What is the definition of Organizational Behavior (O.B.)?
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A field of behavioral science that focuses on understanding, explaining, and improving the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups within organizations or professions.
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What is the definition of Organizational Behavior (O.B.)?
A field of behavioral science that focuses on understanding, explaining, and improving the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups within organizations or professions.
What is the ultimate goal of research in Organizational Behavior (O.B.)?
To improve the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations and/or professions.
What are four scientific methods commonly used in Organizational Behavior research?
Which scientific method in Organizational Behavior is specifically noted for its ability to establish causation?
Experiments
According to research on assessing intuitions, how do the happiness levels of lottery winners and accident victims compare one year after the event?
They tend to be similar (roughly 4.2 on a 5-point scale), showing that initial differences in life circumstances often normalize over time.
What is the approximate correlation coefficient (r) between Ibuprofen use and pain reduction, as cited in the "Medicine's Most Famous Findings"?
r = 0.14
In medical research, what is the correlation between smoking and lung cancer?
r = 0.08 (the same as the correlation for Calcium Intake & Bone Mass).
What is the correlation between Conscientiousness and Job Performance?
r = 0.24
What is the correlation between pay incentives and individual productivity?
r = 0.32
Which Organizational Behavior finding has the highest correlation listed in the course materials?
Goal-setting, effective feedback, and organizational productivity (r = 0.67).
What is the correlation between college grades and job performance?
r = 0.16
According to Organizational Behavior research by Edmondson, what is the third-most common cause of death in the U.S.?
Medical error (estimated at 251,454 deaths in 2013).
According to recruiters cited by the Wall Street Journal, what skills are lacking in undergraduate degrees that focus too much on finance "nuts and bolts"?
Critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
What is a personality trait?
Habitual patterns of cognitions, emotions, and behavior that are stable over time.
What are the two primary factors that determine personality?
Nature (hereditary) and nurture (environment).
What widely used personality test, despite its popularity with companies like Apple and GE, is often criticized by researchers as "armchair psychology"?
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
What are the four dimensions of the MBTI personality test?
What is a major research-based criticism of the MBTI's "bi-modality"?
It forces people into binary "either/or" categories (bi-modality), whereas research shows traits are continuous and normally distributed.
What are the five dimensions of the Big 5 model of personality?
Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (OCEAN).
What are the common work-related outcomes for individuals with high Neuroticism?
Lower levels of job and life satisfaction, plus higher stress and burnout.
Which Big 5 trait is a strong predictor of leader emergence?
Extraversion.
Which Big 5 trait is associated with higher creativity and better adaptation to changes?
Openness to Experience.
In what type of jobs do individuals with high Agreeableness typically perform better?
Interpersonally oriented jobs (where cooperation and warmth are key).
Which of the Big 5 personality traits is the strongest predictor of job performance?
Conscientiousness.
According to personality assessment research, who is generally better at evaluating a person's personality than the person themselves?
External observers (friends, colleagues, or acquaintances).
Is personality completely fixed throughout life?
No, research shows that personality changes over time (e.g., Conscientiousness and Agreeableness tend to increase with age).
What is the definition of values?
Stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences and define what is right/wrong or good/bad in our eyes.
What theory suggests that job satisfaction depends on whether an individual perceives their job as providing the specific things they value?
Value Perception Theory.
What is the difference between espoused and enacted values?
Espoused values are those an organization states it believes in (e.g., in a mission statement), whereas enacted values are those that employees actually perceive to be followed (the "reality").
What is Individualism versus Collectivism in cultural values?
The degree to which people prefer acting as individuals (personal freedom, self-sufficiency) versus as group members (group interest, duty to groups).
Which cultural dimension refers to the degree to which people accept an unequal distribution of power in society?
Power Distance.
What cultural dimension measures the extent to which people feel threatened by ambiguity and uncertainty?
Uncertainty Avoidance.
What is the primary difference between Achievement and Nurturing cultural orientations?
Achievement-oriented cultures value assertiveness, competitiveness, and materialism, while Nurturing-oriented cultures value relationships and the well-being of others.
