Boring tedious jobs generally reduce people's perceptions of their

Organizational Change & Innovation CHAPTER 10 333

Hewlett-Packard Is Counting on Organizational Change to Boost Revenue Growth Meg Whitman became CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co. in 2011. Since the time H-P’s revenue peaked in 2011 at $127 billion, it has dropped every subsequent year. On the positive side, the company had two consecutive quarters of growth in 2014. H-P also is trying to right- size and reduce costs by planning to lay off 16,000 em- ployees. H-P earlier decided to lay off 34,000 people, resulting in a total reduction of 50,000 employees.100

Whitman described the job cuts “as an opportunity to streamline the company further and make it more nim- ble. An expected $1 billion in cost savings in fiscal 2016 would allow H-P to invest in new technologies and skills to revive growth.” Others, like UBS analyst Ste- ven Milunovich, believe that these job cuts will erode employee morale and may lead to increased turnover.101

“But fixing the world’s biggest tech company—with $120 billion in annual revenues and 330,000 employees— is a herculean task. Bloated by more than 70 acquisi- tions in the past 15 years, HP isn’t just sprawling and stalled out; it may actually be running in reverse.”102

Whitman decided to change the organizational structure to fuel growth. She created two clusters of businesses. One focuses on corporate technology cus- tomers. This group, which sells servers, storage, and networking, delivered 43% of the company’s overall operating profits according to Forbes. Unfortunately, the software and services that accompany all this hard- ware have not been as successful. H-P tried to build the software side of the business via acquisitions, which according to Forbes have not been very successful. The magazine noted that “when it comes to software acqui- sitions, Autonomy [H-P’s enterprise software com- pany] was merely the most high-profit misstep. All told, over the past decade HP squandered nearly $19 billion to buy myriad outfits that contribute only 7% to overall profit. The services unit, which staffs other companies’ tech projects, is barely at breakeven.”103 H-P is currently “looking for small to midsize acquisi- tion candidates in cloud computing, security, and ana- lytics software.”104

The second structural cluster sells printers, PCs, laptops, and mobile devices to people worldwide. This segment of the business contributed 29% of operating profits in 2013. The problem here is that the lucrative printer business is shrinking. Technology is simply moving more toward ink-free photo and document sharing, which benefits companies like Google, Face- book, and Dropbox.

Strategically, H-P also is trying to get back into the fast-growing tablet market. The company attempted to gain entry in this market in 2011 with the TouchPad

model, but it was a failure. Since February 2013, the company has introduced new models, and they are being well received in the market. In a similar vein, H-P has created an overall vice president for design. This was done to create a strategic focus on product development.

H-P didn’t stop at just a reorganization or a new tab- let strategy, according to Forbes. A survey of the com- pany’s 20,000 salespeople revealed that employees rated the internal sales tools a mere “7” on a scale of 1 to 100. For example, it took HP as much as three weeks to prepare a sales quote, when competitors could do it in a matter of days. The company decided to upgrade its sales process by using new tools from Salesforce.com.

Whitman also took to the road to reassure custom- ers that H-P was doing the “right things.” In the last year, she conducted “305 one-on-one meetings with customers or sales-channel partners, aides say, as well as another 42 roundtable chats with small groups” around the world.

It did not take Whitman long to realize that the or- ganizational culture also needed to be changed to fos- ter consistency between the company’s strategies and culture. According to Forbes, she eliminated the barbed wire fence and locked gates that separated parking lots for the executives and the general em- ployee population. “We should enter the building the same way everyone else does,” she said. She also de- cided to work from a cubicle, like most employees, instead of from a larger, more private location. She keeps a picture of her mother in her office. She also role models when she travels by staying at more mod- estly priced hotels.105

While H-P is positive about the changes taking place, some analysts are more skeptical. Bill Shope, an analyst from Goldman Sachs, concluded that “serial restructuring cannot solve H-P’s secular challenges, particularly following years of underinvestment.” He forecasts that H-P’s revenue might fall to $107 billion in fiscal 2015.106

FOR DISCUSSION

1. Which of the supertrends are driving H-P to change?

2. Which of the forces for change are causing H-P to undertake major organizational change? Explain.

3. How might Meg Whitman have used Lewin’s and Kotter’s models of change to increase the probability of achieving positive organizational change? Provide specific recommendations.

