Final Exam Answers:
1. What are the three components of an attitude and give an example using job satisfaction?
The three components of an attitude are: belief, evaluation, and behavioral intention. Beliefs are statements of perceptions, for example, “my boss does not pay attention to me.” Evaluations are judgments about those beliefs (i.e., the attitude itself), for example, “I am dissatisfied with my job.” Behavioral intentions are intentions to act in a certain way: “I am going to punch him in the face next time I see him.”
2. Which is more enduring? Mood or emotion?
Moods are more enduring…they are not tied to specific environmental inputs (or events). They are probably in a large part either biological or trait-based in some specific way. Emotions are reactions to environmental events.
In the organizational context, moods are mostly likely detected at the selection stage. They may also exacerbate existing organizational problems. For example, a person more attuned or more likely to perceive events in a negative light may feel far more dissatisfied if they experience the same negative event as a person with a positive mood. It is likely, that is, that moods and emotions interact with one another, such that moods may inflate or deflate the intensity of emotional reactions depending on whether the direction (positive or negative) of the mood and the direction (positive or negative) of the emotion match or are dissimilar.
3. What’s the difference between self esteem, self-efficacy and LOC? Give an example of each.
Self-esteem is one’s view of one’s social value; that is, how accepted and valued you feel by others. Self-efficacy is one’s view of one’s capacity to succeed in a given situation at a given task. Locus of control one’s perception of where one’s actions and decisions are controlled. That is, usually external or internal: one’s actions are controlled from outside one’s self (i.e., external LOC) or actions are controlled from the inside of one’s self (i.e., internal LOC).
These variables are important individual differences in the organizational context. Self-esteem is malleable, but the degree of it’s movement is slow and quick to bounce back to original levels. Self-efficacy is very important in the work context, because if workers do not feel like they can accomplish what they set out to do, then they probably won’t do it. So, a low self-efficacy is a very dangerous thing. LOC is important because people make different judgments depending on their LOC; that is, I am more apt to blame my boss for bad things and even for good things if I have an external LOC. In this scenario, outcomes are not likely to be viewed by the worker as under one’s control, and therefore, the worker will be less motivated to accomplish goals that are apparently out one’s hand anyway.
4. Which is most important for work motivation, affective, continuance, or normative commitment? Why?
Affective commitment is the most important for work motivation. Affective commitment refers to one’s feeling of commitment to the organization. This commitment is not due to feelings of obligation or fear of punishment, it is because one actually feels attached to the organization, takes responsibility for the organization, and may perhaps even refer others to the organization.
Continuance commitment is really only avoiding the discomfort of leaving—changing organizations is a costly process…in continuance commitment, the only reason one is committed is to avoid being without an organization. This is like the employee who hates coming to work and feels no desire to be at the job, except to not get fired. They perhaps may be thinking about changing jobs, but the person has not yet found one, so they are just working to not be without a job.
Normative commitment refers to feelings of obligation toward an organization. In this case, the worker perceives that he/she is “supposed” to work for the organization. However this feeling is not because of any personal attachment to the organization, its values, etc.
5. How would you use what is known about the dispositional and situational (job characteristics) approaches to design an effective employee selection process?
Hackman & Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model suggests that there are several important characteristics of job that need to be present in order for the job to effectively motivate employess. These characteristics are: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. While these characteristics provide a convenient framework from which to view and correct job designs in order to improve worker motivation, they are not the whole picture. For example, individuals may differ as to the degree of autonomy they want in their job; also, a person with a limited skill set would not perform well in a job that required as large skill variety.
Therefore, an effective employee selection process entails identifying the applicant’s dispositions and strengths and matching them to a job that fits those characteristics. A person who wants to learn, grow, be challenged, and have freedom should be placed in a job that will afford those opportunities and require those skills. A person who wants a simple job, wants to be told what to do, and is satisfied with their current levels of skills and abilities should not be put in a job that has been designed to require and/or provide those.
6. Why has job satisfaction not been shown to be highly related to absenteeism and turnover?
Past research have found a consistent, yet relatively small correlation between job satisfaction and absenteeism and turnover. This is for several reasons. First, the research on job satisfaction has, by and large, revealed that most employees are satisfied. There is not a wide range of satisfaction levels among employees.
In addition, absenteeism and turnover are work-behaviors, that, while may be related to job attitudes, they are not attitudes… While attitudes are often thought to be predictive of behaviors, they are often not (especially not as predictors of immediate and short-term actions).
Also, job satisfactions comes in many different forms (i.e., facets). They may be particular components of job satisfaction that are more related to turnover and absenteeism than overall or general job satisfaction. Finally, employees often have reasons to stay on a job even when they are dissatisfied. For example…individuals may be affectively committed to an organization, may fear switching jobs, or may feel obligated to stay at the organization. These commitments moderate the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover/absenteeism.
1. How did Cropanzano get interested in studying “justice”?
Cropanzano recalled the story of Ludlow, CO; a mining town that underwent a strike that ended by the National Guard killing miners, women, and children in a face-off. He was convinced the miners were willing to risk death and injury because they were seeking justice.
2. Give an example of a situation where justice was a problem at work.
First, it is important to understand that there is more than one type of justice. The commonly noted facets of justice are procedural (i.e., the way things are done, the procedure for carrying out business and rewarding/punishing, etc.), distributive (i.e., who gets what—are the “desserts” received given out fairly?), and interactional justice (how employees are treated—are they respected, is the treatment sensitive to employees’ feelings, etc.).
