What are the two main outcomes in organisational behaviour?
Job performance and Organisational commitment
What are the three categories of job performance?
Task performance – effort, productivity, creativity
Citizenship behaviour – helping, boosting, voice
Counterproductive behaviour – theft, incivility, sabotage
What is task performance
Task performance = how well an employee performs their core job duties (effort, productivity, creativity).
🔑 Analogy: Like a chef cooking meals — their main task is preparing food.
What is citizenship behavior
Citizenship behavior = voluntary actions that go beyond the job description (helping others, boosting morale, speaking up with ideas).
🔑 Analogy: Like a teammate who cheers others on and helps clean up after practice, even though it’s not required.
What is counterproductive behavior
Counterproductive behavior = intentional actions that harm the organisation (theft, incivility, sabotage).
🔑 Analogy: Like a player scoring for the opponent on purpose — it directly damages the team.
Why do managers want workers to have organisational commitment?
So they identify with the organisation & goals, feel welcome, stay connected → leads to less turnover, tardiness, cyberloafing, absenteeism
How does the average manager spend time?
Equal amounts on all tasks.
What are the four key managerial tasks?
Traditional management – decision-making, planning, controlling
Communication – paperwork, exchanging information
Human resource management – motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, training
Networking – socialising, interacting with others
How does the successful manager spend time?
Mostly networking (~50%), rest on communicating.
How does the effective manager spend time?
Mostly communicating (~50%), rest on HR management.
What does the study on managers & promotions suggest?
Promotions aren’t always about performance – networking & communicating may matter more.
What are the two main ways to analyse OB?
Systematic study & Intuition
Intuition = gut feeling, observation, common sense
Systematic study = looks at relationships, uses data & scientific evidence, predicts behaviour
What is Systematic study
looks at relationships, uses data & scientific evidence, predicts behaviour
What is Hindsight Bias?
The tendency to see events as more predictable after they happen (“I knew it all along”).
Imagine you’re watching a football match. Before the game, you’re not sure who will win. But once the game ends and Team A wins, you say:
“I knew they were going to win all along!”
In reality, you didn’t know for sure — but after the result, it feels obvious to you. That’s hindsight bias.
What is Evidence-Based Management (EBM)?
Using the best available scientific evidence to guide managerial decisions.
Methodology = pose question → search for best evidence → apply it
What are the four core values of science?
Accuracy – hypotheses must be true & based on logic
Scepticism – question results, don’t accept without proof
Objectivity – research must not be biased
Open-mindedness – remain open to any result
What is a theory?
An integrated set of principles that explains phenomena.
What are hypotheses?
Predictions derived from a theory → tested through research.
What is the systematic observation (correlational method)?
Examines relationships between variables; allows conclusions about correlation, not causation.
✨ Example: A researcher finds that employees who sleep more hours also report higher job satisfaction.
⚠️ But → we cannot say “more sleep causes satisfaction.” Maybe satisfied employees sleep better.
Systematic observation (general): Carefully and consistently recording behavior.
What is the experimental method?
Allows conclusions about causality; provides more control over variables.
✨ Example: A manager randomly assigns employees to two groups: one gets extra training, the other doesn’t. If the trained group performs better, we can say training caused performance to improve.
How does job satisfaction influence job performance?
Behavioral intentions
Less withdrawal
Positive mood
How does job performance influence job satisfaction?
Achievement
Goal progress
Positive mood
