CSS Business Administration Organizational Behaviour Syllabus

What two factors primarily determine personality?

Heredity (genetic factors) and environment, moderated by the situation.

What are the Big Five personality dimensions?

Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability (vs. Neuroticism), and Openness to Experience.

Which Big Five trait is the best overall predictor of job performance?

Conscientiousness.

What four personality types does the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) classify people along?

Extraverted/Introverted (E/I), Sensing/Intuitive (S/N), Thinking/Feeling (T/F), and Judging/Perceiving (J/P).

What is the 'Dark Triad' of socially undesirable traits?

Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.

Distinguish terminal values from instrumental values (Rokeach).

Terminal values are desirable end-states of existence (goals one wants to achieve); instrumental values are preferable modes of behaviour (means of achieving terminal values).

What are Hofstede's five dimensions of national culture?

Power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term vs. short-term orientation.

Define perception.

Perception is the process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.

What three sets of factors influence perception?

Factors in the perceiver (attitudes, motives, interests, experience, expectations), in the target (novelty, motion, sound, size, background), and in the situation (time, work setting, social setting).

What is attribution theory?

It explains how we judge people differently depending on whether we attribute their behaviour to internal (within the person's control) or external (situational) causes.

What three factors determine whether behaviour is attributed to internal or external causes?

Distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency.

What is the fundamental attribution error?

The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal/personal factors when judging others' behaviour.

What is self-serving bias in attribution?

The tendency to attribute one's own successes to internal factors while blaming failures on external factors.

Name common perceptual shortcuts used in judging others.

Selective perception, halo effect, contrast effects, projection, and stereotyping.

What is the halo effect?

Drawing a general impression of an individual based on a single characteristic, such as intelligence or appearance.

What are the three components of an attitude?

The cognitive component (evaluation/belief), the affective component (feeling/emotion), and the behavioural component (intention to act).

What is cognitive dissonance (Festinger)?

Any incompatibility or inconsistency between two or more attitudes, or between behaviour and attitudes, which individuals are motivated to reduce.

Define job satisfaction.

A positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.

What are the major job attitudes studied in OB?

Job satisfaction, job involvement, psychological empowerment, and organizational commitment (plus perceived organizational support and employee engagement).

What are the four employee responses to dissatisfaction in the Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Neglect framework?

Exit (leaving), Voice (actively trying to improve conditions), Loyalty (passively waiting for improvement), and Neglect (passively allowing conditions to worsen).

Distinguish emotions from moods.

Emotions are intense feelings directed at someone or something, are brief, and have specific causes; moods are less intense, more diffuse feelings that lack a clear contextual stimulus and last longer.

What is emotional labour?

An employee's expression of organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions at work, which can create dissonance between felt and displayed emotions.

Define emotional intelligence (EI).

A person's ability to perceive emotions in self and others, understand the meaning of these emotions, and regulate one's emotions accordingly.

Distinguish felt emotions from displayed emotions.

Felt emotions are an individual's actual emotions; displayed emotions are those that the organization requires workers to show and considers appropriate for the job.

What are the five stages of group development (Tuckman model)?

Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning.

What characterizes the Storming stage of group development?

Intragroup conflict: members accept the group's existence but resist the constraints it imposes on individuality; conflict over who controls the group.

What is the punctuated-equilibrium model of group development?

A model for temporary groups with deadlines: a phase of inertia, a transition at the midpoint that sparks major change, a second phase of inertia, and a burst of accelerated activity at the end.

List the key group properties (the structural variables) studied in OB.

Roles, norms, status, size, cohesiveness, and diversity.

How does group size affect performance and individual effort?

Smaller groups complete tasks faster and individuals perform better; larger groups are better at problem solving and gaining diverse input but tend to produce social loafing (reduced individual effort).

What conditions help build effective teams (key components)?

Context (adequate resources, leadership, climate of trust, performance rewards), composition (abilities, personality, role allocation, diversity, size, member flexibility, preference for teamwork), process (common purpose, specific goals, team efficacy, mental models, managed conflict, minimal social loafing).

What are the strengths and weaknesses of group decision making compared to individual decisions, and what are groupthink and groupshift?

Strengths: more complete information, diversity of views, greater acceptance. Weaknesses: time-consuming, conformity pressures, domination by few, ambiguous responsibility. Groupthink is conformity pressure that suppresses dissent and realistic appraisal; groupshift is the tendency for group discussion to exaggerate members' initial positions toward a more extreme (often riskier) stance.