The MARS model consists of motivation, ability, role perception and situational factors:

1. Motivation
   The forces within a person that affects his or her direction, intensity and persistence of voluntary behaviour.
2. Ability
   The natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task. Aptitudes are natural talents. Competencies are characteristics of a person that result in superior performance. It is important to match employees with the right job requirements. This can be done by looking for employees that already have the required skills or by training employees. Redesigning the job is also possible.
3. Role perception
   The degree to which a person understands the job duties assigned to or expected of him. Employees need to know their responsibilities, their priorities of different tasks and understanding the preferred behaviours or procedures for accomplishing tasks.
4. Situational factors
   Any context beyond the employee’s immediate control. Work context can constrain or facilitate performance and the situation provides cues that guide and motivate people.

There are five categories of individual behaviour:

1. Task performance
   The individual’s voluntary goal-directed behaviours that contribute to organizational objectives. Proficient task performance (1) is performing the work accurately and efficiently. Adaptive task performance (2) is how adaptive employees are in their performance. Proactive task performance (3) refers to how well employees take the initiative to anticipate and introduce new work patterns that benefit the organization. Adaptive and proactive task performance is important when the work is ambiguous.
2. Organizational citizenship
   Various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organization’s social and psychological context (e.g: covering a shift for someone else). Organizational citizenship can have negative consequences because it takes time and energy away from performing tasks.
3. Counterproductive work behaviours
   Voluntary behaviours that have the potential to directly or indirectly harm the organization (e.g: bullying).
4. Joining and staying with the organization
   Companies have to keep higher skilled and productive employees at their company.
5. Maintaining work attendance
   Absence can cause the company to be short-staffed and knowledge will temporarily leave the company. Absence can have positive consequences because it can help people recover sooner. People that go to their work while absence should’ve occurred are less productive and may reduce the productivity of co-workers.

Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that characterize a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics. Traits are broad concepts that allow us to label and understand individual differences. Personality is not consistent across all situations, because some situations override the personality (e.g: a funeral). Personality typically stabilizes by around age 30, although it can still change. The five-factor model (Big Five) represents the five most broad dimensions of personality:

1. Conscientiousness
   This characterizes people who are organized, dependable, goal-focused, disciplined and so on.
2. Agreeableness
   This characterizes people who are trusting, helpful and good-natured.
3. Neuroticism
   

Behaviour in the workplace is influenced by cognitive processes and emotions. Emotions may have a greater effect because they can occur prior to cognitive processes. Emotions are physiological, behavioural and psychological episodes experienced toward an object, person or event. Emotional states are short-term and moods are long-term. All emotions have two common features: emotions have a certain valence, also called core affect (e.g: approach or avoid object) (1) and emotions ready us to some extent (2).

Attitudes are evaluations of an object or event. Attitudes consist of beliefs, feelings and behavioural intentions. Feelings can make sure that attitudes differ, even though the beliefs and the behaviours are the same for two people. Having more positive emotions at work can counteract negative experiences at work. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable physiological state when attitudes and behaviour conflict. Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by changing the attitude or behaviour. Emotions are partly determined by personality. The actual situation in which people work has a stronger influence on their attitudes and behaviour than personality.

Emotional labour refers to the effort, planning and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions. Emotional labour is higher when the display rules are precise, if the contact with the client is frequent and long and if the emotions have to be intense. Norms about displaying or hiding your true emotions vary across cultures. Emotional dissonance refers to the tension when the emotions people are required to display differ from the emotions they are actually experiencing at the moment. Surface acting can help with this, pretending to feel the expected emotion. Surface acting can lead to higher stress and burnout. The psychological damage can be reduced by seeing surface acting as part of a role. This does not deprive the person’s self-worth. Deep acting involves visualizing reality differently, which produces emotions more consistent with the required emotion. Deep acting requires emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is a set of abilities to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion and regulate emotion in oneself and others. Emotional intelligence consists of four dimensions:

1. Awareness of our own emotions
   This is the awareness to perceive and understand the meaning of our own emotions.
2. Management of our own emotions
   This is the ability to manage our own emotions.
3. Awareness of others’ emotions
   This is the ability to perceive and understand the emotions of other people.
4. Management of others’ emotions
   This is the ability to manage other people’s emotions (e.g: consoling).

