Organizational Behaviour Glossary

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR GLOSSARY

360 degree feedback. Performance appraisal that uses the input of superiors, subordinates, peers, and clients or customers of the appraised individual.

Accommodating. A conflict management style in which one cooperates with the other party while not asserting one's own interest.

Active listening. A technique for improving the accuracy of information reception by paying close attention to the sender.

Actor-observer effect. The propensity for actors and observers to view the causes of the actor's behavior differently.

Additive tasks. Tasks in which group performance is dependent upon the sum of the performance of individual group members.

Advanced information technology. The generation, aggregation, storage, modification and speedy transmission of information made possible by the advent of computers and related devices.

Affective commitment. Commitment based on identification and involvement with an organization.

Age norms. Widely accepted expectations in society about appropriate behavior for a person at a given age.

Anchoring effect. The inadequate adjustment of subsequent estimates from an initial estimate that serves as an anchor.

Apprentice. A junior person, sometimes called a protégé, who has a mentor

Attitude. A fairly stable emotional tendency to respond consistently to some specific object, situation, person, or category of people.

Attribution. The process by which causes or motives are assigned to explain peoples' behavior.

Autonomy. The freedom to schedule one's own work activities and decide work procedures.

Avoiding. A conflict management style characterized by low assertiveness of one's own interests and low cooperation with the other party.

Benchmarking. A systematic process for examining the products, services, and work processes of firms that are recognized as illustrating the best practices for organizational improvement.

Biosocial life stages. Alternating periods of stability and transition, with predictable themes that are based in psychological and biological factors and patterns of social expectations.

Body language. Nonverbal communication by means of a sender's bodily motions, facial expressions, or physical location.

Boundary roles. Positions in which organizational members are required to interact with members of other organizations or with the public.

Bounded rationality. A decision strategy that relies on limited information and that reflects time constraints and political considerations.

Brainstorming. An attempt to increase the number of creative solution alternatives to problems by focusing on idea generation rather than evaluation.

Bureaucracy. Max Weber's ideal type of organization that included a strict chain of command, detailed rules, high specialization, centralized power, and selection and promotion based on technical competence.

Burnout. Emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment among those who work with people.

Career. An evolving sequence of work activities and positions that individuals experience over time as well as the associated attitudes, knowledge, and competencies that develop throughout one's life.

Career orientation. The fairly stable pattern of preferred occupational activities, talents, values, and attitudes.

Career skills portfolio. The sum total of one's occupational skills, abilities, and knowledge.

Career stages. General patterns of developmental issues, key tasks, and changes in work role activities.

Central tendency. The tendency to assign most ratees to middle-range job performance categories.

Central traits. Personal characteristics of a target person that are of particular interest to a perceiver.

Centralization. The extent to which decision making power is localized in a particular part of an organization.

Chain of command. Lines of authority and formal reporting relationship.

Change. The implementation of a program or plan to move an organization and/or its members to a more satisfactory state.

Change agents. Experts in the application of behavioral science knowledge to organizational diagnosis and change.

Charisma. The ability to command strong loyalty and devotion from followers and thus have the potential for strong influence among them.

Classical viewpoint. An early prescription on management that advocated high specialization of labor, intensive coordination, and centralized decision making.

Coercive power. Power derived from the use of punishment and threat.

Cognitive biases. Tendencies to acquire and process information in an error-prone way.

Cognitive dissonance. A feeling of tension experienced when certain cognitions are contradictory or inconsistent with each other.

Collaborating. A conflict management style that maximizes both assertiveness and cooperation.

Communication. The process by which information is exchanged between a sender and a receiver.

Compensation. Applying one's skills in a particular area to make up for failure in another area.

Competing. A conflict management style that maximizes assertiveness and minimizes cooperation.

Complexity. The extent to which an organization divides labor vertically, horizontally, and geographically.

Compliance. Conformity to a social norm prompted by the desire to acquire rewards or avoid punishment.

Compressed workweek. An alternative work schedule in which employees work fewer than the normal five days a week but still put in a normal number of hours per week.

Compromise. A conflict management style that combines intermediate levels of assertiveness and cooperation.

