Exam Questions | Organizational Behavior Exam Questions MCQs & Test Preparation

The right-most portion of the model contains the two primary individual outcomes of interest to organizational behavior researchers: job performance and organizational commitment.

Job Performance: Employee behaviors that contribute either positively or negatively to the accomplishment of organizational goals.

The theories and concepts found in OB are actually drawn from a wide variety of disciplines. Research on satisfaction, emotions, and team processes draws heavily from social psychology.

Social Loafing: A type of motivational loss resulting from members feeling less accountable for team outcomes relative to independent work that results in individually identifiable outcomes.

The two primary outcomes of interest to organizational behavior researchers: job performance and organizational commitment.

Organizational Commitment: An employee’s desire to remain a member of an organization.

The theories and concepts found in OB are actually drawn from a wide variety of disciplines. Research on job performance and individual characteristics draws primarily from studies in industrial and organizational psychology.

Job Performance: Employee behaviors that contribute either positively or negatively to the accomplishment of organizational goals.

When a firm expands into a new product segment, it is known as diversification.

Personal Clarification: Training in which members simply receive information regarding the roles of the other team members.

Strategic management focuses on the product choices and industry characteristics that affect an organization's profitability. A strategic management study can help in examining the relationship between a firm's diversification and its profitability.

Strategic Management: Field of study devoted to exploring the product choices and industry characteristics that affect an organization’s profitability.

Human resource management takes the theories and principles studied in OB and explores the applications of those principles in organizations.

Human Resource Management: Field of study that focuses on the applications of OB theories and principles in organizations.

The two primary goals managers have for their employees are high levels of job performance and organizational commitment. They want to maximize employees' job performance and retain dedicated, committed workers.

Maximum Performance: Performance in brief, special circumstances that demand a person’s best effort.

The theories and concepts found in OB are actually drawn from a wide variety of disciplines. Models from economics are used to understand motivation, learning, and decision making.

Compromise: A conflict resolution style by which conflict is resolved through give-and-take concessions.

There are several behavioral attributes that have been identified as among the best and worst behaviors exhibited by coworkers. Complaining about anything and everything is one of the worst behaviors identified.

Job satisfaction, stress, and motivation are key drivers of job performance and organizational commitment.

Job Performance: Employee behaviors that contribute either positively or negatively to the accomplishment of organizational goals.

The integrative model of OB was designed with the Rule of One-Eighth in mind.

Rule Of One-Eighth: The belief that at best one-eighth, or 12 percent, of organizations will actually do what is required to build profits by putting people first.

There is no "magic bullet" OB practice-one thing that in and of itself can increase profitability. Instead, the effective management of OB requires a belief that several different practices are important, along with a long-term commitment to improving those practices.

Ability: Relatively stable capabilities of people for performing a particular range of related activities.

Firms that undergo an IPO typically have shorter histories and need an infusion of cash to grow or introduce some new technology.

Stories: Anecdotes, accounts, legends, and myths passed down from cohort to cohort within an organization.

People also create socially complex resources, like culture, teamwork, trust, and reputation. These resources are termed "socially complex" because it's not always clear how they came to develop, though it is clear which organizations do (and do not) possess them.

Socially Complex Resources: Resources created by people, such as culture, teamwork, trust, and reputation. The source of competitive advantage is known, but the method of replicating the advantage is unclear.

According to the resource-based view of organizations, a firm's resources include resources related to organizational behavior, such as the knowledge, ability, and wisdom of the workforce, as well as the image, culture, and goodwill of the organization.

Resource-Based View: A model that argues that rare and inimitable resources help firms maintain competitive advantage.

If a firm has a bad enough product, people won't buy it, regardless of how happy, motivated, or committed the company's workforce is. Effective management of OB can help make a product get better, incrementally, over the long term.

Trust: The willingness to be vulnerable to an authority based on positive expectations about the authority’s actions and intentions.

The integrative model also acknowledges that employees do not work alone. Instead, they typically work in one or more work teams. Like the individual characteristics, these group mechanisms shape satisfaction, stress, motivation, trust, and learning.

Learning: A relatively permanent change in an employee’s knowledge or skill that results from experience.

The integrative model illustrates a number of individual mechanisms that directly affect job performance and organizational commitment. These include job satisfaction, motivation, trust, justice, and ethics.

Ethics: The degree to which the behaviors of an authority are in accordance with generally accepted moral norms.

Learning and decision making deal with how employees gain job knowledge and how they use that knowledge to make accurate judgments on the job.

Decision Making: The process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem.

Actually, research has demonstrated that national cultures affect many of the relationships in the integrative model of organizational behavior. There is very little that is known about OB that is "universal" or "culture free."

Culture: The shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and interpretations that result from common experiences of members of a society and are transmitted across generations.

Organizational behavior (OB) is a field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and ultimately improving the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations. OB can be contrasted with two other courses: human resource management and strategic management.

Organizational Behavior (OB): Field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and ultimately improving the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations.

Job satisfaction is an individual mechanism that captures what employees feel when thinking about their jobs and doing their day-to-day work.

Job Satisfaction: A pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences. It represents how a person feels and thinks about his or her job.

The resource-based view of organizations states that several elements make a resource valuable. One of these elements is rarity.

Resource-Based View: A model that argues that rare and inimitable resources help firms maintain competitive advantage.