect the relative attractiveness of choices.

1. We are more likely to get positive feelings towards choices aligned with our
values.

2. Values frame perceptions.

1. Our decision and actions are affected by how we perceive those situations

3. Values motivate us to act consistently with self-concept and public image.

1. People are motivated to act consistently with their values

When Values Don’t Predict Behaviour

1. Situational factors are barriers or lack of opportunity. (eg. You are environmentally friendly but
there is no recycling facilities around)

2. Counter-motivational forces. (eg. Being pressured to act against values)

 3. Lack of values awareness.

- Values are abstract which may have little relevance in given situations

- Less mindful of values with routine behaviour.

Values Congruence

Value congruence: refers to how similar one’s values are with the organizational values

Similarity of a person’s values hierarchy to another source.

Importance of values congruence.

• Team values congruence—higher team cohesion and performance.

• Person–organization values congruence—higher job satisfaction, loyalty, and

organizational citizenship, lower stress and turnover.

• Incongruence is good as well, allowing for different perspectives which lead to better
decision making

Ethical Values and Behaviour

Ethics: study of moral principles and values, whether actions are right or wrong, outcomes are good or
bad.

Four ethical principles:

1. Utilitarianism.

- Greatest good for the greatest number.

- Provides the highest degree of satisfaction

2. Individual rights.

- Everyone has same natural rights.

- Freedom of speech, freedom of movement, the right to physical security, and the
right to a fair trail.

- Some individual rights may conflict with others

3. Distributive justice.

- Benefits and burdens should be the same or proportional

 - Everyone should be treated equally in terms of rewards or consequences from
what the contribute to the organization. .

4. Ethic of care.

- Moral obligation to help others.

- Being attentive to others needs, using one’s abilities to give care to others.

Moral Intensity and Ethical Conduct

The degree that an issue demands the application of ethical principles.

Moral intensity is determined by:

 How seriously good or bad people will be affected by the decision

 The probability that those good or bad outcomes will occur
 How many people will be affected.

Moral Sensitivity and Ethical Conduct

A person’s ability to detect a moral dilemma and estimate its relative importance.

Several factors are associated with a persons moral sensitivity: 

• Expertise/knowledge of prescriptive norms and rules.

• Some are more aware of illegal or unethical conduct due to professional training

• Past experience with specific moral dilemmas

• Past incidents generate cues that trigger awareness of future ethical dilemmas
with similar charateristics

• More empathy.

• Those with higher empathy have a greater moral sensitivity regarding the
intensity of the issue

• A self-view as an ethical person.

• Employees who define themselves by their moral character (moral identity) are
more sensitive to moral dilemmas as they put effort into maintaining ethical
conduct

• Mindfulness.
 • Refers to a persons receptive and impartial attention to and awareness
of the present situation as well as to one’s own thoughts and emotions
in that moment.
•
• Supporting Ethical Behaviour
• How to improve ethical conduct:
• Corporate code of ethics
• a statement about desired practices, rules of conduct, and philosophy about the
organizational relationship to its stakeholders and environment.
• Educate and test employee’s ethical knowledge
• Employ annual quizzes to test employee awareness of company rules and
practices on ethical issues.
• Systems for communicating/investigating wrongdoing
• An example is a confidential phone line whereby employees can anonymously
report suspicious workplace behaviour/activity.
• Or a ombudspersons which is someone who receives information
confidentially and investigates on the wrongdoing.
• Ethical culture and ethical leadership
• Leaders role-model the ethical standards that employees are more likely to
follow than others in the organization

Individualism

The degree to which people value personal freedom, self-sufficiency, control over themselves, being
appreciated for unique qualities

Collectivism

The degree to which people value their group membership and harmonious relationships within the
group

Power Distance

Refers to the extent to which people accept unequal distribution of power in a society

High power distance

• Value obedience to authority

• Comfortable receiving commands from superiors

• Prefer formal rules and authority to resolve conflicts

Low power distance

• Expect relatively equal power sharing

• View relationship with boss as interdependence, not dependence

Uncertainty Avoidance

The degree to which people tolerate ambiguity (low uncertainty avoidance) or feel threatened by
ambiguity and uncertainty (high uncertainty avoidance)

High uncertainty avoidance

• Feel threatened by ambiguity and uncertainty

• Value structured situations and direct communication

Low uncertainty avoidance

• Tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty

Achievement-Nurturing

Reflects a competitive versus cooperative view of relations with other people

High achievement orientation

• Assertiveness

• Competitiveness

• Materialism

High nurturing orientation

• Value relationships

• Focus on human interaction

Cultural Diversity within Canada

Deep-level diversity across ethnic and regional groups

Compared to Anglophones, Francophones tend to:

 • Have less deference to authority

• Be more tolerant and morally permissive

Indigenous Canadians

• High collectivism

• Relationships represent one of the most frequently mentioned cultural values

• Low power distance

• Indigenous communities have a decentralized leadership in which roles and

duties are shared among several people

• Leader has minimal control over group decisions

• Non-interference

• Indigenous culture prevents directing others down a aprtiuclar path

• Natural time orientation

• Forcing things to happen according to a schedule is deemed as less successful

Personal values/traits vary across Canadian regions

Regional variations seem to be caused by:

• regional institutions (local government, education, religions)

regional migration

Canadian vs American Values

Canadians tend to:

Have higher moral permissiveness

Encourage more collective rights

Have less affiliation with religious institutions, separation from policy

Have less deference to patriarchal authority

Americans tend to:

Have lower moral permissiveness

Encourage individual rights

Have more affiliation with religious institutions, involvement in policy

Have more deference to patriarchal authority

Chapter 8

Teamwork in Canadian Finance

Teamwork has become an integral part of working in the finance industry in Canada and globally

What are Teams?

