Maryland

Maryland International
International College
College

Chapter
Chapter Two
Two
Individual
Individual Behaviour
Behaviour in
in the
the Organization
Organization

3-1
 Discussion Question

What makes one company a successful

business over another company?

3-2
Foundation
Foundation of
of Individual
Individual Behavior
Behavior
Understanding of individual behavior begins with a
review of the major psychological contributors such
as:
Attitude
Personality
Perception
Emotions and moods

3-3
Attitudes
Attitudes
Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects,
people, or events
Three components of an attitude:

The emotional or
feeling segment
The opinion or of an attitude
belief segment of
an attitude
An intention to
behave in a certain
way toward someone
or something

3-4
The
The Components
Components of
of an
an Attitude
Attitude
Cognitive = evaluation
My supervisor gave a promotion
to a co-worker who deserved it less
than me. My supervisor is unfair.

Affective = feeling
I dislike my supervisor!
Negative attitude
Toward supervisor

Behavioral = action
I’m looking for other work; I’ve
complained about my supervisor to anyone
who would listen.

3-5
 Cognitive
Cognitive Dissonance
Dissonance
 Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility between two or more
attitudes or between behavior and attitudes
– Individuals seek to reduce this uncomfortable gap, or dissonance, to
reach stability and consistency
– Consistency is achieved by changing the attitudes, modifying the
behaviors, or through rationalization
 Discrepancies between attitudes and behavior tend to occur
when social pressures to behave in certain ways hold
exceptional power, as in most organizations.

3-6
 Discussion Question

Is It Possible to Predict Attitude from Behavior?

3-7
 How
How Attitudes
Attitudes will
will Influence
Influence the
the
Workplace
Workplace
1. Job Satisfaction: refers to an individual’s
general attitude towards his/her job.
 When people speak of employee
attitudes, they usually mean job
satisfaction , which describes a positive
feeling about a job, resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics.
 A person with a high level of job
satisfaction holds positive feelings about
his or her job, while a person with a low
level holds negative feelings.

3-8
2. Job Involvement

3-9
3. Organizational Commitment: The degree to which an employee

identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to

maintain membership in the organization.

3-10
Outcomes
Outcomes of
of Job
Job Satisfaction
Satisfaction
 Job Performance
– Satisfied workers are more productive AND more
productive workers are more satisfied!
– The causality may run both ways.
 Organizational Citizenship Behaviors
– Satisfaction influences OCB through perceptions of
fairness.
 Customer Satisfaction
– Satisfied frontline employees increase customer
satisfaction and loyalty.
 Reduced Absenteeism
– Satisfied employees are moderately less likely to miss
work.
3-11
Affect,
Affect, Emotions,
Emotions, and
and Moods
Moods

3-12
Do
Do Emotions
Emotions Make
Make Us
Us Irrational?
Irrational?
 The famous astronomer Carl Sagan once wrote,
“Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to
fool ourselves.”
 These observations suggest rationality and emotion
are in conflict, and that if you exhibit emotion you
are likely to act irrationally.
 One team of authors argues that displaying
emotions such as sadness to the point of crying is so
toxic to a career that we should leave the room
rather than allow others to witness it.
 These perspectives suggest the demonstration or
even experience of emotions can make us seem
weak, brittle, or irrational.
3-13
Do
Do Emotions
Emotions Make
Make Us
Us Ethical?
Ethical?
 Like decision making in general, most ethical
decision making was based on higher-order
cognitive processes.

3-14
Sources
Sources of
of Emotions
Emotions and
and Moods
Moods
 1.Personality: Moods and emotions have a trait
component: most people have built-in tendencies to
experience certain moods and emotions more
frequently than others do.

E.g. Contrast Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby

Knight to Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

3-15
Emotional
Emotional Intelligence
Intelligence (EI)
(EI) to
to control
control our
our
emotions
emotions

3-16
Advantages
Advantages of
of Emotional
Emotional Intelligence
Intelligence
 Intuitive Appeal : Almost everyone agrees it is good
to possess social intelligence. Intuition suggests
people who can detect emotions in others, control
their own emotions, and handle social interactions
well have a powerful leg up in the business world..
 EI Predicts Criteria That Matter Evidence suggests a
high level of EI means a person will perform well on
the job. Several studies suggest EI plays an
important role in job performance

Note: Research show that EI appears to be correlated

with measures of personality, especially emotional
stability.
3-17
 Emotion
Emotion Regulation:
Regulation:

Have you ever tried to cheer yourself up when you’re

feeling down, or calm yourself when you’re feeling
angry? If YES, you are engaged in Emotion Regulation

 The central idea behind emotion regulation is to identify

and modify the emotions you feel

3-18
Strategies
Strategies
Emotion to
to regulate
regulate your
Emotion Regulation:
Regulation: your emotions
emotions

 Thinking about more pleasant things,

 suppressing negative thoughts,

 distracting yourself,

 reappraising the situation, or

 engaging in relaxation techniques. 3-19

Effects
Effects
Emotion
Emotionof Positive
Positive Emotions/Moods
ofRegulation:
Emotions/Moods
Regulation:

 Enhances creativity
 Improves decision making,
 A leader with positive emotions buys the
attention of his/her subordinates
 Job attitudes: “Never take your work home
with you,”. You might damage the
emotions of your family at home too.
 The display of emotions is important to
social behavior like negotiation and
customer service. 3-20
Personality of an Individual
(Individual Personality and
Organization)

5-
21
 What
What isis Personality?
Personality?

