MGT 4620 : Exam 2 - Study Guide - Spring, 2014
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MGMT 4620 – EXAM 2 NOTES
Exam Covers:
❖ Chapter 6
❖ Chapter 18 – Organizational Change only (Don’t worry about Organizational Stress)
❖ “Supplemental Chapter”
❖ Progressive Drilling
❖ The Ropes – Chapters 42, 18, 19, & 14
❖ Storm Warning,
Ch. 6: Perception and Decision-Making
Perception-process of organizing and interpreting sensory info to make sense of the world around us
Perception Overview
• Perceptual selection-notice certain things and leaving things out
• Why do managers care? People act to how they perceive the world, not based on reality
Environmental
Stimuli
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Factors that influence Perception
• Factors in the Perceiver (internal)
o Attitudes
o Motives
o Personality
o Interests
o Experience
o Expectations
• Factors in the situation
o Time of day
o Work setting
o Social setting
• Factors in the target (external)
o Size-bigger the object is more likely we will notice
o Intensity-extremely loud or bright is more noticed
o Contrast-things that stick out in background (ex: football game, guys with shirts off)
o Motion
o Novelty-new or weird/different
o Familiarity-similar or familiar to us
• ALL of these lead to Perception
Attribution Process and Errors
• Attribution-trying to get a tribute to why someone’s behaving (find a cause)
• Distinctiveness-person acts same in ALL situations
o High=external: have a C in 9 o’clock class but A’s in everything else
o Low=internal: caused by that specific person
• Consensus-everyone acting in a similar manner/ ex: everyone getting an A on test
• Consistency-person acting that way over time
• Fundamental Attribution error:
o When it comes to judging other’s behavior, we are going to underestimates external and
overestimate internal; when it comes to other people we blame them
o When it comes to judging ourselves, we do the opposite; self-serving bias
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Shortcuts in Judging others (be careful)
• Selective perception-so /much in environment we selectively pay attention to things that are
important to us based on your experiences, personality
• Halo effect- perception/judgment based on one characteristics
• Contrast effect-tendency for managers/recruiters to compare to one another, not to some objective
standard
• Similarity effect-natural predisposition to like people who are similar to us
• Primacy effect-basing judgment on 1st impression, possibly disregarding what we see later on
• Stereotyping-belief that all members of a particular group are sharing the same characteristic
• Projection-see yourself in other people (just because you would not do it does not mean someone else
would not)
• Expectancy effect-self fulfilling prophecy=if you think someone’s going to be a good employee they
will see that in you and start to perform better
Decision-Making
• Rational Decision making (traditional approach)-when people make decisions they are rational and
have (3 assumptions) 1. Complete information available able to 2. Evaluate all of these alternatives in
an unbiased way and 3. Will pick solution best for organization
• Bounded rationality-taking limitations of workplace into account, we don’t know every possible
alternative, pick alternative that satisfices one level of the problem (satisficing)
• Intuition-Non-conscious process that we develop through experiences, gut feeling Emotion based
• OB says that decisions are made best with bounded rationality and intuition
• Influencing factors:
o Personality-certain traits will evaluate more and think longer (conscientiousness)
o Gender-rumination (reflect on decisions) females do more, is good except when you second
guess yourself
o Organizational constraints-time pressures, historical precedence, cultural (risk diverse) HR
structure (reward individual vs. reward group)
o Emotions-in making decisions, recognize
o Perceptual blocks-make sure we see certain things not just through our own eyes-objective
lens
o Ethical Considerations-ethical intensity: degree of moral importance given to an issue
• Magnitude of consequence: amount of good or bad that comes from decision
• Probability of effect: likelihood of harm or benefit to occur
Document Summary
Chapter 18 organizational change only (don"t worry about organizational stress) The ropes chapters 42, 18, 19, & 14. Perception-process of organizing and interpreting sensory info to make sense of the world around us. People act to how they perceive the world, not based on reality. Factors that influence perception: factors in the perceiver (internal, attitudes, motives, personality. Interests: experience, expectations, factors in the situation, time of day, work setting, social setting, factors in the target (external, size-bigger the object is more likely we will notice. Intensity-extremely loud or bright is more noticed: contrast-things that stick out in background (ex: football game, guys with shirts off, motion, novelty-new or weird/different, familiarity-similar or familiar to us, all of these lead to perception. Decision-making: rational decision making (traditional approach)-when people make decisions they are rational and have (3 assumptions) 1. Evaluate all of these alternatives in an unbiased way and 3.
