Organziational behaviour and

learning

Group 2
 Arham
 Kanza
 Khadija
 Shafia
Individual Behavior and Learning

 Four factors that affect individual behavior in organizations:

 Drive Behavior
 Motivation
 Ability
 Provide opportunities and constraints
 Role perceptions
 Situational Contingencies
Model of Individual Behavior
Role
Perceptions

Motivation
Individual
Behavior and
Performance
Ability
Situational
Contingencies
Employee Motivation

 Forces within a person that drive his or her direction, intensity,

and persistence of voluntary behavior
 Direction - goal oriented
 Intensity - amount of effort
 Persistence - continuing effort
Ability

 Natural Aptitudes
 based on talents, size, capabilities
 cannot be learned, or acquired
 Learned Capabilities
 can be taught and learned
 physical and mental skills
 Competency vs Person Job Fit
 Generic competencies not specific task abilities
Assessing Competencies at
EMC
When EMC was about to
dramatically expand its work
force, an executive team at
the enterprise storage
products firm developed an
“Employee Success Profile.”
This list of generic
competencies represented
the traits of successful
employees, such as goal-
orientation and integrity. Courtesy of EMC Corp.
Roles

 Role Perceptions - beliefs about what behaviors are

appropriate or necessary in a particular situation, including job
tasks, relative importance, and preferred behaviors to
accomplish those tasks
 Role Problems
 Role Overload
 Role Conflict
 Role Ambiguity
 Situational Contingencies

 Environmental Factors outside of employee control that constrain or

facilitate their behavior and/or performance

 time, people, resources, working conditions, customers

Types of Work-Related Behaviors

 Joining the organization

 Remaining with the organization
 Maintaining work attendance
 Performing required job duties
 In-role performance
 Organizational citizenship behavior
 Extra-role performance
Joining Organizations

 Applying, Interviewing, Hiring, Socialization into the

organization

 Often driven by external factors:

 money, prestige of organization, etc.

 Has changed with technology

Socialization into the organization

 Learning the history of the organization

 Examining and understanding the structure of the
organization
 Learning the culture and atmosphere
Remaining with the Organization

 Difficult to keep employees with low unemployment rates

 Job Satisfaction
 Satisfaction does not motivate but...
 Job Dissatisfaction cause someone to leave
 Things like money become less motivating and become
areas of possible dissatisfaction
Remaining cont...

 Organizational Commitment - the drive to remain with an

organization
 Three aspects
 Affective - liking your organization
 Normative - feeling an obligation toward an organization
 Continuance - remaining with an organization for lack of
another option
In-Role Performance

 Task performance - goal-directed activities that are under

the individual’s control
 Physical and mental behaviors
 Most can be measured and controlled
 This is what we get paid for
Extra-Role Behavior
 Deviant Behavior - behaviors detrimental to the
organization, the individual, and others
 Examples: ??
 Organizational Citizenship - behavior above and beyond
in-role requirements that in the aggregate promote
individual, organizational, and stakeholder performance
 Influenced by many factors including:
 individual beliefs, fairness perceptions, group characteristics,
management behaviors
Definition of Learning
 A relatively permanent change in behavior (or behavioral
tendency) that occurs as a result of a person’s interaction with
the environment.
Behavior Modification

 We “operate” on the environment

 alter behavior to maximize positive and minimize adverse
consequences.

 Operant versus respondent behaviors

 Law of effect
 likelihood that an operant behavior will be repeated depends on
consequences
A-B-Cs of OB Modification
Antecedents Behavior Consequences

What happens What person What happens

before behavior says or does After behavior

Example
Employee Employee
Attendance
attends receives
bonus system
scheduled attendance
is announced
work bonus
Contingencies of Reinforcement
Consequence No Consequence
is Introduced Consequence is Removed

Behavior
Increases/ Positive Negative
Maintained reinforcement reinforcement

Behavior Punishment Extinction Punishment

Decreases
Schedules of Reinforcement
 Continuous reinforcement- after every behavior
 good for starting behaviors
 drastic fall of after some time

 Fixed
 Fixed interval- after set amount of time
 Fixed ratio- based on a set # of behaviors
 Variable
 Variable interval- average time, but no pattern
 Variable ratio- average number of behaviors, no pattern
OB Modification Limitations

 Can’t reinforce non-observable behavior

 Reinforcer tends to satiate
 Variable ratio schedule is a form of gambling
 Ethical concerns about perceived manipulation
Learning through Feedback

 Any information about consequences of our

behavior
 Clarifies role perceptions
 Corrective feedback improves ability
 Positive feedback motivates future behavior
Multi-Source (360 Degree)
Feedback
Supervisor
Project
Customer
leader

Co-worker
Evaluated Co-worker
Employee

Subordinate Subordinate
Subordinate
Giving Feedback Effectively

Specific

Relevant Effective Frequent

Feedback

Credible Timely
Social Learning Theory
(Bandura, 1990)

 Cognitive and environmental process comb

to facilitate learning
 Behavioral modeling, Vicarious Learning
 Observing and modeling behavior of others
 Learning behavior consequences
 Observing consequences that others experience
 Self-reinforcement
 Reinforcing our own behavior with consequences
within our control
 Rewards signal information about self
Learning Through Experience

 Benefits of experiential learning

 Helps acquire tacit knowledge/skills
 Allows implicit learning
 Practicing experiential learning
 Reward experimentation
 Recognize mistakes as part of learning
 Action learning -- investigating a real problem
 Success experience increase self-efficacy