Chapter 8: Foundations of Individual and Group Behavior

Chapter 8: Foundations of Individual and Group Behavior

Section 8.1 -Toward Explaining and Predicting Behavior

Key Terms

· Organizational behavior

· Organizational citizenship

· Attitudes

· Cognitive component of an attitude

· Affective component of an attitude

· Behavioral component of an attitude

· Cognitive dissonance

Summary

What we tend to see when we look at organizations are their formal aspects--strategies, objectives, policies and procedures, structure, technology, formal authority, and chains of command. However, just under the surface lie informal elements that managers need to understand. Organizational behavior (OB) provides managers with considerable insight into these important but hidden aspects of the organization.

Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of actions of people at work. Like an iceberg, a lot of organizational behavior is not visible to the naked eye. The organization as an iceberg metaphor includes both visible and hidden aspects. Visible aspects include strategies, objectives, policies and procedures, structure, technology, formal authority, and chains of command. The hidden aspects include attitudes, perceptions, group norms, informal interactions, and interpersonal and intergroup conflicts.

Organizational behavior focuses primarily on two major areas. First, OB looks at individual behavior. This area includes such things as personality, perception, learning, and motivation. Second, OB is concerned with group behavior. It includes norms, roles, team building, and conflict. Behavior of a group of employees cannot be understood by merely summing up the actions of the individuals, because individuals in groups behave differently than individuals acting alone. Individuals might never engage in such behavior if they were to act alone. Put them together, add peer pressure, and they act differently.

The goals of OB are to explain and to predict behavior. Employee behaviors we are specifically concerned about are employee productivity, absenteeism and turnover. The fourth type of behavior that is becoming important in determining employee performance is organizational citizenship - those behaviors that promote the effective functioning of the organization.

Job satisfaction is not a behavior—it’s an attitude. An employee’s attitude may be linked to his or her productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. Attitudes are valuative statements, either favorable or unfavorable, concerning objects, people, or events. An attitude is made up of three components: cognition, affect, and behavior.

Cognitive component of an attitude is the beliefs, opinions, knowledge, and information held by a person. The affective component of an attitude is the emotion, or feeling, segment. The behavioral component of an attitude is the intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.

Managers are specifically interested in job-related attitudes. The three most important and most studied are job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. Research has generally concluded that people seek consistency among their attitudes and between their attitudes and their behavior. They try to reconcile differing attitudes and align their attitudes and behavior so that they appear rational and consistent by altering either the attitudes or the behavior or by developing a rationalization for the discrepancy.

Leon Festinger proposed the theory of cognitive dissonance to explain the relationship between attitude and behavior. The theory refers to any incompatibility that an individual might perceive between two or more of his or her attitudes or between his or her behavior and attitude. If they perceive the dissonance to be uncontrollable—something about which they have no choice—they are less likely to feel a need for an attitude change. Rewards also influence the degree to which individuals are motivated to reduce dissonance. Dissonance is manageable. Most researchers perceived that managers would get better results by directing their attention primarily to what would help employees become more productive rather than making employees happy.

Section Outline

I. Toward Explaining and Predicting Behavior

A. What is the focus of organizational behavior?

B. What are the goals of organizational behavior?

C. Do an individual’s attitude and behavior need to be consistent?

D. What is cognitive dissonance?

E. How can understanding of attitudes help managers be more effective?