Meaningful Work (Lecture 2) Work-life balance

Personality Traits
Motivation
Meaningless Work (Lecture 2)
Function of Work (Lecture 2)
Job Satisfaction (Lecture 3) Meaningful work
Personality traits
Psychological safety
Diversity
Work-Life Balance (Lecture 3) Personality traits
Motivation

Stress (Lecture 3)
Burnout (Lecture 3)
Big 5 Personality Traits (Lecture 4) Psychological safety
Decision making
Work group structure
Barriers to perception and (Lecture 6) In-group vs out-group
attribution Communication
Work group structure
Reactive vs. Reflective (Lecture 6) Personality traits
Decision Making Communication
Challenges to group decision
making
Barriers to effective decision (Lecture 6)
making
Direction of Motivation (Lecture 7) Meaningful work
Conflict (?)
Job design
Job satisfaction
Intensity of Motivation (Lecture 7)
Process theories of (Lecture 7)
motivation
Encoding and Decoding (Lecture 8) Barriers to effective decision
making
Meaningful work
Identity groups
Conflict
Medium (Lecture 8)
Noise (Lecture 8)
 Oral vs. Written (Lecture 8)
Communication
Conflict (Lecture 9) Communication
Personality Traits
Psychological safety
motivation
Elements of group (Lecture 9)
effectiveness
Work group structure (Lecture 9)
Psychological Safety (Lecture 10) Communication
Conflict
Personality traits

Group Decision making (Lecture 11) Communication

improvements Motivation
Identity
Challenges to Group (Lecture 11)
Decision-making
Identity Groups (Lecture 12) Job design
Communication
Meaningful work
Conflict
Invisible and visible diversity (Lecture 12)
In group vs. out group (Lecture 12)
Top-down job design (Lecture 13) Meaningful work
Personality traits
Motivation
Elements of group
effectiveness
Bottom-up Job Design (Lecture 13)
OB Concept List
Meaningful Work (Lecture 2)
‘You’ Perspective

Objective Reasons:

(Black et al Chapter 1)

a) Money
b) Connection
c) Status
d) Identity

Subjective Reasons:

(Bailey & Madden What Makes Work Meaningful (or Meaningless))

a) Self-transcendent
b) Poignant
c) Episodic
d) Reflective
e) Meaningful

Meaning of work can alter over time, as people change what they except changes.

How does the meaning of work relate to the meaning of life:

a) The meaning of life (an end to life)

a. Subjective Reasons (Bailey and Madden, What Makes Work Meaningful (or
Meaningless))

b) A means to the meaning of life (means to an end)

a. Objective reasons (Black et al, Chapter 1)
Meaningless Work (Lecture 2)

Objective Reasons:

(Bailey & Madden What Makes Work Meaningful (or Meaningless))

a) Disconnect people from their values

b) Take your employees for granted
c) Give people pointless work to do
d) Treat people unfairly
e) Override people’s better judgment
f) Disconnect people from supportive relationships
g) Put people at risk of physical or emotional harm

Well-Being and Emotion (Lecture 3)

Well-being is the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy

Key Factors in Well-being in work environments:

a) Quality and safety of physical environment

b) Emotions about work and organization

Job Satisfaction (Lecture 3)

Job satisfaction is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s
job or job experience (Black et al)

Work-Life Balance (Lecture 3)

Work-life Balance is the equilibrium between personal life and work (Black et al)

Stress (Lecture 3)
Is a physical and emotional reaction to potentially threatening aspects of the environment
(Black et al)
Burnout (Lecture 3)
Is a general feeling of exhaustion that can develop when a person simultaneously experiences
much pressure to perform and too few sources of satisfaction. (Black et al)

What can we do to facilitate Well-Being at Work? (Lecture 3)

Staple Perks:
a) Sick leave
b) Personal leave
c) Paid vacations
d) Insurance
e) Retirement plan
f) Child care

Personality (Lecture 4)
Personality is a stable set of characteristics and tendencies that determine those
commonalities and differences in the psychological behavior of people… (Black et al)

