The MARS model consists of motivation, ability, role perception and situational factors:MotivationThe forces within a person that affects his or her direction, intensity and persistence of voluntary behaviour.AbilityThe natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task. Aptitudes are natural talents. Competencies are characteristics of a person that result in superior performance. It is important to match employees with the right job requirements. This can be done by looking for employees that already have the required skills or by training employees. Redesigning the job is also possible.Role perceptionThe degree to which a person understands the job duties assigned to or expected of him. Employees need to know their responsibilities, their priorities of different tasks and understanding the preferred behaviours or procedures for accomplishing tasks. Situational factorsAny context beyond the employee’s immediate control. Work context can constrain or facilitate performance and the situation provides cues that guide and motivate people. There are five categories of individual behaviour:Task performanceThe individual’s voluntary goal-directed behaviours that contribute to organizational objectives. Proficient task performance (1) is performing the work accurately and efficiently. Adaptive task performance (2) is how adaptive employees are in their performance. Proactive task performance (3) refers to how well employees take the initiative to anticipate and introduce new work patterns that benefit the organization. Adaptive and proactive task performance is important when the work is ambiguous. Organizational citizenshipVarious forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organization’s social and psychological context (e.g: covering a shift for someone else). Organizational citizenship can have negative consequences because it takes time and energy away from performing tasks....

Behaviour in the workplace is influenced by cognitive processes and emotions. Emotions may have a greater effect because they can occur prior to cognitive processes. Emotions are physiological, behavioural and psychological episodes experienced toward an object, person or event. Emotional states are short-term and moods are long-term. All emotions have two common features: emotions have a certain valence, also called core affect (e.g: approach or avoid object) (1) and emotions ready us to some extent (2). Attitudes are evaluations of an object or event. Attitudes consist of beliefs, feelings and behavioural intentions. Feelings can make sure that attitudes differ, even though the beliefs and the behaviours are the same for two people. Having more positive emotions at work can counteract negative experiences at work. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable physiological state when attitudes and behaviour conflict. Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by changing the attitude or behaviour. Emotions are partly determined by personality. The actual situation in which people work has a stronger influence on their attitudes and behaviour than personality. Emotional labour refers to the effort, planning and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions. Emotional labour is higher when the display rules are precise, if the contact with the client is frequent and long and if the emotions have to be intense. Norms about displaying or hiding your true emotions vary across cultures. Emotional dissonance refers to the tension when the emotions people are required to display differ from the emotions they are actually experiencing at the moment. Surface acting can help with this, pretending to feel the expected emotion. Surface acting can lead to higher stress and burnout. The psychological damage can be reduced by seeing surface acting as part of a role. This does not deprive the person’s self-worth. Deep...

Decision making is the process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs. Rational choice decision making selects the best alternative by calculation the probability that various outcomes will occur from the choices and the expected satisfaction from each of those outcomes. An opportunity is a deviation between current expectations and a potentially better situation that was not previously expected.There are five main problems of problem identification:Solution-focused problemsThis is identifying a problem as a veiled-solution, but this is not really the problem.Decisive leadershipLeaders that announce problems or opportunities before logically assessing the situation does not help with identifying the problem.Stakeholder framingStakeholders hide or provide information in ways that the decision-maker sees the situation as a problem, opportunity or steady sailing. This information is not always accurate and can lead to a wrongly identified problem.Perceptual defencePeople can fail to become aware of problems because they block out bad news as a coping mechanism. Mental modelsMental models can blind us from seeing unique problems or opportunities. Things have to fit in mental models.Identifying problems can be improved by acquiring new perspectives, having leaders that have the willpower to resist the temptation of decisive decision making and create a norm of divine discontent (never being satisfied with the current conditions).Bounded rationality is the view that people are bounded in their decision-making capabilities, including access to limited information, limited information processing and a tendency toward satisficing rather than maximizing when making choices. Problems with goals are that problems are often ambiguous and problems can conflict. Sequential evaluation occurs because all alternatives are not usually available to the decision-maker at the same time....

Frequent, timely and accurate communication is the primary means through which employees and work units effectively synchronize their work. The functions of communication are coordination, organizational learning, decision making, changing behaviour and support employee well-being. The communication process model states that messages are formed and encoded and decoded and feedback is formed and encoded before being sent back and being decoded. According to this model, effective communication depends on the sender’s and receiver’s ability, motivation, role clarity and situational support to efficiently and accurately encode and decode information. There are four main factors that influence the effectiveness of this encoding-decoding process. A codebook makes effective communication easier (1), experience makes the process easier (2), the process is easier if the sender and receiver are skilled and motivated (3) and the process depends on the sender’s and receiver’s shared mental models of the communication context (4). The medium is the channel through which information is transmitted. There are verbal and nonverbal channels. The use of e-mail in an organization reduces social and organizational status differences between sender and receiver. Written digital communication (e.g: e-mail) can potentially reduce stereotyping and prejudice because age, race and other features are unknown or less noticeable. The lack of face-to-face contact may also increase reliance on stereotypes. There are several problems with email and other digital message channels. It is difficult to communicate emotions using digital message channels (1), there is less politeness and respectfulness (2), it is inefficient in ambiguous, complex and novel situations (3) and it contributes to information overload (4). Flaming describes digital messages that convey strong negative emotions.Nonverbal communication includes facial gestures, voice intonation, physical distance and...