4. To what extent is H-P following the four steps for fostering innovation? Explain.

5. What advice would you give Whitman based on what you learned in this chapter? Be specific.

Management in Action

334 PART 4 Organizing

Should CEOs Fire Employees Based on the Opinions of U.S. Senators? This case involves the controversy surrounding Gen- eral Motors and its response, or lack of response, to the need to recall 1.6 million vehicles that could have faulty ignition switches.

GM’s CEO Mary Barra has now testified before several congressional committees on why it took so long to recall the vehicles with potential ignition problems.107 Barra has apologized for the problem and admitted that something was wrong with their in- ternal processes. The company has also established a fund to compensate victims. Distribution of payments is being managed by Kenneth Feinberg.

In a July 2014 congressional meeting, members questioned Barra about her decision to retain Michael Millikin on her staff. Millikin, who has been with GM since 1977, is the company’s top lawyer. While under oath, he stated that he “didn’t know until February about an ignition-switch defect now linked to at least 13 deaths in Chevrolet Cobalts and similar cars built in the last decade.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, an internal report commissioned by GM found that members of Millikin’s staff were warned repeatedly starting in 2010 that GM could face costly, punitive damage awards over its failure to address safety problems re- lated to the ignition defect. Millikin claims that he did not know about these cases because company law- yers settled the cases for amounts that did not require review by Millikin himself.

The congressional committee is not buying this explanation and some members want Barra to fire Millikin. For example, Senator Claire McCaskill (D., Missouri) said, “How in the world, in the aftermath of this report, did Michael Millikin keep his job? This is either gross negligence or gross incompetence.” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Connecticut) accused Millikin “of overseeing a staff that engaged in deceit and potential fraud.” Both Millikin and Barra deny these charges. Barra believes that the company needs a person with Millikin’s experience and integ- rity to help the company work through this crisis.108

SOLVING THE CHALLENGE What would you do about firing Michael Millikin if you were Mary Barra?

1. Nothing. Congress does not have the power to force Barra to fire an employee and it does not know what it takes to run a large company. Termination deci- sions should be left to the company.

2. Continue to investigate the situation and do not fire him if you believe he is exonerated by the internal report.

3. Terminate him even though the internal report sug- gests that Millikin did not know about the issue. He should have known, and his lack of oversight is one cause of this terrible problem.

4. Invent other options.

Source: This case is based on J. Bennett and S. Hughes, “Panel Prods GM for Actions,” The Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2014, p. B3.

Legal/Ethical Challenge

PART 5 LEADING

Managing Individual Differences & Behavior Supervising People as People

Major Questions You Should Be Able to Answer

11.1 Personality & Individual Behavior Major Question: In the hiring process, do employers care about one’s personality and individual traits?

11.2 Values, Attitudes, & Behavior Major Question: How do the hidden aspects of individuals— their values and attitudes—affect employee behavior?

11.3 Perception & Individual Behavior Major Question: What are the distortions in perception that can cloud one’s judgment?

11.4 Work-Related Attitudes & Behaviors Managers Need to Deal With Major Question: Is it important for managers to pay attention to employee attitudes?

11.5 The New Diversified Workforce Major Question: What trends in workplace diversity should managers be aware of?

11.6 Understanding Stress & Individual Behavior Major Question: What causes workplace stress, and how can it be reduced?

11

forecccasst What’s Ahead in This Chapter

This first of five chapters on leadership discusses how to manage for individual differ-

ences and behaviors. We describe personality and individual behavior; values, attitudes,

and behavior; and specific work-related attitudes and behaviors managers need to be

aware of. We next discuss distortions in perception, which can affect managerial judg-

ment. Finally, we consider what stress does to individuals.

