Organisational Behaviour - Sinding & Waldstrom - BulletPoint summary

Chapter 1

• Organisational Behaviour origins in the 20^th century with the arise of scientific management.

• Taylor enlarged productivity by studying work methods.

• According to Fayol, the five major tasks for mangers are planning, organising, leading, co-ordinating and controlling.

• Bernard states that there are multiple conditions which have to be met in order to create co-operation.

• Simon provides three ways to motivate employees: identification with the organisation, training and coercion. People are bounded by the physical and social capabilities.

• Four alternative theories about organisations are symbolism, postmodernism, conflict theory and critical theory.

• According to McGregor there are two kind of employees: type X and type Y.

• Organisational Behaviour is a interdisciplinary field which helps with understanding and managing employees.

Chapter 2

• There are four ways for organisations to build self-esteem: 1) Be supportive by showing concern for personal problems, interests, status and contributions. 2) Offer work involving variety, autonomy and challenges that suit the employee’s values, skills and abilities. 3) Strive for supervisor-employee cohesiveness and build trust. 4) Have faith in each employee’s self-management ability. Reward success.

• Four sources of self-efficacy are prior experience, behaviour models, persuasion from others, assessment of physical/emotional state.

• Someone who is good at self-monitoring has a great public impression by adjusting rightly to situations.

• People with an internal locus of control think they can influence events in their life. People with an external locus of control take events as they are.

• The big five personality model contains five dimensions which describe personallity.

• Jung's personality typology contains three dimensions. Myers and Briggs add a dimension, which provides 16 personality types.

• Personality tests help with hiring employees and work-related decision-making. This can be argued because of the predictive validity, descriptive validity and because of faking.

• Intelligence can be interpreted and measured in various ways. Spearman provides two types of intelligence: general cognitive capabilities and unique capabilities.

• According to Kirton there are adaptive people and innovative people.

• Kolb created a learning cycle with four faces which all contain different learning competences.

Chapter 3

• Values develop under the influence of personality, society and culture

• Instrumental values are ways to reach a certain goal. Terminal values are the certain goals a person wants to reach.

• Schwarz distinguishes 10 different kind of values, which he divides in two dimensions on which he can separate basic human values.

• Behaviour is influenced by someones attitude towards the behaviour, the perceived norms and values about the behaviour and the perceived control about the behaviour.

• Organisational commitment shows how much an in individual relates to an organisation and and is committed to the goals of the organisation. People's attitudes are important.

• Job satisfaction is influenced by needs fulfilment, discrepancy, value attainment, equity, dispositional/genetic components.

• Positive emotions are personal reactions to circumstances, which are favourable for someone's goals. Negative emotions are personal reactions to circumstances which are unfavourable for someone's goals.

• Emotional intelligence is the capability to manage your own and other people's emotions on a mature and constructive manner.

• Emotional contagion is the contingency of emotions between persons.

• When someone is in a flow, the person can focus completely on one thing.

Chapter 4

• Three factor influence perception: perceived target, perceiver and the setting.

• Perception is a mental and cognitive process, which enables us to better interpret and understand our environment.

• Social perception influences who we hire and how we reward achievements.

• The correspondence inference theory describes how an alert receiver separates someone's intentions and personal nature from their behaviour.

• The attribution theory describes how people conclude causes for observed behaviour.

• The self-fulfilling prophesy describes how people behave in a way that they make their own expectations come true.

• Communication is a process of linked elements. Miscommunication occurs easily because receivers interpret messages differently than they are meant by the senders.

• Every component of the perceptual model of communication is a potential process barrier.

• Oral communication contains al spoken, verbal communication. Written communication is all written verbal communication. Non-verbal communication has different interpretation in different cultures.

• Characteristics of the listener, speaker, the message and enviroment influence the understanding of the listener. There are three listening-styles: results-style listener, reasons-style listener and process-style listener.

• There are three communication styles: assertive style, aggressive style and non-assertive style.

• Hierarchical communication patterns describe the communication between managers and employees. Informal communications occurs through the grapevine.

• Asymmetric information can lead to adverse selection or moral hazard.

• The right media type is essential for effective communication.

• Our 'information age' can cause an information overload.