Main points of personality:

a) The constellation of interacting characteristics

b) Relatively stable over time
c) Similarities and differences across people

The Big Five Personality Traits (Lecture 4)

1) Extraversion
a. Outgoing/energetic
b. Contrasted with introversion
2) Emotional Stability
a. Resilient/confident
b. Contrasted with neuroticism: sensitive/nervous
3) Agreeableness
a. Friendly/compassionate
b. Contrasted with critical/rational
 4) Conscientiousness
a. Efficient/organized
b. Contrasted extravagant/careless
5) Intellect/imagination
a. Inventive/curious
b. Contrasted with consistent/cautious

Limits of personality tests

1) Inaccurate (hidden brain)

2) Self-fulfilling prophecy
3) Situational
4) Change over time

Perception, Attribution, Decision Making (Lecture 6)

Attribution (Lecture 6)
Attribution is the process by which people attribute traits and causes to things the observe.

It is what you understand from something you see.

Barriers to Attribution (Lecture 6)

a) Stereotyping
a. Judging an entity on the basis of one’s perception of the group to which that
entity belongs
b. Very common
b) Fundamental Attribution Error
a. Tendency to underestimate the effects of external or situational causes of
behavior and to overestimate the effect of internal or personal causes.
c) Self-serving bias
a. We attribute positive events and successes to out own character or actions, but
blame negative results to external factors unrelated to our character

Decision Making (Lecture 6)

Decision-making is the action or process of thinking through possible options and selecting one.
Reactive vs Reflective Decision Making (Lecture 6)

Reactive Decision Making

a) Quick
b) Impulsive
c) Intuitive
d) Relying on emotions and habits
e) Used frequently

Reflective Decision Making

a) Logical
b) Analytical
c) Deliberate
d) Methodical
e) Used less often

Barriers to Decision-Making (Lecture 6)

a) Attribution Challenges
b) Bounded Rationality
a. We cannot fully gasp all the possible alternatives, nor can we
understand all the implications of every possible alternative
c) Escalation of Commitment
a. Remain committed to a poor decision, even when doing so leads to
increasingly negative outcomes
d) Time constraints
a. Not enough time to collect and process infroamtion
e) Uncertainty
a. Unsure of what could happen
f) Personal biases
a. Confirmation bias: tendency to interpret new evidence as
confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories
b. Similarity bias: tendency to prefer people who are similar to us
g) Conflict
a. People try to avoid conflict
Motivation (Lecture 7)
Motivation: a force within or outside of the body that energizes, directs, and
sustains human behavior. (Black et al)

Work motivation: the aount of effort a persion exerts to achieve a certain level of
job performance (Black et al)

Direction of Motivation (Lecture 7)

What a person wants to achieve, what they intend to do (Black et al)

Intensity of Motivation (Lecture 7)

Intensity is how hard people try to achieve their targets. Intensity is what we think of as effort
(Black et al)

Forms of Motivation (Lecture 7)

a) Extrinsic
a. Come from outside
b. Money, insurance, flexible schedule
b) Intrinsic
a. Come from inside
b. Passion, kindness, joy

Theories of Motivation (Lecture 7)

Content Theories

What motivates people (eg Maslow’s hierarchy)

Equity Theory:

Balance of inputs and outputs

Process Theories
How people become motivated:

Expectancy Theory:

Relates to the question do we expect our performance to lead to a valued outcome

Communication (Lecture 8)
Encoding

The process by which individuals initiating the communication translates their ideas into a
systematic set of symbols, either written or spoken

Decoding

The process by which the recipient of the message interprets it. The receiver attaches meaning
to the message and tries to uncover its underlying intent.

