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Behaviour and Communication in Organizations exam summary
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SUMMARY ONELecture 1:
- Organizations - an organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities or forced of two
or more persons
- Four common denominators:
1. Coordinations of effort - achieved by policies, rules, and regulations
2. A common goal
3. Division of labor - individuals perform separate but related tasks to achieve the common
goals
4. Hierarchy of authority - chain of command dedicated to make sure that the right people
do the right things at the right time
- Organizational behavior - an interdisciplinary field dedicated to better understanding and
managing people at work, OB draws on knowledge from different disciplines. It is in reality not
really interdisciplinary; it is more multidisciplinary.
- Diversity - represent the multitude of individual differences and similarities that exist among
people, based on four different layers:
1. Personality
2. Internal dimension (age, gender, race)
3. External dimension (religion, educational background)
4. Organizational dimensions
- There are two perspective on diversity in organizations:
1. Diversity is good for workgroups → information/decision-making theory
● Diverse group are better in problem solving
● It stimulates brainstorming and contact between group members
2. Diversity is bad for workgroups → social categorization theory
● Creates ‘us versus them’ mentality
● Conflict between ingroups and outgroups
- A process model of diversity - you want to avoid fault lines: hypothetically dividing lines that
may split groups into subgroups based on or more dimensions. To avoid fault lines:
● Make a good team composition → cross-categorization
● Strengthen the overarching identity of the team
- Organizational culture - set of shared, taken for granted implicit assumptions that a group holds
and that determines how it perceives, thinks about and reacts to its various environments.
Passed in to new employees through the process of socialization
- Organizational culture is represented on different levels:
1. Observed artifacts - consist of the physical manifestation of an organizational culture
2. Espoused values - explicitly stated values and norms that are preferred by an
organization
- Societal culture - a set of beliefs and values about what is desirable and undesirable in a
community of people, and a set of formal or informal practices to support the values →
employees bring their societal culture to work with them in the form of customs and languages.
, - Cultural differences may lead to culture shock. Best defense is comprehensive cross-cultural
training, including intensive language study
Lecture 2:
- Self-concept - the concept the individual has of him or herself
- Important parts of one’s self-concept:
1. Self-esteem - believe about one’s own self-worth based on an overall self-evaluation
● Striving for a positive self-evaluation is important for human behavior
● Self-esteem is affected by: downward social comparisons and upwards social
comparison
2. Self-efficacy - a person’s belief about his chances of successfully accomplishing a specific
task. What are the sources of self-efficacy beliefs:
● Prior experience
● Behavior models → observing others / upward social comparisons
● Persuasion from others:
➔ Pygmalion effect - someone’s high expectations for another person
result in high self-efficacy and performance from that person
➔ Golem effect - someone’s lows expectation for another person results in
low self-efficacy and performance for that person
➔ Galatea effect - an individual’s high expectations lead to high
performances
● Assessment of physical / emotional state
3. Self-monitoring - the extent to which a person observes her self-expressive behavior and
adapts it to the demands of the situation
4. Organizational identification -
● Social identity theory - people’s self-concept is formed not only by their
personal identity, but also their social identity. Social identity derives from the
knowledge if membership of a social group together with the values and
emotional significance attached to that membership:
➔ Cognitive element - people are aware of their group membership
➔ Evaluative element - people attached valued to their group members
➔ Affective element - group members have emotional significance
- People strove for a positive self-evaluation and group-evaluation. But how to deal with a low
group status:
1. Outgroup favoritism - acknowledging inferior status
2. Individual mobility - weaken the ties with one’s groups to try to become member of a
better group
3. Social competition - improve status of one’s group
4. Social creativity - choose other groups to compare with or change values of the group
- Organizational identification is strongly related to organizational commitment
5. Organizational commitment - model of meyer and allen: three forms of commitment:
● Affective commitment (desire) - employees’ attachment to the organization
, ● Normative commitment (obligation) - reflects a feeling of obligation to continue
employment
● Continuance commitment (cost/benefits) - awareness of the cost and benefits
associated with leaving the organization → for-lack-of-better commitment
- Consequences of commitment:
1. Turnover and withdrawal cognitions - negative relation with commitment
2. Job performance - positive relation with affective commitment
3. Extra role behavior in organization - a relation with affective commitment
- Extra-role behaviors in organizations - behaviors that are not part of the work-role or job
description but have important consequences for the functioning performance of an
organization:
● Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) → positive
● Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) → negative
- OCB can be directed at other individual (I) or at the organization as a whole (O)
● OCB-I → helping colleagues with their work
● OCB-O → making suggestions during meeting to improve the organization
- CWB can be directed at other individuals (I) or at the organization as a whole (O)
● CWB-I → bullying or harassing colleagues
● CWB-O → taking long brakes, calling in sick while youre not, stealing
- Justice of determinants of CWB - CWB are often directed at achieving some form of balance in
response to organizational injustice. Uch organizational injustice can be:
1. Distributive justice - perceived fairness of how resources and rewards are distributed or
allocated (adam’s equity theory)
2. Procedural justice - perceived fairness of the processed and procedures used to make
allocation decision, having a voice in decision is really important
3. Interactional justice - perceived quality of the interpersonal treatment people recieve
when decision are implemented, being respectfully treated is really important
- Stereotype - an individual's set of beliefs about the characteristics of attributes of a group
- Stereotyping - inferring that all people within a group possesses the same traits
- Stereotype threat - refers to the predicament in which members of a social group must deal with
the possibility of being judged or treated stereotypically, or of doing something that could
confirm the stereotype.
Chapter 5:
- Proactive personality - action oriented person
- Internal locus of control - outcomes to one’s control
- External locus of control - outcomes beyond one’s control
- Ability - characteristic responsible for a person’s performance
- Skill - specific capacity to manipulate objects
- The big 5 personalities:
1. Agreeableness
2. Conscientiousness
, 3. Emotional stability
4. Openness to experience
5. Extraversion
Chapter 6
- Schwartz’s theory
Value Definition motives
power Social status and prestige authority
Achievement Personal success Ambitious
Hedonism Pleasure for oneself Enjoying life
Stimulation Challenge in life daring
Self-direction Independent thought independent
Universalism Understanding of all people Broadminded
and nature
Benevolence Preservation of welfare of helpful
people one is frequent with
Tradition Respect of traditional culture Humble
conformity Restraint of actions Politeness
Security Safety and stability of self Family security, social order
- Three types of value conflict:
1. Interpersonal value conflict - when personal values conflict with each other
2. Interpersonal conflict - the core of personality conflicts and can negatively affect one’s
career
3. Individual-organization value conflict - occur when espoused and enacted values by the
organization collide with personal values of the employee
- Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior - intentions are the link between attitude and behavior.
One’s attitude is formed by:
1. Attitude towards behavior
2. Subjective norm (social expectations)
3. Perceived degree of one’s control over behavior
Chapter 7:
- Perceptual errors
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