HROB 2090 Midterm 1 Key Terms

Chapter 1

Organizations: Social inventions for accomplishing common goals through group effort.

Organizational Behaviour: The attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups in organizations.
Human Resources Management: Programs, practices, and systems to acquire, develop, motivate, and
retain employees in organizations.
Management: The art of getting things accomplished in organizations through others.

Evidence-based management: Translating principles based on the best scientific evidence into
organizational practices.

Classical Viewpoint: An early prescription on management that advocated a high specialization of labour,
intensive coordination, and centralized decision making.

Scientific Management: Frederic Taylor’s system for using research to determine the optimum degree of
specialization and standardization of work tasks.

Bureaucracy: Max Weber’s ideal type of organization that included a strict chain of command, detailed
rules, high specialization, centralized power, and selection and promotion based on technical
competence.
Hawthorne Studies: Research conducted in the 1920s and 1930s at the Hawthorne plant of Western
Electric near Chicago that illustrated how psychological and social processes affect productivity and work
adjustment.

Human Relations Movement: A critique of classical management and bureaucracy that advocated
management styles that were more participative and oriented toward employee needs.

Contingency Approach: An approach to management that recognizes that there is no one best way to
manage, and that an appropriate management style depends on the demands of the situation.

Workplace Spirituality: A workplace that provides employees with meaning, purpose, a sense of
community, and a connection to others.

Positive Organizational Behaviour (POB): The study and application of positively oriented human
resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively
managed for performance improvement.

Psychological Capital (PsyCap): An individual’s positive psychological state of development that is

characterized by self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience.
Talent Management: An organization’s processes for attracting, developing, retaining, and utilizing
people with the required skills to meet current and future business needs.
Work Engagement: A positive work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and
absorption.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): An organization taking responsibility for the impact of its decisions
and actions on its stakeholders.
HROB 2090 Midterm 1 Key Terms

Chapter 2

Personality: The relatively stable set of psychological characteristics that influences the way an individual
interacts with his or her environment.
Dispositional Approach: Individuals possess stable traits or characteristics that influence their attitudes
and behaviours.

Situational Approach: Characteristics of the organizational setting influence people’s attitudes and
behaviour.
Interactionist Approach: Individuals’ attitudes and behaviour are a function of both dispositions and the
situation.
Trait Activation Theory: Traits lead to certain behaviours only when the situation makes the need for the
trait salient.
Locus of Control: A set of beliefs and whether one’s behaviour is controlled mainly by internal or external
forces.

Self-esteem: The degree to which a person has a positive self-evaluation.

Behavioural Plasticity Theory: People with low self-esteem tend to be more susceptible to external and
social influences than those who have high self-esteem.

Positive affectivity: Propensity to view the world, including oneself and other people, in a positive light.

Negative affectivity: Propensity to view the world, including oneself and other people, in a negative light.

Proactive Behaviour: Taking initiative to improve current circumstances or creating new ones.

Proactive Personality: A stable personal disposition that reflects a tendency to take personal initiative
across a range of activities and situations and to effect positive change in one’s environment.

General self-efficacy (GSE): A general trait that refers to an individual’s belief in his or her ability to
perform successfully in a variety of challenging situations.

Core self-evaluations: A broad personality concept that consists of more specific traits that reflect the
evaluations people hold about themselves and their self-worth.

Learning: A relatively permanent change in behaviour potential that occurs due to practice or
experience.

Operant Learning: Learning by which the subject learns to operate on the environment to achieve
certain consequences.

Reinforcement: The process by which stimuli strengthen behaviours.

Positive Reinforcement: The application or addition of a stimulus that increases or maintains the
probability of some behaviour.

Negative Reinforcement: The removal of stimulus that in turn increases or maintains the probability of
some behaviours.
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HROB 2090 Midterm 1 Key Terms

Central Traits: Personal characteristics of a target person that are of particular interest to a perceiver.
Implicit personality theories: Personal theories that people have about which personality characteristics
go together.
Projection: The tendency for perceivers to attribute their own thoughts and feelings to others.

Stereotyping: The tendency to generalize about people in a certain social category and ignore variations
among them.

Attribution: The process by which causes or motives are assigned to explain people’s behaviour.
Dispositional attributions: Explanations for behaviour based on an actor’s personality or intellect.

Situational attributions: Explanations for behaviour based on an actor’s external situation or

environment.

Consistency Cues: Attribution cues that reflect how consistently a person engages in a behaviour over
time.

Consensus Cues: Attribution cues that reflect how a person’s behaviour compares with that of others.
Distinctiveness Cues: Attribution cues that reflect the extent to which a person engages in some
behaviour across a variety of situations.
Fundamental Attribution error: The tendency to overemphasize dispositional explanations for behaviour
at the expense of situational explanations.

Actor-observer effect: The propensity for actors and observers to view the causes of the actor’s
behaviour differently.

