Summary Social Psychology in Organisations
Chapter 1: What is organizational behaviour?
Organizational behaviour (OB): is defined as the study of individuals and their behaviours at work.
Hawthorne effect = positive responses in attitudes and performance when researchers pay attention
to a particular group of workers.
Applied social psychology is the study of how people interact in groups and addresses significant
challenges facing leaders as organizations use teams more regularly to get things done.
Goals of science:
1. Description: what does the process look like?
2. Prediction: will the process occur again? And when?
3. Explanation: why is this happening?
4. Control: can we change whether or not this happens?
Evidence-based management (EBM) is the ability to translate research to practice. EBM means
making decisions about the management of employees, teams, or organizations through the
conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of four sources of information:
1. The best available scientific evidence
2. The best available organizational evidence
3. The best available experiential evidence
4. Organizational values and stakeholders’ concerns
Leaders must have the ability, motivation, and opportunity to practice EBM.
The following standards may be applied by leaders using EBM to ask questions and challenge their
thinking about their organizations:
• Stop treating old ideas as if they were brand new.
• Be suspicious of “breakthrough” studies and ideas.
• Develop and celebrate collective brilliance.
• Emphasize drawbacks as well as virtues.
• Use success (and failure) stories to illustrate sound practices but not in place of a valid
research method.
• Adopt a neutral stance toward ideologies and theories.
Critical thinking calls for persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in
the light of evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. Critical thinking is
a mode of thinking about a problem we face where the problem solver improves the quality of the
process by taking control of it and applying rigorous standards. → three interrelated parts:
1. The elements of thought (reasoning)
2. The intellectual standards
3. The intellectual traits
The scientific method: Make
Observations
Develop Think of
General Interesting
Theories Questions
Refine, Alter,
Expend or Reject
Gather Data to Hypothes Formulate
Test Predictions Hypotheses
es
Develop
Testable
Predictions
Outcome variables in organizational behaviour:
• Performance: productivity (or job performance) is one of the most important outcomes in
OB.
, o Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is the worker’s willingness to go above
and beyond that is required in his or her job description to help others at work.
• Work-related attitudes:
o Job satisfaction
o Organizational commitment = loyalty to an organization.
• Employee well-being
• Motivation
o Extrinsic motivation: is based on the rewards from the organization’s compensation
system such as pay and bonuses.
o Intrinsic motivation: is related to the value of the work itself.
• Employee withdrawal
o Thinking about quitting = turnover intentions, turnover is actual quitting.
Levels of analysis:
• Individual level
• Team-level
• Organizational level
• Industry level
Theory X leaders assume that people are basically lazy, don’t like to work, and avoid responsibility.
This type of manager’s related behaviours include being directive, engaging in surveillance, and
coercion.
Theory Y leaders assume that people are internally motivated, like to work, and will accept
responsibility. These managers’ related leaders are to allow discretion, participation, and the
encouragement of creativity on the job.
Chapter 2: Personality and person-environment fit
Personality has been generally defined as “regularities in feeling, thought and action that are
characteristic of an individual.” Personality may affect our work habits and how we interact with our
co-workers. Individual differences are aspects of OB that must be understood, and leaders must
often work with them rather than try to change people.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the most often administered personality test to
nonpsychiatric populations. The MBTI is based upon four general personality preferences:
• Introversion (I) vs. extraversion (E)
• Sensing (S) vs. intuition (N)
• Thinking (T) vs. feeling (F)
• Judging (J) vs. perceiving (P)
The Big Five:
- Openness = a person’s willingness to embrace new ideas and new situations.
- Conscientiousness represents the characteristic of being a person who follows through and
gets things done.
- Extraversion = a trait of a person who is outgoing, talkative, and sociable as well as enjoys
social situations.
- Agreeableness = being a nice person in general.
- Neuroticism represents a tendency to be anxious or moody.
Different personalities:
• Type A = competitive, aggressive.
• Type B = relaxed, easy-going.
• Type C = nice, hardworking people who try to appease others.
• Type D = the distressed personality, combination of negative affect and social inhibition.
The trait of Machiavellianism (Mach) refers to a person who beliefs that the “ends justify the
means.” In other words, such a person will do whatever it takes to win.
The Dark Triad is comprised of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
, - Narcissism is the expression of grandiosity, entitlement, dominance, and superiority.
- Psychopathy has been described as impulsivity and thrill seeking combined with low
empathy and anxiety.
Self-monitoring is defined as “self-observation and self-control guided by situational cues to social
appropriateness.” High self-monitors are very adaptable to situations, and low self-monitors are not
able to pretend that they are someone that they are not, they are true to themselves.
Risk taking is a personality trait defined as “any purposive activity that entail novelty or danger
sufficient to create anxiety in most people. Risk taking be either physical or social, or a combination
of the two.”
Trait-like implies that the personality characteristic is relatively stable over time.
State-like refers to personality characteristics that are relatively changeable, and a person can
develop (or reduce) then through either self-awareness and/or training.
New research suggests that psychological capital (PsyCap) characteristics are more stable than
fleeting states of mind, but they are open to change.
Positive organizational behaviour (POB) is “the study and application of positive-oriented human
resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively
managed for performance improvement in today’s workplace.”
Four characteristics of PsyCap:
1. Efficacy: a person’s belief that they have the ability to execute a specific task in a given
context.
2. Optimism: a positive outcome outlook or attribution of events, which includes positive
emotions and motivation.
3. Hope: the will to succeed an the ability to identify and pursue the path to success.
4. Resiliency: coping in the face of risk or adversity; the ability to “bounce back” after a setback.
Core self-evaluations (CSE) are defined as “fundamental premises that individuals hold about
themselves and their functioning in the world.” People who have a high core self-evaluation see
themselves as competent and in control.
Research on person-environment (PE) fit has shown that when an individual’s personality is aligned
with his or her environment, it results in job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and better
performance on the job. Also, employees that fit their work environment are less likely to quit. →
two types of PE fit:
1. Person-Organization (PO) fit is viewed as the match between a person’s individual values
and those of the organization they work for.
2. Person-Job (PJ) fit is viewed as the match between the person and the job. Good PJ fit occurs
when job characteristics are aligned with employees’ personalities, motivations, and abilities.
a. Demands-abilities (DA) fit refers to the compatibility between the employee’s
knowledge, skills, and abilities, and the demands of the job.
b. Needs-supplies (NS) fit refers to the extent to which the job supplies the employee’s
needs.
Personality-job fit theory (John Holland): he discovered six different personality types and examined
occupations that match these types. The personality types are: Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Artistic
(A), Social (S), Enterprising (E), and Conventional (C). → RIASEC model
Chapter 4: Attitudes and job satisfaction
An attitude is defined as “a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity
with some degree of favour or disfavour.” → attitudes are a person’s evaluation of something else.
These evaluations have three components:
1. Cognitive: is a statement or belief about something.
2. Affective: the emotional part.
3. Behavioural: an intention to act based upon the cognitions and affect experienced.
These components are all related to one another.
