Chapter 5 Roles & Interaction

Question 1

Role Theory:

Answer 1

• The study of the individual and his roles.
• Framework to understand why the world is not as easy a place to manage as we would like.
• Why individuals suffer stress and strain.
• Why organizations breed misunderstandings and conflict.
• Role Theory links theories about individuals (such as theories on leadership and on motivation) with theories about organizations (design, structure, culture, change, efficiency, effectiveness)
• Roles no longer predefined.
  Do you know where your children will live, merry and work? Your grandparents did!

Question 2

Drivers of Increasing Role Variety and Diversity:

Answer 2

• Improvements in communication.
• Social Mobility.
• Educational Opportunities.
• Increased Affluence.

Question 3

Certainty no Longer:

Answer 3

• Pre-determined roles are boring and restrictive, but provide for certainty, security, and a consistent self-concept.
• Role Variety and Diversity desirable but also imply complexity, uncertainty, insecurity and strain.

Question 4

Role Stress:

Answer 4

• The dominance of work organizations has increased in our society.
• Combining the work/career and family/social role is increasingly difficult.
• Individual is the crunch point of the resulting pressures.

Question 5

Performance in a Given Role:

Answer 5

Will depend on two interactive sets of influences:

1) The forces in herself – her personality, attributes, skills.
2) The forces operating in a given situation.

Question 6

The Concepts of Role Theory:

Answer 6

Focal Person: The particular individual with whom one is concerned in an analysis.
Focal Role: His role, the role under review.
Role Set: The group of people with whom the individual interacts in a given role.

Question 7

Role Definition:

Answer 7

• Combination of Role Expectations (often occupationally defined, and sometimes by law.
• Individuals often find it hard to escape role definitions defined by cultural tradition.

Question 8

Role Signs:

Answer 8

Roles are often deliberately made clear:

• Uniforms, Stripes.
• Dress.
• Place.
• Current trend is to blur role signs is democratic but also makes people insecure.

Question 9

Role Ambiguity:

Answer 9

 Uncertainty about how one’s work is evaluated.
 Uncertainty about the scope for advancement.
 Uncertainty about scope of responsibility.
 Uncertainty about others’ expectations of one’s performance

Question 10

Role Incompatibility:

Answer 10

Expectations of the members of the role set are incompatible as features of the same role.
Examples:
 Disparate expectations regarding leadership and motivation.
 Clash between expectations and one’s self-concept. e.g. ethics: company standards not acceptable to individual.

Question 11

Role Conflict:

Answer 11

 Is caused by the inevitability for a person to carry out different roles in the same situation. The expectation for each role may be clear but the roles themselves may be in conflict.
 Example: Being a woman and a successful executive (a generally male stereotype).

Question 12

Role Overload:

Answer 12

 People can handle some role conflict (roles that do not precisely fit).
 Role overload implies that there are too many (at times conflicting) roles to handle. Role overload is not at all the same as work overload – cannot be solved with overtime!

Question 13

Role Underload:

Answer 13

The individual feels that the role definition is out of line with his self-concept – he feels himself able of handling bigger roles.
 Individuals is “auditing” roles often suffer from role underload.
 Recruiters may talk of opportunities. Tedious work reality then may come as a rude shock.
 Delegation is at first often perceived as a threat to the self-concept of the delegating manager.

Question 14

Role Stress:

Answer 14

Stress can be good, stress can be bad:
 Most people need some stress to bring out best performance.
 Too much, or the wrong form of stress can be damaging. Management in any organization has the task to control the level of stress!

Question 15

Role Stress and Role Strain:

Answer 15

 Beneficial Stress: Role Pressure
 Harmful Stress: Role Strain
Exactly distinguishing between them is impossible, except for their effects.

Question 16

Symptoms of Role Strain:

Answer 16

 Tension. Often Expressed through irritation, preoccupation with trivia, great attention to precision, sickness.
 Low Morale. A sense of futility.
 Communication difficulties. Individuals are hard to talk to, silent or withdrawn. Absenteeism is the extreme form.

Question 17

Generic strategies for “coping” with role strain:

Answer 17

1. Repression: The individual refuses to admit there is a problem.
2. Withdrawal: The individual retreats behind a psychological barrier.
3. Rationalization: The individual decides that the situation is unavoidable and that she must live with it.

Question 18

“Solution strategies” for dealing with Role Stress and Strain:

Answer 18

1) Unilateral Strategies: Re-definition of one’s roles and priorities.
Caveat: unilateral strategies invite retaliation.
2) Cooperative Strategies: Using positive interpersonal relationships.
But: cooperative strategies hard to employ in strained relationships.

Question 19

Four Types of Stress:

Answer 19

1. Time Stress. Some people thrive on it, some develop a “mañana “ attitude.
2. Situational Stress. Role stress, really.
3. Anticipatory Stress. “Free-floating fear”.
4. Encounter Stress. Anxiety about dealing with difficult or unpredictable people.

Question 20

The Personality Variables:

Answer 20

1. Sociability. Interpersonal bonds make stress more tolerable.
2. Emotional Sensitivity. The tough executive is better suited to withstand the strain of organizational life. Strong-minded, insensible people feel less tension.
3. Flexibility / Rigidity. Flexible people will have pressure applied to them.

Question 21

Two types of manager:

Answer 21

 Type A: Extreme competitiveness. Aggressiveness, haste, impatience, hyper-alertness, explosiveness of speech, tenseness of facial musculature, time pressure, under challenge of responsibility.
 Type B: “More laid-back”

Question 22

What kind of manager will you become?

Answer 22

• Probability of coronary disease among Type A managers is a multiple of that recoded for Type B managers. Type A associated with high blood pressure, cholesterol, uric acid, smoking, and lack of fitness…