Organizational Psychology

1. OrganizationalPsychology Interactive lecture Dr Jolanta Babiak Winter semester 2017/2018

2. Content of lectures • Learning about organizational behavior – psychological perspective • Personality and attitudes • Perception and attribution • Individual problem solving styles • Learning and reinforcement • Work motivation • Goal setting • Work stress

3. Content of lectures • Dynamics within and between groups • Influence – Robert Cialdini’s approach • Leadership • Introduction to the theory of conflict • Negotiations • Test • Make-up test

4. Grading

5. Grading

6. Assigned readings • Robins, S. Judge T.A. (2013). Organizational Behavior, New Jersey, Pearson Education, Inc. • Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Influence. The psychology of persuasion. New Yor, HarperCollins Publishers • Whetten, D. A., Cameron K. S. (2011). Developing Management Skills. New Jersey: Person education, Inc.

7. Assigned Reading for lecture 1 • Robins, S. Judge T.A. (2013). Organizational Behavior, New Jersey, Pearson Education, Inc. – chapter 1 • Whetten, D. A., Cameron K. S. (2011). Developing Management Skills. New Jersey: Person education, Inc. – Introduction

8. Organizational behavior Investigates the impact individuals, groups and structure have on behavior within organization Study of what people do in an organization and how their behavior affects the organization’s performance OB is an applied behavioral science built on a contribution from psychology, social psychology, sociology and anthropology

9. Organizational behavior • Understanding human behavior plays a key role in effective managing people in organizations • Until late 1980s emphasis on technical aspects of management e.g. economics, accounting, finance, etc. • Social relationships among co-workers and supervisors: • lower stress at work, • less intentions to quit, • higher work engagement, • more accurate decision making, • collaborative behavior.

10. Human beings are complex and few, if any, simple and universal principles explain organizational behavior Importance of people skills = organizational behavior

11. OB puts great emphasis on examining managerial behavior One common thread runs through managerial functionsParamount importance of managing people

12. What do managers do? • Managers get things done through other people • Managers oversee activities of others • Managers are responsible for attaining goals in the organization • Functional approach (Henri Fayol) – managers’functions • Planning • Organizing • Commanding (Leading) • Coordinating • Controlling

13. What do managers do? Cont. • According to Mintzberg (1960) managers perform 10 different roles grouped into: • Interpersonal: figurehead, leader, liaison • Informational: monitor, disseminator, spokesperson • Decisional: being responsible for decisions and their outcomes

14. What else managers do? • Technical skills – ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise • Human skills – ability to understand, communicate with, motivate, and support other people • Conceptual skills – mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations

15. Management Skills Identifiable sets of actions that individuals perform that lead to certain outcomes • Why do we need management skills? • What are managerial skills? • What is their nature? • Why are they critical for succesfull management? • Can they be developed?

16. Why do we need management skills, since • We live in chaotic, rapid-fire changing environment • It’s been predicted that factories will need two employees only: one person and a dog? • …Or “permanent white water” organizational environment There is something that has remained relatively constant in several thousand years: the basic skills that lie at the heart of effective, satisfying, growth- producing human relationships such as freedom, dignity, trust, honesty, responsibility.

17. (1) We need management skills • Human relationships are becoming more important not less • Information overload ( e.g.6000 business books each month) • No mechanism to organize, prioritize or interpret this information – what is crucial? What can be ignored? • Key sense-making mechanism is the relationship we have with the sources of that information

18. (2) What are management skills? • Ensure employment security • Selectively hire people • Foster decentralization • Institute high levels of pay based on performance • Transcend fear • First look within • Embody a vision for a common good • Disturb the system • Status conscious • Embrace the hypocritical self • Surrender to the emergent process

19. (2) What are management skills? • MS form the vehicle by which management strategy, practices, tools and techniques, personality attributes work to produce effective outcomes in organizations • Building blocks upon which effective management rests • MS are the means by which managers translate their own style, strategy and favorite tools or techniques into practice

20. (2) Management skills • Verbal communication (including listening) • Managing time and stress • Managing individual decisions • Recognizing, defining, and solving problems • Motivating and influencing others • Delegating • Setting goals and articulating a vision • Self-awareness • Team building • Managing conflict