Are the 75 million so-called Millennials, born between 1977 and 1994, really so different from earlier genera- tions (the 78 million Baby Boomers, born 1946–1964, and 49 million Gen Xers, 1965–1976)? Do they need to be managed in different ways? The answer to both questions is yes.1

Independent, Tech-Savvy, Diverse, Educated—& Anxious Some major characteristics of Millennials: (1) They are extremely independent, because many were raised as day care or latchkey kids. (2) They are tech- savvy, used to smartphones and the Internet, and ac- customed to a faster pace of life. (3) They are racially and ethnically diverse. (4) They are probably the most educated in American history. (5) They are anxious they can’t meet their financial needs.

How Millennials Want to Be Managed In the workplace, these translate into a skepticism about rules, policies, and procedures; a requirement for more autonomy; and a need for constant stimula- tion. Millennials not only want a good income and good relationships with bosses and coworkers but also challenging daily work, the opportunity for growth, the chance to show off skills and be recog- nized for their accomplishments, casual dress envi- ronment, and flexible schedules for social and personal time. Some tips for managing this group:

• Allow them independent decision making and expression. Millennials are impatient, skeptical, and blunt and expressive, but they are used to adapting and making decisions. Show appreciation for their individuality and let them participate in decision making.

• Train them and mentor them. Millennials are strongly attracted to education and training, the best kind not being classroom training but forms of independent learning. At the same time, they should be given the chance to create long-term bonds with mentors.

• Give them constant feedback and recognition. Millennials need to know they are making an impact and need to be recognized for their workplace contributions. Thus, supervisors should show them how their work contributes to the bottom line. This generation revels in, even craves, constant praise, so managers should provide rewards in the form of praise, flextime, and extra responsibility.

• Provide them with access to technology. To attract and retain Millennial employees, companies need to provide the newest and best technology.

• Create customized career paths. Millennials would most like to be self-employed, but few are able to do it because of high start-up costs. Employers can reinforce the sense of control that this generation desires by providing them with a realistic account of their progress and their future within the organization.

For Discussion As a worker, you might hope to be led by someone who would follow the preceding sug- gestions. But suppose your boss is of the old “tough guy” school and doesn’t manage this way. In a diffi- cult job market, would you stick it out? How would you try to let your supervisor know how you would prefer to be managed?

the manager’s toolbox

Managing the Millennials: What’s Different about Today’s Generation of Younger Workers A

Sociable and assertive. Does it take a certain kind of personality to be a good salesperson? Have you ever known people who were quiet, unassuming, even shy but who were nevertheless very persistent and persuasive— that is, good salespeople?

In this and the next four chapters we discuss the third management function (after planning and organizing)—namely, leading. Leading, as we said in Chapter 1, is de- fined as motivating, directing, and otherwise influencing people to work hard to achieve the organization’s goals.

How would you describe yourself? Are you outgoing? aggressive? sociable? tense? passive? lazy? quiet? Whatever the combination of traits, which result from the interac- tion of your genes and your environment, they constitute your personality. More for- mally, personality consists of the stable psychological traits and behavioral attributes that give a person his or her identity.2 As a manager, you need to understand personality attributes because they affect how people perceive and act within the organization.3

The Big Five Personality Dimensions In recent years, the many personality dimensions have been distilled into a list of factors known as the Big Five.4 The Big Five personality dimensions are (1) extroversion, (2) agreeableness, (3) conscientiousness, (4) emotional stability, and (5) openness to experience.

■ Extroversion. How outgoing, talkative, sociable, and assertive a person is. ■ Agreeableness. How trusting, good-natured, cooperative, and soft-hearted

one is. ■ Conscientiousness. How dependable, responsible, achievement-oriented, and

persistent one is. ■ Emotional stability. How relaxed, secure, and unworried one is. ■ Openness to experience. How intellectual, imaginative, curious, and broad-

minded one is.