1. Groups of two or more people. 

2. Exist to fulfill a purpose.

3. Interdependence and need for collaboration.

4. Mutual accountability.

5. Perceive themselves
to be a team.

Types of Teams

Departmental Teams: teams that consist of employees with similar skills and are located in the
same unit of functional structure

 Minimal task interdependence due to employees being dispersed across departments.

Self-directed Teams: Teams whose members are organized around work processes that complete an
entire piece of a project that require several interdependent tasks and have substantial autonomy
over the execution of those tasks. (They usually control inputs, flow, and outputs with little or no
supervision)
Task Forces/Project Teams:

Cross-functional teams whose members are usually drawn from several disciplines to solve a specific
problem, realize an opportunity, or design a product or service.

Permanence.

• How long the team exists.

Skill diversity.

• Team members have different skills and knowledge.

• Low skill diversity is when team members have similar skill abilities.

• Most functional departments are low skill diversity due to employee’s

being put in particular roles.

Authority dispersion.

• Decision making distributed throughout the team.

• Department teams tend to have low dispersion due to power being

concentrated on a manager

Groups that exist primarily for the benefit of their members.

-Little to no independence and no organizational mandated purpose (eg. Friends you meet for
lunch)

Reasons why informal groups exist:

• Innate drive to bond.

• Social identity.

• Individuals define themselves by their group affiliations

• Goal accomplishment.

• May accomplish personal objectives that cannot be achieved by individuals

alone (eg. Employees opposing or supporting an organizational change which
brings more power than doing it alone)

• Emotional support.

• the comfort of others motivates us to be around them in stressful situations

Informal groups potentially benefit organizations.

 -minimizes employee stress

Advantages and Challenges of Teams

Advantages.

1. Better decisions, products.

2. Better information sharing and coordination

3. Higher motivation due to team membership.

1. Three Motivating Factors:

 Employees have a drive bond and are motivated to fulfill the goals of the group

 Employees have high accountability

 Employees are motivated to work hard when their performance is compared to others
in the group

Challenges.

• Individuals are better than teams for some tasks.

• Process losses (time and money)

• Team members need time & effort to develop mutual understanding when it
comes to goals, accomplishing goals, negotiating roles, and resolving
disagreements

• Product losses increase with an increase in team’s diversity & size.

• Brooke’s law states that: “adding more people to a late software project only
makes it later” (a quote on the product losses of integrating a new member into
a late project)

• Social loafing: when people exert less effort (and usually perform at a lower level) in
teams than when working alone

Social Loafing Causes and Remedies

Social loafing is more likely to occur:

• When individual performance is hidden, indistinguishable from performance of other

team members

• Work has low motivation (boring or low task significance).

 • Due to individual characteristics such as having conscientiousness and low
agreeableness

• When employees lack motivation to help team goals.

• When employees exert less effort due to belief of having little control over team success
and having little effect on teams performance.

Minimizing social loafing:

• Form smaller teams.

• More noticeability of individual performance with smaller groups

• Measure individual performance.

• Specialize tasks.

• Specialize tasks to increase work visibility for individuals

• Increase job enrichment.

• Increase the variation of tasks

• Increase mindfulness of team obligations.

• Select motivated team oriented employees

• Employees are less susceptible to self loathing when they identify with a team

• Employees that have higher conscientiousness and agreeableness personality

traits and have a collectivist value orientation are less likely to be self loathing

Team Effectiveness Has Three Key Features:

1. To serve some organizational purpose

2. Relies on the well being and satisfaction of its members
3. Includes the ability to motivation of team members to remain together long enough to achieve a
goal

Team Effectiveness Model

The organization and team environment: refers to the context surrounding the team such as its physical
workspace and organizational leadership

Team Design: refers to the variables that are assigned to the team when it is created and altered
throughout its existent (eg. Number of people assigned to team & and the personal attributes these
members bring to the team)

Organization and Team Environment

o Represents all conditions surrounding the team that influence its effectiveness

Communication systems.

Organizational leadership.

Organizational structure.

Physical space.

Reward systems.

Best Task Characteristics for Teams

1. Teams are suited for complex work that can be divided into specialized roles

2. Well-structured tasks function better in a team

- Low task variability. (performing same set of tasks everyday)

- High task analyzability (well established procedures due to predictable work

- Well structured tasks is easier to coordinate amongst members

3. Higher task interdependence

Levels of Task Interdependence

Task Interdependence

Task Interdependence: the extent to which team members must share materials, information, or
expertise to perform their jobs.