Confirmation bias. The tendency to seek out information that conforms to one's own definition of or solution to a problem.

Conflict stimulation. A strategy of increasing conflict in order to motivate change.

Congruence. A condition in which a person's words, thoughts, feelings, and actions all contain the same message.

Conjunctive tasks. Tasks in which group performance is limited by the performance of the poorest group member.

Consensus cues. Attribution cues that reflect how a person's behavior compares with that of others.

Conservative shift. The tendency for groups to make less risky decisions than the average risk initially advocated by their individual members.

Consideration. The extent to which a leader is approachable and shows personal concern for subordinates.

Consistency cues. Attribution cues that reflect how consistently a person engages in some behavior over time.

Contingency approach. An approach to management that recognizes that there is no one best way to manage, and that an appropriate management style depends on the demands of the situation.

Contingency theory. Fred Fiedler's theory that states that the association between leadership orientation and group effectiveness is contingent upon how favorable the situation is for exerting influence.

Continuance commitment. Commitment based on the costs that would be incurred in leaving an organization.

Contrast effects. Previously interviewed job applicants affect an interviewer's perception of a current applicant, leading to an exaggeration of differences between applicants.

Control group. A group of research subjects who have not been exposed to the experimental treatment.

Coordination. A process of facilitating timing, communication, and feedback among work tasks.

Correlational research. Research that attempts to measure variables precisely and examine relationships among these variables without introducing change into the research setting.

Creativity. The production of novel but potentially useful ideas.

Cross-functional teams. Work groups that bring people with different functional specialties together to better invent, design, or deliver a product or service.

Cultural context. The cultural information that surrounds a communication episode.

Customer departmentation. Relatively self-contained units deliver an organization's products or services to specific customer groups.

Debasement. A series of socialization experiences designed to humble people and remove some self-confidence.

Decision making. The process of developing commitment to some course of action.

Defense mechanisms. Psychological attempts to reduce the anxiety associated with stress.

Delphi technique. A method of pooling a large number of expert judgments through a series of increasingly refined questionnaires.

Dependent variable. In an experiment, the variable that is expected to vary as a result of the manipulation of the independent variable.

Devil's advocate. A person appointed to identify and challenge the weakness of a proposed plan of strategy.

Diagnosis. The systematic collection of information relevant to impending organizational change.

Differentiation. The tendency for managers in separate departments to differ in terms of goals, time spans, and interpersonal styles.

Diffusion. The process by which innovations move through an organization.

Diffusion of responsibility. The ability of group members to share the burden of the negative consequences of a poor decision.

Direct observation. Observational research in which the research observes organizational behavior without taking part in the studied activity.

Discrepancy theory. A theory that job satisfaction stems from the discrepancy between the job outcomes wanted and the outcomes that are perceived to be obtained.

Disjunctive tasks. Tasks in which group performance is dependent upon the performance of the best group member.

Displacement. Directing feelings of anger at a safe target rather than expressing them where they might be punished.

Dispositional attributions. Explanations for behavior based on an actor's personality or intellect.

Distinctiveness cues. Attribution cues that reflect the extent to which a person engages in some behavior across a variety of situations.

Distributive fairness. Fairness that occurs when people receive what they think they deserve from their jobs.

Distributive negotiation. Win-lose negotiation in which a fixed amount of assets is divided between parties.

Downsizing. The intentional reduction of workforce size with the goal of improving organizational efficiency or effectiveness.

Downward communication. Information that flows from the top of the organization toward the bottom.

Effect dependence. Reliance on others due to their capacity to provide rewards and punishment.

Effective communication. The right people receive the right information in a timely manner.

Electronic brainstorming. The use of computer-mediated technology to improve traditional brainstorming practices.

Electronic groups. Decision-making groups whose members are linked electronically rather than face-to-face.

Employee survey. Anonymous questionnaire that enables employees to state their candid opinions and attitudes about an organization and its practices.

Empowerment. Giving people the authority, opportunity, and motivation to take initiative and solve organizational problems.

Environmental uncertainty. A condition that exists when the external environment is vague, difficult to diagnose, and unpredictable.

Equity theory. A process theory that job satisfaction and motivation stems from a comparison of the inputs one invests in a job and the outcomes one receives in comparison with the inputs and outcomes of another person or group.