Standardized personality tests are used to score people on each dimension to draw a person’s personality profile that is sup- posedly as unique as his or her fingerprints. For example, if you scored low on the first trait, extroversion, you would presumably be prone to shy and withdrawn behavior. If you scored low on emotional stability, you supposedly would be nervous, tense, an- gry, and worried. (An example of a person- ality test is the Myers-Briggs, discussed in Chapter 9; to take a replica of this test for free, go to www.personalitypathways.com/ type_inventory.html.)

Where do you think you stand in terms of the big five? Are you curious? If yes, take Self-Assessment 11.1.

11.1 Personality & Individual Behavior In the hiring process, do employers care about one’s personality and individual traits?

THE BIG PICTURE Personality consists of stable psychological and behavioral attributes that give you your identity. We describe five personality dimensions and five personality traits that managers need to be aware of to understand workplace behavior.

? MAJOR QUESTION

338 PART 5 Leading

Managing Individual Differences & Behavior CHAPTER 11 339

Do Personality Tests Work for the Workplace? As a manager, you would want to know if the Big Five model in particular and personality testing in general can help predict behavior in the workplace. Is a personality test helpful in predicting a match between personality and job performance? Two findings:

■ Extroversion—the outgoing personality. As might be expected, extrover- sion (an outgoing personality) has been associated with success for manag- ers and salespeople. Also, extroversion is a stronger predictor of job performance than agreeableness, across all professions, according to re- searchers. “It appears that being courteous, trusting, straightforward, and soft-hearted [that is, agreeableness] has a smaller impact on job perfor- mance,” conclude the researchers, “than being talkative, active, and asser- tive [that is, extroversion].”5

■ Conscientiousness—the dependable personality. Conscientiousness (strong work ethic) has been found to have the strongest positive correla- tion with job performance and training performance. According to re- searchers, “those individuals who exhibit traits associated with a strong sense of purpose, obligation, and persistence generally perform better than those who do not.”6

The table below presents tips to help managers avoid abuses and discrimination lawsuits when using personality and psychological testing for employment decisions.7 (See Table 11.1.)

Where Do You Stand on the Big Five Dimensions of Personality? This survey is designed to assess your personality, using the Big Five index. Go to connect.mheducation.com and take Self-Assessment 11.1. When you’re done, answer the following questions:

1. What is your personality profile according to the Big Five?

2. Which of the Big Five is most likely going to help you achieve good grades in your classes and to gain employment after graduation?

SELF-ASSESSMENT 11.1 ®

TABLE 11.1 Cautions about Using Personality Tests in the Workplace

• Use professionals. Rely on reputable, licensed psychologists for selecting and overseeing the administration, scoring, and interpretation of personality and psychological tests. This is particularly important, since not every psychologist is expert at these kinds of tests.

• Don’t hire on the basis of personality test results alone. Supplement any personality test data with information from reference checks, personal interviews, ability tests, and job performance records. Also avoid hiring people on the basis of specified personality profiles. As a case in point, there is no distinct “managerial personality.”

• Be alert for gender, racial, and ethnic bias. Regularly assess any possible adverse impact of personality tests on the hiring of women and minorities. This is truly a matter of great importance, since you don’t want to find your company (or yourself) embroiled in a lawsuit at some point downstream.

• Graphology tests don’t work, but integrity tests do. Personality traits and aptitudes cannot be inferred from samples of people’s penmanship, as proponents of graphology tests claim. However, dishonest job applicants can often be screened by integrity tests, since dishonest people are reportedly unable to fake conscientiousness, even on a paper-and-pencil test.

340 PART 5 Leading

Self-efficacy. Erik Weihenmayer, blind since age 13, is a self- described “unrealistic optimist.” He became the first blind climber to scale Mt. Everest. Do you have a personal belief that you can succeed at great things?

The Proactive Personality A person who scores well on the Big Five dimension of conscientiousness is probably a good worker. He or she may also be a proactive personality, someone who is more apt to take initiative and persevere to influence the environment. Research reveals that proactive people tend to be more satisfied with their jobs, committed to their employer, and produce more work than nonproactive individuals.7

Core Self-Evaluations A core self-evaluation represents a broad personality trait comprising four positive in- dividual traits: (1) self-efficacy, (2) self-esteem, (3) locus of control, and (4) emotional stability. Managers need to be aware of these personality traits so as to understand workplace behavior.