At my work place, there was a problem with procedural justice that also resulted in a a problem with distributive justice. Our tutoring center had just changed ownership from a francise to being a corporate-run center. This intitially resulted in no problems that may usually come with such a transition—new management seemed relatively competent, and current employees were at least amenable to her direction. However, after a few paychecks, several of use began to realize that we were being paid $10 an hour for part of the week instead of our usual rates. When we confronted our management about it, she didn’t actually know why this was happening, so she contacted another center to get their explanation. Our manager then notified us that it was company policy to pay the $10/hour rate for time when we weren’t tutoring kids. While all of use basically accepted the fact that the company was justified for paying us less in this circumstance, the fact that we hadn’t been told, and the fact that even the new management wasn’t aware of this policy made the whole dealing appear quite unfair and underhanded.
3. Is it better to ‘distance’ oneself from the negative outcome? Or not?
4. Equity, need, equality; what’s the difference?
Equity refers to the distribution of rewards in accordance to performance, effort, or merità “to each according to his ability”. Need refers to the distribution of rewards in accordance to the degree of need à “to each according to his need.” Equality referes to the equal distribution of goods/rewards (i.e., everyone receives the same amount).
5. How does a defined comp package (e.g. for Dick Grasso), differ from traditional retirement and what are implications for the effects of each on the employer/employee “contract”?
When a CEO or other top company leader has a huge no-fail retirement package, it is usually seen as an injustice. Everyday employees who work and toil to build and maintain their retirement packages may feel a violation of distributive justice when the big-cheese retires with enough nest eggs to keep him alive for 40 lifetimes.
1. What is leadership? How does it differ from management?
The main distinction is mostly semantic. That is, leader refers to the person who is directing a group of people in order to accomplish or obtain some goal or task. Manager is, semantically, a job title—it is the position of being in leadership. However, the behaviors that are emitted by “managers” and “leaders” are quite the same. In the words of Day (2001), The manager seeks to bring order and consistency to work; the leader seeks change. It seems that the distinction may be necessary to make in order to have a comprehensive theory of leadership. One can be possess the title of “manager” without truly being a leader. Or one could be in leadership position, but not be able to manage. The two concepts are intimately intertwined.
Some specific behaviors that are jointly part of effective leadership as well as management are: “guiding, directing, motivating subordinates, training, coaching, and developing subordinates, maintaining good working relationships, coordinating subordinates and other resources to get the job done, delgating, and settling/influencing.” Perhaps effective leadership is a more general concept that can apply to a wide variety of situations, while effective management is often very context-specific—that is, in different situations and business types, management may take many different, specific forms that are all influence by good leadership.
Leadership deals with how it is to be done; management deals with WHAT is to be done.
2. How has trait theory evolved over the past half century and where does it stand now?
In the past, trait theory of leadership dominated the discussion. Then, when results were repeatedly mixed, the trait theory began to dwindle. In the current day, trait theory is beginning to take hold once again. This is mostly because research has repeatedly demonstrated that a 5-factor model of personality is empirically sound and scientifically adequate. Because much research is being done to accurately measure the Big-5 traits, this research can inform that relating traits to leadership. In fact, some research has found a consistent relationship between the traits of extraversion, emotional stability, and openness; other resarch has found that conscientiousness was a predictor of leader effectiveness.
There is also some research linking elements of the Big 5 with transformational effectiveness, but the evidence is currently mixed. In total, all the Big 5 traits are implicated (either directly or indirectly) in the aggregated extant leadership theories. Also, an emerging area of research on this topic is find out which personality traits may predict leader ineffectiveness.
3. What duties (dimensions) distinguish leadership duties from those of a manager (Borman & Brush, '93)?
Borman & Brush created a list of 18 dimensions of managerial responsibility. This list also contains 6 areas that are also leadership responsibilities (according to Landy & Conte). While there is a great deal of overlap between the duties, there are a few duties that are more leadership than manager bxs. These include those that are uniquely interpersonal in nature (e.g., motivating subordinates, coaching, coordinating, delegating, and influencing).
4. In what way does House/Mitchell's Path-Goal Theory rely on Expectancy theory notions?
Path-Goal Theory assumes that “the leader’s responsibility is to show the subordinate the path to valued subordinate goals.” Expectancy of VIE theory postulates that people are motivated by the valence associated with outcomes, the instumentality of the behavior to obtain the outcome, and the degree to which the person expects to receive the outcome if the behavior succeeds.
To put it simply, Expectancy theory postulates that the person must want the outcome, must associate the behavior with the outcome, and must expect the outcome to occur. This is the underlying assumption of path-goal theory. In that, the leader’s behavior will be viewed by suboridinates in the way consistent with expectancy. If the leader’s behavior is provides immediate desired outcomes or will provide desired outcomes in the future, that behavior will be looked upon positively.
They also postulated that there are four different leadership styles, each of which work best in different situations (depending on the subordinate characteristics and the situational characteristics). For example, directive leadership (i.e., specific task-relevant scheduling of the activities of subordinates…) works best in situations that where the job is not clearly defined or the I-e relationship is not clear to subordinates. The leader’s job is to show subordinates the way to achieve desired outcomes. Specifically, the leader should reduce role ambiguity so that the effort-performance (expectancy) relationship is strengthened, the performance—reward relationship is strengthened by making reward contingencies clearer (instrumentality), and the subordinates have increased desire to obtain the outcomes (valence) by the leader increasing the strength or size of the incentives. This should all result in increased employee effort.
Supportive leadership works best in situations when the job is boring and the subordinate lacks self-confidence. In this case, the subordinate needs the job to me less boring (this will increase intrinsic valence of work) and the leader should make the subordinate more confidence of their effort-performance expectancy (expectancy). This should result in increased effort.