21. (3) What are the attributes of management skills? • MS are behavioral, not personality attributes nor stylistic tendencies – they can be observed • MS are controllable – the performance of MS is under the control of the individual – consciously demonstrated, practiced, improved, or restrained • MS are developable – through practice and feedback • MS are interrelated and overlapping – integrated sets of complex responses; are not demonstrated in isolation from each other • MS are contradictory or paradoxical - either teamwork nor individual relations, either soft and humanistic nor hard-driving and directive

22. (4) Power of management skills • Main presumption: management skills – skills needed to manage one’s own life as well as relationships with others • Due to effective people management: • employee turnover drops • Profits increase • Sales grow • Shareholder value grows • Produces firm’s longevity

23. (4) Power of management skills What factors best account for financial success? • Market share? • Capital intensity? • Size of the firm in assets? • Industry average return on sales? • Good people management? One factor – the ability to manage people effectively – was three times more powerful than all other factors combined in accounting for firm financial success

24. How do we develop management skills? • Are management skills developable? • Where do we start? • What is the foundation/prerequisite to managerial skills’ development process? • How long does it take to master managerial skills?

25. Get to Know Yourself first • Management skills originate from self-management (self-reverence, self-control, self-knowledge, self-insight, self-understanding) • Self-management starts with self-awareness which lies at the heart of ability to master oneself (but it is not sufficient) • Setting priorities and goals, managing time and managing stress are build upon self-awareness

26. Self-awareness A hierarchy of personal life – management skills Setting priorities and goals Managing time Managing stress

27. Knowledge about the self • The knowledge we possess about ourselves (self-concept) is central to develop and improve management skills, however… • Seeking kowledge about the self may motivate improvement or inhibit it! • The sensitive line concept

28. Important areas of self-awareness • Managing diversity: Understanding individual differences • The ability to manage oneself and others: Emotional intelligence • Gathering and processing of information: Cognitive style • Core self-evaluation • Orientation towards change • Personal values

29. Purpose of understanding individual differences • Workforce is becoming more diverse (gender, age, culture, ethnicity) • Self-awareness helps to understand your own uniqueness – assumptions, trigger points, sensitive line, strengths and weaknesses • Helps diagnose, value and utilize differences in other people

30. Understanding individual differences • Evidence suggests that manager’s effectiveness is related to his ability to recognize, appreciate and utilize key differences among others • Ability to diagnose, appreciate and utilize fundamental differences among others with whom you interact

31. Understanding individual differences • Self knowledge helps to recognize own special gifts in comparisons to others and capitalize on our strengths • Being aware of different perspectives, needs, tendencies of other people is key part of personal maturity and emotional intelligence • Don’t we have a tendency to interact with individuals who are like we are?

32. Understanding individual differencesDon’t we have a tendency to interact with individuals who are like we are? pros cons Reduces creativity Reduces complex problem solving capacity Reduces the possibility to challenge authority figure Makes it more difficult to recognize changes in the environment Reduces the potential for novel ways to respond to diversity • Similarity makes it easier to interact with others – especially in the work place

33. How can we become more comfortable while managing diversity? Differences Distinctions Create social barrier Reinforce advantages or disadvantages Destroy trust among people Damages the process of developing self-awareness • Help us understand potential source of misunderstanding among people • Give us clues how we can work together more effectively

34. Interpersonal competencesemotional intelligence • Ability to recognize and control own emotions • Ability to diagnose and recognize others’ feelings • Ability to understand differences among emotions • Ability to respond appropriately to emotional cues • 3 validated measures to assess person’s emotional intelligence; hundreds not scientifically validated are available from different sources

35. These noncognitive skills and abilities are among the most important factors in explaining why some people succeed as leaders and others not Emotional intelligence Emotional competence Noncognitive capabilities and skills that affect human functioning • Ability to diagnose, understand and manage emotional cues

36. Why is emotional intelligence so important? • Evidence suggest that emotional competency level has dropped over time (IQ on the other hand increased almost 25 points over last 100 yrs) • Emotional intelligence has strong predictive power regarding success in management • IQ accounts for 10% of variance in job perfomrance and in life success • IQ + EI almost 40%

37. Gathering and processing of information: Cognitive style • We attend to information and act upon it at a time to certain degree • We all develop strategies for suppressing some kind of information and paying attention to other kinds – to our benefit • These strategies become habitual and ingrained and they result in a particular cognitive style

38. Cognitive styles Particular tendency to perceive, interpret, and respond to information in a certain way • The manner in which we collect information • The way in which we evaluate and act upon it • Cognitive styles are moldable: developable and changeable with conscious effort