1. Self-Efficacy: “I Can/Can’t Do This Task” Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s personal ability to do a task. This is about your personal belief that you have what it takes to succeed.

Have you noticed that those who are confident about their ability tend to succeed, whereas those preoccupied with failure tend not to? Indeed, high expectations of self- efficacy have been linked with all kinds of positives: not only success in varied physi- cal and mental tasks but also reduced anxiety and increased tolerance for pain.8 One study found that the sales performance of life-insurance agents was much better among those with high self-efficacy.9 A meta-analysis involving 21,616 people also found significant positive correlation between self-efficacy and job performance.10 Low self- efficacy is associated with learned helplessness, the debilitating lack of faith in one’s ability to control one’s environment.11

Managing Individual Differences & Behavior CHAPTER 11 341

Among the implications for managers:

■ Assign jobs accordingly. Complex, challenging, and autonomous jobs tend to enhance people’s perceptions of their self-efficacy. Boring, tedious jobs generally do the opposite.

■ Develop self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a quality that can be nurtured. Employ- ees with low self-efficacy need lots of constructive pointers and positive feed- back.12 Goal difficulty needs to match individuals’ perceived self-efficacy, but goals can be made more challenging as performance improves.13 Small suc- cesses need to be rewarded. Employees’ expectations can be improved through guided experiences, mentoring, and role modeling.14

2. Self-Esteem: “I Like/Dislike Myself” How worthwhile, capable, and ac- ceptable do you think you are? The answer to this question is an indicator of your self- esteem, the extent to which people like or dislike themselves, their overall self-evaluation.15 Research offers some interesting insights about how high or low self- esteem can affect people and organizations.

■ People with high self-esteem. Compared with people with low self-esteem, people with high self-esteem are more apt to handle failure better, to empha- size the positive, to take more risks, and to choose more unconventional jobs.16 However, when faced with pressure situations, high-self-esteem people have been found to become egotistical and boastful.17 Some have even been associated with aggressive and violent behavior.

■ People with low self-esteem. Conversely, low-self-esteem people confronted with failure have been found to have focused on their weaknesses and to have had primarily negative thoughts.18 Moreover, they are more dependent on oth- ers and are more apt to be influenced by them and to be less likely to take in- dependent positions.

Can self-esteem be improved? According to one study, “low self-esteem can be raised more by having the person think of desirable characteristics possessed rather than of undesirable characteristics from which he or she is free.”19 Some ways in which managers can build employee self-esteem are shown below. (See Table 11.2.)

3. Locus of Control: “I Am/Am Not the Captain of My Fate” As we dis- cussed briefly in Chapter 1, locus of control indicates how much people believe they control their fate through their own efforts. If you have an internal locus of control, you believe you control your own destiny. If you have an external locus of control, you believe external forces control you.

Research shows internals and externals have important workplace differences. In- ternals exhibit less anxiety, greater work motivation, and stronger expectations that effort leads to performance. They also obtain higher salaries.20

TABLE 11.2 Some Ways that Managers Can Boost Employee Self-Esteem

• Reinforce employees’ positive attributes and skills.

• Provide positive feedback whenever possible.

• Break larger projects into smaller tasks and projects.

• Express confidence in employees’ abilities to complete their tasks.

• Provide coaching whenever employees are seen to be struggling to complete tasks.

342 PART 5 Leading

These findings have two important implications for managers:

■ Expect different degrees of structure and compliance for each type. Employ- ees with internal locus of control will probably resist close managerial supervi- sion. Hence, they should probably be placed in jobs requiring high initiative and lower compliance. By contrast, employees with external locus of control might do better in highly structured jobs requiring greater compliance.

■ Employ different reward systems for each type. Since internals seem to have a greater belief that their actions have a direct effect on the consequences of that action, internals likely would prefer and respond more productively to incentives such as merit pay or sales commissions. (We discuss incentive compensation systems in Chapter 12.)

