McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Individual Behavior and Differences

Organizations: Behavior, Structure, Processes

Chapter 4

Learning Objectives

 Define perception and explain its role in understanding and coping with organizational life  Describe how self-efficacy can influence an employee’s behavior  Discuss why increasing diversity of the workforce requires the adoption of a different approach/style of managing employees  Compare the meaning of the psychological contract from employee and employer perspectives  Explain why it’s difficult to change an attitude

4-3

Understanding Behavior

 Variables that influence behavior  Abilities and skills  Background  Demographic variables  Can any manager modify, mold, or reconstruct behaviors?

 This is much debated among behavioral scientists and managerial practitioners

4-4

Individual Behavior Framework

The Environment The Individual Behaviors Outcomes

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Individual Behavior

 To understand individual differences, managers must  Observe and recognize the differences  Study variables that influence individual behavior  Discover relationships among the variables

4-6

Individual Behavior

 Research finds that behavior  Is caused  Is goal directed  Can be observed  Is measurable  Is motivated  Behavior that is not directly observable is also important in accomplishing goals

4-7

Individual Behavior

 Questions that help managers pinpoint performance issues  Does the employee have the skill and ability to perform the job?

 Does the employee have the resources to perform the job?

 Is the employee aware of the performance problem?

4-8

Individual Behavior

 Questions (continued)  When did the performance problem surface?

 How do the employee’s co-workers react to the performance problem?

 What can I do as a manager to alleviate the performance problem?

4-9

Individual Differences

 Poor performance  Even highly motivated employees may not have the abilities or skills to perform well  Ability  A biological or learned trait that permits a person to do something mental or physical  Skills  Task-related competencies

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Individual Differences

 Job analysis  Defining and studying a job in terms of behavior  Specifying education and training needed to perform the job  Used to take some of the guesswork out of matching jobs to people  Matching people with jobs is often a problem

4-11

Matching People to Jobs

 Matching people to jobs involves  Employee selection  Training and development  Career planning  Employee counseling  Managers must examine  Job content  Required behaviors  Preferred behaviors

4-12

Skills and Abilities

 Mental ability examples  Flexibility  Fluency and verbal comprehension  Inductive reasoning  Associative memory  Span memory  Number facility  Deductive reasoning  Spatial orientation and visualization

4-13

Skills and Abilities

 Physical skill examples  Dynamic strength  Extent flexibility  Gross body coordination  Gross body equilibrium  Stamina

4-14

Demographics

 Among the most important demographic classifications  Gender  Race  Cultural diversity

4-15

Demographics

 White male research results should not influence  Decisions  Prescriptions  Techniques  Faulty generalizations lead to  Improper assumptions  Inadequate solutions  Inaccurate rewards and evaluations

4-16

Psychological Variables

Perception Emotional Intelligence Personality Attribution Attitudes

4-17

Perception

 Perception is based on five senses  Sight  Touch  Hearing  Taste  Smell  Perception helps individuals  Select, organize, store, and interpret stimuli into a meaningful and coherent picture of the world.

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Differing Perceptions

 A manager believes employees have opportunities to judge how to do the job   The employee feels there is no freedom to make judgments A worker’s response to a request is based on what she thought she heard  It was not based on what was actually requested  A manager considers a product to be of high quality  The customer feels it is poorly made

4-19

Perceptual Differences & Behavior

Manager’s perception

Worker has lots of freedom to make decisions

Manager’s behavior

No concern about freedom given to worker

Manager’s behavior

Puzzled by the absence record of worker

Freedom worker is given Worker’s perception

I am not given freedom to make decisions

Worker’s behavior

Feeling of being left out Staying home

Worker’s behavior

Belief that no one really cares

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Stereotyping

 Over-generalized, over-simplified belief about people’s personal characteristics  Most people engage in stereotyping  Applies to both people and occupations  Self-perpetuating  Affects promotions, motivation, job design, or performance evaluation  Situational factors, needs, emotions can affect perceptual accuracy

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Stereotyping

 Stereotyping is perpetuated by  Selective perception  The manager’s characteristics  Situational factors  Needs  Emotions

4-22

Attribution

 The process of perceiving the causes of behavior and outcomes

4-23

Attribution

 Dispositional attributions  Emphasize some aspect of the individual  Situational attributions  Emphasize the environment’s effect on behavior  Before deciding if behavior is due to the person or the situation, consider  Consensus  Distinctiveness  Consistency

4-24

Attribution

 Types of attribution errors  Attributional bias  Fundamental attribution error  General positivity (the Pollyanna principle)  Self-serving bias

