Organizational Behavior

Session 1: Introduction
What does organizational psychology involve?
1. Individuals in organization

2. Group and team processes

3. Organizational processes

What is an organization?
An organization is a collection of people who work together and coordinate
their actions to achieve a wide variety of goals.

What is organizational behavior?

Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of factors that have an impact on
people and groups act, think, feel, and respond to work and organizations,
and how organizations respond to their environments.

What is management?
1. Planning: Decide goals and methods to achieve the goals.

2. Organizing: Establish the structure that help people to achieve the goals.

3. Leading: Encourage and coordinate people.

4. Controlling: Evaluate and take action.

Session 2: Individuals Differences:

Personality and Ability

💡 People differ in PERSONALITY and ABILTIY

Personality

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 Personality is the pattern of relatively enduring ways that a person feels,
thinks, and behaves.

The nature of personality

Develops over a person’s lifetime

Generally stable in the context of work

Can influence career choice, job satisfaction, stress, leadership and

performance

The determinants of personality

Nature: biological heritage

Nurture: life experiences

Locus of control
Internal: Belief in personal control over events.

External: Belief that outcomes are determined by external forces.

Self-monitoring
Self-monitoring refers to an individual's ability to regulate their behavior to
meet social cues and situational demands.

High: understand about the social cues and demands so that be able to
behave inconsistently to adapt the situation.

Self-esteem
Self-esteem is the extent to which people have pride in themselves and their
capabilities.

Type A vs. Type B personality

Type A individuals have an intense desire to achieve, are extremely
competitive, have
a sense of urgency, are impatient, and can be hostile.

Type B individuals are more relaxed and easygoing.

McClelland’s Learned Needs

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 1. Need for power

2. Need for achievement

3. Need for affiliation

→ Managers should be high in need for power and achievement.

The big five model of personality

1. Extraversion >< Introvert: hướng ngoại, có positive feelings about
themselves and the world.

2. Neuroticism (high >< low): link to negative experience

3. Agreeableness (high >< low): ~ sự dễ chịu, can get along with others or
not

4. Conscientiousness (high >< low): careful and preserving

5. Openness to experience: willing to take risks

What is MBTI?
Indicator, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

DISC styles
1. Dominance: take risk, task-oriented

2. Influence: emphasize person value

3. Steadiness: patient, cooperative, like to belong

4. Conscientiousness: private, enjoy systems, value intelligence and

competence

Ability
What a person is capable of doing.

Cognitive Ability
1. Verbal

2. Numerical

3. Reasoning

4. Deductive: khả năng suy diễn logic

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 5. Ability to see relationship

6. Ability to remember: how things are related to each other

7. Spatial ability: về không gian → kiến trúc

8. Perceptual ability: Nhận thức thị giác → photographers

Physical ability
Cognitive and physical are natured and nurtured.

Emotional Ability
The ability to understand and manage one’s own feelings and emotions
and the feelings and emotions of others.

Management of ability
Selection: select the one with needed ability

Placement: place them in the right place

Training: train the missing ability

Session 3: Values, Attitudes, Moods,

and Emotions
Value
Values are one’s personal convictions about what one should strive for in
life and how one should behave.

Work value
Extrinsic value: rewards and benefits come from job: high salary, job
security,…

Intrinsic value: satisfaction and fulfillment derived from the work itself:
personal growth,…

Ethical value
Utilitarian values: dictate that decisions should be made that generate
the greatest good for the greatest number of people, quan trọng là
outcome.

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 Moral right values: indicate that decisions should be made in ways that
protect the fundamental rights and privileges of people affected by
the decision.

Justice values: dictate that decisions should be made in ways that

allocate benefit and harm among those affected by the decision in a fair,
equitable, or impartial manner.

Code of ethics
A code of ethics is a set of formal rules and standards, based on ethical
values and beliefs
about what is right and wrong, that employees can use to make appropriate
decisions when the interests of other individuals or groups are at stake.

Work attitudes
Work attitudes are collections of feelings, beliefs, and thoughts about how to
behave that people currently hold about their jobs and organizations.

Consist of three components: affective, cognitive and behavioral.

Job satisfaction
Determinants of job satisfaction:

1. Personality: Extraverts tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction than

introverts.

2. Values

3. Work situations

4. Social influence: Co-worker, family, culture, other reference groups

Theories of job satisfaction:

1. The facet model:

2. Herzberg’s Motivator (intrinsic) and hygiene (extrinsic) needs: if

motivator need is not met, they are not satisfied. If hygiene need is not
met, employee is dissatisfied.

→ Dissatisfaction can lead to CWB (counterproductive work behavior) which

is action to harm the organizations, employees and stakeholders including
blackmail, bribery.

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 Organizational commitment
The psychological attachment that binds an employee to the organization.
Components of OC:

1. Affective commitment: Emotional attachment

2. Continuance commitment: employees have invested in as sunk-cost

commitment

3. Normative commitment: one’s obligation to continue the employment, as

moral commitment

Additional job attitudes

Job involvement: The extent to which employees are cognitively
engaged in their jobs. (to a particular job)

Work centrality: The degree of importance that work holds in one’s life.
(work in general)

Workaholic: An individual whose high drive to work and high job

involvement become so intense that they result in work– life imbalance
issues.