4. Emotional Stability: “I’m Fairly Secure/Insecure When Working Under Pressure” Emotional stability is the extent to which people feel secure and unwor- ried and how likely they are to experience negative emotions under pressure. People with low levels of emotional stability are prone to anxiety and tend to view the world negatively, whereas people with high levels tend to show better job performance.

Emotional Intelligence: Understanding Your Emotions & the Emotions of Others Emotional intelligence (EI or EQ) has been defined as “the ability to carry out accurate reasoning about emotions and the ability to use emotions and emotional knowledge to enhance thought.”21 Said another way, emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor your and others’ feelings and to use this information to guide your thinking and actions. The trait of emotional intelligence was first introduced in 1909. Since that time much research has examined the components of EI and its consequences.22

Why High EI Is Important Recent research underscores the importance of devel- oping higher EI. It was associated with (1) better social relations for children and adults, (2) better family and intimate relationships, (3) being perceived more positively by others, (4) better academic achievement, and (5) better psychological well-being. Daniel Goleman, a psychologist who popularized the trait of EI, concluded that EI is composed of four key components: self-awareness, self-management, social aware- ness, and relationship management.23 (See Table 11.3.)

TABLE 11.3 The Traits of Emotional Intelligence

1. Self-awareness. The most essential trait. This is the ability to read your own emotions and gauge your moods accurately, so you know how you’re affecting others.

2. Self-management. This is the ability to control your emotions and act with honesty and integrity in reliable and adaptable ways. You can leave occasional bad moods outside the office.

3. Social awareness. This includes empathy, allowing you to show others that you care, and organizational intuition, so you keenly understand how your emotions and actions affect others.

4. Relationship management. This is the ability to communicate clearly and convincingly, disarm conflicts, and build strong personal bonds.

Sources: Adapted from D. Goleman, R. Boyatzis, and A. McKee, “Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance,” Harvard Business Review, December 2001, p. 49; and Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), p. 39.

Can You Raise Your EI? Is there any way to raise your own emotional intelli- gence, to sharpen your social skills? Although parts of EI represent stable traits that

Managing Individual Differences & Behavior CHAPTER 11 343

are not readily changed, other aspects, such as using empathy, can be developed.24 Two suggestions for improvement are as follows:

■ Develop awareness of your EI level. Becoming aware of your level of emo- tional intelligence is the first step. The self-assessment below can be used for this purpose. (Some companies use the Personal Profile Analysis during the hiring process to provide insights into a person’s EI.25)

■ Learn about areas needing improvement. The next step is to learn more about those EI aspects in which improvement is needed. For example, to im- prove your skills at using empathy, find articles on the topic and try to imple- ment their recommendations. One such article suggests that empathy in communications is enhanced by trying to (1) understand how others feel about what they are communicating and (2) gaining appreciation of what peo- ple want from an exchange.26

Emotional Intelligence: Self-Understanding Should Include “the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly”

Charlotte Beers is a former chairwoman and CEO of advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, but in her early 30s she was a management supervisor and “thought I was really doing well.” Then she heard from a friend that a colleague described her management style as “menacing.” That surprised her be- cause Beers regarded herself as “a friendly, gentle Southern belle,” and the criticism was the exact opposite of the way she thought of herself.27

Learning to Self-Correct. She goes on: “I began to watch myself—something I think we all have to do—and I realized I did end meetings on a threatening note. I created urgency when there was none. I was taking on the persona of ‘I really mean business’

that I had learned from an earlier boss.” After that she learned to watch herself more and to self-correct about talking too much and interrupting other people.

YOUR CALL The comment about her coming off as menacing, though dev- astating at first to her, was important because “nothing is more helpful than finding out how others see you,” says Beers. “[You need to learn to] keep your own scorecard, and it has to include the good, the bad, and the ugly.” Do you agree? Could you con- duct this kind of research about yourself in an impersonal way to find out how others see you?