39. Knowing style Attributes Potential flaws Slow to make decisions Less creative resistant to innovation Preference for one view instead of multiple • emphasis on facts, details and data; • seek clear solutions, • Seek rationality and validity of data • Show preference for a legitimate data • Careful, accurate, and precise in evaluating information

40. Planning style Attributes Potential flaws Resistant to change Don’t handle ambiguity well Intolerant of chaos Can’t handle illogical issues and unpredictability • Emphasis on structure, preparation, and planning • Seek information with clear outlines and well-developed • Systematic methodology for responding to information • Conform to procedures and maintain routine • Prefer organization and logic

41. Creating style Attributes Potential flaws Resistant to structure Inclination to break rules May make many mistakes Tend to ignore data and facts Tend to be disorganized • Emphasis on experimentation, non-rational thinking, and creativity • Seek novelty and handle ambiguity well • Spontaneous and quick to respond to information • Like action and restructuring of situations • Good brainstormers

42. Consequences of our cognitive styles • People use their preferred cognitive style no matter what type of problem the face (brainstorming vs. installing new decision-aiding computer system) • Cognitive style does not indicate intelligence or capability • Knowing the style is advantageous in many ways • CS can be modified as person engages in different activities, interacts with different people or manage in different environments

43. Orientation towards change: prerequisite for successful coping with change • Ability to process information is to some extent constrained by the fundamental attitude towards change • Why is it important…? Change • Stability is interpreted as stagantion • If the organization is not in the stage of transformation/revolution it is considered poorly managed • Managers can no longer afford the luxury of managing in the stable, constant environemnt • Rapid-fire decision making, without the benfit of adequate information and careful analysis is becoming the norm

44. Orientation towards change: two key attitudes associated with success in management roles Tolerance of ambiguity Locus of control Refers to the attitude people develop regarding the extent to which they are in control of their own destinies Internal locus of control: interpreting the reinforcements as being contingent upon one’s own action External locus of control: interpreting the reinforcements as being the product of outside forces • Difficulty coping with ambiguous situations, with unpredictable, complex circumstances, inadequate and unclear information (stimulus-rich and information-overloaded environments) • High ambiguity tolerance correlates + with cognitive complexity: more adaptive than opposite characteristics • One can learn to be more tolerant of ambiguity

45. Orientation towards change, cont. Tolerance of ambiguity Locus of control ILC managers: less alienated form work environment, more satisfied with work, experience less job strain, position mobility, tend to acquire leadership position in groups Firms led by internals engage in innovation, more risky projects, longer planning horizons, more leadership in the marketplace L of C can shift over time as a function of position held and experiences • High ambiguity tolerant individuals are better transmitters of information, more sensitive to internal characteristics of others, more adaptive and flexible under overloaded situations • HA mangers are more entrepreneurial, are able to screen less information in a complex environment and cope more effectively with major organizational change • Might have difficulty focusing on single important element of information

46. Personality: Core self-evaluation • differences among people are manifest in certain kinds of behaviors, attitudes, emotional reactions, and thought patterns • these unique patterns are persons personality usually referred to as “trait”, to the extent that it is relatively enduring and stable • sizeable portion of our behavioral makeup is learned and can be changed, that is we have some control over it and it may be altered with conscious effort

47. Personality – research • Three attribute of personality have gotten extremely high interest from scientists: self-esteem, locus of control, and neuroticism • Five aspects of personality are referred to as most important individual’s characteristics: Extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness

48. Core self-evaluation • Differences in scores on the five personality aspects can be explained by a more foundational personality factor: the fundamental evaluation each person has developed about him/herself - core self-evaluation • Core evaluations influence people’s appraisals about themselves, the world, and others but they operate subconsciously – for the most part people are not aware of their own core self-evaluations

49. Components of core self-evaluation • core self-evaluation sometimes referred to as positive self-regard; • comprised of four components: • self-esteem, • generalized self-efficacy, • neuroticism, • locus of control • In combination these 4 factors create a single, powerful latent attribute that lies at the foundation of personality manifestations

50. Effects of core self-evaluation • Each factor has a slightly different meaning but the shared meaning among them, core self-evaluation, assess the extent to which one possesses positive self-regard, feels valuable, capable, stable and in control • High CSE tend to be more satisfied with their job, perform more successfully on the job, have higher level of task motivation, persistence, productivity in the task, goal setting and commitment, and energized work behavior • Core self-evaluation is a strong predictor of personality differences, job satisfaction, job performance, and life happiness