 Personality is the relatively stable set of psychological

attributes that distinguish one person from another.
 A longstanding debate among psychologists – often
expressed as nature vs. nurture – is the extent to which
personality attributes are inherited from our parents (the
nature argument) or shaped by our env’t. (Nurture
agreement)..
 In reality both biological and environmental factor play
important role in shaping our personalities.
 Although their debate is beyond the scope of our
discussion here, managers should strive to understand
basic personality attributes 6-
22
 The
The Big
Big Five
Five Personality
Personality Traits
Traits
 Psychologists have identified literally thousands of
personality traits and dimensions that differentiate one
person for the others.
 But in recent years, researchers identified five
fundamental traits that are especially relevant to
organizations.
 Because these five traits are so important and because
they are currently receiving so much attention, they are
now commonly called big five personality traits:
Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Negative emotionality,
Extraversion, and Openness

6-
23
 1.
1. Agreeableness
Agreeableness
 Agreeableness: refers to a person’s ability to get along
with others.
 It causes some people to be gentle, cooperative, forgiving,
understanding, and good natured in their dealing with
others. But it results in others being irritable, short
tempered, uncooperative, and generally antagonistic
towards other people.
 Researchers have not yet fully investigated the effects of
agreeableness, but it seems likely that higher agreeable
people are better at developing good working relationship
with coworkers, subordinates, and higher level managers;
where as less agreeable people are not likely to have
particularly good working relationships 6-
24
 2.
2. Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness

 Conscientiousness: refers to the number of goals on which

a person focuses.
 People who focus on relatively few goals at a time are
likely to be organized, systematic, careful, thorough,
responsible, and self disciplined.
 Others however, tend to pursue a wider array of goals, and
a s result, are more disorganized, careless, and
irresponsible, as well as less thorough and less self
disciplined

6-
25
 3.
3. Negative
Negative Emotionality
Emotionality

 Negative emotionality: this is the third of the big five

personality traits.
 Negative emotionality is characterized by moodiness and
insecurity.
 People with less negative emotionality are relatively
poised, calm, resilient, and secure; people with more
negative emotionality are more excitable, insecure,
reactive, and subject extreme mood swings.

6-
26
 4.
4. Extroversion
Extroversion

 Extraversion: reflects person’s comfort level with

relationships.
 Extroverts are sociable, talkative, assertive, and open to
establishing relationship with others.
 Introverts are much less sociable, talkative, assertive, and
reluctant to begin new relationships..
 Research suggests that extroverts tends to be higher
overall performer than introverts, and that they are more
likely to be attracted jobs based on personal relationships,
such as sales and marketing positions.

6-
27
 5.
5. Openness
Openness

 Openness: reflects person’s rigidity of beliefs and range of

interests.
 People with high level of openness are willing to listen to
new ideas and to change their own ideas, believes, and
attitudes in response to new information.They also tend
to have broad interests, curious, imaginative and more
creative.
 On the other hand, people with low level of openness tend
to less receptive to new ideas and less willing to change
their minds. Further they tend to fewer and narrower
interest to and to be less curious and creative.

6-
28
Perception of an Individual

5-
29
 What
What isis Perception?
Perception?

 A process by which individuals organize and interpret

their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to
their environment.
 People’s behavior is based on their perception of what
reality is, not on reality itself.
 The world as it is perceived is the world that is
behaviorally important.

6-
30
 Discussion Question

How do you explain that individuals may look

at the same thing, yet perceive it differently?

5-
31
 Attribution
Attribution Theory:
Theory: Judging
Judging Others
Others
 Our perception and judgment of others is significantly
influenced by our assumptions of the other person’s
internal state.
– When individuals observe behavior, they attempt to
determine whether it is internally or externally caused.
• Internal causes are under that person’s control

• External causes are not under the person’s control

6-
32
 Errors
Errors and
and Biases
Biases in
in Attributions
Attributions
 Fundamental Attribution Error

– The tendency to underestimate the

influence of external factors and
overestimate the influence of internal
factors when making judgments about
the behavior of others
– We blame people first, not the
situation
6-
33
 Self-Serving Bias

◦The tendency for individuals to attribute their own

successes to internal factors while putting the
blame for failures on external factors
◦It is “our” success but “their” failure

5-
34
False-consensus effect (similar-to-
me effect): A perceptual error in
which we overestimate the extent to
which others have beliefs and
characteristics similar to our own

5-
35
 Perception
Perception Errors
Errors

 Selective Perception

– People selectively interpret what they

see on the basis of their interests,
background, experience, and attitudes
 Halo Effect

– Drawing a general impression about

an individual on the basis of a single
characteristic

6-
36
 Contrast Effects

◦Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that are affected by

comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank
higher or lower on the same characteristics

 Stereotyping
Judging someone on the basis of
one’s perception of the group to
which that person belongs

5-
37
 Primacy effect: A perceptual error
in which we quickly form an opinion
of people on the basis of the first
information we receive about them.

 Recency effect: A perceptual error

in which the most recent information
dominates our perception of others

5-
38
Organizational
Organizational Citizenship
Citizenship
Organizational Citizenship refers to the behavior
of individuals who make a positive contribution
to the organization

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Summary
Summary of
of Organizational
Organizational Behavior
Behavior