FOUNDATIONS OF INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR

1. ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR CHAPTER 2 FOUNDATIONS OF INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR Sumeyye KUSAKCI, MA

2. Foundations of Individual B. in O. • Ability • How intellectual ability contributes to job performance • Attitudes • How employees’ attitudes about their job affect the workplace • A special attitude: Job Satisfaction • Learning • Hoe people learn behavior • What management can do to shape those behaviors

3. Ability • An individual’s current capacity to perform the various tasks in a job • Intellectual abilities: • Abilities needed to perform mental activities • Number aptitude, Inductive R., Deductive R., Memory • Jobs differ in their required abilities • The more complex a job, the more intelligence will be necessary • Why intelligent people are better performers? • Learn quickly • Adapt to changing circumstances easily • Invent solutions improving performance • Correlation between intelligence and job satisfaction? • Ability-Job Fit • If employees lack the required abilities? • If employees’ abilities far exceed the requirement of the job? • Organizational inefficiency (payment) • Decline in satisfaction • Physical abilities • Strength, Flexibility, Coordination

4. Attitudes • Evaluative statements – either favorable or unfavorable – concerning objects, people or events • Reflect how one feels about something • I like to live in Sarajevo! • Extended registration periods • Online games?

5. Three Components of Attitudes

6. Three Components of Attitudes • Discrimination is wrong. • I do not like Jon, because he discriminates against minorities. • I might choose to avoid Jon, because of my feelings about him.

7. How Consistent They Are? • I would (never) do … • Consistency among attitudes and between attitudes and behavior • If there is an inconsistency; • Alter the attitude or behavior • Develop a rationalization for the discrepancy • Cognitive Dissonance (developed by Festinger in 1950s) • any inconsistency between two or more attitudes, or between behavior and attitudes • Individuals seek to minimize dissonance • Desire to reduce dissonance is determined by: • The importance of the elements creating the dissonance • The degree of influence the individual believes he or she has over the elements • The rewards that may be involved in dissonance

8. Behavior Follows Attitude? • Attitudes significantly predict future behavior. • The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior relationships; • Importance • Specificity • Accessibility • Social pressures • Direct personal experience

9. Attitudes Follow Behavior? • Self Perception Theory • Attitudes are used, after the fact, to make sense out of an action that has already occurred rather than as devices that precede and guide action. • This is particularly true when attitudes are vague and ambiguous.

10. Major Job Attitudes • Positive or negative evaluations that employee hold about aspects of their work environment. • Job satisfaction • Job involvement • Organizational commitment • Are job attitudes really so that distinct? • The influence of employee’s personality on attitudes

11. Job Satisfaction • A positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. • The most comprehensive job attitude • A general satisfaction in western countries • Satisfied with which facet of the work?

12. What Causes Job Satisfaction? • Work itself • the strongest correlation with overall satisfaction • Payment • not correlated after individual reaches a level of comfortable living • Advancement Opportunities • Supervision • Co-workers • Personality

13. The Effects on the Workplace • Better job and organizational performance • Better organizational citizenship behaviors • OCB – Discretionary behaviors that contribute to organizational effectiveness but are not part of employees’ formal job description • Greater levels of customer satisfaction • Generally lower absenteeism and turnover • Decreased instances of workplace deviance • Do not try to control everything, deal with the source of the problem!

14. Job Involvement • The degree to which people identify psychologically with their job and consider their perceived performance level important to self-worth. • Psychological Empowerment • Positively related to • organizational citizenship • job performance • Negatively related to • absence • resignation rate

15. Organizational Commitment • The state in which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization • Affective Commitment • An emotional attachment to the organization and a belief in its values • Continuance Commitment • The perceived economic value of remaining with and organization compared to leaving it • Normative Commitment • An obligation to remain with the organization for moral or ethical reasons • The strongest one? • The weakest one? • Negatively related to • absence • resignation rate • Positively moderately related to • job performance • As an alternative “occupational commitment”

16. Learning • Any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience • Three components of learning • Learning involves change. • Change must be ingrained. • Some forms of experience is necessary. • Directly through observation or practice • Indirectly through reading

17. Learning Theories • Operant Conditioning • People learn to get something they want or do avoid something they do not want. • Pleasing consequences, such as rewards • Social Learning • Extension of operant conditioning • Individuals can also learn by observing what happens to other people and just by being told abut something, as well as by direct experiences.

18. Shaping Behavior • Methods • Positive Reinforcement • Negative Reinforcement • Punishment • Extinction • Schedules of Reinforcements • Continuous vs. Intermittent R. • Ratio vs. Interval Schedules • Fixed vs. Variable