Organisational Behaviour
Midterm exam
- week 1: chapter 1 & 3
- week 2: chapter 4
- week 3: chapter 7 & 8
Final exam
- week 5: chapter 2, 9 & 10
- week 6: chapter 5
- Week 7: chapter 6 & 7 (only the parts regarding ‘stress’)
- (Repeat Chapters 1-3-4-7-8)
Final exam structure
,Week 1
Organizational Behaviour (OB) is a field of study investigating the impact that individuals, groups,
and structure have on behaviour within organizations to apply such knowledge to improve an
organization’s effectiveness.
For example decision-making, motivation, teamwork, etc. However, the job's technical, financial,
and economic aspects do NOT belong in the OB field.
Cognitive Dissonance: any incompatibility that an individual might perceive between two or more
attitudes, or between behaviour and attitudes.
The theory is that dissonance between what people say and what they
do makes people uncomfortable and that they will take whatever
actions they can to reduce that discomfort, such as changing their
attitudes or behaviours.
,Managerial activities
• Traditional management: Decision-making, planning, and controlling
• Communication: Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork.
• Human resource management: Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training.
• Networking: Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.
Effective managers have a good quality of performance and satisfied employees, which they are
committed to. Successful managers are those who promote quickly in organizations.
Disciplines That Contribute to Organisational Behaviour
➢ Psychology: Seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behaviour of humans and
other animals.
➢ Social psychology: Blends concepts from both psychology and sociology to focus on peoples’
influence on one another. One major study area is change – how to implement it and how to
reduce barriers to its acceptance. It contributes to measuring, understanding, and changing
attitudes; identifying communication patterns; and building trust.
➢ Sociology: Studies people concerning their social environment or culture.
➢ Anthropology: The study of societies
to learn about human beings and
their activities. Their work on
cultures and environments has
helped us understand the
differences in fundamental values,
attitudes, and behaviour between
people in different countries and
within different organizations.
,Attitudes (ABC)
A - Affect: The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude.
B - Behaviour: Describes an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.
Cognition and affect are intertwined. In organizations, attitudes are important because of their
behavioural component.
C - Cognition: A description of or belief in the way things are.
Psychological empowerment is the beliefs of employees in the degree to which they influence their
work environment, competence, job meaningfulness, and perceived autonomy.
➔ High levels of both job involvement and psychological empowerment are positively related
to organizational citizenship and job performance. High job involvement is also related to
reduced absences and lower resignation rates.
,Job Attitudes
1. Job satisfaction describes a positive feeling about a job, resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics.
2. Job involvement measures the degree to which people identify psychologically with their job
and consider their perceived performance level important to self-worth.
High involvement: I identify with my job as a teacher a lot, my performance as a teacher matters
to me, a lot and it impacts my self-worth (my job is an important part of who I am)
3. Organizational commitment
The degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and
wishes to maintain membership in the organization. (How much do you identify with your
organization and its goals? How much do you wish to remain in your organization? It implies
loyalty and willingness to go the ‘extra mile’)
4. Perceived Organizational Support
The degree to which employees believe an organization values their contribution and cares
about their well-being. (Do you believe that your organization values your contribution? Do
you believe that your organization cares about your well-being?)
5. Employee engagement is the individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for the work he or she does. (How enthusiastic are you about your work?
How involved are you in your work? Engaged employees are passionate about their work
and company)
Three types of commitment:
➔ Affective commitment: emotional attachment,
‘I want to stay’
➔ Continuance commitment: Evaluation of costs and risks associated with leaving,
‘I need to stay’
➔ Normative commitment: moral obligation based on feeling responsible,
‘I feel I ought to stay’
,Outcomes of job satisfaction
➔ Job Performance
Happy workers are more likely to be productive workers.
➔ OCB (Organizational Citizenship Behaviour)
People who are more satisfied with their jobs are more likely to engage in OCB. (the extra
mile, the things employees do that are not in their job description, for example: saying good
things about the company when talking to friends, or posting something regarding the
company on social media)
➔ Customer Satisfaction
Satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
➔ Life Satisfaction
Research shows that job satisfaction is positively correlated with life satisfaction.
Outcomes of job dissatisfaction
➔ Counterproductive work behaviour (CWB): actions that actively damage the organization,
including stealing, gossiping, behaving aggressively toward co-workers, or being late or
absent.
➔ Absenteeism: the more satisfied you are, the less likely you are to miss work.
➔ Turnover: a pattern of lowered job satisfaction is the best predictor of intent to leave.
, Week 2
Personality: The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others.
Nurture VS Nature: the way they were brought up, and a person’s genetics play a role.
• 50% of the variation in occupational choice is due to heredity (genetical)
• 40% of the variance in values related to work motivation attributed to heredity
In general, personality development is affected by both genes and environment: 40% of genes, 60%
environment
Measurement
High validity – how accurately it measures what it’s supposed to measure
High reliability – consistency of the measure
Personality-job fit theory: Matching job requirements with individuals’ personality/values:
Satisfaction increases, and turnover decreases. People are attracted to and are selected by
organizations that match their values, and they leave organizations that are not compatible with
their values
The closer two fields or orientations are in the hexagon, the more compatible they are. Adjacent categories are
quite similar, whereas diagonally opposite ones are highly dissimilar. The theory argues that satisfaction is
highest and turnover lowest when personality and occupation are in agreement. The key points of this model
are:
(1) there do appear to be intrinsic differences in personality among individuals,
(2) there are different types of jobs
(3) people in jobs congruent with their personality should be more satisfied and less likely to
voluntarily resign than people in incongruent jobs.