ERG theory. A three-level hierarchical need theory of motivation (existence, relatedness, growth) that allows for movement up and down the hierarchy.

Escalation of commitment. The tendency to invest additional resources in an apparently failing course of action.

Ethics. Systematic thinking about the moral consequences of decisions.

Expectancy theory. A process theory that states that motivation is determined by the outcomes that people expect to occur as a result of their actions on the job.

Expectancy. The probability that a particular first-level outcome can be achieved.

Experimental research. Research which changes or manipulates a variable under controlled conditions and examines the consequences of this manipulation for some other variable.

Expert power. Power derived from having special information or expertise that is valued by an organization.

External career. The objective sequence of positions that comprise one's career.

External environment. Events and conditions surrounding an organization that influence its activities.

Extinction. The gradual dissipation of behavior following the termination of reinforcement.

Extrinsic motivation. Motivation that stems from the work environment external to the task; it is usually applied by others.

Feedback. Information about the effectiveness of one's work performance.

Filtering. The tendency for a message to be watered down or stopped during transmission.

Fixed interval schedule. A partial reinforcement schedule in which some fixed time period occurs between a reinforced response and the availability of the next reinforcement.

Fixed ratio schedule. A partial reinforcement schedule in which some fixed number of responses must be made between a reinforced response and the availability of the next reinforcement.

Flat organization. An organization with relatively few levels in its hierarchy of authority.

Flex-time. An alternative work schedule in which arrival and quitting times are flexible.

Force. The effort directed toward a first-level outcome.

Formal work groups. Groups that are established by organizations to facilitate the achievement of organizational goals.

Formalization. The extent to which work roles are highly defined by an organization.

Framing. Aspects of the presentation of information about a problem that are assumed by decision makers.

Functional departmentation. Employees with closely related skills and responsibilities are assigned to the same department.

Fundamental attribution error. The tendency to overemphasize dispositional explanations for behavior at the expense of situational explanations.

Gainsharing. A group pay incentive plan based on productivity or performance improvements over which the workforce has some control.

Gatekeepers. People who span organizational boundaries to import new information, translate it for local use, and disseminate it.

Geographic departmentation. Relatively self-contained units deliver an organization's products or services in a specific geographic territory.

Goal setting. A motivational technique that uses specific, challenging, and acceptable goals and provides feedback to enhance performance.

Grapevine. An organization's informal communication network.

Group. Two or more people interacting interdependently to achieve a common goal.

Group cohesiveness. The degree to which a group is especially attractive to its members.

Group think. The capacity for group pressure to damage the mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment of decision-making groups.

Growth need strength. The extent to which people desire to achieve higher-order need satisfaction by performing their jobs.

Halo effect. The rating of an individual on one trait or characteristic tends to color ratings on other traits or characteristics.

Harshness. The tendency to perceive the job performance of ratees as especially ineffective.

Hawthorne effect. A favorable response by subjects in an organizational experiment that is the result of a factor other than the independent variable that is formally being manipulated.

Hawthorne studies. Research conducted at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electronic in the 1920s and 1930s that illustrated how psychological and social processes affect productivity and work adjustment.

Hindsight. The tendency to review a decision-making process to find what was done right or wrong.

Horizontal communication. Information that flows between departments or functional units, usually as a means of coordinating effort.

Human relations movement. A critique of classical management and bureaucracy that advocated management styles that were more participative and oriented toward employee needs.

Hybrid departmentation. A structure based on some mixture of functional, product, geographic, or customer departmentation.

Hypothesis. A formal statement of the expected relationship between two variables.

Idea champions. People who recognize an innovative idea and guide it to implementation.

Identification. Conformity to a social norm promoted by perceptions that those who promote the norm are attractive or similar to oneself.

Idiosyncrasy credits. Social credits earned from regular conformity to group norms that allow occasional deviance from the norms.

Ill-structured problem. A problem for which the existing and desired states are unclear and the method of getting to the desired state is unknown.

Implicit personality theories. Personal theories that people have about which personality characteristics go together.

Independent variable. The variable that is manipulated or changed in an experiment.

