ORGNIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
SUMMERIZATION
FOR
CHAPTER 6, 7, 8, 9
Abdulrahman Almusailet
Talal Naif
Hamad Alomran
Abdullah Al-khater
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#201002138
#200900835
#200700852
Chapter 6
Perception and Individual Decision Making
Every individual organize and interpret their sensory impression in order to give
meaning to their environment by going through this process of perception. There are a
number of factors that influence the operating to shape something distorts perception.
There are different types of factors that influence perception:
Factors in the situation: Time, work setting and social setting.
Factors in the perceiver: Attitudes, motives, interests, experience, and expectations.
Factors in the target: Novelty, motives, sounds, size, background, proximity and
similarity.
After knowing the person perception we have know how they make judgments
about others. The attribution theory it is an attempt to determine whether an individual’s
behavior is internally or externally caused. The determine behaviors depends on three
largely factors. 1) Distinctiveness 2) consensus and 3) consistency.
In the person perception of making judgments about others we use a number of
shortcuts when we judge others. For the common shortcuts starts selective perception
which characteristic that makes a person an object or event stand out will increase the
probability that we will perceive it. Also halo effect draw a general impression about an
individual on the basis of a single characteristics. Such as intelligence, sociability or
appearance. The third common shortcuts is contrast effect which evaluation of a person’s
characteristic that is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who
rank higher or lower on the same characteristics .the last shortcuts is Stereotyping which
is judging someone on the basis of one’s perception of the group to which that person
belongs. Also there is a specific application of shortcuts in organizations wear people
always judging each other. The mangers should appraise their employee’s performances
and evaluate how much the employees put effort into their job. On the other hand, the
employment interview there are some employment get hair without an interview. But the
interview makes perceptual judgments those is often inaccurate and draw early
impressions that quickly become entrenched. On the performance expectations, people
attempt to validate their perceptions of reality even when they are faulty. The terms selffulfilling prophecy and Pygmalion effect describe how an individual’s behavior is
determined by others to let her down.
There is a link between perception and decision making because the employment
make a decision and make choices between two or more alternatives. Top mangers
determine their organization’s goals of what products or services to offer and how is the
best way to finance operations or where to locate the manufacturing plant. Moreover,
decision making accurse as reaction to a problem.
The decision making in organization have the rational model, bounded rationality
and intuition. We often think that the rational decision makers are mostly right and
makers consistent, value-maximization choices within constraints.
The next six steps is a list of rational decision making model:
1: define the problem.
2: identify the decision criteria.
3: allocate weights to the criteria.
4: develop the alternatives.
5: evaluate the alternatives.
6: select the best alternative.
The bounded rationality a process of making decisions by constricting simplified
models that extract the essential features from problems without capturing all their
complexity. The last one in decision making in organization is intuition whish an
unconscious process created out of distilled experience.
For the common biases and errors in decision making. We have the
overconfidence bias; it's been said "on problem in judgment and decision making is more
prevalent and more potentially catastrophic than overconfidence. Moreover, anchoring
bias is a tendency to fixate on initial information and fails to adequately adjust for
subsequent information. The confirmation bias of rational decision-making process
assumes that we objectively gather information. But we don’t. Confirmation bias
represents a specific case of selective perception. We seek out information that reaffirms
our past choices. On the other hand, availability bias more people fear flying than fear
driving in a car. But if flying on a commercial airline really were as dangerous as driving,
the equivalent. Availability bias is our tendency to base judgments on information readily
available. Furthermore, Escalation of commitment, another distortion that creeps into
decisions is a tendency to escalate commitment. Also, Escalation of commitment refers to
staying with a decision even when there is clear evidence its wrong. Basically, Risk
Aversion is this tendency to prefer a sure thing over a risky outcome is risk aversion.
Lastly, Hindsight bias is the tendency to believe falsely, after, the outcome is known, that
we'd have accurately predicted it. All of these mistakes could happen in decision-making.