Three Levels of Task Interdependence

o Pooled Interdependence: occurs when an employee or work unite shares

machinery, technical support, financial support, or other common (pooled)
resources but otherwise operates independently from other employees or work
units
o Sequential Interdependence: a higher level of interdependence occurs when the
output of one person or work unit becomes the direct input for another person
or unit. (eg. Assembly line to which the output of one person is forwarded to
the next person in the line for assembly of product or service)
o Reciprocal Interdependence: work output is exchanged back and forth among
individuals or work units, produces the highest level of interdependence.
 Any decision produced would influence the work of all positions within
an organization
 High task interdependence motivates people to be part of a team and
coordinate with each other

Team Size

Smaller teams are better because:

• Less process loss (less conflict, less time to make decisions)

• Feel more engaged in teamwork due to more influence on group norms and goals

• Faster team development.

 • Maintain coordination and meaningful involvement between each member

But team must be large enough to accomplish task

Team Composition

o Team effectiveness depends on the qualities of the people who are assigned to those teams
o Below is a list of task-related behaviours toward the achievement of the teams objectives

Diverse Teams Reorganize Rijksmuseum

Rijksmuseum reorganized its public display areas around historical time periods. For each era, the Dutch
museum formed diverse teams with staff representing the numerous specialized collections.

Team Composition: Diversity

Team members have diverse knowledge, skills, perspectives, values, etc.

Diversity Advantages:

• View problems/alternatives from different perspectives.

• Broader knowledge base.

 • Different mental models, increases their likelihood of identifying solutions to difficult
problems

• Better represent constituents.

• Broader pool of technical abilities

Diversity Disadvantages:

• Slower team development. (those with varied worldview take longer to reach
agreement on team goals, operational procedures, and informal team dynamics)

• Susceptible to “faultlines.” (the splitting of a team based on subgroups of gender, race,

ethnic, and professional or other dimensions)

• Building trust takes longer

Team Processes

Cognitive and emotional dynamics of the team that continually change with the team’s ongoing
evolution and development.

Includes team development, norms, roles, cohesion, trust, mental models.

Team development – heart of team processes – the other processes are embedded in team
development

Stages of Team Development

Forming: First Stage of Development

 o Testing and orientation of new members evaluating the benefits and costs of continuing
membership

Storming: Second Stage of Development

o Personal conflict may arise as members fit for various team roles
o Members establish norms of behaviour and performance standards

Norming: Third Stage of Development

o Roles are established

o Group objectives and team based mental models are formed

Performing: Fourth Stage of Development

o Coordination and resolving conflicts between members in this stage

Adjourning: Fifth Stage of Development

o Shift task attention away to a relationship focus

Norms: Informal rules, and shared expectations that groups establish to regulate the behaviour of their
members

Norms are said to begin at the storming stage due to conflict arising the

Why teams have norms.

• Improve team performance/wellbeing.

• Improve predictability and conflict-avoidance with team members.

• Routinize behavior with minimal cognitive effort

• A persons social identity that is more closely connect to the groups is more motivated to
obey team norms

Developing and changing team norms.

• Select team members with preferred values and past behaviour.

• State desired norms when forming teams

• Ongoing coaching of norms to team members.

 • Introduce team-based rewards that counter dysfunctional norms.

• Disband teams with dysfunctional norms & create a new group with appropriate norms

Team Roles

Role: Set of behaviours that people are expected to repeatedly perform because they hold formal or
informal positions in a team and organization.

Roles versus norms.

• Both establish/reinforce behaviour.

• Roles apply to one/few people, norms apply to all members.

Roles are acquired formally or informally. (shared roles

Types of roles:

Taskwork roles – assist the team’s performance (include coordination, providing critique of teams
plans), and motivating team members when effort is lagging

Teamwork roles – support team development/dynamics

Six Role Categories

o Organizer
– Keeps track of accomplishments and how the team is progressing relative to goals and
timelines
o Doer
– Completes work, meets deadlines, and takes on takes to ensure team success
o Challenger
– Comfortable with debating and critiquing all aspects of a situation and considers
alternative assumptions, explanations and solutions.
o Innovator
– Generates new and creative ideas, strategies, approaches for how the team can handle
various situations and challenges
o Team Builder
– Establishes norms, supports decisions, and maintains a positive work atmosphere within
the team.
o Connector
– Helps bridge and connect the team with people, groups , and or other stakeholders
outside of the team.
Team Cohesion

The degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members.

Better team cohesion with:

• Higher member similarity.

• We are more attracted to members that are similar to us.

• Smaller team size.

• Easier to agree on goals and coordinate work activities

• Members have more influence with fewer people in a team.

• Frequent member interaction.

• Somewhat difficult team entry.

• the greater prestige it confers on its member, they tend to value their
membership in the unit.

• Higher team success.

• Team cohesion increases with team success because people are attracted to
groups that fulfill goals.

• More external competition or challenges.

• External competition or a challenging objective that is important to them

Team Cohesion and Performance

High cohesion teams usually perform better because:

• Motivated to maintain membership, achieve team objectives.

• Share information more frequently.

• Higher coworker satisfaction.

• Better social support (minimizes stress).