Individualistic vs. Collective. Individualistic societies stress independence, individual initiative, and privacy. Collective cultures favor interdependence and loyalty to family or clan.

Influence tactics. Tactics that are used to convert power into actual influence over others.

Informal groups. Groups that emerge naturally in response to the common interests of organizational members.

Information dependence. Reliance on others for information about how to think, feel, and act.

Information overload. The reception of more information than is necessary to make effective decisions.

Information richness. The potential information-carrying capacity of a communication medium.

Initiating structure. The degree to which a leader concentrates on group goal attainment.

Innovation. The process of developing and implementing new ideas in an organization.

Inputs. Anything that people give up, offer, or trade to their organization in exchange for outcomes.

Instrumentality. The probability that a particular first-level outcome will be followed by a particular second-level outcome.

Integration. The process of attaining coordination across differentiated departments.

Integrative negotiation. Win-win negotiation that assumes that mutual problem solving can enlarge the assets to be divided between parties.

Integrators. Organizational members permanently assigned to facilitate coordination between departments.

Interest groups. Parties or organizations other than direct competitors that have some vested interest in how an organization is managed.

Interlocking directorates. A condition existing when one person serves on two or more boards of directors.

Internal career. The individual's interpretation of objective work experiences know only from a person's own subjective sense of external events.

Internalization. Conformity to a social norm prompted by true acceptance of the beliefs, values, and attitudes that underlie the norm.

Interpersonal conflict. A process that occurs when one person, group, or organizational subunit frustrates the goal attainment of another.

Interrole conflict. Several roles held by a role occupant involve incompatible expectations.

Intersender role conflict. Two or more role senders provide a role occupant with incompatible expectations.

Intrasender role conflict. A single role sender provides incompatible expectations to a role occupant.

Intrinsic motivation. Motivation that stems from the direct relationship between the worker and the task; it is usually self-applied.

Intuition. Problem identification and solving based on systematic education and experiences that locate problems within a network of previously acquired information.

Jargon. Specialized language used by job holders or members of particular occupations or organizations.

Job demands-job control model. A model that asserts that jobs promote high stress when they make high demands while offering little control over work decisions.

Job enrichment. The design of jobs to enhance intrinsic motivation and the quality of working life.

Job satisfaction. A collection of attitudes that workers have about their jobs.

Job sharing. An alternative work schedule in which two part-time employees divide the work of a full time job.

Leader punishment behavior. The leader's use of reprimands or unfavorable task assignments and the active withholding of rewards.

Leader reward behavior. The leader's provision of subordinates with compliments, tangible benefits, and deserved special treatment.

Leadership. The influence that particular individuals exert upon the goal achievement of others in an organizational context.

Learning. A relatively permanent change in behavior potential that occurs due to practice or experience.

Least Preferred Co-Worker (LPC). A current or past co-worker with whom a leader has had a difficult time accomplishing a task.

Legitimate power. Power derived from a person's position or job in an organization.

Leniency. The tendency to perceive the job performance of ratees as especially good.

Liaison role. The assignment of a person to help achieve coordination between his or her department and another department.

Locus of control. A set of beliefs about whether one's behavior is controlled mainly by internal or external forces.

Lump sum bonus. Merit pay that is awarded in a single payment and not built into base pay.

Machiavellianism. A set of cynical beliefs about human nature, morality, and the permissibility of using various tactics to achieve one's ends.

Management by Objectives (MBO). An elaborate, systematic, ongoing program to facilitate goal establishment, goal accomplishment, and employee development.

Management. The art of getting things accomplished in organizations through others.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A five-level hierarchical need theory of motivation that specifies that the lowest-level unsatisfied need has the greatest motivating potential.

Matrix departmentation. Employees remain members of a functional department while also reporting to a product or project manager.

Maximization. The choice of the decision alternative with the greatest expected value.

McClelland's theory of needs. A nonhierarchical need theory of motivation that outlines the conditions under which certain needs result in particular patterns of motivation.

Mechanistic structures. Organizational structures characterized by tallness, specialization, centralization, and formalization.

Mentor. An older and more senior person in the organization who gives a junior person special attention, such as giving advice and creating opportunities.