In individual differences there are an affect on the organization decision-making,
these are personality, gender and mental ability. As we know each of us has his or her
own personality wish is so far conducted on personality and decision-making suggests it
dose influence our decisions. The gender has a research on rumination offers insights into
gender differences in decision making. Women are nearly twice as likely as man to
develop depression. Why women ruminate more than man is not clear. And people with
higher level of mental ability are able to process information more quickly, solve
problems more accurately, and learn faster, so you might expect them also to be less
susceptible to common decision errors.
The next part of influences on decision-making is organization constraints witch
includes the performance evaluation, the mangers are strongly influence by criteria on
which they are evaluated. The other one is reward system in the organizations, which the
person will choose the best decision that have a better personal payoff. Also for the
formal regulation witch is getting things done the way the organization want. Finally on
the system-imposed time constraints we can say that all the decisions come with explicit
deadline.
The ethical decision criteria, first yardstick is Utilitarianism in which decision are made
solely on the basis of their outcomes. But the Whistle-blowers reveal an organization's
unethical practices to the press or government agencies, using there right to free speech.
The improving in decision-making needs creativity witch is the ability to produce novel
and useful ideas. These are different form what are been done before but appropriate to
the problem presented. Creativity potential were most of people useful creative potential.
But to unleash it, they have to escape the psychological ruts many of us fall into and to
learn how to think about the problem in divergent ways. Creativity contains three
important components witch are expertise, creativity skills and task motivation.
To summarize the perception each individual base their behavior not on the way
their external environment actually is but rather on what they see or believe it to be.
Whether a manger successfully plans and organizes the work of the employees and
actually helps them to structure their work more efficiently and effectively. To influence
productivities, we need to asses how works perception perceive their jobs.
Chapter (7)
Motivation and concept
Motivation
When we analyzing the motivation concepts we have to keep in mind that the
level of motivation varies both between individual and within individuals at different
times. We define motivation as the processes that account for individual intensity,
direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal. While general motivation is
concerned with effort toward any goals.
The three key elements in our definition are intensity, which describes how hard a
person tries. However, high intensity is unlikely to lead to favorable job-performance
outcomes unless the effort is channeled in a direction that benefits the organization.
Finally, motivation has a persistence dimension. These measure how long a person can
maintain effort. Motivated individuals stay with a task long enough to achieve their goal.
Early theories motivation
The best-known theory of motivation is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which
is that within every human being, there exists a hierarchy of five needs:





Physiological, includes hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, and other bodily needs.
Safety, security and protection from physical and emotional harm.
Social, affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship .
Esteem, internal factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement.
Self-actualization, drive to become what we are capable of becoming; includes
growth, achieving our potential, and self-fulfillment.
Theory X and Theory Y:
Managers believe under Theory X that employees inherently dislike work and
must therefore be directed or even coerced into performing it. However Theory Y in
contrast managers assume employees can view work as being as natural as rest or play,
and therefore the average person can learn to accept, and even seek, responsibility. For
the third theory called Two-Factor theory, which is a theory that relates intrinsic factors
to job satisfaction and associates extrinsic factors with dissatisfaction. Also called
motivation hygiene theory.
Two-factor theory: The two factor theory believes in that individual’s relationship is
basic and that attitude toward work can very well determine success or failure.
McClelland’s Theory of Needs
You have one beanbag, and five targets are set up in front of you. Every target is
farther then the other one thus are difficult to hit. Keep this in mind because the theory
McClelland’s of needs states a achievements, power, and affiliation are three important
needs that help explain motivation:
 Need for achievement (nAch) the drive to excel, to achieve in
relationship to a set of standers, and to strive to succeed.
 Need for power (nPow) is the need to make others behave in a way in
which they would not have behave otherwise.
 Need for affiliation (nAff) the desire for friendly and close interpersonal
relationships.