Chapter 5

• Motivation contains professional processes which causes excitement, guidelines and persistence.

• The five explanations for behaviour (needs, reinforcement, cognitive, job characteristics, emotions) are fundamentals for the evolution of modern motivation theories.

• The content approach of motivation emphasises what motivates people. The process approach explains the process itself which gets people motivated.

• Two important 'need theories' are those of Maslow and McClelland.

• Alderfer's need theory narrows Maslow's model by transforming five dimensions into three dimensions.

• Herzberg believes that job-satisfaction motivates to better job performance.

• The psychological state of perceived meaningfulness, perceived responsibility and knowledge about results cause internal work motivation.

Chapter 6

• The equity theory is a model of motivation, which clarifies how people strive for equity and justice in social exchange. At the workplace the equity en justice is all about the rewards for the contributive inputs.

• Te expectancy theory concludes that motivation is resolved by one's perceived changes of achieving valued outcomes. Vroom's model explains how both the effort → performance expectancies and the performance → outcome instrumentalities will have influence on the level o f effort expended to attain the desired outcomes.

• The goal-setting theory explains the idea that people are motivated to reach goals. It provides four motivational mechanisms: 1) it directs one's attention, 2) regulates effort, 3) increases persistence and 4) encourages development of goal attainment strategies and action plans.

• The recipient's openness to feedback is determined by self-esteem, needs, self-efficacy, goals and desire for feedback.

• In addition to financial benefits, there are as well social and psychic rewards. There are intrinsic (psychic) and extrinsic (financial) rewards.

• In order to create an effective and justice reward system, it is important to: 1) make the organisational reward system an integral part of the organisation's mission and goals. 2) Communicate regularly and clearly about the system to all employees. 3) stimulate a performance culture. 4) implement the system in a fair and objective way.

Chapter 7

• A formal group is formed by the organisation to help the organisation to accomplish a goal (e.g. work groups, team, committee). An informal group evolves naturally and is not created on purpose by an organisation.

• Social networks are social entities and the relations between them. They differ from groups or teams as they have no clear boundaries.

• Tuckman's theory describes the formation of a group. His five stages are: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. The three stages of group decay are de-norming, de-storming and de-forming.

• Roles are sets of behaviour that people expect of occupants of a position. Three problems with roles are role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity.

• Norms are shared attitudes, opinions, feelings or actions that guide social behaviour, so they are not personal like roles are. Four reasons norms are enforced are because of group/organisational survival, clarification of behavioural expectations, avoidance of embarrassment and clarification of central values/unique identity.

• Group size can be optimised with two approaches: 1. mathematical modelling includes building around certain desired outcomes of group action. 2. laboratory simulations, assumes that group behaviour needs to be observed first in controlled laboratory settings.

• The three major threats to group effectiveness are the Asch effect, groupthink and social loafing.

• Symptoms of groupthink are: Invulnerability, Inherent mortality, Rationalisation, Stereotyped views of opposition, Self-censorship, Illusion of unanimity, Peer pressure and Mind guards

• Four explanations for social loafing are: Equity of effort, Loss of personal accountability, Motivational loss due to sharing rewards and Co-ordination loss as more people perform the task

Chapter 8

• A group is a team when it meets the following criteria: group members share the same goals in relation to their work, in order to achieve these goals the members should interact with each other, every team member has their own clear and rated roles,

• Belbin distinguishes three kinds of roles within a team: do-roles, think-roles and and social-roles.

• KSAs help evaluating willingness for teamwork. The five KSAs are Conflict resolution KSAs, Collaborative problem-solving KSAs, Communicative KSAs, Goal-setting and performance management KSAs en Planning and task co-ordination KSAs.

• The ecological model of effectiveness states that performance and variability are the two criteria for team effectiveness.

• Teams fail because of unrealistic expectations, which causes frustration and failure.

• Team building improves the team's effectiveness. According to Richard Beckhard, the four purposes of team building are: 1. to set goals, 2. to analyse the way work is performed, 3. to examine the way a group is working and its processes, 4. to examine relationships among the people.

