Exam
Name___________________________________
TRUE/FALSE. Write 'T' if the statement is true and 'F' if the statement is false.
Motivation is an external force on the person that causes him or her to engage in specific
behaviours.
Persistence is an element of motivation.
Learned capabilities refer to the skills and knowledge that you have actually acquired.
Aptitudes are natural talents that help individuals learn specific tasks more quickly and
perform them better than other people.
Learned capabilities are skills and knowledge that you possess. Therefore, they do not
diminish over time when not in use.
Competencies refer to the extent to which people understand the job duties assigned to or
expected of them.
According to the MARS model, ability is the most important force influencing individual
behaviour and results.
Competencies refer to the complete set of motivations, abilities, role perceptions, and
situational factors that contribute to job performance.
The MARS model identifies the four main factors that influence individual behaviour.
According to the MARS model of individual behaviour and performance, employee
performance will remain high even if one of the four factors significantly weakens.
Providing training is a person-job matching strategy.
The four perspectives described over the past few pages—open systems, organisational learning, high-performance work practices and stakeholder—provide a multidimensional view of what makes companies effective. Within these models, however, are individual behaviours that enable companies to interact with their environments; acquire, share and use knowledge to the best advantage; process inputs to outputs efficiently and responsively; and satisfy the needs of various groups in society. While organisational effectiveness is the ultimate dependent variable, the behaviours described here are the individual-level dependent variables found in most OB research. Exhibit 1.2 highlights the five types of behaviour discussed most often in the organisational behaviour literature: task performance, organisational citizenship, counterproductive work behaviours, joining and staying with the organisation, and work attendance. | Summarise the five types of individual behaviour in organisations. |
Task Performance
Task performance refers to goal-directed behaviours under the individual's control that support organisational objectives. Task performance behaviours transform raw materials into goods and services, or support and maintain technical activities.58 For example, foreign exchange traders at the Bank of New Zealand make decisions and take actions to exchange currencies. Employees in most jobs have more than one performance dimension. Foreign exchange traders must be able to identify profitable trades, work cooperatively with clients and coworkers in a stressful environment, assist in training new staff and work on special telecommunications equipment without error. Some of these performance dimensions are more important than others, but only by considering all of them can we fully evaluate an employee's contribution to the organisation.
Organisational Citizenship
Companies could not effectively compete, transform resources or serve the needs of their stakeholders if employees performed only their formal job duties. Employees also need to engage in organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs)Various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organisation's social and psychological context.—various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organisation's social and psychological context.60 In other words, companies require contextual performance (i.e. OCBs) along with task performance.
Australia Post Superstar Performance |
Australia Post's Dandenong Letters Centre is the largest mail-processing facility in the Southern Hemisphere. Fifteen hundred employees work across seven shifts, processing more than 7 million separate mail articles each day. During Christmas season, daily production jumps to 12 or 13 million items. Computerised equipment processes most letters, directing them to regions and specific delivery routes. Each day thousands of documents aren't readable by machine, so the computer scans them and sends the image to human ‘video coders’ who view the image and type in the correct postcode. The performance of these video coders is staggering. One video coder named Edna routinely processes 5000 addresses per hour, even while carrying on a conversation. ‘She can sit there and just talk; she's just got such a light touch,’ says supervisor Michelle D'Rozario, who calls Edna her ‘superstar’.59 Jason Edwards/Oakleigh Springvale Dandenong Leader |
Organisational citizenship behaviours take many forms.61 Some are directed toward individuals, such as assisting coworkers with their work problems, adjusting your work schedule to accommodate coworkers, showing genuine courtesy toward coworkers and sharing your work resources (supplies, technology, staff). Other OCBs represent cooperation and helpfulness toward the organisation in general. These include supporting the company's public image, taking discretionary action to help the organisation avoid potential problems, offering ideas beyond those required for your own job, attending voluntary functions that support the organisation and keeping up with new developments in the organisation.