• Resolve conflict more swiftly and effectively.

Cohesion increases performance when:

• Task interdependence is high.

• Team norms are consistent with organizational objectives.

Trust in Teams

Trust: positive expectations one person has toward another person or group in situations involving risk.

Three levels of trust:

• Calculus-based (lowest): represents a logical calculation that other team members will
act appropriately based on facing consequences if not following expectations.

• Knowledge-based: based on predictability of another team members behaviour which

refers only to “positive expectations” because you wouldn’t trust someone who tends to
engage in harmful behaviour

• Identification-based (highest): mutual understanding and an emotional bond among

team members. It occurs when team members think, feel, and act like one another.

Swift trust – initially a moderate or high level of trust in co-workers when people join a team.

Team Mental Models

Mental models: visual or relational images in our mind that we develop to describe, explain, and predict
the world around us.

Shared mental models — all team members hold similar images and expectations about the team
objectives, shared values, behaviour norms, and work style.

Complementary mental models — each member’s mental model is unique but compatible with others
and each having unique models of how the team operates

Benefits of shared and complementary team mental models.

• Improves coordination.

• Supports belief that the team is a functioning social entity

• Directory of the team’s diverse knowledge repository.

Team Building

Formal activities to improve the team development processes.

Types of team building:

• Goal setting.

• Task focused interventions focus on clarifying team performance goals, increase

the motivation to accomplish these goals, and establish a mechanism for
systematic feedback on the team’s goal performance
 • Problem-solving.

• Focuses on improving the teams problem-solving skills

• Role clarification.

• Clarifies and reconstructs each members perception of their role as well as the
role expectations that member has of other team members

• Interpersonal relations.

• Helping improve interpersonal relations which then build trust in each other.

Team building can be effective under specific conditions.

Self-Directed Teams

Self-directed teams defined:

• Cross-functional groups organized around work processes.

• Complete entire piece of work, requires interdependent tasks.

• Autonomy over task decisions.

Success factors:

1. Responsible for entire work process.

2. High interdependence within the team.

3. Low interdependence with other teams.

4. Autonomy to organize and coordinate work.

5. Work site/technology support team communication/coordination and job enrichment.

Remote (Virtual/Distributed) Teams

Remote teams: teams whose members operate across space, time and organizational boundaries and
are linked through information technologies to achieve organizational tasks.

Remote Work Differs:

1. One or more members work remotely at least some of the time rather than always being co-
located (working in the same physical area as co workers)
 2. Depend on information technologies in addition to or instead of face to face interaction to
communicate and coordinate their work effort

Team remoteness varies with:

• Geographic dispersion.

• Percentage of members who work apart.

• Percentage of time that members work apart.

Remote team success factors:

• Members apply effective teamwork behaviors (5 Cs).

• Freedom to use a toolkit of communication channels. (messaging, online whiteboards,

video conferencing, etc.)

• Moderate or higher task structure. (clear operational objectives, documented work

processes, and agreed-on roles and responsibilities.

• Opportunities to meet face-to-face

Team Decision-Making Constraints

• Time constraints.

 When only one person can speak its called a production blocking it undermines
ideas by:

1. Members need to listen n on the conversation to find an opportune

time to speak up but this makes it difficult to concentrate on their own
ideas.

2. Ideas are fleeting the longer participants wait to speak

3. Concentration on fleeting thoughts while waiting to speak will cause a

loss of concentration on the ideas talked about.

• Evaluation apprehension.

 The fear of ideas being viewed as “Silly” and the fear of being silently evaluated
by employees

• Peer pressure to conform.

 Opinions may be supressed between members if they do not relate with the
team norms

• Overconfidence (inflated team efficacy).

  Overconfidence isn’t favourable in the organization due to the fact that it leads
to less vigilant decisions

 Teams are overconfident due to the natural motivation to believe that the
teams capabilities are above average.

General Guidelines for Team Decisions

1. Checks/balances avoid individual dominance.

2. Maintain optimal team size.

3. Encourage team confidence but not overconfidence.

4. Team norms encourage critical thinking.

5. Support psychological safety

 Psychological safety: a shared belief that engaging in interpersonal risk taking

will not have adverse consequences. (belief to share ideas without fear of co-
workers belittle them)

6. Use team structures that encourage creativity.

Four brainstorming rules:

• Speak freely.

• Don’t criticize others or their ideas.

• Provide as many ideas as possible.

• Build on others’ ideas.

Brainstorming is successful in field studies and creative firms.

• Skilled facilitators, confident employees, psychological safety.

• Success is measured by the most creative idea, NOT number of ideas.

Brainstorming limitations.

• Production blocking.

• Fixation/conformity effect.
Brainwriting:

• Brainstorming without conversation.

• Less production blocking than brainstorming.

Electronic brainstorming:

• Brainwriting with technology.

• Reduces production blocking, evaluation apprehension, conformity.

Nominal group technique:

• Brainwriting with verbal stage.

Perceptions and Self-Concept in Engineering

Stereotypes, discrimination, and other misperceptions are a few of the reasons why women are under-

represented in the engineering profession.

Self-Concept Defined

Self concept: Our self-beliefs and self-evaluations.