• Six aspects of self-management leadership are: 1. stimulates reinforcement, 2. stimulates self-observation/evaluation, 3. stimulates self-expectation, 4. stimulates self-goal-setting, 5. stimulates rehearsal, 7. stimulates self-criticism.

• Effective teamwork can be realised because of co-operation, trust and cohesion.

• There are six guidelines for building and maintaining trust: communication, support, respect, fairness, predictability, and competence.

• Two types of cohesiveness are socio-emotional cohesiveness and instrumental cohesiveness.

• Four types of work teams are advice teams, production teams, project teams and action teams.

• Quality circles consist of small teams of people who work in the same field of activity and identify, analyse and recommend solution for problems. Virtual teams contain of individuals across various boundaries using the communication technology. Self-managed teams are groups of workers that are given ‘administrative oversight’ such as planning, monitoring and staffing for their task domains.

Chapter 9

• Stereotypes are person's belief or expectation about groups of people which are too simplified.

• Managing diversity can 1) lower costs and improve employee attitudes, 2) improve an organisation's recruiting efforts, 3) increase sales, market share and corporate profits, 4) increase creativity and innovation and 5) increase group problem-solving.

• Eight general responses for handling any diversity issues are: include/exclude, deny, assimilate, suppress, isolate tolerate, build relationships and foster mutual adoption.

• Stress is an adjusting reaction on external demands or stressors that generates a fight-or-flight response.

• The Karasek Job Demand-Control model emphasises the stress factors inherent in the work organisation, more than it stresses the individual characteristics.

• Perceived stress is caused by four sets of stressors: individual level, group level, organisational level and extra-organisational. It has psychological/attitudinal, behavioural, cognitive and physical health outcomes.

• Holmes an Rahe developed the SRRS to assess an individual's cumulative stressful life events.

• Burnout develops in phases: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and feeling a lack of personal accomplishment.

• Social support represents the amount of perceived helpfulness derived from social relationships.

• Coping is the management of stress and stressors. Coping is directly affected by cognitive appraisal, which is influenced by situational and personal factors.

Chapter 10

• Organisations are defined as systems of coordinated activities and they exist in order to get things of a group of people done. All organisations have four things in common: division of labour, hierarchy of authority, coordination of effort and the people in an organisation have a goal in common.

• Differentiation occurs by dividing the work and the technical specialisation. An outcome of differentiation is that specialists in one field think differently than specialists from another field.

• However, if everyone differentiates and there are too many differentiations, proper communication might diminish. There therefore needs to be integration in an organisation.

• In an organisation there is hierarchy of authority and this hierarchy determines the communication network. Unity of command means that every employee has to report to only one manager. When people report to more managers, organisations might become inefficient because there are conflicting demands.

• In divisional organisations all components of an organisation fall within the boundaries of that division. A matrix form is used when functional specialisation and corss-functional integration is needed.

• Organisation forms and organisation types are different. Types are about the composition of the earlier structural elements: the division of labour, coordination and hierarchy of authority.

• Mechanistic organisation are rigid bureaucracies with strict rules, top-down communication and narrow defined tasks. Organic organisations are flexible and exists out of individuals with multiple talents that execute different tasks.

• In bureaucratic organisations, rules and procedures are based on rationality and not on personality or habits. In bureaucratic organisations the roles are well defined and focused on maximizing the efficiency.

Chapter 11

• The system theory approach states that every element belongs to a certain subsystem of a system from a higher order.

• The contingency approach looks at a certain way at the organisational fit. According this approach, organisations are more effective when they are construed or designed to comply to the demands of the situations.

• The contingency variables are technology, environment, culture, size, strategy and structure. A design based on contingency seeks a fit for these variables and a fit between structural variables and external contingencies.

• Miles and Snow have developed a typology of strategies that exist out of four categories: defenders (organisations with a few products or markets, but who are efficient in serving the customers), analysers (they have their companies in stable environments in which they can emphasise efficiency and they don’t have to change their structure), prospectors (are very innovative and they constantly seek change in their products, markets, processes and structures to beat the competition) and reactors.

• The bigger is better model states that the costs per unit production decline when the organisation grows. Bigger is seen as more efficient.

