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Principles of Organizational Behaviour Introduction
The nature of organizational behaviour A broad foundation in industrial psychology and sociology remains import for any business education: it forms the basis of business and management studies ad whole, like organizations strategy and human resources. This approach develop the individual perspective of psychology and the process perspective of sociology as complementary but separate frameworks. The study of groups is an area of common ground on which the individual and social perspective overlap.
The psychological perspective Psychology has its chief focus the individual and his interaction whit the environment. Psychology theory can be a great value on the workplace: to understand its behaviour and design training programmes, employee selection procedures and physical working environment.
The social-psychological perspective Interface between psychology and sociology, describes and explains how social structure can be internalized by individuals and this affect psychological make-up and behaviour. Roles must be regarded as rather like ‘scripts’ written for us by society; we many interpret them in individual and personal ways. Group conformity can be obtained simply via social rewards, like acceptance in the group, or through the threat of negative sanctions, such and ostracism or ridicule. The dynamics of groups must be understood so that optimal use may be made of the skills possessed by decision-makers. In addition, there is now increasing interest in decision-making situations: are the small group of influential or technically qualified people that take the most important decisions.
The sociological perspective An approach drawn from sociology’s full rage can very engage with management interests. The explanations that sociology provides are based on the so-called duality between structure and action: society consists of a ‘world out there’ existing independently, but together, structure and action account for the opposing forces of stability and change present in all human affairs. As Thompson has asserted, we now have a ‘new sociology of work’ in which radical theories and existing tradition are joined in an exciting and fruitful debate.
Social structure (social class) The class structure has always been one of the chief interest of social science and explains much about the power relations in society and the control of wealth and authority. Class seen as a relationship : explain the issue of conflict in the workplace. Class thought of in occupational terms : the power to attract material rewards and status. Sexual divisions define important patterns of inequality and expressions of social identity.
Human action and meaning Social situations are complex, many-sided events, giving ample scope for different groups affected to perceive them in quite different ways. The meanings that people assign take on a concrete reality become self-fulfilling social facts because form the basis on which people act.
Social conflict it is a form of social action that must be explained in its own right.
Chapter 1 -Learning
Theories of learning are important for:
- Training designed with an awareness of how people learn is more effective;
- Understand what differentiates excellent from merely competent individual;
- Identify what individual skills a job needs and provides
Learning is the cognitive and physical activity given rise to a relatively permanent charge in knowledge, skills or attitude. Declarative knowledge is factual information; Procedural knowledge involves understanding processes. Training is the organized effort to assist learning through instruction and practice.
Theories of learning There are two major approaches:
- Stimulus-response theories focus on the external environment factors reinforcing learning;
- Cognitive theories emphasize the active mental modelling of the processes to capture the complexity of skill acquisition;
Stimulus-response theories I Pavlov Æ experiment of dogs conditioned to respond to the neutral stimulus. UCS (unconditioned stimulus)Æ unconditioned response (UCR) Æ reflex behaviour CS (conditioned stimulus) Æ UCS Æ UCR Æ learning trial CS (conditioned stimulus) Æ CR Æ learned behaviour CS Æ no CR at all Æ zero extinction
- Generalization: organism’s capacity to respond in a similar way to similar stimuli.
- Discrimination: organism’s capacity to respond differently to similar stimuli. Conditioning provide us patterns, that can be the result of a single extremely traumatic event and can form the basis of what is now termed post-traumatic stress disorder.
Classical conditioning is useful in explaining behaviour mediated by the autonomic nervous system and has implication for task performance and training in organizations. Secondary conditioning occurs when CS-CR connection is so well established that a CS acts as a UCS in subsequent conditioning.