Self-Determination Theory
Which purpose that people prefer to feel they have control over their actions, so
anything that makes a previously enjoyed task feel more like an obligation than a freely
chosen activity will undermined motivation. Cognitive evaluation theory of selfdetermination theory, which holds that allocating extrinsic rewards for behavior that had
been previously intrinsically rewarding, tends to decrease the overall level of motivation
if the rewards are seen as controlling.
Goal sitting theory addresses these issues, and the findings as you'll see are impressive
in terms of the effect that goal specificity, challenge, and feedback have on performance.
In other words goal-setting theory is a theory that says that specific and difficult goals
with feedback lead to higher performance. (Robbins & Judge, 2011, P248)
Management by objectives emphasizes participative set goals that are tangible,
verifiable, and measurable. Management by objectives is a program that encompasses
specific goals, participative set, for an explicit time period, with feedback on goal
progress. (Robbins & Judge, 2011, P250)
Self-efficacy theory refers to an individual's belief that he or she is capable of
performing a task. The higher yourself efficacy, the more confidence you have in your
ability to succeed. So we conclude that self-efficacy is an individual belief that he or she
capable of performing a task. (Robbins & Judge, 2011, P251)
A counterpoint to goal-setting theory is Reinforcement theory. Goal-setting is a
cognitive approach, proposing that an individual's purposes direct his action.
Reinforcement theory: A theory that says that behavior is a function of its
consequences.
The concept of operant conditioning was part of skinner's broader concept of
Behaviorism, which argues that behavior follows stimuli in a relatively unthinking
manner.
Behaviorism: A theory that argues that behavior follows stimuli in a relatively
unthinking manner.
This view that we can learn through both observation and direct experience is called
Social-learning theory.
Called Social-learning theory: the view that we can learn through both observation and
direct experience.
Models are central to the Social-learning viewpoint. FOUR processes determine their
influence on an individual:
attention processes: people learn from a model only when they recognize and pay
attention to its critical features.
Retention processes: A model's influence depends on how well the individual
remembers the model's action after the model is no longer readily available.
Motor reproduction processes: after a person has seen a new behavior by observing the
model, watching must be converted to doing.
Reinforcement processes: individuals are motivated to exhibit the modeled behavior if
positive incentives or rewards are provided
Demonstrate how organizational justice is a refinement of equity theory:
Equity theory is a theory that says that individuals compare their job inputs and
outcomes with those of other and then respond to eliminate any inequities.
Organizational justice is an overall perception of what is fair in the work place
composed of distributive procedural and interactional justice.
Distributive justice is perceived fairness of the amount and allocation of rewards among
individuals.
Procedural justice is the perceived fairness of the process used to determine the
distribution of rewards.
Interactional justice is the perceived degree to which an individual is treated with
dignity concern and respect.
Applying the key tenets of expectancy theory to motivating employees:
Expectancy theory: one of the widely accepted explanations of motivation although it
has its critics, most of the evidence support the theory.
Expectancy theory argues that strength of our expectation of given outcome and its
attractiveness.
a- Effort-performance relationship: the probability perceived by the individual
exerting a given amount of effort will lead to performance.
b- Performance-reward relationship: the degree to which the individual believes
performing at particular level will lead to the attainment of desired outcome.
c- Reward-personal relationship: the degree to which organizational reward
satisfy an individual's personal goals or needs and the attractiveness of those
potential rewards for the individual.
Comparing contemporary theories of motivation:
Chapter 8
Motivating by job Design: The job characteristics model:Model that proposes that any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions
skills variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.
1-skills variety: The degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities.
2- task identity: The degree to which a job requires completion of whole and identifiable
piece of work.
3- task significance: The degree to which a job has a substantial impact on the lives or
work of other people.
4- autonomy: The degree to which a job provides substantial freedom and discretion to
the individual in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be used in
carrying it out.
5- feedback: the degree to which carrying out the work activities required by a job results
in the individual obtaining direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or
her performance.
Motivating potential score (MPS): -
Predictive index that suggests the motivation potential in a job.