What does the "Tightness vs. Looseness" dimension of culture refer to?
The strength of social norms and the tolerance for deviant behavior.
According to the course data, what are three notable cultural characteristics of Mainland China?
Low Individualism (Collectivism), High Power Distance, and High Tightness.
How does the U.S. score on Individualism, Power Distance, and Tightness compared to Mainland China?
Individualism (high), Power Distance (low), and Tightness (low).
What is confirmation bias?
The tendency to attend to information that supports one's existing decisions or beliefs while discrediting or ignoring contradictory information.
What is a major consequence of confirmation bias in decision-making?
It often leads to overconfidence in conclusions that are based on incomplete data.
What is the definition of perception?
The process of receiving information about and making sense of the world.
What is attribution in psychology?
The process through which individuals infer or attempt to determine the causes of other people's behavior.
What are the three rules or rules of attribution used to determine if a cause is internal or external?
Consistency, Distinctiveness, and Consensus.
What does consistency mean in the attribution process?
Whether the person behaves the same way in the same situation over time. High consistency typically leads to an internal attribution.
What does distinctiveness mean in the context of attribution rules?
Whether the person behaves the same way in different situations. High distinctiveness (behavior is unusual in other situations) leads to an external attribution.
What does consensus mean in the attribution process?
Whether other people react the same way in that situation. High consensus (others also reacted this way) leads to an external attribution.
What is the tendency to attribute others' actions to internal causes while ignoring the impact of external or situational factors?
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE).
What is the tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors and their failures to external factors?
Self-serving bias.
What is "The Double Bind" in the context of women in senior management?
The situation (gender roles) where women are liked when they act traditionally feminine but not seen as leaders, and disliked (but still not chosen as leaders) when they act masculine.
What is the approximate "Motherhood Penalty" in earnings as compared to non-mothers and fathers?
Mothers earn approximately 13,000 less than fathers.
Is the Motherhood Penalty justified by research into actual productivity?
Studies show that mothers are actually more productive than non-mothers and often acquire new performance-enhancing skills like time management and flexibility.
What is a primary recommendation for beating the double bind and motherhood penalty in professional settings?
Implementing control systems or "choice architecture" (e.g., blind auditions) that remove the possibility of human bias from evaluations.
What is the definition of decision-making?
A conscious process of making choices from among one or more alternatives with the intention of moving toward a desired state.
What real-life event is the LSK "Vroom Racing" case based on?
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which resulted from the same O-ring failure patterns seen in the Vroom Racing case.
What was the primary data-related error in the NASA Challenger decision-making process?
Flawed analysis of the data, where only failures were examined while ignoring the ambient air temperature during successful races.
What cognitive bias describes focusing only on trade-offs between existing options while missing hidden or creative alternatives?
Narrow framing.
What is one specific technique suggested to overcome narrow framing?
The "Vanishing Options Test": If none of the current options were available, what else would you do?
What bias describes the tendency for people to align their opinions with those of a majority or an authority figure?
Conformity pressure.
What cognitive bias involves making judgments based on incomplete data, such as only studying successful firms (sampling on the dependent variable)?
Representativeness bias (specifically sampling error).
What bias suggests that the pain of a loss is felt more intensely than the satisfaction of an equivalent gain?
Loss aversion.
What is a suggested solution to overcome loss aversion and its resistance to change?
Flip the frame by asking "What do we stand to lose if we don't seek change?"
What are two recommended strategies for improving decision-making overall?
The "Vanishing Options Test" and expanding the number of options (e.g., developing a "best of both worlds" option).
What is job satisfaction?
The collection of attitudes (positive or negative) that people have about their jobs.
What is the difference between overall job satisfaction and facet satisfaction?
Overall satisfaction refers to a general feeling about the job (e.g., "I love my job!"), while facet satisfaction describes feelings about specific aspects, such as pay, colleagues, or supervision.
What are four organizational outcomes associated with high job satisfaction?
High motivation, high organizational commitment, and high customer satisfaction, along with lower turnover and absenteeism.
How strong is the link between job satisfaction and individual performance, and what is one reason for this strength?