Stimulus-response theories II: operant condition An operant condition is a unit of behaviour. Skinner believed that the environment shapes an individual’s behaviour. He believed that the most powerful shaping mechanism is reinforcement: positive reinforcement occurs when a pleasant stimulus follows a response; negative reinforcement reduces the intensity or removes an unpleasant stimulus. It produces two types of learning: x escape: allows individuals to escape from their conditioned distress. x avoidance: allows individuals to avoid supervisors and reduce the threat of anxiety- loaded encounters. Skinner believed that escape and avoidance could explain a number of social phenomena. Negative reinforcement decrease the strength of responses: x punishment involves an aversive stimulus following a response: it can cause anxiety, hostility, and resentment in an individual. x omission describe the removal of pleasant stimuli after a response;
x determine what reinforces are supporting unwanted behaviours; x estimate what stimulus will reinforce the desired behaviour; Implementing the technique takes a good deal of commitment and skill.
Programmed instruction : Skinner believed that teaching objectives needed to be specified in very precise operant terms with constant reinforcement provided to learners. He believed an incorrect response was a wasted opportunity for providing reinforcement and programmes should be designed to make the chances of a learner making a mistake ad close to zero as possible. Linear programmes : material has to be broken up into a large number of frames, each containing a small amount of information. The disadvantage is that learners are all presented with the same order of frames whatever their previous knowledge may be.
Branching programmes create more flexible instruction by using errors diagnostically.
Programmed instruction enables organizations to specify terminal performance :
- the pre-entry behaviour, the level of competence required before;
- the criterion test at the end of the programme; It enables employees to use free available for training ad and when it occurs. It allows the slow learner to learn at his or her own peers. It is thought to be highly cost-effective.
Programmed instruction have some disadvantages:
- Producing a good course is very difficult;
- Learners do not always fully understand;
Nowadays Skinner’s vision lives on in modified form as computer-based training.
Cognitive approaches Researchers have argued that stimulus-response theories are overly mechanistic and reductive Æ break down complex behaviour into small stimulus-response unit in order to explain how they are acquired. Individuals do not respond directly to the environment, as stimulus-response theories assume, but to the models they construct of it. Critics of stimulus-response theories have claimed that we need to develop more holistic units of analysis and accept that internal mental processes play an important part in the learning process. Skill in psychology are seen as natural units of activity that cut across task boundaries. Transferable skill are particularly important. Cognitive theorists believe that improvements in performance can be related to changes in the model people possess of the system they are interacting with. Gibson (1968) suggested that at first we learn the range of stimulus inputs. If we are able to relate a specific input to the entire range we can understand it better. Learning affordances: understanding what meaning or value an input has and what its implications for action are. Gibson suggested individuals will then establish the covariations between inputs from different perceptual system.
Constancies: appear to be learned early on in life (can break down and need to be reacquired). Without them, the visual world would be extremely confusing. Constancies As Hammond (2000) argues, constancies represent one of the most fundamental discovery: they enable us to respond to the significance of objects for action rather than the sensory input they provide us with. Hammond defines stress as the disruption of constancy.
Next our perceptual system incorporated what Gibson termed the invariants in events : the concept of categorization has important practical implications. Constructing models of the environment which categorize and store inputs also reduces the demand on memory. Our primary memory is comprised of short-term memory and working memory capacity:
- a simple storage buffer.
- more complex, consist of both storage and attentional components and to possess distinct perceptual and verbal capacities. The function is to maintain memory representations in the face of distractions. Hockey described it as a kind of mental workspace which can be used to maintain information while actions are being carried out or compare with items already stored in long-term memory. Primary memory is a fragile store and is easily disrupted, like by fatigue and stress and appears to have a limited capacity: seems to be between 5 and 9 chunks of information. Our secondary memory houses our long-term storage capacity and thus any previous learning: has an almost infinite storage capacity. This division implies that at least two processes are involved in the storage of information of the brain cells. It is useful to think of skill in term of : 1. horizontal dimension : refers to the organization of activity over time. The correct sequencing and timing of responses may vary in specific contexts and will depend on macro-cognitive learning. 2. vertical dimension : reflect the hierarchical organization of skills:
- subroutines : so well learned that can be retrieved from secondary memory and employed without having consciously to control the activity.
