BA 210: Foundations of Behavior

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BA 210 Foundations of Behavior
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Class Information

• New? Read syllabus and check website
• www.cba.uiuc.edu/ba210
• Course Packet (syllabus slides) at T.I.S.
• Textbook at the usual places
• Attempting to enroll?
• Even if course is full, be persistent slots
  open as people drop the course.

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TAs again

• Teaching Assistants
• A-E Steve Harper srharper_at_uiuc.edu
• F-K Naina Gupta ngupta5_at_uiuc.edu
• L-Q Yuri Mishina ymishina_at_uiuc.edu
• R-Z Ece Tuncel etuncel_at_uiuc.edu
• TAs are your first point of contact with
  questions about course
• See website www.cba.uiuc.edu/ba210 for more

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Individuals and Groups
Foundations of Behavior
Motivation
Leadership
Teams
Communication
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What is challenging about individual behavior in
organizations?
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Reprise Topics in this part of the course are
central for managers
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Todays Objective Roadmap

• To enhance your understanding of several
  fundamental aspects of human behavior in
  organizations
• Attitudes
• Personality
• Perception
• Attributions
• Learning

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Attitudes reflect evaluations of objects, people
or events

• Three components (Believe Feel Intend)
• Cognitive - beliefs, opinions, knowledge, or
  information held by a person
• Behavioral - intention to behave in a certain way
  toward someone or something

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Job-Related Attitudes

• Job satisfaction - employees general attitude
  toward her/his job
• Job involvement how much employee identifies
  with her/his job
• Degree of active participation in the job
• Feeling that job performance is important to
  self-worth
• Organizational commitment - employees loyalty
  to, identification with, and involvement in the
  organization
• Organizational citizen behavior (OCB) -
  discretionary behavior that is not part of the
  formal job requirements
• Promotes effective functioning of the organization

Why do we care about attitudes? Just get the job
done, eh?
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Attitudes and Consistency

• People seek consistency
• Among their attitudes
• Between their attitudes and behavior
• Inconsistency gives rise to steps to achieve
  consistency
• Alter attitudes or behavior
• Develop rationalization for the inconsistency

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Cognitive Dissonance

• Cognitive dissonance - incompatibility between
  attitudes, or between attitudes and behavior
• Effort to reduce dissonance related to
• importance of factors causing dissonance
• perceived degree of influence over these factors
• rewards that may be involved in dissonance

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Attitudes Example Downsizing

• Which of the three components of attitudes
• I think my company is going to downsize
• I dont like that, it stresses me out
• Im not going to stick my neck out right now.
• Do you take an opportunity on a risky, important
  project?
• Now youre a manager who has to lay off 20 of
  your staff as part of the downsizing. Many of
  your staff are close friends.
• How might this create cognitive dissonance
• Would you try to reduce dissonance? How?
• Now the downsizing happens. How might your
  staffs job-related attitudes change?

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Attitudes in Action The Satisfaction-Productivit
y Controversy

• Research if satisfaction does has a positive
  influence on productivity at all, it is small
• But Research designs often do not permit
  conclusions about cause and effect there is
  evidence that productivity causes satisfaction,
  rather than the other way around.
• Some exceptions Satisfaction does affects
  organizational citizenship and turnover, and the
  satisfaction-productivity relationship is
  stronger for higher-level jobs.
• Recommendation Focus on helping people produce,
  and satisfaction will largely take care of itself

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Personality

• Personality The unique combination of
  psychological traits that describe a person.
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - 16 personality
  types
• Widely used to illustrate differences in how
  people approach problems and tasks, and help
  people consider differences when they work
• Big-Five Model Widely used in research
• Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,
  emotional stability, openness to experience.
• Matching Job and Personality
• For example, extraversion predicts success in
  jobs where there is high social interaction.

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Emotional Intelligence (EI)

• Noncognitive skills, capabilities, and
  competencies that influence a persons ability to
  succeed in coping with environmental demands and
  pressures
• Self-awareness - aware of what youre feeling
• Self-management - ability to manage ones
  emotions and impulses
• Self-motivation - persistence in the face of
  setbacks and failures
• Empathy - ability to sense how others are feeling
• Social skills - ability to handle the emotions of
  others
• Developed as a counterpoint to IQ
• EI related to performance at all organizational
  levels
• Especially important in jobs requiring social
  interaction
• EI can be developed, whereas IQ is fixed

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Example Emotional Intelligence Self-Assessment

• I am usually aware-from moment to moment-of my
  feelings as they change
• I act before I think.
• When I want something, I want it NOW!
• I bounce back quickly from life's setbacks
• I can pick up subtle social cues that indicate
  others' needs or wants.
• I'm very good at handling myself in social
  situations.
• I'm persistent in going after the things I want.
• When people share their problems with me, I'm
  good at putting myself in their shoes.
• When I'm in a bad mood, I make a strong effort to
  get out of it.
• I can find common ground and build rapport with
  people from all walks of life.