The four dimensions form a hierarchy and one dimension needs to be fulfilled in order to go to the next one (4-3-2-1). Emotional intelligence improves employee performance and well-being. It only improves tasks that require social interaction. Emotional intelligence can be improved through training and improves with age.

Job satisfaction is a person’s evaluation of his or her job and work context. It is

Decision making is the process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs. Rational choice decision making selects the best alternative by calculation the probability that various outcomes will occur from the choices and the expected satisfaction from each of those outcomes. An opportunity is a deviation between current expectations and a potentially better situation that was not previously expected.

There are five main problems of problem identification:

1. Solution-focused problems
   This is identifying a problem as a veiled-solution, but this is not really the problem.
2. Decisive leadership
   Leaders that announce problems or opportunities before logically assessing the situation does not help with identifying the problem.
3. Stakeholder framing
   Stakeholders hide or provide information in ways that the decision-maker sees the situation as a problem, opportunity or steady sailing. This information is not always accurate and can lead to a wrongly identified problem.
4. Perceptual defence
   People can fail to become aware of problems because they block out bad news as a coping mechanism.
5. Mental models
   Mental models can blind us from seeing unique problems or opportunities. Things have to fit in mental models.

Identifying problems can be improved by acquiring new perspectives, having leaders that have the willpower to resist the temptation of decisive decision making and create a norm of divine discontent (never being satisfied with the current conditions).

Bounded rationality is the view that people are bounded in their decision-making capabilities, including access to limited information, limited information processing and a tendency toward satisficing rather than maximizing when making choices. Problems with goals are that problems are often ambiguous and problems can conflict. Sequential evaluation occurs because all alternatives are not usually available to the decision-maker at the same time. The implicit favourite is a preferred alternative that the decision-maker uses repeatedly as a comparison with other choices. The main reason why decision-makers compare alternatives against an implicit favourite is the need to minimize cognitive dissonance. There are three main decision-making heuristics:

1. Anchoring and adjustment heuristic
   This is the tendency to be influenced by an initial anchor point such that they do not move away sufficiently from that point as new information is provided.
2. Availability heuristic
   This is the tendency to assign higher probabilities to objects or events that are easier to recall.
3. Representativeness heuristic
   This is a tendency to evaluate probabilities of events or objects by the degree to which they resemble other events of objects.

Clustering illusion is the tendency to see patterns from a small sample of events when those events are random. Satisficing is selecting an alternative that is good enough, rather than the alternative with the highest value. People stop searching for alternatives the moment they find one option that is good enough. Maximizing decision making is difficult when there are a lot of alternatives.

Emotions affect the evaluation of alternatives

Frequent, timely and accurate communication is the primary means through which employees and work units effectively synchronize their work. The functions of communication are coordination, organizational learning, decision making, changing behaviour and support employee well-being.

The communication process model states that messages are formed and encoded and decoded and feedback is formed and encoded before being sent back and being decoded. According to this model, effective communication depends on the sender’s and receiver’s ability, motivation, role clarity and situational support to efficiently and accurately encode and decode information. There are four main factors that influence the effectiveness of this encoding-decoding process. A codebook makes effective communication easier (1), experience makes the process easier (2), the process is easier if the sender and receiver are skilled and motivated (3) and the process depends on the sender’s and receiver’s shared mental models of the communication context (4).

The medium is the channel through which information is transmitted. There are verbal and nonverbal channels. The use of e-mail in an organization reduces social and organizational status differences between sender and receiver. Written digital communication (e.g: e-mail) can potentially reduce stereotyping and prejudice because age, race and other features are unknown or less noticeable. The lack of face-to-face contact may also increase reliance on stereotypes.

There are several problems with email and other digital message channels. It is difficult to communicate emotions using digital message channels (1), there is less politeness and respectfulness (2), it is inefficient in ambiguous, complex and novel situations (3) and it contributes to information overload (4). Flaming describes digital messages that convey strong negative emotions.