- operating programmes : convert the contents of our models into behavioural outputs by triggering patterns of subroutines. Can be relegated subroutine status.
- executive programmes : select the skills most appropriate to a situation.
Cognitive Task Analysis uses structured and semi-structured interviews with individuals and groups, observations, and think aloud techniques to identity the critical categories, cues, and problem-solving strategies experts employ. Skill theory has considerably improved our understanding of the way in which people acquire complex behaviour.
Political and organizational has developed an interest in how people acquire skills: research into training effectiveness and transfer of learning has focused on: features of courses: they need to be perceived and relevant (by internal marketing) and useful, to be customized and be based on a mixture of cognitive and stimulus- response learning Æ both forms are involved in acquiring complex behaviours:
- Stimulus-response theory has increased awareness of the need to identify key operants and provide opportunities for reinforcing them.
- Cognitive theories have emphasized the importance of facilitating the selection, encoding, and active organization of material. features of individuals: Warr and Gardner (1998) suggest key difference in learners is in the effectiveness of the learning strategy they adopt. Learning strategies are strong predictors of transfer of training. Training can be designed to improve learning self-efficacy: an individual confidence in his own learning abilities. features of the environment: management can create a transfer-of-training climate which helps reinforce and sustain new skills.
x Describe the differences between classical and operant conditioning.
x What are scheduled of reinforcement, which are more effective and why?
x List some everyday examples of each of the reinforcement schedules.
x What relevance do operant and classical conditioning have to the explanation of workplace behaviour?
x To what extent can there be a ‘technology of behaviour’?
x Why is learning important to modern economies?
x In reality, workplace learning is a mixture of both cognitive and behavioural learning – discuss.
x How can the transfer of training be encouraged?
x What are learning strategies and how might they help the design of training programmes?
Chapter 2 – Stress
Skills have limits: when exceed our adaptive capacities, we experience the stress. Stress is not simply an issue for academic dispute: it exists and has well-established cause. Stress-related symptoms are just as frequently caused by factors like shift working or excessive fatigue which are typical if manual jobs. The cost and prevalence of stress and stress-related symptoms are huge: the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), an agency of the UK government, suggested the costs to the UK could be as much as £3,75 billion.
x Define stress essentially as a response to external events it is too simplistic: Hans Selye adopted this view and observed an identical series of biochemical changes in a number of organisms adapting to a variety of environmental conditions. This series of changes is the general adaptation syndrome that can operate at different levels, from a subsystem to an entire organism, and consists of:
1. Stage of alarm : the organism orients to the demand the environment is making on it and starts to experience it as threatening. This state cannot be maintained for long; 2. Stage of resistance : the organism musters the resources to cope with the demand. If the demand continues for too long these adaptive resources are worn out; 3. Stage of exhaustion in which serious damage can occur. Selye has created the field of psychoneuroimmunology : an interdisciplinary area of research exploring the varied and complex way immune system reacts to stressors.
x Believe that the sources of stress could impact uniformly on individuals does not take into account enormous individual differences in the ability to handle stressful circumstances.
x Events in the environment are not necessarily stressful: before individuals must perceive them as a threat. The stress experience could be determined by the appraisal of what is at stake and the analysis of the resources available to meet the demand. The two major related problems are - the lack of clarity;
- the practical measurement: necessitate a more rigorous approaches to its measurement. The two major attractive facets of the appraisal concept are
- a demonstrated importance of appraisal in mediating the stress response;
- it broadens the notion of stress to include psychological factors, as personality variables; Appraisal are often divided in:
- primary: individual becomes aware something is at stake and defines the situation as potentially armful;
- secondary: the individual considers the coping resources he or she has available.
x The current concept of stress is an extension of the appraisal hypothesis. It assumes stress is transactional rather than interactional : this perspective emphasizes the evaluative processes through which an individual makes sense of stressors ( the demands in terms of events) which in turn determine strain ( the somatic, psychological, and behavioural responses ). Stress is the process life: is an ongoing process which involves individuals interacting with their environment. The P-E fit theoretical models utilizes this transactional perspective: it suggests stress is the result of a lack of fit between a person ( in terms of their personality, aptitudes, and abilities ) and the environment, and a consequent inability to cope effectively with the various demands that it makes of him or her. When the person-environment fit is exact, depression is minimal.