Self-serving bias. The tendency to take credit for successful outcomes and to deny responsibility for
failures.

Workforce diversity: Differences among recruits and employees in characteristics such as gender, race,
age, religion, cultural background, physical ability, or sexual orientation.

Stereotype Threat: Members of a social group feel they might be judged or treated according to a
stereotype and that their behaviour and/or performance will confirm the stereotype.

Trust: A psychological state in which one has a willingness to be vulnerable and to take risks with respect
to the actions of another party.

Chapter 4

Values: A broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others.

Power Distance: The extent to which an unequal distribution of power is accepted by society members.
Uncertainty Avoidance: The extent to which people are uncomfortable with uncertain and ambiguous
situations.
HROB 2090 Midterm 1 Key Terms

Individualism versus collectivism: Individualistic societies stress independence, individual initiative, and
privacy. Collective cultures favour interdependence and loyalty to family or clan.

Cultural distance: The extent to which cultures differ in values.

Cultural Intelligence: The capability to function and manage well in culturally diverse environments.

Attitude: A fairly stable evaluative tendency to respond consistently to some specific object, situation,
person, or category of people.

Job Satisfaction: A collection of attitudes that workers have about their jobs.
Discrepancy Theory: A theory that job satisfaction stems from the discrepancy between the job
outcomes wanted and the outcomes that are perceived to be obtained.
Distributive fairness: Fairness that occurs when people receive the outcomes they think they deserve
from their jobs.
Equity Theory: A theory that job satisfaction stems from a comparison of the inputs one invests in a job
and the outcomes one receives in comparison with the inputs and outcomes of another person or group.

Inputs: Anything that people give up, offer, or trade to their organization in exchange for outcomes.

Outcomes: Factors that an organization distributes to employees in exchange for their inputs.
Procedural fairness: Fairness that occurs when the process used to determine work outcomes is seen as
reasonable.

Interactional Fairness: Fairness that occurs when people feel they have received respectful and
informative communication about an outcome.

Emotions: Intense, often short-lived feelings caused by a particular event.

Moods: less intense, longer-lived, and more diffuse feelings.

Emotional Contagion: Tendency for moods and emotions to spread between people or throughout a
group.

Emotional Regulation: Requirement for people to conform to certain “display rules” in their job
behaviour in spite of their true mood or emotions.

Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB): Voluntary, informal behaviour that contributes to

organizational effectiveness.

Organizational Commitment: An attitude that reflects the strength of the linkage between an employee
and an organization.

Affective commitment: Commitment based on identification and involvement with an organization.

Continuance commitment: Commitment based on the costs that would be incurred in leaving an
organization.

Normative commitment: Commitment based on ideology or a feeling of obligation to an organization.

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HROB 2090 Midterm 1 Key Terms

Expectancy Theory: A process theory that state that motivation is determined by the outcomes that
people expect to occur as a result of their actions on the job.

Outcomes: Consequences that follow work behaviour.

Instrumentality: The probability that a particular first-level outcome will be followed by a particular
second-level outcome.

Valence: The expected value of work outcomes; the extent to which they are attractive or unattractive.

Expectancy: The probability that a particular first-level outcome can be achieved.

Force: The effort directed toward a first-level outcome.

Equity Theory: A process theory that states that motivation stems from a comparison of the inputs one
invests in a job and the outcomes one receives in comparison with the inputs and outcomes of another
person or group.
Goal setting Theory: A process theory that states that goals are motivational when they are specific and
challenging, when organizational members are committed to them, and when feedback about progress
toward goal attainment is provided.

Goal orientation: An individual’s goal preferences in achievement situations.

Learning goal orientation: A preference to learn new things and develop competence in an activity by
acquiring new skills and mastering new situations.

Performance-prove goal orientation: A preference to obtain favourable judgements about the outcome
of one’s performance.

Performance-avoid goal orientation: A preference to avoid negative judgements about the outcomes of
one’s performance.

Distal Goal: Long-term or end goal.

Proximal Goal: Short-term goal or sub-goal.

Chapter 6

Piece-Rate: A pay system in which individual workers are paid a certain sum of money for each unit of
production completed.

Wage Incentive Plans: Various systems that link pay to performance on production jobs.

Restriction of Productivity: The artificial limitation of work output that can occur under wage incentive
plans.

Merit Pay Plans: System that attempt to link pay to performance on white-collar jobs.
Lump Sum Bonus: Merit pay that is awarded in a single payment and not built into base pay.
HROB 2090 Midterm 1 Key Terms

Profit Sharing: The return of some company profits to employees in the form of a cash bonus or a
retirement supplement.

Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs): Incentive plans that allow employees to own a set amount of
a company’s shares and provide employees with a stake in the company’s future earnings and success.

Gainsharing: A group pay incentive plan based on productivity or performance improvements over which
the workforce has some control.

