15. List four causes of conflict in relation to teams.
Scarce resources Personality clashes Power and status differences Goal differences
16. List five visible artefacts of an organisation’s culture.
Symbols Stories Heroes Slogans Ceremonies
17. List the six characteristics of entrepreneurs.
Internal locus of control High energy level Need to achieve Tolerance for ambiguity Awareness for passing time Self-confidence
18. What are the two types of personal power?
Expert power
Referent power
19. What are the two types of position power?
Legitimate power
Reward power
20. List the five types of upward communication and downward communication, three types of horizontal communication.
Upward:
Problems and exceptions
Suggestions for improvement
Performance reports
Grievances and disputes
Financial and accounting information
Downward:
Implementation of goals and strategies
Job instructions and rationale
Procedures and practices
Performance feedback
Indoctrination
Horizontal:
Intradepartmental problem solving
Interdepartmental coordination
Change initiatives and improvements
Mini Essays:
1. Briefly describe systems theory, including synergy and negative entropy.
System theory is an extension of the humanistic perspective that describes organisation as open systems that are characterised by entropy, synergy and subsystem interdependence. There are five components in the basic system theory of organisation: inputs, a transformation process, outputs, feedback and the environment.
Inputs are the material, human, and financial or information resources used to product goods or services. The transformation process is management’s use of production technology to change the inputs into output. Outputs include the organisation’s products and services. Feedback is knowledge of the result that influences the selection of inputs during the next cycle of process. The environment surrounding the organisation includes the social, political and economic forces.
Open systems must interact with the environment to survive; closed systems need not. In the classical and management science perspectives, organisations were frequently thought of as closed system. In the management science perspective, closed system assumptions – the absence of external disturbances – are sometimes used to simplify problems for quantitative analysis. In reality, however, all organisations are open systems, and the cost of ignoring the environment may be failure.
Entropy is a universal property of system and refers to their tendency to run down and die. If a system does not receive fresh input and energy from its environment, it will eventually cease to exist. In contrast, negative entropy is the ability of open system to bring in new energy, in the form of inputs and feedback from the environment, in order to delay or arrest entropy. For example, one reason why the car brand Edsel ran into troubles was that Ford relied on market research conducted in the early 1950s and ignored the newer signs indicating that consumers were turning to more fuel efficient foreign cars.
Another major characteristic of open system is synergy, the ability of the whole to equal more than the sum of its parts. This means that an organisation ought to be able to achieve its goals more effectively and efficiently than would be possible if the parts operated separately. For example, at Ford, the organisation’s parts were not operating in synchronization when the top management committee ignored market research and chose the ill fated “Edsel” tag which is best known as one of the most spectacular failures in the history of the United States automobile industry.
2. Define what is meant by the term “fundamental attribution error” (FAE). Using examples, discuss the three factors the underpin FAEs.
The fundamental attribution error (FAE) define that the tendency to overestimate the impact of internal factors and underestimate the impact of external factors on other people’s behaviour. Perceiver tends to give other people too much blame for their failures and too much credit for their success. For example, when someone has been promoted to CEO, people generally consider the characteristics of the person that allowed him or her to achieve the promotion. In reality, however, the selection of that person may have been heavily influenced by external factors, such as business conditions creating a need for someone with a strong financial or marketing background at that particular time. There are three factors that influence whether an attribution will be external or internal: Distinctiveness, Consensus, Consistency.
Distinctiveness means the extent to which a person being perceived achieves the same results on task that are much different. In this case, the perceiver is comparing the same person’s performance of different tasks. When a perceiver observes someone succeed at widely differing tasks, the perceiver in more likely to attribute the success to internal causes – the person’s ability or effort. With success at only one type of activity, the perceiver is more likely to credit task difficulty. For example, in the case of your successful project, your boss is more likely to give you the credit if you perform well at other, unrelated activities.
Consensus describes the extent to which others, including the perceiver, engage in the same behaviour or experience the same outcome. In other words, it compares different people performing the same kind of task. For example, if you are being assessed on your performance on a project, your boss will likely take into account how well other people have performed similar assignment. If your boss views these other situations are equally challenging and sees that most people have succeeded as well as you did, he or she will more likely attribute your success to something about the project.
Consistency is degree to which the person being observed behaves the same way or obtains the same outcome at different time. It compares the performance of the same person at similar task at different time. In situations with high consistency, the perceiver is more likely to attribute an outcome to internal factors. Low consistency usually results in external attributions to task difficultly or luck. For example, in the case of impressing your boss, he or she is more likely to attribute your success to you if he or she often sees you working hard or succeeding.
3. Identify and define the reinforcement tools available to a manager. Using examples, indicate how each type might be used to remove tardiness from the workplace.
Reinforcement is defined as anything that causes a certain behaviour to be repeated or inhibited. The four reinforcement tools are positive reinforcement, avoidance learning, punishment and extinction. Each type of reinforcement is a consequence of either a pleasant or unpleasant event being applied or withdrawn following a person’s behaviour.
Positive reinforcement is the administration of a pleasant and rewarding consequence following desired behaviour. The rewarding consequence, such as praise, a raise, or time off, is said to be a positive rein forcer if it leads to repetition of the desired behaviour.
A good example of positive reinforcement is immediate praise for an employee who arrives on time or does a little extra in his or her work.
Avoidance learning is the removal of an unpleasant consequence following desired behaviour. Avoidance learning is sometime called negative reinforcement. Employees learn to do the right thing by avoiding unpleasant situations. In other words, the desired behaviour is reinforced in a negative way because the individual must engage in the behaviour in order to get rid of an unpleasant condition. For example, an engineer may work hard to finish a project on time in order to stop the chief engineer’s nagging or yelling.
Punishment is the imposition of unpleasant outcomes on an employee. Punishment typically occurs following undesirable behaviour. Punishment, when applied, is sending the message to not do something. Some people believe that punishment is the opposite of reward and is just as effective in changing behaviour. For example, punishing a worker who deliberately and overtly slows down the flow of work may be an economically necessary way of altering behaviour. However, the point is that punishment and its use depend on the situation and on the manager’s style of altering behaviour.
Extinction is the withdrawal of a positive reward, meaning that behaviour is no longer reinforced and hence is less likely to occur in the future. If a perpetually tardy employee fails to receive praise and pay raises, he or she will begin to realise that the behaviour is not producing desired outcomes. The behaviour will gradually disappear if it is not continually reinforced. For example, a member of a work team may have gotten into the habit of telling jokes at team meetings because people laughed at them. If the team began to feel that the jokes were not a desirable part of their activities and made an effort not to laugh, over time the team member’s joke telling is likely to diminish.