Merit pay plans. Systems that attempt to link pay to performance on white-collar jobs.

Modeling. The process of imitating the behavior of others.

Motivation. The extent to which persistent effort is directed toward a goal.

Mum effect. The tendency to avoid communicating unfavorable news to others.

Need for achievement. A strong desire to perform challenging tasks well.

Need for affiliation. A strong desire to establish and maintain friendly, compatible interpersonal relationships.

Need for power. A strong desire to influence others, making a significant impact or impression.

Need theories. Motivation theories that specify the kinds of needs people have and the conditions under which they will be motivated to satisfy these needs in a way that contributes to performance.

Negative reinforcement. The removal of a stimulus that in turn increases or maintains the probability of some behavior.

Negotiation. A decision-making process among interdependent parties who do not share identical preferences.

Network organization. Liaisons between specialist organizations that rely strongly on market mechanisms for coordination.

Networking. Establishing good relations with key organizational members and/or outsiders in order to accomplish one's goals.

Neutralizers of leadership. Factors in the work setting that reduce a leader's opportunity to exercise influence.

Nominal group technique. A structured group decision-making technique in which ideas are generated without group interaction and then systematically evaluated by the group.

Nonverbal communication. The transmission of messages by some medium other than speech or writing.

Normative commitment. Commitment based on ideology or a feeling of obligation to an organization.

Norms. Collective expectations that members of social units have regarding the behavior of each other.

Observational research. Research that examines the natural activities of people in an organizational setting by listening to what they say and watching what they do.

Open door policy. The opportunity for employees to communicate directly with a manager without going through the chain of command.

Open systems. Systems that take inputs from the external environment, transform some of them, and send them back into the environment as outputs.

Organic structures. Organizational structures characterized by flatness, low specialization, low formalization, and decentralization.

Organizational behavior modification. The systematic use of learning principles to influence organizational behavior.

Organizational behavior. The attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations.

Organizational citizenship behavior. Voluntary, information behavior that contributes to organizational effectiveness.

Organizational commitment. An attitude that reflects the strength of the linkage between an employee and an organization.

Organizational culture. Shared beliefs, values, and assumptions that exist in an organization.

Organizational development (OD). A planned, ongoing effort to change organizations to be more effective and more human.

Organizational politics. The pursuit of self-interest in an organization, whether or not this self-interest corresponds to organizational goals.

Organizational processes. Activities or work that have to be accomplished to create outputs that internal or external customers value.

Organizational structure. The manner in which an organization divides its labor into specific tasks and achieves coordination among these tasks.

Organizations. Social inventions for accomplishing common goals through group effort.

Outcomes. Consequences that follow work behavior and factors that an organization distributes to employees in exchange for their inputs.

Participant observation. Observational research in which the researcher becomes a functioning member of the organizational unit being studied.

Participative leadership. Involving subordinates in making work-related decisions.

Path-Goal Theory. Robert House's theory concerned with the situations under which various leader behaviors (directive, supportive, participative, achievement-oriented) are most effective.

Perception. The process of interpreting out senses to provide order and meaning to the environment.

Perceptual defense. The tendency for the perceptual system to defend the perceiver against unpleasant emotions.

Perfect rationality. A decision strategy that is completely informed, perfectly logical, and oriented toward economic gain.

Performance. The extent to which an organizational member contributes to achieving the objectives of the organization.

"Performance causes satisfaction" hypothesis. An assumption that high job performance leads to high job satisfaction.

Person-role conflict. Role demands call for behavior that is incompatible with the personality or skills of a role occupant.

Personality. The relatively stable set of psychological characteristics that influences the way an individual interacts with his or her environment.

Piecerate. A pay system in which individual workers are paid a certain sum of money for each unit of production completed.

Pooled interdependence. A condition in which organizational subunits are dependent upon the pooled resources generated by other subunits but are otherwise fairly independent.

Positive reinforcement. The application or addition of a stimulus that increases or maintains the probability of some behavior.

Power. The capacity to influence others who are in a state of dependence.

Power distance. The extent to which an unequal distribution of power is accepted by society members.

Primacy effect. The tendency for a perceiver to rely on early cues or first impressions.