TYPES OF STRESS AT WORK
1. Role stressors A role is the set of expectations others have of a role incumbent’s behaviour. a. Role ambiguity : its essence is information deficiency. It reduces organizational commitment, job involvement and job satisfaction. It increases reported tension, anxiety and the intention to leave an organization.
b. Boundary-spanning roles involve taking the organization activities to the outside world. It is exposed to numerous novel and unanticipated problems, as he or she attempts to develop relationships with different types of client: what can make the role difficult is the availability of hard performance data, the pressure for results and ignore the delicate processes involved in building relationship with customers.
c. Single role conflict: various components of a role are difficult to reconcile, as in the first-line supervisory roles. Returning to former position could resolve the conflict.
1.d. Multiple role conflict : one role clash with another, as home-work, causing burnout.
1.e. Work role transitions : feeling a new, uncertain environment as traumatic and stressful.
1.f. Entrapment: individuals feel trapped in roles, as experienced in middle age: career paths blocked leads to frustration, apathy, and eventually to burnout. Burnout : the extreme emotional state involving the presence of these factors:
- Emotional exhaustion : originally seen at the core of the construct, now seen as generic.
- Cynism : apply to work, not just to human factor.
- Professional efficacy : this factor refers to an individual having negative expectations of his or her effectiveness across the range of work tasks. Burnout research is affected by the causality problem: a fuller appreciation of the causes and consequences of burnout remains to be developed. 2. Decision-making stress Decisional stressors represent a very potent form of workplace stressors. Decisional stress include categorical thinking, forgetting, misinterpreting information and not thinking beyond the immediate decision. Janis suggested that individuals attempting to deal with decisional stress can display:
- unconflicted adherence : where behaviour is unchanged, and information about the risks of continuing in the same way is ignored;
- unconflicted change : without making contingency plans and without psychologically preparing for setback;
- defensive avoidance : where the individual procrastinates but eventually chooses the least difficult alternative;
- hypervigilance : involves searching frantically for a way out of the conflict and seizing upon any plan which seems to offer an immediate solution. Janis saw ‘time pressure’ as the main cause of it.
- vigilance : a careful search for relevant information followed by a thorough appraisal of the alternatives. This is the only one which involves enough cognitive work to meet the criteria of true decision-making.
Individual differences moderate the impact of stressors to fix their health outcomes:
x Self-esteem (self-efficacy): this is a well-established personality trait. Brockner suggested that individuals with:
- high self-esteem have behavior plasticity : psychologically less susceptible to external events.
- low self-esteem are more uncertain about the correctness of their thoughts, feelings, and actions and so are more reliant on external cues.
This individual differences may impact in determining the adopted coping strategy:
- Low self-esteem may lead to more events in the environment being seen as stressful and selecting less effective coping strategies.
x Negative affectivity (NA): high scorer are more pessimism, less resilient, prone to more negative moods. They experience more stressors in the environment following:
- a direct link: in experiencing life more vividly, they react more stressors;
- an indirect link: tend to be located in jobs which are less attractive and more stressful. A burnout hypothesis suggests that high NA is effect rather than cause.
Type As and type Bs In 1959 Friedman and Rosenman operationalized a behavior pattern. The type A construct is one of the best-established products of stress research. Individuals who fall into the type A category display:
- a strong and sustained drive to archive poorly defined and self-imposed goals;
- an intense desire to compete;
- a desire for recognition and promotion;
- involvement in numerous and varied activities which have deadlines;
- habitually fast completion of physical and mental functions;
- high levels of mental and physical alertness.
- tense facial and body muscle tone, rapid body movements,
- hand- or teeth-clenching,
- excessive gesturing,
- explosive speech characteristics.