We will look at some of the ways to put JCM into practice to make job more motivation:
Job Rotation: It is the periodic shifting of an employee one task to another.
Job Enrichment: The vertical expansion of jobs, which increase the degree to which the
worker controls the planning, execution, and evaluation, and evaluation of the work.
How does management enrich an employee’s job?
Combining tasks puts fractionalized tasks back together to form a new and larger module
of work. Forming natural work units makes an employees tasks create an identifiable and
meaningful whole.
Alternative work arrangement: The approach to motivation is to alter work arrangements:1. Flextime: Flexible work hours.
2. Job sharing: An arrangement that allows two or more individuals to split a
traditional 40 hours a week job.
3.Telecommunication: Working from home at least tow days a week on a computer
that is linked to the employer’s office. It might be close to the ideal job for many people.
No commuting, flexible hours, freedom to dress as you please, and few or no
interruptions from colleagues.
Employee Involvement:
It’s a participative process that uses employee’s input to increase their commitment to the
organizations success. The logic is that if we engage workers in dictions that affect them
and increase their autonomy and control over their work lives, they will become more
motivated, more committed to the organization, and more productive.
The two major forms of employee involvement:
Participative management: a process in which subordinates share a significant degree
of decision-making power with their immediate superiors.
Representative participation: A system in which workers participate in organizational
decision making through a small group of representative employees.
Different types of variable pay programs can influence employee motivation:
Variable pay programs are a pay plan that bases a portion of an employee's pay on
some individual or organizational measure of performance.
Piece rate pay:
A pay plan in which workers are paid a fixed sum for each unit of production completed.
A pure piece rate plan provides no base salary and pays the employees only for what he
or she produces.
Merit- based pay plan:
A pay plan based on performance appraisal ratings.
Bonus:
A pay plan that rewards employees for recent performance rather than historical
performance.
Skill- based pay:
A pay plan that sets pay levels on the basis of how many skills employees have or how
many jobs they can do.
Flexible benefits turn benefits into motivation:
Profit sharing plan:
Is an organization wide program that distributes compensation based on some
established formula designed around a company’s profitability.
Gain-sharing:
Is a formula based group incentive plan that uses improvement in-group productivity
from one period to another determining the total amount of money allocated.
Intrinsic motivation: do psychologists describe a concept as the motivation that comes
from within a person to accomplish a task or goal? Intrinsically motivated people are not
influenced by external rewards or punishments for their work, such as earning money for
doing a job or getting a poor grade on a school assignment.
Summary:
Recognize individuals difference Mangers should be sensitive to individual difference,
for example, employee from Asian culture prefer not to be singled out as special because
it makes them uncomfortable. Spend the time necessary to understand what's important to
each employee. This allows you to individualize goals, level of involvement, and rewards
to align with individual needs. Design jobs to align with individual needs and maximize
their motivation potential.
Use goals and feedback Employee should have firm, specific goals, and they should get
feedback on how well they are faring in pursuit of those goals.
Allow employee to participate in decisions that affect them Employee can contribute
to setting work goals, choosing their own benefits packages, and solving productivity,
commitment to work goals, motivation, and job satisfaction.
Link rewards to performance Reward should be contingent on performance, and
employee must perceive the link between the two. Regardless of how strong the
relationship is if individuals perceive it to be weak, the result will be low performance, a
decrease in job satisfaction, and an increase in turnover and absenteeism.
Check the system for equity Employee should perceive that experience, skills abilities,
effort, and other obvious inputs explain differences in performance and hence in pay, job
assignments and other obvious rewards.
Chapter 9
Defining group and distinguish the different types of groups:
Group: two or more individuals interacting and interdependent who have come
together to achieve particular objectives. Groups can be either formal or unformed.
Formal group: A designated work group defined by the organization’s structure. The
behavior of formal group team members should engage in are established by and
directed toward organizational goal.
Informal group: A group that is neither formally structured now organizationally
determined; appears in response to the need for social contact. For example, three
employees from different department who regularly have lunch or coffee together is
an informal group.