We compare situations with our current (perceived self) and desired (ideal self).

Three levels of self-concept: individual (personal traits), relational, collective (connections to friends and
coworkers). (social groups, other entities, organizations, roles in teams)

Self-Concept Model: Three Cs and Four Selves

Self-Concept Characteristics (3 Cs)

Complexity.

• Number of distinct/important identities people perceive about themselves.

• People have multiple self-concepts.

• Higher complexity when selves are separate (not similar).

Consistency.

• Multiple selves require similar personality attributes.

• Self-views are compatible with actual attributes.

Clarity.

• Self-concept is clear, confidently defined, and stable.

Clarity increases with age and high consistency

People have better well-being with:

• Multiple selves (complexity).

• High-consistency selves.

• Well-established selves (clarity).

Outcomes of Self-Concept Characteristics

Effects on individual behaviour and performance.

• High self-concept complexity – more adaptive, more diverse networks, more stressful,
more resources needed to maintain several identities.

• Less complex selves – more investment in fewer roles, which may lead to higher
performance.

• High self-concept clarity – better performance, leadership, career development, less

threatened by conflict.

• But very high clarity may cause role inflexibility.

Self-Concept: Self-Enhancement

Drive to promote and protect a positive self-view.

 • Competent, attractive, lucky, ethical, valued.

• Evident in common and important situations.

Self-enhancement outcomes.

• Better mental and physical health.

• Higher motivation due to “can-do” beliefs.

• Riskier decisions inflated perceived personal causation, slower to recognize mistakes.

Self-Concept: Self-Verification

Motivation to confirm and maintain our self-concept.

Stabilizes our self-concept.

• We communicate self-concept to others.

• We seek confirming feedback.

Self-verification outcomes.

• Affects perceptions -- selective attention on views/beliefs consistent to ours

• Dismiss feedback contrary to self-concept.

• Motivated to interact with those who affirm our self-view.

Self-Concept: Self-Evaluation

Self-esteem.

• Extent to which people like, respect, and are satisfied with themselves.

• High self-esteem: less influenced by others, more persistent, more logical thinking.

Self-efficacy.

• Belief that we can successfully perform a task (MARS factors).

• General self-efficacy, “can-do” belief across situations.

Locus of control.

• General belief about personal control over life events.

• Higher self-evaluation with internal locus of control.

 • Internal locus: derived from personal characteristics

• External locus: derivd from conditions out of one’s control

Self-Concept: Social Self

Opposing motives:

• Need to be distinctive and unique (personal identity).

• Need for inclusion and assimilation with others (social identity).

We define ourselves by groups we are easily identified with, that have high status, and our minority
status in a situation

Social identity theory: people define themselves by the groups to which they belong or have an
emotional attachment

Perception and Selective Attention

Perception: the process of receiving information about and making sense of the world around us.

Selective attention: selecting versus ignoring sensory information.

• Affected by characteristics of perceiver and object perceived.

• Emotional markers are assigned to selected information.

Selective attention biases.

• Assumptions and expectations.

• Confirmation bias: individuals tendacy to screen out information that is contrary to their
beliefs, values, and assumptions

Perceptual Organization and Interpretation

Perceptual grouping processes reduce information volume and complexity.

Categorical thinking: organizing people or things based on normally gender, age, race, or clothing style.

Perceptual grouping principles:

• Similarity or proximity.

• Closure: filling in missing pieces. (eg. Making assumptions to fill out the missing
information by relying on past images and experiences)

• Perceiving patterns/trends
Interpreting incoming information.

 Emotional markers automatically evaluate this incoming information making quick judgements
as to whether it’s good or bad.

Mental Models in Perceptions

Mental models: Knowledge structures that we develop to describe, explain, and predict the world
around us.

• Visual: image road maps that predict the world. (eg. When you turn a late assignment or
what a classroom looks like)

• Relational: cause–effect.

• Important for sense-making.

Problem: Mental models make it difficult to see the world in different ways.

• Need to constantly question our mental models.

Stereotyping

Assigning traits to people based on their membership in social categories.

-include personality traits, physical traits, and abilities.

• Kernels of truth, but embellished, distorted, supplemented.

Why Stereotypes are Formed?

 Personal experience (eg. media images such as movie characters)

 Shared beliefs among a society

Why people stereotype:

• Categorical thinking: depicting a group of a particular stereotype due to it being easier

to remember

• Fulfills drive to comprehend and predict others’ behaviour.

• Supports self-enhancement and social identity.

Social identity and self-enhancement reinforce stereotyping through:

• Categorization: categorize people into groups.

 • Homogenization: assign similar traits within a group; different traits to other groups.

• Differentiation: assign more favourable attributes to our groups; less favourable to other
groups

Problems with Stereotyping

Problems with stereotyping:

• Inaccurate description of most members as not everyone is identical

• Stereotype threat: inducing stereotypical behaviour by stressing over being too

stereotypical

• Foundation of systemic and intentional discrimination.

Overcoming stereotype biases:

• Difficult to prevent stereotype activation.

• Possible to minimize stereotype application if we refuse to rely on it.