Perceived organizational support: Employees’ global beliefs concerning

the extent to which the organization values and cares about them.

Work moods
How people feel at the time they actually perform their jobs.

Determined by personality, work situation, circumstances outside work.

Emotions
Intense, short-lived feelings that are linked to specific cause or antecedent.

Emotions can feed into moods.

Emotion labor includes feeling rules and expression rules.

Session 4: Perception, Attribution, and

the Management of Diversity

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 Perception is the process by which individuals select, organize, and
interpret the input from their senses to give meaning and order to the world
around them.

Factors that influence perception:

Component Characteristics Description

Abstract knowledge structures that

are stored in memory and allow
people to organize and interpret
information about a given target of
perception.

Based on past experience and

knowledge.
Resistent to change.
Perceiver Schemas
→Functional: Help make sense of the
input, choose what to pay attention,
what to ignore.

Dysfunctional: can lead to

inaccurate perceptions.
Stereotype: a oversimplified and
inaccurate belief about the typical
characteristics of a group.

are the needs, values, and desires of

Motivational state a perceiver at the time of
perception.

how a perceiver feel at the time of

Mood
perception.

A lack of clearness or definiteness.

Target Ambiguity The more ambiguity, the less
accurate the perception is.

is a person’s real or perceived

Social status position in society or in an
organization.

Use of impression is an attempt to control the

management perceptions or impressions of others.
(high or low)

Impression management tactics:

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 Component Characteristics Description
- Behavioral matching:
The target of perception matches his
or her behavior to that of the
perceiver.

- Self-promotion: The target tries to

present herself or himself in as
positive a light as possible.

- Conforming to situational norms:

The target follows agreed-upon rules
for behavior in the organization.

- Appreciating or Flattering Others:

The target compliments the
perceiver. This tactic works best
when flattery is not extreme and
when it involves a dimension
important to the perceiver.

- Being consistent: The target’s

beliefs and behaviors are consistent.
There is agreement between the
target’s verbal and nonverbal
behaviors.

Situation Additional information

is the extent to which a target of

perception stands out in a group of
people or things.

- Being novel: Anything that makes a

target unique in a situation. (age,
race, sex)
Salience
- Being figural: Standing out from
the background. (wearing bright
clothes, spotlight)

- Being inconsistent: Behaving or

looking in a way that is out of the
ordinary.

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 Biases in perception
Bias is the extent to which a target of perception stands out in a group of
people or things.

Bias Description

The initial pieces of information that a perceiver has about a

target have an inordinately large effect on the perceiver’s
Primary effect perception and evaluation of the target.

→ INITIAL IMPRESSION

The perceiver’s perceptions of others influence the perceiver’s

perception of a target.
Contrast effect

→ COMPARE THE TARGET WITH A GROUP OF REFERENT

The perceiver’s general impression of a target influences his or

her perception of the target on specific dimensions.
Halo effect

→ GENERAL IMPRESSION

People perceive others who are similar to themselves more

Similar-to-me positively than they perceive those who are dissimilar.
effect
→ SIMILAR TO ME

Some perceivers tend to be overly harsh in their perceptions,

Harshness, some
leniency, average overly lenient. Others view most targets as being about average.
tendency
→ PERSONAL BIAS

Knowing how a target stands on a predictor of performance

influences perceptions of the target.
Knowledge of
predictor → HAVE SOMETHING PROVE THAT HE/SHE CAN DO IT
HAVING IELTS MEANS GOOD AT ENGLISH MORE THAN WHO
DONT HAVE

The recent information that a perceiver has about a target have

an inordinately large effect on the perceiver’s perception and
Recency effect evaluation of the target.

→ RECENT INFORMATION

Horn effect Closely related to the halo effect, is a form of cognitive bias that
causes perceiver's perception of the target to be unduly

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 Bias Description
influenced by a single negative trait.

→ DUE TO A NEGATIVE TRAIT

Attribution theory

Session 5: Learning and Creativity

Learning is a relatively permanent change in knowledge or behavior that
results from practice or experience.
Learning principle:

1. Classic conditioning/Pavlow conditioning: Phản xạ có điều kiện

2. Operant conditioning: describes how learning takes place when the

learner recognizes the connection between a behavior and its
consequences. → sửa đổi hành vi dựa trên cơ chế thưởng và phạt.

Learning desired behaviors:

Positive reinforcement: describes how learning takes place when the

learner recognizes the connection between a behavior and its
consequences.

Negative reinforcement: increases the probability that a desired

behavior will occur by removing, or rescinding, a negative consequence
when an employee performs the behavior desired.

Discouraging undesired behaviors:

Extinction: loại bỏ hành vi dẫn tới undesired behaviors.

Punishment: administrative hành vi dẫn tới undesired behaviors.