• The small is beautiful model thinks that big organisations and subunits are plagued by expensive behavioural problems. Big an impersonal organisations can cause apathy and alienation and may result in the employees staying away.

• Organisation effectivity is the degree in which an organisation can achieve its goals. In order to assess this, you have to look at goal accomplishment (results), the resources, satisfaction of strategic constituencies and internal processes (the organisation is functioning well and there is little resistance).

• De declining spiral of an organisation is called the organisational decline. It is defined as the decline in resources of the organisation (resources are customers, employees, ideas, products and money).

Chapter 12

• Culture is a pattern of key assumptions which are considered true. Organisational culture are shared values and beliefs, which are hidden in the organisation identity.

• Espoused values are explicit values, which are chosen by a founder or the top management. Enacted values are implicit values, which represent actual employee behaviour.

• There are four types of organisational values: elite, meritocratic, leadership and collegial.

• The four basic manifestations of organisational culture are objects (shared things), talk (shared sayings), behaviour (shared doings) and emotion (shared feelings).

• Four types of organisational cultures are: 1. Adaptability culture, 2. External control culture, 3. Development culture, 4. Internal consistency culture.

• Organisational solicitation is the process where new members learn to be part of the culture. The three phases are anticipatory solicitation, encounter, and change and acquisition.

• Two important intercultural aspects are Ethnocentrism and high-context and low-context cultures.

• Hofstede's five cultural dimensions are 1. Power distance, 2. Individualism vs. collectivism, 3. Masculinity vs. femininity, 4. Uncertainty avoidance, 5. Long-term vs. short-term orientation.

• Trompenaars' five cultural dimensions are 1. Universalism – Particularism, 2. Individualism – collectivism, 3. Neutral – emotional, 4. Specific – diffuse, 5. Achievement – ascription.

• Monochromic time means you prefer to do one thing at the time because time is limited. Polychronic time means you prefer to do several things at the same time because time is flexible.

• Hall distinguished four interpersonal distance zones: intimate, personal, social and public.

• The foreign assignment cycle helps to make the expatriation a success with four stages.

Chapter 13

• The rational model has the following steps: identify the problem, generate solutions, select one solution and implement/evaluate it.

• The Carnegie model is based on bounded rationality. The model states that decision-making is characterised by limited information processing, the use of judgemental heuristics and satisficing.

• The garbage can model states that decisions result from four the interaction between four independent streams of events: problems, solutions, participants and choice opportunities.

• The unstructured model is quite similar to the rational model but is less focussed on finding the optimal solution. It has three stages: identification, development and selection.

• Decision-makers use an aided-analytic, unaided-analytic or non-analytic strategy to choose a proper solution.

• The decision-making model is based on value orientation and tolerance for ambiguity. There are four styles of decision-making: directive, analytical, conceptual and behavioural.

• Decisions can be biased. Various biases are: availability bias, representativeness bias, escalation of commitment, anchoring, confirmation bias, hindsight, framing and overconfidence bias.

• Groups usually outperform individuals, but there are five important issues to consider when using groups to make decisions.

• Participative management increases employee job involvement, organisational commitment, creativity and perceptions. Managers should use the contingency approach when determining whether to include others in the decision-making process. Three group problem-solving techniques are brainstorming, the nominal group technique and the Delphi technique. Creativity is the process of using imagination and skill to develop a new or unique object or product. The creative process underlies five stages: preparation, concentration, incubation, illumination and verification.

Chapter 14

• The term ‘mutuality of interest’ includes the win-win thinking between organisational interests and personal interests.

• Kipnis' mythology shows how people influence each other in organisations. There are nine tactics, the first five are 'hard' tactics and the last four are 'soft tactics'.

• Caldini's six principles of Influence en Persuasion are Liking, Reciprocity, Social proof, Consistency, Authority and Scarcity.

• Conflicts can be functional or dysfunctional, as they have advantages and disadvantages. Dean Tjosvold's cooperative model indicates three desired outcomes: agreement, stronger relationships and learning.

• There are two tactics to mange conflict: devil's advocacy and dialectic method. The five conflict-handling styles are integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising

• There are two types of negotiation: distributive and integrative. The first type concerns that sharing of a fixed amount, whereas the integrative type of negotiation goes beyond. It calls for a win-win strategy where all can benefit.

