In this document, you can find everything you need to know about the Organizational Behavior midterm. This summary contains both the lecture notes and a summary of the book chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10. I passed this exam myself in one go with this summary.
Chapter 1
What is Organizational Behavior?
The study of the structure and management of organizational, their environments, and the
actions and interactions of their individual members and groups.
OB refers to the activities and interactions from people in organizations.
Organization = a social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of
collective goals.
Social arrangement: group of people who interact with each other because of their
membership.
Controlled performance: setting standards, measuring performance, comparing actual with
standard, and taking corrective action if necessary.
Organizations are also political systems in which some individuals exert control over others.
There are several factors that influence:
- Individual factors
- Group factors
- Contextual factors
- Management and organization factores
- Leadership process factors
So, blaming the individuals is often wrong fundamental attribution error: the tendency to
explain the behavior of others based on their personality or disposition, and to overlook the
influence of wider contextual influences.
Field map
PESTLE = Political, economic, social, technological, legal, and ecological context.
Organizational effectiveness: a multidimensional concept that can be defined differently by
different stakeholders. To managing this one approach is the balances scorecard: a
combination of quantitative and qualitative measures.
Quality of working life: an individual’s overall satisfaction with their job, working conditions,
pay, colleagues, management style, organization culture, work-life balance, and training,
development and career opportunities.
The main restraint to human aspiration (streven) is not intellect or equipment, but our ability
to work together.
,OB looks at attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizational context.
Organizational dilemma: how to reconcile inconsistency between individual needs and
aspirations, and the collective purpose of the organization?
Social science
Goals
- Description: how people understand and interpret their circumstances. Using
observation, asking questions, study documents.
- Explanation: how can we explain human behavior?
- Prediction: precise prediction is very difficult. The focus is often on groups.
- Control/ability to change: findings are often designed to encourage change.
Positivism: a perspective which assumes that the world can be understood in terms of causal
relationships between observable and measurable variables, and that these relationships
can be studied objectively using controlled experiments natural sciences.
Variance theory: an approach to explaining organizational behavior based on universal
relationships between independent and dependent variables which can be defined and
measured precisely definitive explanations.
Constructivism: a perspective which argues that our social and organizational worlds have
no ultimate objective truth or reality, but are instead determined by our shared experiences,
meanings and interpretations.
Process theory: an approach to explaining organizational behavior based on narratives
which show how several factors, combining and interacting over time in a particular context,
are likely to produces the outcomes of interest probabilistic explanations.
,Chapter 6 Personality
Personality: the psychological qualities that influence an individual’s characteristic behavior
patterns, in a stable and distinctive manner.
Psychometrics: the systematic testing, measurement and assessment of intelligence,
aptitudes and personality.
- Nomothetic: ‘tick box’ questionnaires
- Idiographic: open-ended questions.
Chronotypes: a cluster of personality traits that can affect whether someone is more active
and performs better in the morning or in the evening.
Type: a descriptive label for a distinct pattern of personality characteristics, such as
introvert, extravert, neurotic.
Hippocrates claimed that personality type or ‘temperament’ was determined by bodily
‘humors’, which generated the following behavior patterns:
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator MBTI
Trait: a relatively stable quality or attribute of an individual’s personality, influencing
behavior in a particular direction.
Examples: shyness, reliability, moodiness.
Nomothetic: an approach to the study of personality emphasizing the identification of traits,
and the systematic relationships between different aspects of personality.
Neurotics are emotional, unstable and anxious, have low opinions of themselves, feel that
they are unattractive failures, tend to be disappointed with life, and are pessimistic and
depressed.
Two behavior syndromes:
Type A personality = a combination of emotions and behaviors characterized by ambition,
hostility, impatience and a sense of constant time-pressure.
Type B personality = a combination of emotions and behaviors characterized by relaxation,
low focus on achievement, and ability to take time to enjoy leisure.
Type A can change into Type B with awareness and training.
, Any condition that requires an adaptive response is known as a stressor.
Eustress describes the positive aspect of stress.
Distress is the unpleasant, unhealthy side of stress.
Factors moderating the impact of stressors:
- Condition: you are better able to cope with stress if you are in good health.
- Cognitive appraisal: if you believe that you are not going to cope with a particular
event, this belief can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Hardiness: is an outlook on life characterized by a welcoming approach to change,
commitment to purposeful activity, and a sense of being in control. This combination
increases ability to deal with stress.
Sings of stress have effect on work performance and physical signs and can cause aggressive
behavior, regression, withdrawal, and other behavior.
There are two strategies for reducing stress:
1. Individual emotion-focused strategies (improve resilience). For example:
- self-help training, exercise and fitness programs, and development of other social
and job interests.
2. Organizational problem-focused strategies (deal directly with the stressors). For
example:
- improved selection, training, and organizational communications, and development
of teamworking.
The Big Five = consistent trait clusters that capture the main dimensions of personality:
Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. (OCEAN)
- Openness: based on six traits: fantasy, aesthetics, feeling, actions, ideas, values.
- Conscientiousness: competence, order, dutifulness,
achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation.
Positively related to salary, promotions, and job status
in most occupations.
- Extraversion: warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness,
activity, excitement-seeking, positive emotions.
Positively related to management level.
- Agreeableness: trust, straightforwardness, altruism,
compliance, modesty, tendermindedness.
Management potential.
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