Student Resources
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Chapter Summary
Chapter 1
We began this chapter by describing some of the major global changes that are shaping the nature of work in the 21st century and requiring increased flexibility in the operations of organizations. It is critical to study organizations as systems and to focus on systems thinking given the diverse and sustained contact between individuals and organizations around the world, mediated by electronic communication systems. We identified important features of systems that apply to organizations, such as the interrelationship of all parts of a system and systems change in response to feedback. We distinguished between macro and microsystems and presented our framework for understanding organizations.
In describing the 21st-century world, we made note of the ever-increasing world population that impacts all organizations and individuals. Thereafter, we turned to a brief history of industrial/organizational psychology and identified major questions that need to be addressed by I/O psychologists in the 21st century.
Chapter 2
This chapter focused on tool sets to promote understanding of individuals and organizations as systems. The first tool set, instrumental forces, allows us to see individuals and organizations as systems and promotes systems thinking. We defined and then examined dispositional (trait) and situational (contextual) forces that powerfully influence individual and organizational actions and experiences. We also noted that organizations exhibit and require variation, that organizations, like individuals, have problems that provide a platform for organizational learning. We also examined rationality and emotionality as components of organizations as systems. Organizational learning arises from learning by individual members, but is also much more, because it is shared learning with other members that becomes embedded in the organization by inclusion in standard operating manuals and procedures as well as through other forms of organizational documentation.
The second tool set, methods of study, includes five specific techniques used in industrial/organizational psychology: the case study, archival research, the field experiment, the survey-questionnaire, and the laboratory experiment. The third set of tools, used to prepare an organizational snapshot, includes a preliminary portrait of an organization constructed from collected information about organizational structure, demography, power and politics, and networks. The systematic use of all three of these tool sets can help us better understand and manage organizations.
Chapter 3
This chapter introduced organizational culture as the unifying and shared pattern of feelings, actions, and thoughts that bind together organizational members and distinguish them from non-members. Organizational culture determines the responses of organizational members to problems of external adaptation and internal integration that confront all organizations around the globe.
Organizational learning and organizational culture are intimately linked to each other, and this linkage provides the bases for instituting organizational cultural change. The chapter presented a specific change strategy with detailed steps for implementing the strategy, which can be applied in a wide variety of organizations. Workplace culture influences the financial and productivity outcomes of an organization, which means that organizational culture is an important factor for companies participating in the global marketplace.
A solid understanding of organizational culture yields many dividends for the individual member, department, or unit within an organization, as well as for the overarching organization, by making plain what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in the organization. This understanding minimizes the unnecessary expenditure of attention and emotions about what, how, when, and why individual members should do, think, value, feel, and act in the workplace.
Chapter 4
Effective leadership involves a mix of three features: traits, behaviors, and situations. Key traits include high energy, stress tolerance, integrity, and emotional maturity. These traits are coupled with strong social rather than personal power orientation and sound technical, conceptual, and interpersonal skills in successful leaders. Leadership behaviors include the broad domains of consideration (or people-oriented behaviors) and initiating structure (or task-oriented behaviors). Situational or contingency models of leadership include the path–goal, situational leadership theory and the cognitive resources theory, each of which emphasizes different situational features that moderate leadership behaviors.
We examined empirical findings of leadership, all of which indicate that leadership is a mix of traits, behaviors, and learning that leaders use to read distinctive situations in organizations. We examined the models and strategies of charismatic and transformational leadership and evaluated their effectiveness on follower and organizational performances.
Leaders wield power in an organization, and we looked at the types and sources of this power. Power arises from the organizational position held by a member as well as from unique features of the individual, including expert and referent (personal traits) power sources. We examined the relationship between authority and power and between power and organizational politics. We also examined a variety of influence tactics, some of which were identified hundreds of years ago by Niccolo Machiavelli and are still highly applicable in contemporary organizations around the world. We briefly considered the relationship between empowering followers and the centrality of individual and collective efficacies to empowerment. Lastly, we examined a variety of leadership issues including empowerment, and leadership stereotyping, and we reflected on servant leadership and signs of narcissistic leadership.