Attribution Theory

The perceptual process of deciding whether an observed behaviour or event is caused mainly by internal
or external factors.

Internal Attribution:

• Perceiving that behaviour/event is caused mainly by the person’s characteristics (eg.

late to work due to being lazy)

External Attribution:

• Perceiving that behaviour/event is caused mainly by factors beyond the person’s

control. (eg. late to work due to traffic)

Three Rules to distinct between external or internal Atrributon:

• Consistency: did this person act this way in this situation in the past
• Distinctiveness: does this person act this way in other situations?
• Consensus: do other people act this way in this situation?
Attribution Outcomes and Errors

Importance of the attribution process:

• Improves our mental model of causation.

• We respond differently to attributions of our own behaviour and performance.

Self-serving bias:

• Attributing our failures to external causes, our successes to internal causes.

• Due to self-enhancement process.

Fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias):

• Tendency to overemphasize internal causes of others’ actions and ignore external

causes of behaviour 

• Fairly modest error effect.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Cycle

Self fulfilling prophecy: occurs when our expectations about another person cause an individual to act in
a way that is consistent with those expectations.
 Contingencies of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Self-fulfilling prophecy effect is strongest:

• At the beginning of the relationship.

• When several people hold same expectations.

• When employee has low achievement due to low self esteem they are more likely to be
easily influenced by others opinions on them

Leaders need to develop and maintain a positive, yet realistic, expectation toward all employees.

Positive organizational behaviour: focusing on positive rather than negative aspects of life will improve
organizational success and individual well being

Minimizing self-fulfilling prophecy error.

• Awareness has minimal effect on reducing this bias.

• Supporting/learning organizational culture.

Hiring supervisors who are inherently optimistic toward staff.

Other Perceptual Effects

Halo effect:

• General impression of person from one trait affects perception of person’s other traits.

False-consensus effect:
 • Overestimate extent that others share the same beliefs or traits.

• Overestimating may be due to interacting more with those who have the same
views and beliefs.

• Overestimating may be because we screen out information that is contrary to

our beliefs

• Overestimating is due to homogenization (the intention that everyone has the

same views and beliefs in a group)

Recency effect:

• Most recent information dominates our perceptions.

Primacy effect:

Quickly form opinion of others based on first information received about them

Improving Perceptions

Awareness of perceptual biases.

• Problems: reinforces on stereotypes, limited effect on prejudice.

Improving self-awareness.

• Implicit association test (used to detect any implicit biases you may have against race,
age, gender, disability and others.

• Johari Windows: divides into four levels based on what’s known to you and others:

• Open: includes information about you that is known to both you and others

• Blind area: refers to information that is known to others but not you

• Hidden area: information known to you but unknown to others

• Unknown area: information that isn’t known to you or anyone

• Model purpose is to increase the size of open area so that others are
more aware of underlining beliefs, values, and perceptual biases.

• Problems with Jahori: (a) difficult to avoid implicit bias activation, (b) more sensitized
and self-conscious with target groups of that bias

Meaningful interaction.

• People work together on valued activities.

 • Based on contact hypothesis: if individuals work together they are less likely to be
perceptually bias towards each other due to a greater understanding of one another.

- Interaction reduces perceptual bias of others.

• Improves empathy.

- Understanding and being sensitive to the feelings, thoughts, and situations of

others.

Global Mindset Abilities

Global mindset: refers to an individuals ability to perceive, know about, and process information across
cultures

1. Adopting a global perspective:

 Stirring away from a local to a global mindset.

2. Empathizing and acting effectively across cultures.

• Understanding perceptions and emotions from other cultures in various situations

3. Processing complex information about novel environments.

• Ability to analyze a large volume of information in new and diverse situations

4. Developing new multilevel mental models.

• Having both local and global mindsets to adhere quickly to developing situations

Developing a Global Mindset

Begins with self-awareness.

Compare own mental models with those of people from other cultures/regions.

Develop better knowledge of people and cultures, preferably through immersion.

Pulse Checks Assess Employee Attitudes

Employee emotions and attitudes are so important at Quebec City, CAE Inc., and other Canadian

organizations that they rely on pulse surveys to regularly check in on employee feelings.

Emotions Defined
Psychological, behavioural, and physiological episodes that create a state of readiness.

• Emotions are experiences for which change our physiological (eg, blood pressure, heart
rate), psychological state, and behaviour (eg. Facial expressions)

• Brief episodes.

• Subtle, mostly nonconscious they occur without our awareness

• Emotions motivate (state of readiness which your body prepares)

• Emotions differ from moods which aren’t directed towards anything particular and tend
to have longer emotional states.

• Emotions are influences to our perceptions attitudes, decision, and behaviour

Types of Emotions

Emotions have two common features:

1. Emotions vary in level of activation there are a primary source of a person’s motivation
 2. All emotions have an associated valence (core affect) which signals if an event or object should
be approached or avoided

Attitudes versus Emotions

Attitudes: cluster of beliefs, assessed feelings, and behavioural intentions toward a person, object, or
event (an attitude object)

• Judgments with conscious reasoning.

• More stable over time.

Emotions

• Experiences related to attitude object.