The association is often weak. One reason is that performance is a combination of motivation and ability; high satisfaction increases motivation but does not increase ability.
What are the five core job characteristics in the Job Characteristics Model (JCM)?
Skill Variety, Task Identity, Task Significance, Autonomy, and Feedback from Job.
What is "Skill Variety" in the Job Characteristics Model?
The extent to which a job allows for a range of activities using different skills and talents. (High variety example: a garage operator who handles electrical repair, engine rebuilding, and customer interaction).
What is "Task Identity" in the context of job design?
The degree to which a job involves completing a whole piece of work from beginning to end (e.g., designing and building furniture).
What is "Task Significance" in the Job Characteristics Model?
The impact a job has on other people (e.g., a nurse caring for sick patients has high task significance).
What is "Autonomy" in the context of the Job Characteristics Model?
The degree of freedom someone has to schedule their own work activities and decide their own work procedures.
What is "Feedback from Job" in the Job Characteristics Model?
The amount of information provided to a worker (either from the job itself or from a supervisor) about their effectiveness and performance.
According to research by the Center for Creative Leadership, what are the three main reasons for executive derailment?
Difficulty in handling change, inability to work well in a team, and poor interpersonal relations.
According to research by the Carnegie Institute of Technology, what percentage of financial success is due to "human engineering" versus technical ability?
85% of financial success is attributed to "human engineering" (people skills, communication, negotiation, and leadership), while only 15% is due to technical ability.
What is the breakdown of components in emotional communication (the 7-38-55 rule)?
What is "Emotional Aperture"?
The ability to accurately read or recognize the collective emotions of a group. (High aperture means a clearer view of group diversity or unity in emotions).
According to 2010 research published in Science, how does social intelligence compare to member IQ in predicting team success?
A team's social intelligence (specifically the ability to read emotions) is more than five times more important to success than the average IQ of its members.
What is emotional regulation?
The ability to perceive, regulate, and use emotions in oneself and others to experience the most appropriate state for a task.
What is "Emotional Contagion"?
The phenomenon where people's emotions are influenced by or "catch" the emotions of those around them (e.g., feeling sadness when a coworker cries).
What is the difference between distress and eustress?
Distress is a negative, unhealthy deviation from functioning, whereas eustress is "good" stress that motivates and activates people toward their goals.
What is the definition of motivation?
The extent to which persistent effort is directed toward a goal. (A very strong predictor of performance).
What is extrinsic motivation?
Motivation stemming from reasons external to the task itself, such as rewards, pay, bonuses, or fulfilling others' expectations.
What is intrinsic motivation?
Motivation that comes from the direct relationship between the worker and the task, applied by the self. (Examples: personal achievement, sense of purpose, or pure interest).
What phenomenon occurs when adding an extrinsic motivator (like pay) removes an individual's intrinsic desire to perform an activity?
The "Over-justification Effect" (or crowding out).
How do extrinsic motivators impact a worker's focus?
It narrows focus to the reward ("eyes on the prize"), leaving little room for enjoyment for the sake of the work itself.
What was the unanticipated consequence of introducing fines for late pickups at daycare centers in Israel?
Fines led to an increase in lateness because parents viewed it as a market transaction for 30 minutes of babysitting, rather than a social or moral obligation. (Removing the fine caused lateness to increase even more).
Which theory suggests that people prefer to feel they have control over their actions, and that external obligations undermine intrinsic motivation?
Self-Determination Theory.
Which theory states that motivation is a function of fairness in social exchanges, where employees compare their own input/output ratio to that of others?
Equity Theory.
What are the three needs identified in McClelland's Theory of Needs?
Need for Achievement, Need for Affiliation, and Need for Power.
What specifically motivates individuals with a high "Need for Achievement"?
Challenging tasks that provide feedback on their progress and offer opportunities for personal growth.
What specifically motivates individuals with a high "Need for Affiliation"?
The opportunity to work in a team, build social relationships, and communicate with others.
What specifically motivates individuals with a high "Need for Power"?
Opportunities to exert influence, gain attention, and participate in activities that earn them prestige.
