Organizational Behaviour, emerging knowledge and practice for the real world, by S. McShane, M. Von Glinow (fifth edition) – Summary chapter 2

The MARS model consists of motivation, ability, role perception and situational factors:

1. Motivation
   The forces within a person that affects his or her direction, intensity and persistence of voluntary behaviour.
2. Ability
   The 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.
3. Role perception
   The 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.
4. Situational factors
   Any 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:

1. Task performance
   The 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.
2. Organizational citizenship
   Various 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.
3. Counterproductive work behaviours
   Voluntary behaviours that have the potential to directly or indirectly harm the organization (e.g: bullying).
4. Joining and staying with the organization
   Companies have to keep higher skilled and productive employees at their company.
5. Maintaining work attendance
   Absence can cause the company to be short-staffed and knowledge will temporarily leave the company. Absence can have positive consequences because it can help people recover sooner. People that go to their work while absence should’ve occurred are less productive and may reduce the productivity of co-workers.

Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that characterize a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics. Traits are broad concepts that allow us to label and understand individual differences. Personality is not consistent across all situations, because some situations override the personality (e.g: a funeral). Personality typically stabilizes by around age 30, although it can still change. The five-factor model (Big Five) represents the five most broad dimensions of personality:

1. Conscientiousness
   This characterizes people who are organized, dependable, goal-focused, disciplined and so on.
2. Agreeableness
   This characterizes people who are trusting, helpful and good-natured.
3. Neuroticism
   This characterizes people who are anxious, insecure, self-conscious, depressed and temperamental
4. Openness to experience
   This characterizes people who are imaginative, creative, curious, non-conforming and so on.
5. Extraversion
   This characterizes people who are outgoing, talkative, sociable and assertive.

People who score high on conscientiousness and extraversion are better at proficient task performance. People who score high on emotional stability, extraversion and openness to experience are better at adaptive task performance. People who score high on extraversion and openness to experience are better at proactive task performance.

Values are stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or courses of action in a variety of situations. Personal values are values that exist within an individual and shared values are values that exist within an organization. Values tell us what we ought to do and personality tells us what we tend to do. There are several clusters of values:

1. Openness to change
   This refers to the extent to which a person is motivated to pursue innovative ways
2. Conservation
   This refers to the extent to which a person is motivated to preserve the status quo.
3. Self-enhancement
   This refers to how much a person is motivated by self-interest.
4. Self-transcendence
   This refers to motivation to promote the welfare of others and nature.

Personal values motivate behaviour to some extent, but several factors weaken that relationship. The situation is important in following the values for behaviour. People are more likely to apply their values when they are explicitly reminded of those values and see their relevance to the situation. Values congruence refers to how similar a person’s values hierarchy is to the values hierarchy of another entity, such as an organization. Some degree of value congruency is useful in organizations.

Ethics refers to the study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad. There are three ethical principles:

1. Utilitarianism
   The only moral obligation is to seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
2. Individual rights
   Everyone has the same set of natural rights.
3. Distributive justice
   Benefits and burdens of similar individuals should be the same (e.g: equal work requires equal pay).

There are three factors that influence ethical conduct in the workplace:

1. Moral intensity
   This is the degree to which an issue demands the application of ethical principles.
2. Moral sensitivity
   This is a characteristic of a person to detect a moral dilemma and estimate its relative importance.
3. Situational factors
   Ethical conduct is influenced by the situation in which the conduct occurs.

There are five values that have cross-cultural significance:

1. Individualism
   This is the degree to which people in a culture emphasize independence and personal uniqueness.
2. Collectivism
   This is the degree to which people in a culture emphasize duty to groups to which they belong and to group harmony.
3. Power distance
   This is the degree to which people in culture accept the unequal distribution of power in a society.
4. Uncertainty avoidance
   This is the degree to which people tolerate ambiguity or feel threatened by ambiguity and uncertainty.
5. Achievement-nurturing orientation
   This is the degree to which people in a culture emphasize competitive versus cooperative relations with other people.