Problem. A perceived gap between an existing state and a desired state.

Procedural fairness. Fairness that occurs when the process used to determine work outcomes is seen as reasonable.

Process losses. Group performance difficulties stemming from the problems of motivating and coordinating larger groups.

Process theories. Motivation theories that specify the details of how motivation occurs.

Product departmentation. Departments are formed on the basis of a particular product, product line, or service.

Profit sharing. The return of some company profit to employees in the form of a cash bonus or a retirement supplement.

Program. A standardized way of solving a problem.

Projection. The tendency for perceivers to attribute their own undesirable ideas, feelings, and motives to others.

Punctuated equilibrium model. A model of group development that describes how groups with deadlines are affected by their first meetings and crucial midpoint transitions.

Punishment. The application of an aversive stimulus following some behavior designed to decrease the probability of that behavior.

Rationalization. Attributing socially acceptable motives to one's actions.

Reaction formation. Expressing oneself in a manner that is directly opposite to the way one truly feels.

Realistic job previews. The provision of a balanced, realistic picture of the positive and negative aspects of a job to job applicants.

Reality shock. An unsettling experience caused by the disparity between unrealistic expectations and the reality that people confront in their first job.

Regency effect. The tendency for a perceiver to rely on recent cues or last impressions.

Reciprocal interdependence. A condition in which organizational subunits must engage in considerable interplay and mutual feedback to accomplish a task.

Reengineering. The radical redesign of organizational processes to achieve major improvements in factors such as time, cost, quality, or service.

Referent power. Power derived from being well liked by others.

Refreezing. The condition that exists when newly developed behaviors, attitudes, or structures become an enduring part of the organization.

Reinforcement. The process by which stimuli strengthen behaviors.

Reliability. An index of the consistency of a research subject's responses.

Repression. The prevention of threatening ideas from becoming conscious.

Resistance. Overt or convert failure by organizational members to support a change effort.

Resource dependence. The dependency of organizations upon environmental inputs such as capital, raw materials, and human resources.

Restriction of productivity. The artificial limitation of work output that can occur under wage incentive plans.

Reward power. Power derived from the ability to provide positive outcomes and prevent negative outcomes.

Risky shift. The tendency for groups to make riskier decisions than the average risk initially advocated by their individual members.

Role ambiguity. Lack of clarity of job goals or methods.

Role conflict. A condition of being faced with incompatible role expectations.

Role overload. The requirement for too many tasks to be performed in too short of a time period.

Roles. Positions in groups that have a set of expected behaviors attached to them.

Rumor. An unverified belief that is in general circulation.

"Satisfaction causes performance" hypothesis. An assumption that high job satisfaction leads to high job performance.

Satisficing. Establishing an adequate level of acceptability for a solution to a problem and then screening solutions until one that exceeds this level is found.

Scientific Management. Frederick Taylor's system for using research to determine the optimum degree of specialization and standardization of work tasks.

Self-esteem. The degree to which a person has a positive self-evaluation.

Self-managed work teams. Work groups that have the opportunity to do challenging work under reduced supervision.

Self-management. The use of learning principles to manage one's own behavior.

Self-monitoring. The extend to which people observe and regulate how they appear and behave in social settings and relationships.

Self-serving bias. The tendency to take credit for successful outcomes and to deny responsibility for failures.

Sequential interdependence. A condition in which organizational subunits are dependent upon the resources generated by units that precede them in a sequence of work.

Similar-to-me effect. A rater gives more favorable evaluations to people who are similar to the rater in terms of background or attitudes.

Situational attributions. Explanations for behavior based on an actor's external situation or environment.

Skilled based pay. A system in which people are paid according to the number of job skills they have acquired.

Skill benchmarking. The process of identifying required competency levels for key jobs in an industry.

Skill variety. The opportunity to do a variety of job activities using various skills and talents.

Social loafing. The tendency of individuals to withhold physical or intellectual effort when performing a group task.

Social network. A group of one's peers, subordinates, and senior people who provide general information about what is going on in the organization, specific advice on how to accomplish job assignments, and feedback about the consequences of different career strategies.

Social-emotional leader. A leader who is concerned with reducing tension, patching up disagreements, settling arguments, and maintaining morale.