• Operate as events, often nonconscious.

Brief experiences

Emotions, Attitudes, and Behaviour Model

Perceived Environment
Cognitive
process

Beliefs
Emotional
Episodes
Attitude Feelings

Behavioural
Intentions

Behaviour
Beliefs: established perceptions about the attitude object, what you believe to be true.

Feelings: represents conscious positive or negative evaluations of the attitude object

Behavioural Intentions: represents your motivation to engage in a particular behaviour regarding the
attitude object.

Attitude-Behaviour Contingencies
Beliefs-Feelings Contingencies:

• Two people have the same belief but different valences (feelings) about that belief. (eg.
Both employees believe they work hard but one dislikes working the other doesn’t)

Feelings-Behavioural Intentions Contingencies:

• Two people have the same feelings but form different behavioral intentions due to past
experience, personality. (eg. one might leave and one might complain to upper
management when they don’t like their boss)

Behavioural Intentions-Behaviour Contingencies:

• Two people have same behavioural intentions, but different situation or skills enables
only one of them to act. (eg. two employees intend to quit their job but one doesn’t
because of external factors)

How Emotions Influence Attitudes and Behaviour

Emotional markers attach to incoming sensory information that influence our feeling on an object

Emotional experiences occur when information is first received and later thinking about that
information.

Feelings and beliefs are influenced by cumulative emotional episodes.

Emotions influence our cognitive thinking about the attitude object.

We “listen in” on our emotions.

Emotions also directly affect behaviour.

Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance: occurs when people perceive that their beliefs, feelings, and behaviour are
incongruent with each other.

• Violates image of being rational.

• Emotion motivates consistency (changing one of the beliefs, views, feelings, and
behaviours to become congruent)

Difficult to reduce dissonance by reversing decisions.

Reduce cognitive dissonance by changing beliefs and feelings.

1. Amplify or discover additional positive features of the selected alternative.

2. Amplify or discover additional problems or weaknesses with the alternatives that

haven’t been chosen

3. Compensate the dissonant decision by recognizing previous consonant that have been
congruent

Emotions And Personality

 Higher emotional stability and extraverted personalities distinct more positive emotions
 Higher neuroticism and introverted personalities tend to experience more negative emotions

Emotional Labour

Emotional labour: the effort, planning and control to express organizationally desired emotions during
interpersonal transactions

Higher in jobs requiring:

• Frequent/lengthy emotion display rules: displaying positive behaviours and hiding

evidence of undesirable one’s.

• Variety of emotions display

• Intense emotions display

Emotion display norms vary across cultures

• Expressed emotions discouraged: Ethiopia, Japan

• Expressed emotions allowed/expected : Kuwait, Spain

Emotion Display Norms Across Cultures

Cultural variations in emotional display norms:

• Some countries/cultures strongly discourage emotional expression.

• Some countries/cultures encourage open display of one’s true emotions.

Strategies for Displaying Expected Emotions

1. Consciously engage in verbal and nonverbal behaviors that represent the expected emotions.

- Surface acting is faking the expected emotions.

- Surface acting is stressful and difficult.

2. Regulate actual emotions (basis of deep acting).

- Change the situation. 

1. Moving out of a situation or into work settings that produce or avoid

specific emotions

- Modify the situation. 

1. Modify or create a setting to avoid specific emotions

- Suppress or amplify emotions.

1. Blocking out thoughts that produce dysfunctional emotions or actively

thinking about things that produce expected emotions

- Shift attention. 

1. Changing focus of attention if things don’t go the way you wanted

- Reframe the situation.

1. Reframing a particular event that generates more desirable emotions

Deep acting: producing emotions that are expected in a particular situation

Emotional Intelligence Model

 Four main dimensions:

1. Awareness our own emotions: ability to perceive and understand the meaning of our
own emotions (lowest level)
2. Management of our own emotions
3. Awareness of others emotions: ability to perceive and understand the emotions of other
people
4. Management of others emotions refers to managing other peoples emotions (highest
level)

-hierarchy goes from top to bottom as you can’t manage others emotions until you know and manage
your own.

Emotional Intelligence: improves performance in many types of jobs.

- Includes a set of abilities that enable us to recognize and regulate our emotions
as well as the emotions other people.

Emotional Intelligence Outcomes and Development

Emotional Intelligence leads to better:

• teamwork.

• emotional labour performance.

• leadership.

• decisions involving others.

• creativity mindset.

Developing emotional intelligence

• Training, coaching, practice and feedback.

Emotional intelligence increases with age

Job Satisfaction at The Co-operators

The Co-operators has some of Canada’s highest customer ratings for automobile and home insurance by
applying the service profit chain model; the company has more satisfied customers by having more
satisfied employees.

Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction: a person’s evaluation of their job and work context, It is an appraisal of one’s job
characteristics, work environment, and emotional experiences at work.

EVLN: Responses to Dissatisfaction

Exit

• Leaving the situation.

• Quitting, transferring, being absent.

Voice

• Changing the situation.

• Problem solving, complaining.

Loyalty

• Patiently waiting for the situation to improve.

• How loyal you are to a company determines on if you stay

Neglect

• Reducing work effort/quality.