EXAMPLE

Both research and our experience suggest that your emotional intelligence can help or hurt your career. Would you like to know where you stand and what you might do to improve your level of emotional intelligence? If yes, take Self-Assessment 11.2. ●

What Is Your Level of Emotional Intelligence? The following survey is designed to assess your emotional intelligence. Go to connect.mheducation.com and take Self- Assessment 11.2. When you’re done, answer the following questions:

1. How do you stand on the five dimensions of emotional intelligence?

2. Use the scores from the items to identify your strengths and liabilities.

3. Identify two things you might focus on to enhance your emotional intelligence.

SELF-ASSESSMENT 11.2 ®

Formal Goals Policies Hierarchy Structure

The Organization

Informal Values Attitudes Personalities Perceptions Conflicts Culture

11.2 Values, Attitudes, & Behavior How do the hidden aspects of individuals—their values and attitudes—affect employee behavior?

THE BIG PICTURE Organizational behavior (OB) considers how to better understand and manage people at work. In this section, we discuss individual values and attitudes and how they affect people’s actions and judgments.

? MAJOR QUESTION

344 PART 5 Leading

FIGURE 11.1 Formal and informal aspects of an organization

If you look at a company’s annual report or at a brochure from its corporate communi- cations department, you are apt to be given a picture of its formal aspects: Goals. Policies. Hierarchy. Structure.

Could you exert effective leadership if the formal aspects were all you knew about the company? What about the informal aspects? Values. Attitudes. Personalities. Per- ceptions. Conflicts. Culture. Clearly, you need to know about these hidden, “messy” characteristics as well. (See Figure 11.1, left.)

Organizational Behavior: Trying to Explain & Predict Workplace Behavior The informal aspects are the focus of the interdisciplinary field known as organiza- tional behavior (OB), which is dedicated to better understanding and management of people at work. In particular, OB tries to help managers not only explain workplace behavior but also to predict it, so that they can better lead and motivate their employ- ees to perform productively. OB looks at two areas:

■ Individual behavior. This is the subject of this chapter. We discuss such individual attributes as values, attitudes, personality, perception, and learning.

■ Group behavior. This is the subject of later chapters, particularly Chapter 13, where we discuss norms, roles, and teams.

Let’s begin by considering individual values, attitudes, and behavior.

Values: What Are Your Consistent Beliefs & Feelings about All Things? Values are abstract ideals that guide one’s thinking and behavior across all situa- tions.28 Lifelong behavior patterns are dictated by values that are fairly well set by the time people are in their early teens. After that, however, one’s values can be reshaped by significant life-altering events, such as having a child, undergo- ing a business failure, or surviving the death of a loved one, a war, or a serious health threat.

From a manager’s point of view, it’s helpful to know that values are those con- cepts, principles, things, people, or activities for which a person is willing to work hard—even make sacrifices for. Compensation, recognition, and status are common values in the workplace.29 However, according to numerous surveys, employees are more interested in striking a balance between work and family life rather than just earning a paycheck.30 For instance, 86% of 550 employees responding to one sur- vey said flexibility to balance their work and personal life was an important aspect of job satisfaction.

Managing Individual Differences & Behavior CHAPTER 11 345

Attitudes: What Are Your Consistent Beliefs & Feelings about Specific Things? Values are abstract ideals—global beliefs and feelings—that are directed toward all objects, people, or events. Values tend to be consistent both over time and over related situations.

By contrast, attitudes are beliefs and feelings that are directed toward specific ob- jects, people, or events. More formally, an attitude is defined as a learned predisposi- tion toward a given object.31 It is important for you to understand the components of attitudes because attitudes directly influence our behavior.32

Example: If you dislike your present job, will you be happier if you change to a different job? Not necessarily. It depends on your attitude. In one study, researchers found that the attitudes of 5,000 middle-aged male employees toward their jobs were very stable over a 5-year period. Men with positive attitudes tended to stay positive, those with negative attitudes tended to stay negative. More revealingly, even those who changed jobs or occupations generally expressed the same attitudes they had previously.33