Socialization. The process by which people learn the norms and roles that are necessary to function in a group or organization.

Span of control. The number of subordinates supervised by a superior.

Stakeholders. People inside or outside of an organization who have the potential to be affected by organizational decisions.

Status. The rank, social position, or prestige accorded to group members.

Stereotyping. The tendency to generalize about people in a social category and ignore variation among them.

Strategic alliances. Actively cooperative relationships between legally separate organizations.

Strategic contingencies. Critical factors affecting organizational effectiveness that are controlled by a key subunit.

Strategy. The process by which top executives seek to cope with the constraints and opportunities that an organization's environment poses.

Stress. A psychological reaction to the demands inherent in a stressor that has the potential to make a person feel tense or anxious.

Stress reactions. Behavioral, psychological, and physiological consequences of stress.

Stressors. Environmental events or conditions that have the potential to induce stress.

Strong culture. An organizational culture with intense and pervasive beliefs, values, and assumptions.

Subcultures. Smaller cultures that develop within a larger organizational culture that are based on differences in training, occupation, or departmental goals.

Substitutes for leadership. Factors in the work setting that can take the place of active leadership, making it unnecessary or redundant.

Subunit power. The degree of power held by various organizational subunits, such as departments.

Suggestion systems. Programs designed to enhance upward communication by soliciting ideas for improved work operations from employees.

Sunk costs. Permanent losses of resources incurred as the result of a decision.

Superordinate goals. Attractive outcomes that can be achieved only by collaboration.

Survey feedback. The collection of data from organizational members and the provision of feedback about the results.

Tall organization. An organization with relatively many levels in its hierarchy of authority.

Task forces. Temporary groups set up to solve coordination problems across several departments.

Task identity. The extent to which a job involves doing a complete piece of work, from beginning to end.

Task leader. A leader who is concerned with accomplishing a task by organizing others, planning strategy, and dividing labor.

Task significance. The impact that a job has on other people.

Team building. An effort to increase the effectiveness of work teams by improving interpersonal processes, goal clarification, and role clarification.

Technological interdependence. The extent to which organizational subunits depend on each other for resources, raw materials, or information.

Technological routineness. The extent to which exceptions and problems affect the task of converting inputs into outputs.

Technology. The activities, equipment, and knowledge necessary to turn organizational inputs into desired outputs.

Theory of career anchors. Five distinct patterns of self-perceived talents, motives, needs, and values that evolve as one faces early work experiences: technical/functional competence, managerial competence, security, autonomy, and creativity.

Theory of career types. John Holland's theory identifying six distinct patterns of career orientation: conventional, artistic, realistic, social, enterprising, and investigative.

Total quality management (TQM). A systematic attempt to achieve continuous improvement in the quality of an organization's products and/or services.

Traits. Individual characteristics such as physical attributes, intellectual ability, and personality.

Transformation leadership. Providing followers with a new vision that instills true commitment.

Type A behavior pattern. A personality pattern that includes aggressiveness, ambitiousness, competitiveness, hostility, impatience, and a sense of time urgency.

Uncertainty avoidance. The extent to which people are uncomfortable with uncertain and ambiguous situations.

Unfreezing. The recognition that some current state of affairs is unsatisfactory.

Upward communication. Information that flows from the bottom of the organization toward the top.

Valence. The expected value of work outcomes; the extent to which they are attractive or unattractive.

Validity. An index of the extent to which a measure truly reflects what it is supposed to measure.

Values. A broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others.

Variable interval schedule. A partial reinforcement schedule in which some variable time period occurs between a reinforced response and the chance for the next reinforcement.

Variable ratio schedule. A partial reinforcement schedule in which some variable number of responses must be made between a reinforced response and the availability of the next reinforcement.

Vertical integration. The strategy of formally taking control of sources of organizational supply and distribution.

Wage incentive plans. Various systems that link pay to performance on production jobs.

Well-structured problem. A problem for which the existing state is clear, the desired state is clear and how to get from one state to another is fairly obvious.

Workforce diversity. Differences among recruits and employees in characteristics such as gender, race, age, religion, cultural background, physical ability, and sexual orientation