MHR 405 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Fundamental Attribution Error, Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction
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3 Dec 2011
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CHAPTER 1 – organizational behaviour
– Organizations are groups of people who work interdependently towards some
purpose
– Organizational behavior is a field of study that seeks understand, explain,
predict, and change human behavior, both individual and collective, in the
organizational context.
– People study organizational behavior to understand, influence, and predict
organizational events.
– Organizational behavior anchors include multidisciplinary, systematic,
contingency, multiple levels of analysis, and open systems anchor.
–Formal organization - includes its official, legitimate, and most visible
parts, such as its technology and structure.
–Informal organization- includes the unofficial and less visible elements
such as beliefs, assumptions, values, and unspoken norms of behaviour.
– GHOST stands for goals, human resources, organizational structure, and
technology. Exhibit 1.4 outlines the overall framework of organizational
functioning including the GHOST model. The two-way arrows connecting the
boxes within the internal organization are there to remind you that “various
parts both affect and are affected by each other
– Behavioural science is research that improves one’s ability to understand,
predict, and influence the behavior of others.
–
CHAPTER 2 – creating a positive work environment
– Individual factors
○Primary diversity factors – age, gender, physical attributes,
race/ethnicity/culture.
○Secondary diversity factors – career stage, marital status, educational
background, religious belief, work experience
– Individual values
○Instrumental: behaviours used to achieve end state (honesty,
politeness, courage)
○Terminal: goals representing end state (happiness, salvation, self
respect, prosperity)
– Job satisfaction and organizational commitment increase employee
engagement.
– Job satisfaction is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the
appraisal of ones job or job experience , and is influenced by culture.
– Top 5 reasons for staying in the job are :
○The work itself – 78%
○The co workers – 68%
○The mission and activities of the company – 61%
○On the job learning – 57%
○Salary satisfaction – 53%
– Organizational commitment is the strength of an individuals identification
with an organization
○Affective commitement – desire to remain
○Continuance commitment – cannot afford to leave
○Normative commitment – perceived obligation to remain
– Employment engagement is the state of emotional and intellectual
involvement that employees have in their organization
– Qualities required for ethical decision making include
○Competence to identify ethical issues and evaluate the consequences
of alternative courses of action
○Self confidence to seek out different opinions about the issue and
decide what is right in terms of a situation
○ Tough mindedness – willingness to make decisions when all that need
to be known cannot be known and when the ethical issue had no
established, unambiguous solution.
CHAPTER 3 – Perception and Personality
– Perception – the process through which we select, organize, and interpret
information gathered by our senses in order to understand the world around
us.
– Perception is an automatic, unconscious process.
– Perceptual process model – environmental – feeling, hearing, seeing,
smelling, tasting- selective attention- organization and interpretation-
emotions and behaviours
– Barriers to social perception include
○Selective attention
○Stereotyping – a generalization about a group of people
○Self-fulfilling prophecies – the situation in which our expectations about
people affect our interaction with them in such a way that our
expectations are fulfilled.
○First impression error (primacy effect) – the tendency to form lasting
opinions about an individual based on initial perceptions.
– Attribution process about human behavior and outcome
○Attribution process
○Internal and external attribution
○Common errors – fundamental attribution error, and self-serving bias.
– To improve perceptual accuracy one can postpone judgment, reduce
uncertainty, check perception, empathy, increase self-awareness.
– Personality is a relative stable set of characteristics that influences an
individuals behavior
– Big 5 Personality Characteristics – instrument most frequently used in
assessing personality for recruitment and selection.
○Openness
○Conscientiousness
○Extraversion