Source Based on D. Goleman, Emotional
Intelligence Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (New
York Bantam Book, 1995).
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Important Job-Related Personality Traits

• Locus of Control
• internals - believe that they control their own
  destiny
• externals - believe their lives are controlled by
  outside forces
• less satisfied and involved with their jobs
• more alienated from the work setting
• Machiavellianism - High Machs
• are pragmatic, maintain emotional distance,
  believe that ends can justify the means
• are productive in jobs that require bargaining
  and have high rewards for success

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Perception

• Perception interpretation of the environment
• We actively interpret sensory impressions
• None of us sees reality we interpret what we see
  and call it reality
• Perception is influenced by
• Perceivers attitudes, personality, experience,
  expectations. We see what weve seen before,
  what weve been trained to see, what we expect to
  see. And ignore the reverse.
• Target and situation. We see what is distinctive.

The old saw Perception is reality, and
in management situations this is doubly true.
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Perception Challenges What do you see?
Every textbook has something like this. A bit
Mickey-Mouse but a great metaphor
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Attribution Theory

• Attribution theory how we assign meanings to
  behavior and causes of behavior of others
• Internal explanations
• External explanations
• We assign meanings to our perceptions based on
  attributions

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Attribution Theory
Exh 14.6
Many or one situation?
Many or one people?
Many or one times?
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We make systematic errors and show biases in
attributions

• Fundamental attribution error - tendency to
  explain behavior of others by
• overestimating the influence of internal factors
• underestimating the influence of external factors
• Self-serving bias -
• personal success attributed to internal factors
• personal failure attributed to external factors

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We use shortcuts to make attributions

• Why? Makes perceptual task easier
• Its efficient if based on fact, and problematic
  if not
• Selectivity - We attend to particular stimuli,
  based on interests, background, and attitudes
• Assumed similarity
• Stereotyping Individual is evaluated based on
  ones impressions of the group to which s/he
  belongs
• Halo effect - General impression about a person
  is forged on the basis of a single characteristic

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Examples

• Attributions at dinner-time
• Husband Im home!
• Wife Youll have to eat dinner yourself, weve
  already eaten.
• Husband Im sorry, Peter from Australia called!
• Wife Youre always late! Other professors get
  home on time!
• Husband But hes in Australia! This was
  different!
• You just dont care about getting home on time!
• Give an ambiguous case about a troubled company
  to a factory manager, a CFO, a marketing VP, and
  the head of research.
• How will their interpretations of the problem
  differ and why?
• When your significant other has a really
  stressful problem, how can the assumed similarity
  bias get you into big trouble?

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CanGo Exercise

• The nature the CD stylized and concise
• Reality is less obvious and so errors are much
  more likely to occur
• How Nicks story might be spun

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Learning

• Learning any relatively permanent change in
  behavior that occurs as a result of experience
• almost all complex behavior is learned
• Text discusses operant conditioning, rewards and
  shaping, we consider them next class.
• Social Learning learning by observing other
  people and direct experience.
• People learn from watching others, especially in
  unfamiliar situations.
• Set an example and manage who people learn from

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Major points

• People think differently, believe differently,
  perceive differently, attribute differently.
• Poses management challenges that are often
  underestimated, especially in the hustle-bustle
  of organizational life.
• People change attitudes and behavior when
  inconsistencies arise
• Not always in ways that you expect or desire
• Perception is reality, but perceptions differ
  widely
• People see what they expect to see
• Attributions are going to be made, often in
  error.
• Avoid self-attribution and self-serving biases
  yours and theirs!

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Next Time

• Motivation Chapter 16 of textbook
• T123 Skip 7-8, 12-14, 15-16.
• Mastering Management Work Motivation module
• Complete the introduction, concepts, exercises
  and resolution sections of the Work Motivation
  module
• Case and discussion sections will not be required
  for any of our sessions.