Skill-based Pay: A system in which people are paid according to the number of job skills they have
acquired.

Job Design: The structure, content, and configuration of a person’s work tasks and roles.
Job Scope: The breadth and depth of a job.

Breadth: The number of different activities performed on a job.

Depth: The degree of discretion or control a worker has over how work tasks are performed.

Job Rotation: Rotating employees to different tasks and jobs in an organization.

Skill Variety: The opportunity to do a variety of job activities using various skills and talents.

Autonomy: The freedom to schedule one’s own work activities and decide work procedures.
Task Significance: The impact that a job has on other people.

Task Identity: The extent to which a job involves doing a complete piece of work, from beginning to end.

Feedback: Information about the effectiveness of one’s work performance.

Growth Need Strength: The extent to which people desire to achieve higher order need satisfaction by
performing their jobs.

Job Enrichment: The design of jobs to enhance intrinsic motivation, quality of working life, and job
involvement.

Job Involvement: A cognitive state of psychological identification with one’s job and the importance of
work to one’s total self-image.

Job Enlargement: Increasing job breadth by giving employees more tasks at the same level to perform
but leaving other core characteristics unchanged.

Work Design Characteristics: Attributes of the task, job, and social and organizational environment.

Relational Architecture of Jobs: The structural properties of work that shape employees’ opportunities to
connect and interact with other people.
Prosocial Motivation: The desire to expend effort to benefit other people.

Management by Objectives (MBO): An elaborate, systematic, ongoing program designed to facilitate goal
establishment, goal accomplishment, and employee development.
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HROB 2090 Midterm 1 Key Terms

Body Language: Non-verbal communication by means of a sender’s bodily motions, facial expressions, or
physical location.

Cultural Context: The cultural information that surrounds a communication episode.

Information Richness: The potential information carrying capacity of a communication medium.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC): Forms of communication that rely on computer technology

to facilitate information exchange.

Enterprise social media: A private work-related social media platform that is accessible only by
organizational members.

Congruence: A condition in which a person’s words, thoughts, feelings, and actions all contain the same
message.

Active Listening: A technique for improving the accuracy of information reception by paying close
attention to the sender.

360-degree feedback: Performance appraisal that uses the input of supervisors, employees, peers, and
client or customers of the appraised individual.

Employee Survey: An anonymous questionnaire that enables employees to state their candid opinions
and attitudes about an organization and its practices.

Suggestion Systems: Programs designed to enhance upward communication by soliciting ideas for
improved work operations from employees.

Chapter 11

Decision Making: The process of developing a commitment to some course of action.

Problem: A perceived gap between an existing state and a desired state.

Well-structured Problem: A problem for which the existing state is clear, the desired state is clear, and
how to get from one state to the other is fairly obvious.

Program: A standardized way of solving a problem.

Ill-structured Problem: A problem for which the existing and desired states are unclear and the method
of getting to the desired state is unknown.

Perfect Rationality: A decision strategy that is completely informed, perfectly logical, and oriented
toward economic gain.

Bounded Rationality: A decision strategy that relies on limited information and that reflects time
constraints and political considerations.
Framing: Aspects of the presentation of information about a problem that are assumed by decision
makers.
HROB 2090 Midterm 1 Key Terms

Cognitive Biases: Tendencies to acquire and process information in an error-prone way.

Confirmation Bias: The tendency to seek out information that conforms to one’s own definition of or
solution to a problem.
Information Overload: The reception of more information than is necessary to make effect decisions.

Maximization: The choice of the decision alternative with the greatest expected value.

Anchoring Effect: The inadequate adjustment of subsequent estimates from an initial estimate that
serves as an anchor.
Satisficing: Establishing an adequate level of acceptability for a solution to a problem and then screening
solutions until one that exceeds this level is found.
Sunk Costs: Permanent losses of resources incurred as the result of a decision.

Escalation of Commitment: The tendency to invest additional resources in an apparently failing course of
action.

Hindsight: The tendency to review the decision-making process to find what was done right or wrong.
Diffusion of Responsibility: The ability of group members to share the burden of the negative
consequences of a poor decision.
Groupthink: The capacity for group pressure to damage the mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral
judgement of decision-making groups.

Devil’s Advocate: A person appointed to identity and challenge the weaknesses of a proposed plan or
strategy.

Risky Shift: The tendency for groups to make riskier decisions than the average risk initially advocated by
their individual members.

Conservative Shift: The tendency for groups to make less risky decisions than the average risk initially
advocated by their individual members.

Evidence-based Management: Making decisions through the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of
the best available evidence from multiple sources.

Crowdsourcing: Outsourcing aspects of a decision process to a large collection of people.

Analytics: Finding meaningful patterns in large datasets.

Big Data: Copious amounts of information that are often collected in real time and can come from a wide
variety of sources, particularly digital.