Nonverbal communication includes facial gestures, voice intonation, physical distance and silence. Nonverbal cues are generally more ambiguous and susceptible to misinterpretation. Emotional contagion is the automatic process of catching or sharing another person’s emotions by mimicking that person’s facial expressions and other nonverbal behaviours. Emotional contagion influences communication and social relationships in three ways. Mimicry provides feedback (1), mimicking seems to be a way of receiving emotional meaning from people (2) and mimicry helps us fulfil the drive to bond (3).

There are four important factors when deciding which communication channel to use:

1. Synchronicity
   This is the extent to which the channel requires or allows both sender and receiver to be actively involved in the conversation at the same time or at different times. Whether this factor is important depends on time urgency, the complexity of the topic, cost of both parties communication at the same time and whether the receiver should have time to reflect before responding.
2. Social presence
   This is the extent to which a communication channel creates psychological closeness to others, awareness of their humanness and appreciation of the interpersonal relationship. Whether this factor is important depends on the need to empathize with and influence others.
3. Social acceptance
   This refers to how well the communication medium is approved and supported by the

Conflict is the process in which one party perceives that its interest is being opposed or negatively affected by another party. Conflict is based on perception. One party can believe they have a conflict without the other party believing this. Conflict can lead to lower performance, higher stress, dissatisfaction and turnover, less information sharing and coordination, increased organizational politics, wasted resources and weakened team cohesion. There are also benefits of conflict. The optimal conflict perspective states that organizations are most effective when employees experience some levels of conflict but become less effective with high levels of conflict. Conflict can lead to better decision making, make people more responsive to the changing environment and lead to a stronger team cohesion if the conflict is between the team and outside opponents.

There are two types of conflict:

1. Task conflict (constructive conflict)
   This is a type of conflict in which people focus their discussion around the issue while showing respect for people who have other points of view. It focusses on an issue or task.
2. Relationship conflict
   This is a type of conflict in which people focus on the characteristics of other individuals as the source of conflict. This conflict threatens self-esteem, self-enhancement and self-verification processes.

The stronger the level of debate and the more the issue is tied to our self-view, the more likely that task conflict will evolve into relationship conflict. There are three conditions that potentially minimize the level of relationship conflict during task conflict: emotional intelligence and emotional stability (1), cohesive team (2) and supportive team norms (3).

There are different sources of conflicts in organizations:

1. Incompatible goals
   This occurs when one party’s goals interfere with another party’s goals.
2. Differentiation
   This refers to differences among people and work units regarding their training, values, beliefs and experiences.
3. Interdependence
   This refers to the extent to which employees must share information, materials or expertise to perform tasks. The risk of conflict increases with the level of interdependence.
4. Scarce resources
   This refers to a scarcity in resources that two or more parties would like to acquire.
5. Ambiguous rules
   This creates uncertainty which increases the risk that one party intends to interfere with the other party’s goals.
6. Communication problems
   This refers to the lack of opportunity, ability or motivation to communicate effectively. A lack of communication leads to increased reliance on stereotypes.

Pooled interdependence occurs where individuals operate independently except for reliance on a common resource or authority. Reciprocal interdependence refers to high mutual dependence as well as higher centrality.

There are five ways of resolving conflicts:

1. Problem-solving
   This is trying to find a solution that is beneficial for both parties. This is a win-win orientation. Information sharing is important for this style of conflict handling.
2. Forcing
   This is trying to win the conflict at the other’s

Organizational structure refers to the division of labour as well as the patterns of coordination, communication, workflow and formal power that direct organizational activities.

Organizational structures include two requirements, the division of labour into distinct tasks (1) and the coordination of labour (2). Division of labour refers to the subdivision of work into separate jobs assigned to different people. Job specialization increases work efficiency. An organization’s ability to divide work among people depends on how well those people can coordinate with each other. There are three coordination mechanisms:

1. Informal communication
   This is sharing information on mutual tasks as well as forming common mental models to synchronize work activities. It is useful in ambiguous situations. It makes use of direct communication, liaison roles, integrator roles and temporary teams.
2. Formal hierarchy
   This is assigning legitimate power to individuals who ten use this power to direct work processes and allocate resources. It makes use of direct supervision and formal communication channels. A formal hierarchy is not efficient in novel or ambiguous situations.
3. Standardization
   This is creating routine patterns of behaviour or output. It makes use of standardized skills, processes and output.