Chapter 5
This chapter focused on barriers to participation in the workplace that confront women, people of color, and sexual minorities, as members of these groups represent an increasing proportion of the workforce each day. We presented a definition of workforce diversity and the role of privilege in barriers to work for women, persons of color, and sexual minorities. We also presented a brief description of the laws, court cases, and executive orders that have been implemented in the United States to strengthen and promote equality for all persons. We distinguished between quid pro quo and hostile environment forms of sexual harassment and identified several tactics that can reduce sexual harassment in the workplace. Lastly, we defined the four types of organizational justice and indicated that they are the foundation for ethical actions and programs.
Chapter 6
This chapter focused on the strategies and specific actions involved in enhancing an individual’s chances of getting and keeping a job. We first described the interactions between a job applicant and the organization that determine if an applicant will be hired. Then we examined the role of performance assessment in keeping the job for which the individual was hired. We also described the socialization processes and training used by organizations to facilitate the integration of newly hired employees into the culture and operation of the organization.
The second part of this chapter focused on performance assessment, which requires a systematic, accurate, and fair appraisal system for evaluating people’s work. We presented some of the major concepts and trends in performance evaluation. We reported research findings that indicate how systems thinking led to the development of performance evaluation techniques (such as 360-degree feedback) that explicitly seek out multiple perspectives to develop evaluations that are more complete, accurate, and useful.
Although job performance is ultimately a matter of the employee succeeding in his or her duties and responsibilities, we reviewed research on personality differences that indicate an association with individual and overall organizational success. We presented some recent research on the impact of dispositional variables on work performance, we identified some contemporary issues in performance management, and we concluded with a brief treatment of protected groups and adverse impact in hiring, performance evaluation, and promotion.
Chapter 7
Teams utilize two key elements to attain the cooperation necessary for quality outcomes: (1) a shared goal or an understanding of what makes teamwork interdependent and (2) an appreciation for the role each team member assumes to coordinate work with the other team members and maximize group synergy. We explained in this chapter that optimal cooperation is attained when integrity is intact or that which makes the unit unique is in balance. Individual integrity requires intragroup receptivity to feedback exchange, and the higher the group entitativity or confidence, the better the communication needed to keep individuals and the group in balance. Therefore, we advise teams to maintain high entitativity as a priority for quality teamwork, which is sustained through strong relations, full team engagement, and management support.
Chapter 8
In this chapter, we first reviewed some of the important models for motivation, including Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, equity, self-determination theory, and goal setting. We then turned our attention to the centrality of goal setting for understanding the relationship between motivation and productivity. We considered various ways that people live up to their own expectations and the expectations of others by means of several different types of self-fulfilling prophecies, referred to as the Pygmalion effect, the Golem effect, and the Galatea effect. We examined the highly subjective but compelling experience of flow, where activity is so engrossing and engaging that time literally seems to fly. Lastly, we discussed two self-defeating behaviors, social loafing and procrastination, and offered advice for preventing the dynamics that render a workforce vulnerable to these forms of system dysfunction.
Chapter 9
Decision making in organizations is a social process that consists of process and outcome components. Organizational decisions are programmed (routine) or non-programmed (unique and infrequent); the former requires increasingly refined decision processes, whereas the latter requires strategies that contribute to the generation of new and creative alternatives.
We described five models of organizational decision making in which decisions arise from primarily social or group processes: the rational model, the bounded rationality model, the participation model, the political model, and the garbage can model. We also introduced groupthink and the Abilene paradox, both of which are examples of dysfunctional group decision making. Specific strategies were identified to prevent or minimize these widespread and frequently occurring organizational anomalies. A review of electronic brainstorming, nominal group, and stepladder techniques provided sound techniques to generate good ideas. We examined moral disengagement, its antecedents, and their relationship to unethical decision making and identified strategies to reduce unethical decision making at work. We also presented findings that identify dispositional and situational forces that impact ethical decision making, which in turn can provide principles to construct intervention programs at work to enhance ethical decision making.
Lastly, we provided several decision-making tools, including communication channels and feedback loop systems, that can help an organization strengthen relations among its members, facilitate the integrity of interdependent work, and enhance collective decision making.
Chapter 10
In this chapter we explained how quality distributive negotiation and integrative negotiation produce good outcomes when appreciated for their strengths and limitations, while position-based negotiation threatens to compromise optimal gain because it does not build relations and it threatens to alienate participants. You should remember that a well-planned BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) can give parties the confidence to maximize gains during negotiation. The chapter also discussed situational and dispositional forces that complement or challenge quality organizational negotiation, such as orientation to power, stereotyping, comfort with delaying decision making, constructive use of emotion and positive framing, multicultural variance, and cultural competency.