Medium

A system or channel through which the communicator addresses the receiver

Noise

Factors that distort message clarity

Group (Lecture 9)
A group is a collection of individuals who share a common set of norms, generally have
differentiated roles, and interact with one another (Black et al)

Teams are people organized to function cooperatively as a group (Black et al)

Team Structure:

a) Formal/informal
b) Temporary/permanent
c) Roles
d) Size
e) Norms
f) Status systems
g) Cohesiveness

Elements of Group Effectiveness (Lecture 9)

What makes a group Effective (Black et al)

a) Productive Output (organization)

b) Personal need satisfaction (you)
c) Capacity for future cooperation (organization + you)

Main Inputs into Effective Groups (Black et al)

a) Effort
b) Knowledge and skills
c) Task performance strategies

Group Conflict (Lecture 9)

Types of Conflict:

a) Task Conflict
a. Relates to work tasks
b. Understanding of the task, how to share resources
b) Relationship
a. Relates to differences in personality
b. Preferences
Psychological Safety (Lecture 10)
Is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions,
concerns, or mistakes. (Edmondson)

How to build psychological safety

a) Frame the problem as a learning problem

b) Acknowledge your own fallibility
c) Ask a lot of questions

Group Decision Making (Lecture 11)

Shared Information Bias:

Group members tend to discuss information that they all have access to while ignoring equally
important information that is available to only a few of the members. (Strangor et al)

Groupthink:

Strong conformity pressures to wrong decision (Stangor et al)

Social Loafing:

Don’t work as hard because others are going to work harder (or wont work as hard) (Stangor et
al).

Production Blocking:
Only one person can speak at a time, and this can cause people to forget their ideas because
they are listening to others, or to miss what others are saying because they are thinking of their
own ideas.

Group Polarization:

The tendency for groups to show a shift towards the extremes of decision-making

Occurs when:
a) Group is already leaning one way
b) Discussion takes place

Improving Group Decision Making (Lecture 11)

a) Work alone, then share (Stangor et al)
a. Allows you to minimize groupthink, production blocking, social loafing, group
polarization
b) Electronically mediated anonymously to give time to reflect + reduce apprehension
(Strangor et al)
a. Allows you to minimize groupthink, production blocking, social loafing, group
polarization.
c) Have diverse members in the group
a. Minimizes groupthink, group polarization, shared information bias
d) Assign a devil’s advocate
a. Minimizes groupthink, group polarization, shared information bias
e) Setting helpful norms, roles

Diversity (Lecture 12)

Diversity refers to identity-based differences among and between two or more people that
affect their lives (Black et al)

Visible Diversity (Lecture 12)

Relatively easily observable with our 5 senses (eg race, gender)

Invisible Diversity (Lecture 12)

Not easily observable (eg religion, nationality)

Identity Groups (Lecture 12)

A collective of individuals who share these characteristics is known as an identity group, either
visible or invisible (Black et al and Lecture 12)

In Group vs Out Group (Lecture 12)

Favor: in-group
Disparage: out-group
Overlaps with self-similarity bias

Improving Experience for Diverse Workers (Lecture 12)

a) Create policies
b) Found Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)

Job Design (Lecture 13)

Top-Down Job Design (Lecture 13)

Managers design the jobs

Early theory of job design

Theories:

a) Scientific Management
a. Improve efficiency of workflows
i. Ordering tasks in a specific way
b) Job Characteristics Theory
a. You want to design and modify jobs to capture these things:
Bottom-Up Job Design (Lecture 13)

Individuals shape how their work is carried out

Works best if management allows it

Theories:

a) Job Crafting
a.

In-Class Activity (Lecture 4)

The in-class activity that really affected me was the ‘party planning’ with people who have the
same major personality traits from the big five personality traits. I learned a lot regarding how
different personality traits affects us, but I also learned about work group structure, namely
how to structure an efficient work group. I remember different groups had very different plans
and used their time differently-with one group not bein able to finish the planning. This shows
to me that an efficient work group has t have people with different personality traits in order to
create the best output because each trait has a different set of skills that add to the output as
highlighted in the lecture and Black.

Real-Life Example Reading (Lecture 3)

The real-liofe example that affected me the most is the reading of Deloitte's employee benefits
because I was able to see hoe companies try to make sure their employees’ see their work as
meaningful work and build efficient working teams by increasing cohesiveness inside their team
through team events.

Real-Life Example In Class (Lecture 5)

The Amazon case we did in practicum 1 was very beneficial becuas eit not only showed how we
can apply OB concepts but also outlined how companies deal with work-life balance issues in
realtion with top-down job creation problems.