In many ways, employees who engage in organisational citizenship act like company owners because they go beyond their own interests to the wellbeing of others and the organisation. This is illustrated in a recent story from Procter & Gamble (P&G) in India. P&G was waiting for a shipment of materials needed to keep its production lines running. The shipment had arrived in customs, but due to heavy rains the government declared a holiday for all of its offices (including customs). Undeterred by the weather, a P&G plant engineer took the initiative of arranging to pick up a customs official from his house and take him to the customs office to authorise clearance of the valuable materials. When the materials were cleared through customs, the engineer then made sure they were delivered to the plant the same day. By going beyond the call of duty, the engineer (with the cooperation of the customs officer) was able to keep the production lines running.62
Counterproductive Work Behaviours
Organisational behaviour is interested in all workplace behaviours, including those on the ‘dark side’, collectively known as counterproductive work behaviours (CWBs) Voluntary behaviours that have the potential to directly or indirectly harm the organisation.. CWBs are voluntary behaviours that have the potential to directly or indirectly harm the organisation. They include abuse of others (e.g. insults and nasty comments), threats (threatening harm), work avoidance (e.g. tardiness), work sabotage (doing work incorrectly) and overt acts (theft). CWBs are not minor concerns. One Australian study found that units of a fast-food restaurant chain with higher CWBs had a significantly worse performance, whereas organisational citizenship had a relatively minor benefit.63
Joining and Staying with the Organisation
Task performance, organisational citizenship and the lack of counterproductive work behaviours are obviously important, but if qualified people don't join and stay with the organisation, none of these performance-related behaviours will occur. Although staff shortages vary as the economy rises and falls, it appears that some employers never seem to get enough qualified staff. During the most recent economic recession, for example, one Australian newspaper published stories of employers who didn't have any qualified applicants in spite of rising unemployment. (Most employers filled their vacancies after the stories were reported.) The effects of staff shortages are apparent in Wittlesea, Victoria, where a chronic shortage of paramedics has resulted in cancellation of some ambulance services. The shortage has also placed a heavy strain on existing staff, some of whom are regularly (and reluctantly) working fourteen-hour days without a lunch break, and also covering other shifts on their days off. ‘The paramedics are exhausted and each patient is then forced to wait longer for treatment,’ says the union representing paramedics.64
Companies survive and thrive not just by hiring people with talent or potential; they also need to ensure that these employees stay with the company. Companies with high turnover suffer because of the high cost of replacing people who leave. More important, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, much of an organisation's intellectual capital is the knowledge carried around in employees' heads. When people leave, some of this vital knowledge is lost, often resulting in inefficiencies, inferior customer service and so forth. This threat is not trivial: One large-scale survey revealed that nearly two-thirds of Indonesian employees plan to move to a different employer even though the position, area of work and remuneration are the same. During the recent mining boom, a survey of thirteen mining operations across Australia reported an average turnover rate of 24 per cent, with some mining sites experiencing annual employee turnover approaching 60 per cent.65
Maintaining Work Attendance
Along with attracting and retaining employees, organisations need everyone to show up for work at scheduled times. Situational factors—such as severe weather or car breakdown—explain some work absences. Motivation is another factor. Employees who experience job dissatisfaction or work-related stress are more likely to be absent or late for work because taking time off is a way to temporarily withdraw from stressful or dissatisfying conditions. Absenteeism is also higher in organisations with generous sick leave because this benefit limits the negative financial impact of taking time away from work. Studies have found that absenteeism is also higher in teams with strong absence norms, meaning that team members tolerate and even expect coworkers to take time off. One study of Queensland government employees discovered that absenteeism rates changed over time, and that these changing absence levels may be due to changing norms about how much unscheduled time off team members should take.67
Google Attracts and Keeps Talent through ‘Cool’ Campuses |
Courtesy of Camenzind Evolution Google is ranked by university students in many countries as one of the top ten places to work. One reason why the internet technology company is able to attract so many applicants is that its workplaces look like every student's dream of a university campus. Google's headquarters (called Googleplex) in Mountain View, California, is outfitted with lava lamps, exercise balls, casual sofas, foosball, pool tables, workout rooms, video games, slides and a restaurant with free gourmet meals. Google's new EMEA engineering hub in Zurich, Switzerland, also boasts a fun, campus-like environment. These photos show a few areas of Google's offices in Zurich, including private temporary workspaces in beehives and ski gondolas. Google's offices are so comfortable that executives occasionally remind staff of building code regulations against making the offices their permanent home.66
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