- A behavior to be particularly predictive of CHD: a. Time urgency; b. Competitive and hard-driving style (they deadlines on themselves); c. Suppression of symptoms: (caused by hard work and self-imposed deadlines); d. Hostility and aggressiveness: they are more impatient, aggressive, and irritable.
Type As increased risk of CHD often confronts them with the choice of either curtailing their ambitions and accepting health-damaging physiological responses.
- need for control : perceived lack of control causes intense frustration.
- Caused in situations in which they feel challenged, under pressure, or threatened.
- At work, they are positively correlated with occupational status.
Type Bs individual displays less striving, aggression, hostility, and competitiveness. Interestingly, they are most prevalent at the top organizations.
While these are extremes, most people fall into one category, 40% type A and 60% type B.
Absence, illness, accidents, and stuff traumas can be the direct or indirect result of stress and have a substantial cost: According to the Confederation of British Industry in the UK suggested that stress was the second most prevalent cause of sickness absenteeism. Interest in stress management has burgeoned in recent years: the International Stress Management Association institute created for these involved in stress management, has become part of the consultancy industry. Coping strategies are the cognitive and behavioural efforts to master, reduce or tolerate the internal or external demands that are created by the stressful transaction. They could be active ( changing the environment ) or passive ( distorting the view of reality ). Essentially, individuals adopt one of these strategies:
- Appraisal focused : a conscious logical analysis of what is troubling them:
- examine causes and effects or thinking about what has changed in their life;
- cognitive redefinition accept their situation but attempt to find something positive in it;
- cognitive avoidance : denying the problem.
- Focused strategies : individuals actively tackle the problem causing their stress. - obtaining guidance talking the problem through with friends or family. - direct action: a. develop alternative rewards, more readily obtainable. b. Role innovation introducing new skills or procedures
- Emotion-focused to manage the anxieties:
- affective regulation stiff upper lip (tr. restare impassibili) - resigned acceptance individuals can stoically accept the situation _;
- using palliative_ as smoking to find problems more tolerable; - emotional discharge letting off steam (tr. sfogarsi)
Some coping strategies involve anti-social and self-defeating behaviours.
Organizational focus (primary) Individual focus (secondary) Application screening and selection Assertiveness training Career and succession planning strategies Biofeedback Career guidance Fitness and exercise training Æ cross resistant effect Continuous training Imagery training Courses to improve management skills to recognize the symptoms of stress in others
Individual counselling
Mentoring and coaching Positive self-talk Organizing the work task and the work environment (improving communications, autonomy, participation, defining work roles, and ensuring manageable workloads)
Progressive muscle relaxation : generally a PMR session start with tensing and relaxing all the muscles in the body at once.
Promotion and transfer screening Specific medical examination before appointment Sick-leave policy Stress education and weight control Staff attitude surveys Support after traumatic events
Using multi-method approaches that combine more techniques produce more consistent and positive effects than single-technique approaches; the most effective approaches are those that mix the two domains ( primary and secondary ).
CONCLUSION Stress is the outcome of some of the dominant characteristics of modern market economies-uncertainty, high demand, and low control. It is not restricted to certain occupational groups, some of the most stressful jobs are those where demand are high and control and social support is low.
- Is there a “stress-prone” personality?
- Is too much or too little stimulation at work inherently stressful?
- Is stress largely a white-collar/managerial problem?
- How can roles become stressful?
- Could stress largely be designed out of most jobs?
- What makes worksite stress-management programmes more likely to be effective?
A factor analysis identify the smallest number of factors which need to be postulated to explain the pattern of correlations: it is a way of summarizing a correlation matrix.
A factor is considered important when has a eigenvalue more than one. Eigenvalues are often displayed in a “scree plot”.
The two major problems with factors analysis are:
- Interpretation: factors can be regarded as causes;
- Explanation: for Burt and others the objects of factors analysis was to describe rather than explain.
For Burt and others the object of factor analysis was to describe rather than explain.
