Organizational Behavior Argumentative Essay

Assignment 2
Answer each of the following questions by saving this document as a new file and inserting your answers below. Save the document as a .doc (not a .docx), include your last name in the new file name, and submit the assignment before the beginning of the next class. Be sure to follow the instructions as provided.
Chapter Five.

True/False: State whether the following statement is true or false and provide a brief explanation to justify your answer.
1. Self-esteem is usually unrelated to a person’s level of education.
True: It is related to the level of confidence a person has with in themselves.
2. In individualistic cultures people are socialized to “fit into the community and to do their duty.” Thus, how an individualist feels about him- or herself is less relevant to life-satisfaction.
False: it is very important how a person feels about themselves because that will reflect on their attitude and behavior which will affect their level of satisfaction in life also their relationship with others is also affected by how they feel about themselves.
3. Global managers need to remember to deemphasize self-esteem when doing business in collectivist (“we”) cultures.
True: Yes in a collectivist culture its more about the we than me. So certain way of individualist acting can be taken as being arrogant.
4. Self-efficacy is functionally the same thing as self-esteem.
False: Self-efficacy is being independent or being economically free from
others it has nothing to do with self-esteem.
5. People who are low self-monitors are sometimes called chameleons because they can readily adapt their self-presentation to their surroundings.
True: I have notice a number of people who are excellent in adapting to any situation in their surroundings which is mostly has a motive.
6. People who believe they control the events that affect their lives are said to possess an internal locus of control.
True: These are people who believe that they can control all event in their lives.
7. Successful performance depends solely on skill.
True: Skills are the determining factor to any performance at any time. Anyone who doesn’t have the skill to perform task X cannot do the task.
8. Emotional behavior seldom affects day-to-day organizational life.
True: People have variance level of emotional behavior. Organizations need to be able to filter the best fit candidate in the hiring process to make sure the organizational life is not affected by a single person.
Essay Questions: answer the following questions in your own words (approximately 100 words each).
1. Define organizational identification. What are the advantages and disadvantages of organizational identification?
Organizational identification represents the social and psychological tie binding employees and the organizational tie that exists even when employees are dispersed. An organization identity provides members with an answer to the question, “What is the nature of this organization?” Furthermore, by defining the organization, it guides members on feelings, beliefs and behaviors of the organization. The advantage is more specialized in certain fields, communication is excellent because of the knowledge one has about the function of the job, easier to work as a team to get better results. The disadvantage is staff does not always know the case of the client in detail, other organizations may not always talk to the same person, and very specific job knowledge is required, hard to find a fill in for positions.
2. What is a proactive personality? How does having a proactive personality relate to resiliency? Proactive personality is a stable disposition that reflects on the tendency to behave proactively and to effect positive change in one’s environment. Individuals with a proactive personality are relatively unconstrained by situational forces and act to change and influence their environment. Proactive personality is related to a number of work outcomes including job performance, tolerance for stress in demanding jobs, leadership effectiveness, participation in organizational initiatives, work team performance, entrepreneurship, and career success.
Resiliency tends to be pleasant stimuli, this is not always true since the resultant increase or maintenance of behavior determines whether or not a given stimulus was a positive reinforcement. Positive personality is usually marked by the ability to recover readily, as from misfortune. A resilient personality like positive personality is best for dealing with stress and adversity especially in this economy a resilient personality and positive personality is a must to keep within an organization. 3. Empirical research on emotions has focused on two concepts: emotional contagion and emotional labor. Define these two concepts with examples.
Emotional labor is a form of emotion regulation that creates a publicly visible facial and bodily display. While emotion work happens within the private sphere, emotional labor is emotional management within the workforce that creates a situation in which the emotion management by workers can be exchanged in the marketplace. For example professions that require emotional labor are nurses, doctors, waiting staff, TV actors. Emotional contagion is the tendency for two individuals to emotionally converge. One view is that this can be done through automatic mimicry and synchronization of one’s expressions, vocalizations, postures and movements with those of another person. When people unconsciously mimic their companions’ expressions of emotion, they come to feel reflections of their partner’s emotions.
Chapter Ten.
True/False: State whether the following statement is true or false and provide a brief explanation to justify your answer.
1. A crowd on a street corner watching a man play the tambourine fits the definition of a group.
True: A group is anything that is more than one. A crowd is more than one person in this context.
2. According to Tuckman’s five-stage theory of group development, during the “norming” stage, subgroups take shape and subtle forms of rebellion occur.
True: This takes place when procrastination occurs.
3. De-norming, de-storming, and de-forming are all observed stages of group decay.
True: All of them are different levels of group decay.
4. As the group develops, positive feedback typically decreases and negative feedback typically increases.
False: This is not true because not all feedback increases or decreases just because a group is developed. It all depends on how the group is run by its leader.
5. When group members accurately perceive important deadlines, the pacing of work and timing of interdependent tasks tend to be more efficient.
True: This is true because the pressure not to put the entire group down is in everyone’s sholder.
6. A supportive, democratic, decentralized, and participative leadership style is most effective early in the group development process.
True: this will create participation from the beginning and will make group members feel important and that will make them productive.
7. People in collectivist cultures tend to have higher role ambiguity than
people in individualistic cultures.
True: When they feel they have uniqueness.
8. A group member who says, “Let’s stop wasting time and get down to business. How do we solve this problem?” is performing a task role.
True: Also that member is taking charge and putting the group to focus on the task.
9. Odd-numbered groups are recommended if an issue is to be settled by a majority vote.
True: Odd number grouping is used for a tie breaker vote.
10. The difference between the Asch effect and groupthink is that victims of groupthink are strangers to each other while Asch’s subjects are a friendly and tight-knit group.
False: The Asch effect is frightening example as to the groupthink is a tendency to make collective decision.
Essay Questions: answer the following questions in your own words (approximately 100 words each).
1. Distinguish between roles and norms. Why do norms exist in organizations?
Roles are patterns of behavior associated with a given status within a system of related roles and statuses. Roles are often labeled with a title. Fulfilling our roles generally involves conforming to the social norms. There are often normative specialties associated with specific roles that not everyone must fulfill. Other norms may be more generally applied throughout the culture of an organization. Defining the norms is useful because it assists the group or team in clarifying its thinking and frees members from behavior patterns that they may not really wish to follow in the first place.
When group or team members actually become aware of negative organizational norms if they do not like them they commonly reject them and seek alternative modes of behavior. And the upper management or supervisor can’t begin to change negative organizational norms to positive ones until the group or team members first become aware of their existence. This is why norms are introduced to all new employees when they start working in an organization either formally in a training process or through day to day mentorship. 2. How does a manager decide the optimum size of a work group?
Well the manager need to conduct a periodic team building as needed to do business for one. Groups work best if everyone has a chance to make strong contributions to the discussion. Determining the number of people for a project needed os a skill the manager should have to make the group very effective. If you need 7 engineers to build something the manager needs to bring seven engineers in the group formation. That way at the beginning of each meeting, the manager needs to decide what to expect to have accomplished by the end of the meeting from the engineers. The scope of the project will have to be the factor to determine the size of the group. The manager needs to allocate responsibility for group process (especially if you do not have a fixed leader) such as a time manager for meetings and someone who periodically says that it is time to see how things are going when deadline are due and so on.