• The five steps in added value negotiation are: 1. clarify interests, 2. identify options, 3. design alternative deal packages, 4. select a deal, 5. perfect the deal.

• French and Raven's five bases of power are reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, expert power and referent power.

• Organisational politics is a positive force in modern organisations and ever-present in work life. It is defined as intentional acts of influence to protect the self-interest of individuals. There are three levels of political action: the individual level, the coalition level and the network level

• Four motives for making a poor impression are: avoidance, obtain concrete rewards, exit and power.

• Delegation provides more than a participatory role in decision-making. Employees make their own work-related decisions. Employees can gain supervisor's trust by demonstrating personal initiative.

Chapter 15

• Leadership can be defined as the influence in which leaders seeks subordinate’s participation in an effort to reach goals. Management differs from leadership because leader provide emotional support and tries to let employees strive together to a common goal. Management is handling complexity and leadership is about handling change.

• Trait theories believe that leadership characteristics are preordained. Select people should have traits which make them successful leaders. This turned out to be false. Research showed that someone becomes a leader when the person meet our prototypes.

• There is a relationship between gender and leadership. Research provided the following results: 1. men and women have different leadership roles, 2. men and women, 3. the effectiveness of women and men as leaders was related with the percentage of male leaders and male subordinates.

• Ohio State studies revealed two independent dimensions of leadership behaviour: consideration and initiating structure.

• The most popular leadership model is the Robert Blake and Jane Mouton Leadership Grid ® It is formed by the intersection of two dimensions of leader behaviour: ‘concern for production’ and ‘concern for people’. The five leadership styles that derive from the leadership grid are ‘country club management’, ‘impoverished management’, ‘middle-of-the-road management’, ‘team management’ and ‘authority compliance’.

• The behavioural style approach declares that leaders are shaped by improving and developing their behaviour.

• According to Fiedler, situational control is the amount of control and influence the leader has in his/her work environment. The three dimensions of situational control are leader-member relations, task structure and position power.

• Roubert House argues that leaders do not use only one style of leadership. He states there are four styles that leaders use intermittently: directive leadership, supportive leadership, participative leadership and achievement-oriented leadership.

• The Situational leadership theory (SLT) developed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard states that effective leadership behaviour is dependant on the level of readiness the leaders’ followers have. Research does not support this.

• The transactional leadership tries to engage employees’ behaviour. This means leaders motivate employees by giving rewards and exert corrective action when performance goals are not obtained. The charismatic leadership enables followers to develop deep commitment. Leaders using this approach can transform followers by appealing to followers’ values and personal identity.

• There are 14 substitutes for leadership, which can substitute, neutralise or enhance the effects of leadership.

• The servant-leadership approach by Robert Greenleaf assumes that leaders act as servants and serve the needs of others as priority.

• Coaches must be committed to the goals and the team, they must spend much time educating and instructing the group (skill building) and support the team.

Chapter 16

• Organisations change because of external and internal forces.

• Lewin developed a model for planned change which explains how to organise, manage and stabilise a change process. The model contains of three phases: unfreezing, changing and refreezing.

• Theory E is focussed on maximising profits for shareholders. Change is driven by finances. Theory O is focussed on optimising the quality of the company. Finances are less important.

• According to Kotter, organisational change usually fails because of senior management mistakes. He created an eight steps plan to lead an organisational change.

• Resistance to change is an emotional/behavioural response to real or perceived work changes. Nine reasons for resistance to change are: 1. Surprise and fear of the unknown, 2. Climate of distrust, 3. Anxiety of failure, 4. Loss of status or job security, 5. Peer pressure, 6. Interruption of cultural traditions or group relations, 7. Personality conflicts 8. Absence of tact or bad timing, 9. Non-reinforcing reward systems

• Alternative strategies to overcome resistance to change are: Education + communication, Participation + involvement, Facilitation + support, Negotiation + agreement, Manipulation + co-optation, and Explicit +explicit coercion

• Four characteristics of organisational development are: OD and profound change, OD is value-loaded, OD is a cycle of diagnosis and prescription,OD is process-oriented.