Chapter 11
This chapter discussed how proactive practices preserve relations and correct system imbalances that otherwise initiate and perpetuate organizational conflict. We explained how being transparently accountable for mistakes opens opportunity for learning and continuous improvement on current practices. Since organizational and employee resilience rests on remaining in balance in an ever-changing environment, we advocated for removing barriers that block adaptation to change and/or internal integration. Lastly, we encouraged employees and management to constructively address disruptive behaviors and negative bias to preserve the healthy relations that are essential for collective decision making and sustaining a cooperative work environment.
Chapter 12
In this chapter we presented the “change to” or imposed change and the “changing” or participatory change models of organizational development. We discussed how regularly scanning the horizon to gain insight into ways to advance worker relations and quality production puts an organization at the head of the line to take action when opportunity arises. People in a learning culture support the needs of their colleagues, and they embrace the idea of taking responsibility for change as they model transparent acknowledgment of falling short of goals and use insights gained from mistakes to do better next time. We described a proactive approach to organizational learning and development and explained the benefits of resolving conflict close to the site of its implementation. Leadership and management actively support the innovative work of employees, and the full organization practices a mantra of “one for all, and all for one.” Guided by the laws of nature as well as by those of humankind, today’s organizations use systems thinking to retain resilience in the exciting, fast-paced world of our 21st century.
Learning Objectives
Chapter 1
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Identify the importance of work in the 21st century for individuals, families, and society.
- Describe organizations as systems and identify the core tendencies of social systems as they apply to organizations.
- Define systems thinking and indicate the advantages this type of problem solving affords analytical thinking and the study of organizations.
- Define a global organization and explain why it is critical to study these organizations.
- Discuss the history of industrial/organizational psychology and specify some of the important topics being studied by I/O psychologists.
Chapter 2
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Describe the first tool set, instrumental forces, which assess the impact of key dispositional and contextual variables and rationality-emotionality on work performances.
- Identify and distinguish between independent and frequently measured dependent variables in the study of organizations.
- Describe the second tool set, methods of study, which includes five frequently employed techniques to study organizations.
- Define measurement and distinguish between descriptive (shrinking data chunks into meaningful wholes) and inferential statistics (reaching beyond limited observations to larger groupings or populations.
- Describe the third tool set, which generates an organizational snapshot, constructed by the systematic collection of data of four key domains of organizations—organizational structure, demography, power and politics, and networks—to produce a preliminary assessment of the organization.
Chapter 3
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Define organizational culture and distinguish it from organizational climate.
- Identify the three levels of organizational culture: artifacts, values, and basic assumptions.
- Understand the relationship between individual and organizational learning and organizational culture.
- Identify the origins of organizational culture.
- Understand the function of organizational culture in addressing the problems of external adaptation and internal integration.
- Use a directory of organizational culture derived from organizational documents, manuals, ceremonies, rites, rituals, and stories to describe an organizational culture.
- Explain how a learning culture orchestrates organizational resilience, strengthening relationships between individual and organizational learning.
- Learn specific applied strategies to change an organizational culture.
Chapter 4
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Define leadership as a relational process and a mix of forces of traits, behaviors, and situations.
- Differentiate between leaders and managers.
- Describe the trait, behavior, and situational models of leadership and discuss empirical findings associated with each model.
- Define and distinguish between charismatic and transformational leaders.
- Define and identify sources of power in organizations.
- Learn the organizational political strategies of coalition building and establishing control over important decision processes.
- Define Machiavellianism and learn a variety of influence tactics for effective leadership in dynamic environments.
- Define empowerment and identify the role of individual and collective efficacies for empowering followers.
- Understand the issues, dynamics, and strategies arising from issues of leadership and gender, and servant and narcissistic leadership.
Chapter 5
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Define diversity, inclusion, and the role of privilege as a major barrier to workforce participation.
- Describe the barriers to entrance and inclusion in decision-making processes for women, persons of color, and sexual minorities in the workforce.
- Discuss regulatory mechanisms of laws, court cases, and executive orders to promote and strengthen equality of opportunity in hiring, promoting, and other personnel decisions.
- Describe sexual harassment in the workplace and distinguish between quid pro quo and hostile environment forms of sexual harassment.