People with liaison roles are expected to communicate and share information with co-workers in other work units. People with integrator roles are responsible for coordinating a work process by encouraging employees in each work unit to share information and informally coordinate work activities.

Organizational structure has four elements: span of control, centralization, formalization and departmentalization.

The span of control refers to the number of people directly reporting to the next level above in the hierarchy. The best span of control is decided by the degree of autonomy for staff members (1), whether employees perform routine tasks (2) and the degree of interdependence among employees within the department or team (3). A highly interdependent job requires a narrow span of control because there is more conflict. The span of control is interconnected with organizational size and the number of layers in the organizational hierarchy. A wide span of control is only achievable by removing layers of management.

Centralization means that formal decision-making authority is held by a small group of people, typically those at the top of the organizational hierarchy. Larger organizations often decentralize, they disperse decision making authority and power throughout the organization.

Formalization is the degree to which organizations standardize behaviour through rules, procedures, formal training and related mechanisms. Formalization can increase efficiency and compliance, but it can reduce organizational flexibility, organizational learning and creativity. Formalization is also a source of job dissatisfaction and work stress.

A mechanistic structure is an organizational structure with a narrow span of control and a high degree of formalization and centralization. An organic structure is an organizational structure with a wide span of control, little formalization and decentralized decision making. Mechanistic structures operate better in stable environments because they rely on efficiency

Lewin’s force field analysis model describes the forces that drive and restrain proposed organizational change. Driving forces are forces that lead to organizational change. Restraining forces are forces that maintain the status quo. Stability occurs when both forces are equal. Unfreezing occurs when there is disequilibrium between the driving and the restraining forces, leading to effective change. Refreezing occurs when systems and structures are introduced that reinforce and maintain the desired behaviours. This model states that effective change occurs by unfreezing the current situation, moving to the desired position and then refreezing the situation.

Subtle resistance to change is more common than overt resistance to change. Some people experience change as relational conflict, although experiencing it as a task conflict would be more productive. There are several reasons why employees resist change:

1. Negative valence of change
   Employees resist change when they believe the new situations will have more negative than positive outcomes.
2. Fear of the unknown
   Change has a degree of uncertainty and employees tend to assume they are worse off when they are unsure about the outcomes of the change.
3. Not-invented here syndrome
   This is resisting change when it comes from another place (e.g: department) than where the change is implemented.
4. Breaking routine
   People tend to resist change that requires them to break habits.
5. Incongruent team dynamics
   If there are incongruent norms in a team, change may be resisted.
6. Incongruent organizational systems
   If organizational systems are incongruent, change may be resisted.

Unfreezing occurs when the driving forces are stronger than the restraining forces. Increasing the driving forces can be done by using threats, but this is ineffective. Weakening the restraining forces doesn’t lead to motivation to change.

Developing an urgency to change can help produce change in the organization and can be done by informing and reminding employees about competitors and other forms of external turbulence. A successful company is often less vigilant about threats. Creating an urgency to change when the organization is ahead of the competition requires a lot of persuasive influence that helps employees visualize future competitive threats and environmental threats.

There are six main strategies for reducing the restraining forces:

1. Communication
   Continuously communication the need for change can reduce the restraining forces, but it is time-consuming and potentially costly. It decreases uncertainty about the future and creates an urgency to change.
2. Learning
   This helps employees perform better after the change as it also promotes their confidence in their ability to change.
3. Employee involvement
   The higher employee involvement, the more likely that change will be accepted and not resisted.
4. Stress management
   Reducing stressors can reduce resistance to change, as change is stressful.
5. Negotiation
   This can be used to exchange compliance to change for other benefits and thus reduce resistance to change.
6. Coercion
   This includes a range of assertive influence