Command group: A group composed of the individuals who report directly to a
given manager. For example, elementary school principle and her eighteen teachers
form a commend group.
Task group: Those working together to complete a job or task. However task group’s
boundaries are not limited to immediate hierarchical superior; the group can be cross
commend relationship.
Interest group: Those working together to attain a specific objective with which each
is concerned.
Friendship group: Those brought together because they share one or more common
characteristics.
Social identity theory: perspective that considers when and why individuals consider
team-selves members of groups.
Identifying the five stages of group development:
Five stages of group development are the five distinct stages groups go through:
Forming Stage: the first stage in-group development, characterized by much
uncertainty.
Storming Stage: the second stage in-group development, characterized by intragroup
conflict.
Norming Stage: the third stage in-group development, characterized by close
relationships and cohesiveness.
Performing Stage: the fourth stage in-group development, when the group is fully
functional.
Adjourning Stage: the final stage in-group development for temporary groups,
characterized by concern with wrapping up activities rather than performance.
Group properties: Roles, Norms, States, Size, and cohesiveness:
Group probability 1: Roles
Roles: a set of expected behavior patterns attributed so someone occupying a given
position in a social unit.
Role perception an individual’s view of how he or she is supposed to act in a given
situation.
Role expectation how others believes a person should act in a given situation.
Requirements change in different situations by role:
Work groups are not disorganized crowds they have goods that shape members behavior
and help explain and predict individual behavior within the group as well as the
performance of the group itself. Some of these properties are roles, norms, status, size,
and cohesiveness.
Group probability 2: Norms
Norms: acceptable standers of behavior with in a group that are share by the groups
members.
Psychological contract: a written agreement that sets out what management expects
from an employee and vice verse.
Role conflict: a situation in what an individual is confronted by divergent role
expectation.
Reference group important group to which individual belong or hope to belong and with
whose norms individuals are likely to conform.
Conformity: the adjustments of once behavior to align with the norms of the group.
Deviant workplace behavior: voluntary behavior that violates significant organization
norms and, in so doing threatens the well being of the origination or its members.
Explains how norms and status exert influence on an individual’s behavior:
The golfers don’t speak while their partners are putting on the green or that employees
don’t criticize their bosses in public? Why not? The answer is norms. All groups have
founded norms acceptable standers of behavior shared by their members that express
what they should and should not to do under certain situations.
Group Probability 3: Status
Status: a socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others.
Status characteristic theory: A theory that states that difference in status characteristic
create status hierarchies within groups.
Group Property 4: Size
Group size affects group performance:
Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working
collectively than alone. It directly challenges the logic that the productivity of the group
as a whole should at least equal the sum of the productivity of the individuals in that
group.
Group Property 5: Cohesiveness
Contrasting the benefits and weaknesses of organized groups.
Some work groups are cohesive because the members have spent a great of time together
or the group small size simplifies high communication or external threats have brought
members close together. Cohesiveness is the degree to which members are attracted to
each other and motivated to stay in the group.
Social loafing: the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working
collectively than when working individually.
Cohesiveness: the degree to which group members are attracted to each other and
motivated to say in the group.
What can you do to encourage group cohesiveness?
1) Make the group smaller. 2) Encourage the agreement with group goals. 3) Increase the
time members spent together. 4) Increase the group's status and the perceived difficulty
of attaining membership. 5) Stimulate the competition with other groups. 6) Give
rewards to the group rather than individual members. 7) Physically isolate the group.
Contrasting the group strengths and weaknesses of group decision-making.
A) Groups versus the individual: Decision making groups may be widely used in
organizations but are group decision preferable to those made by individual alone? The
answer depends on a three factors.
Strengths of group decision-making: Groups generate more complete information and
knowledge. By aggregating the resources of several individuals, groups bring more input
as well as heterogeneity into the decision process.
Weaknesses of group decision-making: group decision making have their drawbacks.