• Increasing absenteeism.

Job Satisfaction and Performance

Happy workers are somewhat more productive workers

Satisfaction-performance relationship isn’t stronger because:

• General attitudes are poor predictors of specific behaviours

 • Low employee control over performance as there may be other factors involved like
other co-workers or work technology.

• Reverse causation (performance causes satisfaction), but performance often isn’t

rewarded.

Happy workers are somewhat more productive workers

Satisfaction-performance relationship isn’t stronger because:

• General attitudes are poor predictors of specific behaviours

• Low employee control over performance

• Reverse causation (performance causes satisfaction), but performance often isn’t

rewarded.

Service Profit Chain Model

Service profit chain model: proposes that job satisfaction has a positive effect on customer service which
flows financial returns.

Job satisfaction increases customer satisfaction and profitability because:

1. Employee emotions affect customer emotions.

2. Experienced (low turnover) employees provide better service.

Organizational Commitment

Affective commitment:

• Emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in an organization.

• Lower turnover, higher motivation and organizational citizenship.

• Motivation to stay due to internal factors (eg. bond, psychological, and person’s
identity)

Continuance commitment:

• Calculative attachment to the organization

• Leaving is difficult: (a) due to social/economic loss or (b) lack of alternative employment.

• Motivation to stay due to external factors

• Lower turnover, performance, organizational citizenship, cooperation.

Normative commitment:-

• Felt obligation or moral duty to the organization.

• Applies norm of reciprocity- a natural human motivation to support, contribute, and pay
back to the organization

Consequences of Affective & Continuance Commitment

 Affective commitment employee’s are less likely to leave their jobs, and be absent from work,
higher motivation, and improves customer satisfaction due to better knowledge of work
practices.
o Lower creativity due to high conformity
o High commitment may lead to illegal activity being taken in defence of the company
 Continuance commitment has many consequences
o Lower power & less likely to engage in organizational citizenship behaviours
o More likely to use formal grievances

Building Affective Commitment

Justice and support.

• Support organizational justice and employee well-being.

Shared values.

• Employees believe their values are congruent with the firm’s values.

Trust.

• Positive expectations toward another person in situations involving risk.

• Employees trust management when management trusts employees.

Organizational comprehension.

• How well employees understand the organization.

• Need a clear mental model of organization to identify with it.

Employee involvement.

• Stretching the Psychological ownership of and social identity with the company.

What Is Stress?

Stress: Adaptive response to situations perceived as challenging or threatening to well-being.

Prepares us to adapt to hostile environmental conditions

Eustress: positive part of stress that activates and motivates people to achieve goals, change their
environments and succeed in life’s challenges

Distress: negative part of stress which portrays a degree of psychologically, physiological, and behaviour
deviation from healthy functioning.

General Adaptation Syndrome

General adaption syndrome: a fairly consistent and automatic physiological response to stressful
situations which helps them to cope with environmental demands.

Four stages:

 Alarm reaction: occurs when a threat or challenge activates a physiological stress response
 Resistance reaction: activates biochemical psychological and behavioural mechanisms that give
individuals coping mechanism to overcome or remove the source of stress.
 Exhaustion reaction: removing source of stress or ourselves away from the stressful situation
before becoming too exhausted

Consequences of Stress

 Tension headache, muscle pain, and muscle contractions related to stress.

 Heart diseases, strokes, forms of cancer and cardiovascular diseases increase risks with increase
of stress

Job burnout: occurs when people experience emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced
Emotional exhaustion: a feeling that one’s emotional resources are depleted
Cynicism: indifferent attitude towards work, emotional detachment from clients, tendency to
strictly follow rules and regulations rather than adapt to needs of others
 Reduced personal accomplishment: feelings of diminished confidence in one’s ability to perform
the job well

Workplace Stressors

Stressors: an environmental condition that place a physical or emotional demand on a person

Four most common workplace stressors:

1. Organizational constraints

• Interferes with performance, lack of control,

• Includes lack of equipment, supplies, budget funding, co-worker support, information

and other sources that are necessary to complete a job.

2. Interpersonal conflict

• Interferes with goals, other’s behaviour threatening

• Includes psychological and sexual harassment

• Conflict with employee’s due to variation of beliefs and views to which causes them to
disagree

3. Work overload

• More hours, intensive work

4. Low task control

• Lack of control over how and when they perform their tasks as well as over the pace of
work activity

• Unable to adjust the pace of their workload to their own ability

Individual Differences in Stress

People experience less stress and/or less negative stress outcomes when they have:

1. Better physical health – exercise, lifestyle

2. Appropriate stress coping strategies (eg, removing the stressor or minimize the stressor)

3. Personality: lower neuroticism and higher extraversion experience lower levels of stress

4. Positive self-concept
Managing Work-Related Stress

1. Remove the stressor.

 Integrating work-life integration initiatives

2. Withdraw from the stressor.

 Temporarily or permanently remove employees from stressor (eg. Vacation)

3. Change stress perceptions.

4. Control stress consequences.

 Keeping fit and maintain a physical lifestyle

Receive social support

 Provides information to interpret, comprehend, and possibly remove the stressor