4-25

Attitudes

 A positive or negative feeling or mental state of readiness  Learned, organized through experience  Influences a person’s response to people, objects, and situations  Components of an attitude  Affect  Cognition  Behavior

4-26

Outcomes of Attitudes

Stimuli Work factors

Job design Manager style Company policies Technology Salary Benefits

Attitudes Components

Affect Cognition Behavior

Outcomes Responses

Emotional Perceptual Action

4-27

Cognitive Dissonance

 A mental state of anxiety  Occurs when there’s a conflict among an individual’s various cognitions after a decision has been made

4-28

Cognitive Dissonance

 Organizational implications  Helps explain the choices made by someone with attitude inconsistency  Can help predict a person’s propensity to change attitudes  If one is required to do or say things that contract personal attitudes  An attitude may be chosen that is more compatible with what they’ve said or done

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Attitudes

 Changing employee attitudes  Can hinder job performance  Factors that affect attitude change  Trust in the sender  The message itself  The situation

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Attitudes and Values

 Values  The conscious, affective desires and wants that guide behavior  Once internalized, values  Become a standard for guiding one’s actions  Affect the perceptions of appropriate ends and the appropriate means to those ends

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Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

 Job satisfaction  Attitude individuals have about their jobs  Results from their perception of the jobs  Dimensions linked to job satisfaction  Pay  Job  Promotion opportunities  Supervisor  Co-workers

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Satisfaction-Performance Views

1. Job satisfaction causes “The satisfied worker is more productive.” Job Performance 2. Job satisfaction is caused by “The more productive worker is satisfied.” Job Performance 3. Job satisfaction Job Performance “There is no specific direction or relationship.”

4-33

Job Satisfaction Comparison

 Prottas and Thompson findings  Self-employment is a better career choice than organizational employment  Higher levels of job satisfaction  Lower job stress  Higher levels of job autonomy satisfaction  Lower levels of job pressure

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Job-Customer Satisfaction

 Most businesses in developed countries are service oriented  Only satisfied customers return  Satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty  Job satisfaction and customer satisfaction flow in both directions  Rude, unhappy customers can result in dissatisfied employees

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Personality

 Characteristics, tendencies, and temperaments  Determines commonalities and differences in people’s behavior

4-36

Personality

 Personality is influenced by  Hereditary factors  Cultural factors  Social class and other group membership forces  Family and environment

4-37

Ego Defense Mechanisms

 Some ego defense mechanisms  Rationalization  Identification  Compensation  Denial of reality

4-38

Theories of Personality

 Trait Personality Theories  Predispositions direct the behavior of an individual in a consistent pattern  Psychodynamic Personality Theories  Freudian approach (id, superego, ego)  Emphasis on subconscious determinants of behavior  Humanistic Personality Theories  Emphasis on growth and self-actualization

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Measuring Personality

 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory  Statements to which one responds True, False, or Cannot Say  Covers health, psychosomatic symptoms, neurological disorders, social attitudes, phobias, delusions, and sadistic tendencies

4-40

Measuring Personality

 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)  Assesses personality or cognitive style  Extroverted or introverted, sensory or intuitive, thinking or feeling, perceiving or judging

4-41

Big Five Model

 “Big Five” personality dimensions  Conscientiousness  Extraversion-Introversion  Agreeableness  Emotional Stability  Openness to Experience

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Self-Efficacy

Believing that you can perform adequately in a situation

4-43

Self-Efficacy

 Self-efficacy has three dimensions  Magnitude  Strength  Generality  A person with high self-efficacy is motivated toward achievement  Machiavellianism  Negative connotation associated with political maneuvering and power manipulation

4-44

Creativity

 The generation of novel ideas that may be converted into opportunities  Should be a core competency  The first step in the innovation process

4-45

Developing Creativity

 Buffering  Look for ways to absorb the risks of creative decisions made by employees  Organizational time-outs  Give people time off to work on a problem and think things through  Intuition  Give half-baked or raw ideas a chance

4-46

Developing Creativity

 Innovative attitudes  Encourage everyone to solve problems  Innovative organizational structures  Let employees see and interact with many managers and mentors

4-47

Emotional Intelligence

 The ability to accurately perceive, evaluate, express, and regulate emotions and feelings

4-48

The Psychological Contract

 An implied understanding of mutual contributions between a person and an organization

4-49

The Psychological Contract

 Violation  A person perceives that the organization has failed honor one or more obligations  Common obligations  Job security and feedback  Childcare benefits  Merit-based pay raises  Job autonomy  Computer training  Promotion

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