Organizational behavior modification (OB MOD): the systematic application

of the principles of operant conditioning for teaching and managing
organizational behavior.

1. Identify important OB

2. Measure the frequency of the behavior

3. Analyze antecedents and consequences

4. Intervene

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 5. Evaluate for performance improvement

6. Problem solved

Social cognitive theory

A learning theory that takes into account the fact that thoughts and feelings
influence learning.

Necessary components include:

1. Vicarious learning (học tập quan sát): Learning that occurs when one
person (the learner) learns a behavior by watching another person (the
model) perform the behavior.

2. Self-control: Self-discipline that allows a person to learn to perform a

behavior even though there is no external pressure to do so.

3. Self-efficacy: is a person’s belief about his or her ability to perform

particular behavior successfully. This can come from past performance,
vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, individuals’ readings of their
internal psychological states.

Learning by doing: experiential learning/ hands-on training.

Continuous learning through creativity.

1. Recognition of a problem

2. Information gathering

3. Production of creative ideas

4. Selection of creative ideas

5. Implementation of creative ideas

Creativity is determined by characteristics of the employee and the

organizational situation.

Session 6: The Nature of Work

Motivation
Work motivation is the psychological forces within a person that determine:

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 Direction of behavior

Level of effort

Level of persistence

Performance is an evaluation of the results of a person’s behavior.

Need Theory
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Physiological → Safety → Belonging → Esteem
→ Self-actualization
One satisfied no longer motivate.
Alderfer’s ERG theory: growth (được phát triển), relatedness (có mối quan
hệ), existence (basic) needs
Flexible movement among levels.

Expectancy Theory
Expectancy: Does effort lead to high performance?
Instrumentality: Does high performance lead to outcome?

Valence: Does the outcomes/rewards turn out to be desirable?

Equity Theory
Employee compare the output/input ratio of their own to the reference
group.

Organizational Justice Theory

This deals with an employee’s perceptions of overall fairness in his or her
organization.

1. Distributive: regarding the outcome as pay, promotion

2. Procedural: regarding the process of making decision

3. Interpersonal: regarding the way how being treated

4. Informational: regarding the information shared

Job enlargement: increasing the number of task with the same difficulty -
horizontal job loading.

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 Job enrichment: increasing the control of his or her work - vertical job
loading.

Session 7: Managing Stress and Work-

Life Balance
Stress is the experience of opportunities or threats that: people perceive as
important and also perceive they might not be able to handle or deal with
effectively.
Stress can originate from opportunities and threats.

The opportunities or threats that cause stress are important to the person in
question.
Stress is rooted from perception.
Stressor: Any disruptive event or force that pushes a psychological or
physical function beyond its range of stability, producing a strain within the
individual.

Strains: Undesirable personal outcomes resulting from the combined

stressful experiences of various life domains.
Stressor → Strain.
Job-related strains: lack of satisfaction, job turnover.
Emotional strains: burnout, a condition characterized by:

1. Emotional exhaustion

2. Depersonalization

3. Reduced personal accomplishment

Physical strains: PTSD, STSD

Work-family conflict (WFC): A model of work–family relations in which work
and family demands are incompatible.

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 Work-family enrichment: A model of work–family relations in which positive
attitudes and behaviors are believed to carry over from one domain to the
other.

Session 8: The Nature of Work Groups

and Teams
A group have interactivity and mutual goal.

Formal work group

1. Command group

2. Task forces

3. Teams

4. Self-managed work teams

Informal work group

1. Friendship group

2. Interest group

Forming → Storming → Norming → Performing → Adjourning

Work group characteristics

1. Group size

2. Group composition: Homogeneous (alike)/ Heterogeneous (diverse)

3. Group function: meaning and purpose

4. Group status: the implicitly agreed upon, perceived importance of what

a group does in an organization.

5. Group efficacy: is the shared belief group members have about the
ability of the group to achieve its goals and objectives.

6. Group facilitation: is the effect the physical presence of others has on an

individual’s performance. → enhance or impair the performance

Group members control mechanism

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 1. Roles: A role is a set of behaviors or tasks that a person is expected to
perform by virtue of holding a position in a group or organization.

2. Rules: Rules are written guidelines for behavior.

3. Norm (chuẩn mực): are informal rules of conduct for behavior that are
considered important by most group members and are not put into
writing. Groups enforce norms by rewarding members who conform to
the norm and punishing those who deviate.

Problems in group motivation and performance

1. Social loafing (lười biếng xã hội): → Show them feel valued.

Task interdependence: is the extent to which the work performed by one

member affects what other group members do.

Type of task interdependence

1. Pooled: tự mình đóng góp vào chung

2. Sequential: tuần tự

3. Reciprocal: cả input lẫn output

Conflict:

1. Avoidance: low-low → to let people cool down and regain perspective.

2. Accommodation: high-low → to learn and when you are wrong.

3. Competition: low-high → on issues vital to the organization’s welfare.

4. Collaboration: high-high → when your objective is to learn.

5. Compromise: mid-mid → backup when collaboration or competition is

unsuccessful.

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