Conflict is the process in which one party perceives that its interest is being opposed or negatively affected by another party. Conflict is based on perception. One party can believe they have a conflict without the other party believing this. Conflict can lead to lower performance, higher stress, dissatisfaction and turnover, less information sharing and coordination, increased organizational politics, wasted resources and weakened team cohesion. There are also benefits of conflict. The optimal conflict perspective states that organizations are most effective when employees experience some levels of conflict but become less effective with high levels of conflict. Conflict can lead to better decision making, make people more responsive to the changing environment and lead to a stronger team cohesion if the conflict is between the team and outside opponents. There are two types of conflict:Task conflict (constructive conflict)This is a type of conflict in which people focus their discussion around the issue while showing respect for people who have other points of view. It focusses on an issue or task. Relationship conflictThis is a type of conflict in which people focus on the characteristics of other individuals as the source of conflict. This conflict threatens self-esteem, self-enhancement and self-verification processes.The stronger the level of debate and the more the issue is tied to our self-view, the more likely that task conflict will evolve into relationship conflict. There are three conditions that potentially minimize the level of relationship conflict during task conflict: emotional intelligence and emotional stability (1), cohesive team (2) and supportive team norms (3). There are different sources of conflicts in organizations:Incompatible goalsThis occurs when one party’s goals interfere with another party’s goals. DifferentiationThis refers to differences among people and work units regarding their training,...

Organizational structure refers to the division of labour as well as the patterns of coordination, communication, workflow and formal power that direct organizational activities. Organizational structures include two requirements, the division of labour into distinct tasks (1) and the coordination of labour (2). Division of labour refers to the subdivision of work into separate jobs assigned to different people. Job specialization increases work efficiency. An organization’s ability to divide work among people depends on how well those people can coordinate with each other. There are three coordination mechanisms:Informal communicationThis is sharing information on mutual tasks as well as forming common mental models to synchronize work activities. It is useful in ambiguous situations. It makes use of direct communication, liaison roles, integrator roles and temporary teams.Formal hierarchyThis is assigning legitimate power to individuals who ten use this power to direct work processes and allocate resources. It makes use of direct supervision and formal communication channels. A formal hierarchy is not efficient in novel or ambiguous situations.StandardizationThis is creating routine patterns of behaviour or output. It makes use of standardized skills, processes and output.People with liaison roles are expected to communicate and share information with co-workers in other work units. People with integrator roles are responsible for coordinating a work process by encouraging employees in each work unit to share information and informally coordinate work activities. Organizational structure has four elements: span of control, centralization, formalization and departmentalization. The span of control refers to the number of people directly reporting to the next level above in the hierarchy. The best span of control is decided by the degree of autonomy for staff members (1), whether employees perform routine tasks (2) and the degree of...

Lewin’s force field analysis model describes the forces that drive and restrain proposed organizational change. Driving forces are forces that lead to organizational change. Restraining forces are forces that maintain the status quo. Stability occurs when both forces are equal. Unfreezing occurs when there is disequilibrium between the driving and the restraining forces, leading to effective change. Refreezing occurs when systems and structures are introduced that reinforce and maintain the desired behaviours. This model states that effective change occurs by unfreezing the current situation, moving to the desired position and then refreezing the situation. Subtle resistance to change is more common than overt resistance to change. Some people experience change as relational conflict, although experiencing it as a task conflict would be more productive. There are several reasons why employees resist change:Negative valence of changeEmployees resist change when they believe the new situations will have more negative than positive outcomes.Fear of the unknownChange has a degree of uncertainty and employees tend to assume they are worse off when they are unsure about the outcomes of the change.Not-invented here syndromeThis is resisting change when it comes from another place (e.g: department) than where the change is implemented. Breaking routinePeople tend to resist change that requires them to break habits.Incongruent team dynamicsIf there are incongruent norms in a team, change may be resisted.Incongruent organizational systemsIf organizational systems are incongruent, change may be resisted.Unfreezing occurs when the driving forces are stronger than the restraining forces. Increasing the driving forces can be done by using threats, but this is ineffective. Weakening the restraining forces doesn’t lead to motivation to change. Developing an urgency to change can help produce change in the organization and can be done by...