They're time consuming because groups typically take more time to reach a solution. The
desire by group members to be accepted and considered an asset to the group can squash
any overt disagreement.
Effectiveness and efficiency: Whether groups are more effective than individuals
depends on how you define effectiveness. Group decisions are generally more accurate
than the decision of the average individual in a group but less accurate than the
judgments of the most accurate.
B) Groupthink and group shift:
Groupthink: A phenomenon in which the norm for consensus override the realistic
appraisal of alternative courses of action.
Group shift: A change in decision risk between a group's decision and an individual
decision that a member within the group would make, the shift can be toward either
conservatism or greater risk.
Comparing the effectiveness of interacting, brainstorming, nominal, and electronic
meeting groups:
Group's decision-making techniques:
The most common form of group decision-making takes place in instructing groups.
Interacting groups: Typical groups in which members interact with each other face-toface.
Barnstorming can overcome the pressures for the conformity that dampen creativity by
encouraging any and all alternatives while with holding criticism. Although
brainstorming is an idea generation process that specifically encourage any and all
alternatives while you withholding any Criticism Of those alternatives.
Nominal group technique: a group decision-making method in which individual
members meet face-to-face to pool their judgment in systematic but independent fashion.
Electronic meeting a meeting in which Members interact on computers allowing for
anonymity of comments aggregation of votes.
9- Evaluating evidence for culture difference in group status and social loafing as
well as the effects of diversity in groups:
Group diversity: More research is being done on how diversity influences group
performance. Some looks at the culture diversity and some racial, gender, and other
differences. Overall, studies identify both benefits and costs from group diversity.
References:
Chapter 6
Robbins & Judge (2011) Organizational Behavior (14th ED)
1- Defining perception and explaining the factors that influence it.
P202
2- Explaining attribution theory and list the three determinants of attribution.
P204
3- Identifying the shortcuts individuals use in making judgment of attribution.
P205
4- Explaining the link between perception and decision making.
P209
5- Apply the rational model of decision making and contrast it with bounded
rationality and intuition.
P210
6- Listing and explaining the common decision biases or errors
P213
7- Explaining how individual differences and organizational constraints affect
decision-making.
P217
8- Contrasting the three ethical decision criteria.
P220
9- Defining creativity and discuss the three-component model of creativity.
P221
Chapter 7
Robbins & Judge (2011) Organizational Behavior
1- Describing the three key-elements of motivation.
P238
2- Identifying early theories of motivation, and evaluate their applicability
today.
P239
3- Applying the predications of self-determination theory to intrinsic and
extrinsic rewards.
P245
4- Comparing and contrast goal-sitting theory and management by objectives.
P248
5- Contrasting reinforcement theory and goal-sitting theory.
P253
6- Demonstrating how organizational justice is a refinement of equity theory.
P255
7- Applying the key tenets of expectancy theory to motivating employees.
P259
8- Comparing contemporary theories of motivation.
P261
Chapter 8
1- Describing the job characteristics model and evaluating the way it motivates
by changing the work environment.
P276
2- Comparing and contrasting the main ways jobs can be redesigned.
P278
3- Identifying three alternative work arrangements and showing how they
might motivate employees.
P281
4- Giving examples of employee involvement measures and show how they can
motivate employee.
P287
5- Demonstrating how the different types of variable pay programs can
influence employee motivation.
P288
6- Showing how flexible benefits turn benefits into motivation.
P293
7- Identifying the motivation benefits of intrinsic rewards
P294
Chapter 9
1- Defining group and distinguish the different types of groups.
P310
2- Identifying the five stages of group development.
P313
3- Showing how role requirement change in different situation.
P316
4- Demonstrate how norms and status exert influence on an individual's
behavior.
P319
5- Showing how group size affects group performance.
P326
6- Contrasting the benefits and disadvantages of cohesive groups.
P327
7- Contrasting the group strengths and weaknesses of group decision making.
P328
8- Comparing the effectiveness of interacting, brainstorming, nominal, and
electronic meeting groups.
P332