- Identify tactics that can reduce sexual harassment in the workplace and summarize two U.S. Supreme Court decisions that resulted in major settlements in favor of women plaintiffs and also strengthened further sexual harassment prevention programs.
- Define the four types of organizational justice and describe the connection between organizational justice and ethics in the workplace.
Chapter 6
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Explain the role of biographical data and letters of recommendation in the hiring process.
- Discuss the differences between structured and unstructured interviews and identify self-presentation tactics that are useful during interviews.
- Identify strategies for applying for a job in the context of web-based recruitment and assessment centers.
- Identify challenges facing new employees who are entering both a new social culture and a new organizational culture.
- Discuss core self-evaluation in the work environment and describe socialization and training programs for new employees.
- Describe informal and formal organizational mentoring programs, especially formal programs for new employees who are new to both the country and the organizational culture.
- Discuss performance evaluations, how they work, their importance, and sources of error and bias that can contaminate performance evaluations.
- Describe the advantages of the 360-degree performance evaluation process, including self-ratings and ratings by others.
- Identify and discuss dispositional variables that impact work performance.
- Discuss contemporary issues in performance evaluation and describe protected groups and adverse impact.
Chapter 7
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Explain the similarities and differences between groups and teams.
- Discuss the reasons for joining groups or work teams.
- Define the concept of a team and discuss the different types of teams, including virtual teams and empowered or autonomous teams.
- Identify systems characteristics as they apply to group dynamics and teamwork.
- Specify strategies to build and maintain quality teamwork.
- Describe teamwork challenges and ways to address these challenges.
Chapter 8
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Define motivation and identify the forces that influence motivational levels, making it possible for people to directly influence their own levels of motivation.
- Define and explain some traditional and contemporary theories of workplace motivation.
- Discuss the potent and valuable motivational tactics of self-fulfilling prophecies and learned industriousness.
- Identify several ways to enhance workplace motivation.
- Explain the relationship between mood and productivity.
- Discuss research on self-defeating behaviors, such as social loafing and procrastination, that derail constructive participation in the workforce.
Chapter 9
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Define decision making and its process and implementation components.
- Discuss five models of organizational decision making and the advantages and limitations of each model.
- Define groupthink and explain the Abilene paradox and offer strategies to deal with each.
- Discuss electronic brainstorming, nominal group technique, and the stepladder technique as strategies to generate the good ideas that are essential for effective decision making.
- Discuss ethical and unethical decision making as well as strategies to promote ethical decision making at work.
Chapter 10
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Explain how distributive negotiation and integrative negotiation are similar and how they are different, and know the advantages and disadvantages of each negotiation type.
- Understand the limitations of position-based negotiation compared to interest-based negotiation.
- Define BATNA and critique bargaining strategies in relation to principled negotiations.
- Understand how integrative negotiation facilitates team building, prevents conflict, and stimulates constructive organizational development.
- Explain how inclusive practices facilitate cooperation, enhance negotiated outcomes, and ensure greater employee satisfaction.
- List key tool sets and skills that facilitate and guide effective negotiation.
Chapter 11
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Define conflict and discuss the three levels of conflict management.
- Identify the signs of organizational conflict and how it is manifested in the workplace.
- Explain conflict theory and describe how conflict is a systems phenomenon.
- Explain how systems thinking guides organizational resilience or adaptability as well as conflict resolution.
- Understand how organizational conflict reflects systems dysfunction and learn how to curb destructive or bad conflict while utilizing constructive or good conflict to strengthen relations, improve work outcomes, and retain organizational stability.
- Develop insight into the social system dynamics that precipitate and perpetuate organizational conflict.
- Introduce intervention plans, tools, and skill sets essential for sustainable and effective conflict management.
Chapter 12
When you have finished reading this chapter, you will be prepared to do the following:
- Define change management and explain how it is proactive to self-organization.
- Explain the two orientations to organizational change, “to change” and “changing”.
- Describe the advantages of a learning culture as a good venue for change management.
- Define organizational learning and describe learning theory.
- Explain the importance of a learning culture for balancing innovation with accountability.
- Describe the multiple models and concepts that explain organizational learning.
- Discuss how systems methodology instructs organizational learning and development.
- Explain how inclusive practices facilitate cooperation and change management.
- List the many tools and skills that facilitate organizational learning and development.