Chapter 2 – Individual Behavior, Personality, and Values (MARS & Values in the

Workplace, Ethical Principles)

A. An individual’s voluntary behavior and performance is influenced by motivation,

ability, role perceptions, and situational factors represented by the acronym
MARS.

Motivation – Internal forces (cognitive and emotional conditions) that affect a person’s
voluntary choice of behavior

• Direction – motivation is goal-directed, not random

• Intensity – amount of effort allocated to the goal

• Persistence – continuing the effort for a certain amount of time

Ability – Natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a

task

• Aptitudes – natural talents that help people learn specific tasks more quickly and
perform them better

Role Perceptions – the extent to which people understand the job duties (roles)
assigned to or expected of them. Clear role perceptions:

• Understand the specific tasks assigned to them

• Understand the priority of their various tasks and performance expectations

• Understand the preferred behaviors for accomplishing tasks

Situational Factors – Environmental conditions beyond the individual’s immediate

control that constrain or facilitate behavior and performance

• Constraints – e.g. time, budget, work facilities, consumer preferences, economic

conditions

• Cues – clarity and consistency of cues provided by the environment to employees

regarding their role obligations e.g. lack of signs of nearby safety hazards

B. Values in the Workplace

• Stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or courses of action
in a variety of situations
• Tell us what we “ought” to do – Define right or wrong, good or bad
• Serve as a moral compass that directs our motivation and, potentially our decisions
and actions
Value system -- hierarchy of preferences which is relatively stable and long-lasting

Ethics is the study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right
or wrong and outcomes are good or bad

C. Three Ethical Principles

Utilitarianism
• Seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people
• Focuses on the consequences of our actions, not on how we achieve those
consequences
Individual rights principle
• Reflects the belief that everyone has entitlements that let her or him act in a certain
way e.g. freedom of speech, fair trial
• Problem of conflicting rights e.g. right to privacy conflicts with another’s right to know
Distributive justice principle
• People who are similar should receive similar benefits and burdens e.g. two
employees who contribute equally in their work
• Inequalities are acceptable when they benefit the least well off

Chapter 3 – Perceiving Ourselves and Others in Organizations (Four “Selves” of Self

Concept)

A. An individual’s self-beliefs and self-evaluations

• It is the “Who am I?” and “How do I feel about myself?” that people ask themselves to
guide their decisions and actions

• We compare our images of a job with our current (perceived self) and desired (ideal
self) to determine fit.

 Self-enhancement

 Promoting and protecting our positive self-view. An innate human drive to

promote/protect a positive self-view. Being competent, attractive, lucky,
ethical, valued. Most evident in situations that are common and important.
People with a positive self-concept: Have better personal adjustment and
mental/physical health. Tend to inflate personal causation and probability
of success

 Self-verification
  Affirming our existing self-concept. Stabilizes our self-concept – anchors
our thoughts and actions People prefer feedback that is consistent with
their self concept

 Self-evaluation

 Evaluating ourselves through self-esteem, self-efficacy and locus of

control.

 Self-esteem

 High self-esteem -- less influenced, more persistent/logical

 Self-efficacy

 Belief in one’s ability, motivation, role perceptions, and situation to

complete a task successfully

 General vs. task-specific self-efficacy

 Locus of control

 General belief about personal control over life events

 Higher self-evaluation with internal locus of control

 Social self

 Defining ourselves in terms of group membership.

 Personal identity (internal self-concept)

 Attributes that highlight a person’s uniqueness

 Social identity (external self-concept)

 People define themselves by the groups to which they belong or

have an emotional attachment

 We identify with groups that make us feel better about ourselves –

self-enhancement (e.g. high status groups)
Chapter 4 – Workplace Emotions, Attitudes, and Stress (Two dimensions of emotions,
Emotional Labor Across cultures, Emotional Intelligence)

A. Emotions
Two dimensions of emotions – evaluation and activation
• Foundation of the circumplex model of emotions
• e.g. fearful is a negative emotion that generates a high level of
activation
• e.g. relaxed is a pleasant emotion that has fairly low activation

B. Emotional Labor Across culture “American Dream”

Displaying or hiding emotions varies across cultures

• Minimal emotional expression and monotonic voice in Ethiopia,
Japan, Austria
• Encourage open display of one’s true emotions in Kuwait, Egypt, Spain, Russia people
expected to be dramatic and animated. (telephone scene)

C. Emotional Intelligence – Not to be bitter in their father’s work

A set of abilities to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought,

understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in oneself and others.

Emotional intelligence is a set of abilities/skills

• Can be learned through personal coaching, practice, and feedback
• EI increases with age – maturity

Chapter 5 – Foundations of Employee Motivation (Motivation, Three Learned Needs,)

A. Motivation
Motivation is the forces within a person that affect direction, intensity, and persistence of
voluntary behavior. Motivated employees are willing to exert a particular level of effort
(intensity), for a certain amount of time (persistence), toward a particular goal (direction)

Nothing in the world can take the place of good old persistence. Talent will not. Nothing
is more common that unsuccessful men with talent. Genius won’t. Unrecognized genius
is practically a cliché. Education won’t. The world is full of educated fools. Persistence
and determination alone are powerful.

B. Three Learned Needs

Need for achievement
• High nAch people want to accomplish reasonably challenging goals through their own
effort; prefer working alone; choose tasks with moderate risk; desire unambiguous
feedback and recognition; and money is a weak motivator
• Low nAch people work better when money is an incentive
• Entrepreneurs have high achievement need

Need for affiliation

• Seek approval of others, conform to their wishes and expectations, and avoid conflict
and confrontation
• People in decision-making positions must have relatively low need for affiliation so that
their choices are not biased by personal need for approval

Need for power

• People want to control their environment including people and material resources
• Personalized power – enjoy power for its own sake and use it to advance personal
interests
• Socialized power – desire power as a means to help others
• Effective leaders – should have high need for socialized rather than personalized
power

Chapter 6 – Applied Performance Practices (Money, Self Leadership)

A. Money
Rewarding people with money is one of the oldest and most widespread applied
performance practices but money means different things to different people
• Symbol of achievement/success/status
• Reinforcer and motivator
• Reflection of performance
• Source of enhanced or reduced anxiety
Differences in meaning of money by gender and culture
• Men value money more than women – men tend to view money as a symbol of power
and status
• Cultural values influence the meaning and value of money – high power distance
countries e.g. China and Japan tend to have high respect and priority for money
Money is an important motivator

B. Self Leadership

The process of influencing oneself to establish the self direction and self-motivation
needed to perform a task.

1. Personal Goal Setting and Constructive Thought Patterns

Self-talk – the process of talking to ourselves about our own thoughts or actions
Positive self-talk increases self-efficacy
Mental imagery – process of mentally practicing a task and visualizing its successful
completion

2. Designing Natural Rewards (Franchise)

Finding ways to make the job more motivating e.g. altering the way the task is
accomplished – making slight changes to suit their needs and preferences

3. Self Monitoring

Keeping track at regular intervals of one’s progress toward a self-set goal

Using naturally-occurring feedback e.g. lawn maintenance employees can see
improving appearance of client’s lawn
Designing feedback systems e.g. arranging to receive a monthly report on sales levels

4. Self reinforcement

“Taking” a reinforcer only after completing a self-set goal e.g. taking a break after
reaching a pre-determined stage of your work – self-induced form of positive
reinforcement