The big five fundamental factors that can synthetize personality data. This model represents a significant contribution to the understanding of workplace behaviour. Taken together, these five broad factors provide an adequate account of the structure of personality and are used across a wide range of applications from academic research to employee selection and development.
- Extraversion-introversion is a dimension normally distributed. The extravert is essentially sociable, energetic, socially confident, and cheerful, whereas the introvert is more quiet, self-contained, serious-minder, and somewhat aloof. Extraversion-introversion is a dimension which is assumed to follow the normal distribution. Extraverts are seen as more effectively engaged with the world than introverts: they have more capacity for joy and pleasure. The traits seen as defining extraversion are: x Venturesomeness: more socially confident, adventurous and thick-skinned. x Affiliativeness: more warm, friendly, and attentive; x Energy: prefer to have too much to do, enjoy work providing variety opportunities for travel or multi-tasking. x Ascendance: tend to be more assertive and more dominant. The cortex is kept alert by the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS). Hans Eysenck argued that extraverts have a sluggish ARAS, introverts an overactive one: extraverts are less receptive to incoming signals, less likely to acquire conforming and conscientious behaviour patterns and have micro-sleeps. The ability of extraverts to generate interaction means they are able to enhance a team's cohesion and to be seen as a leader.
- Neuroticism - Stability is a dimension normally distributed. High scorers on neuroticism scale report a high level of negative affect Æ life and work have a more negative emotional tone. The traits correlating with the factor are: x Anxiety : experienced as a state but also as a trait (= often being anxious); x Tenseness : more tense and irritable x Low self-esteem : less arrogant and have more sense of urgency; x Guilt-proneness : self-critical and self-blaming Æ this may minimize the risk of failure; x Emotional control : they experience strong Æ at work they could give up x Irrationality : problems can take on an importance not proportional to their reality. They overly mistrustful of other and become suspicious of other people's motives. x Shyness : the heightened anxiety experienced may load onto social encounters; x Moodiness : the high scorer are more subject to considerable mood swings;
Neuroticism-stability has its roots in our biological and genetic make-up of an indidual's automatic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is the part of the nervous system not directly under conscious control that carries a number of reflex activities and also involved in certain emotional responses. The high scores
- inherit a labile ANS which responds vigorously to stress and also takes some time to return to its baseline
- experience more spontaneous activity, that is, shifts in activation which are not clearly attributable to external events.
Ayduck and Mischel (2002) argue that 'stupid' behaviour in 'smart' people occurs when individuals find it difficult to control their affective states.
- Conscientious-expedient emerges out of associations between smaller traits such as obedience, persistence, impulse control, planning and organizing, perfectionism, and integrity (honesty). The positive relationship between conscientiousness and job performance is the single most robust finding in personality research. The high scorers:
- are dominated by the need to live up to other people's and self-imposed expectations;
- have a strong sense of obligation and duty;
- tend to adopt a more systematic and procedural approach to work.
- can become overly perfectionistic and obsessional.
Low scorers are less organized and plan less, tend to be more flexible and responsive, coping better with turbulent environments and fuzzy (tr. indefiniti) work roles.
- Open to experience - closed to experience High scorer :
- typically are artists, poets, or indeed anyone with a rich inner world (a culture);
- have highly developed aesthetic interests which set them apart from low scorers.
- tend to be more analytical and intellectual in the approach to life and work,
- have intellect
- are potentially more imaginative and creative problem-solvers
Low scorers are more practical individuals, are more 'hands on' at work, with a more down to earth and often more productive approach.
- Agreeable-hostile factor captures differences in an individual's style of interacting with others. Low scorers are more irritable, mistrustful, headstrong, tough-minded, and hostile, not to accept what others tell them at face value and have an increased risk of peripheral artery disease. The 'pro-social' behaviour of high scorers makes them natural team players and desire to maintain positive relations. Agreeableness can be understood as a concern for the welfare of others and the desire to fulfil social obligations in order to avoid disrupting relationships. In management settings high scorers are able to fulfil their desire to be of service to the community and impact positively on the quality of life of individuals.
