DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. If your boss was not sure it would be worth the investment to change the company’s hiring
practices to include an evaluation of applicants’ attitudes, what would you tell him or her?
Students may point out that attitudes and values about work influence job satisfaction. Someone with
a negative attitude toward work is less likely to be satisfied with a job than someone with a positive
2. Do you think that it would be easy to influence a subordinate’s attitudes, values, or emotions?
Why? Which would have the largest influence on the employee’s behavior? Why?
It is easier to influence a subordinate’s emotions. Attitudes are formed over the course of a person’s
lifetime through experiences, family, culture, religion, and socioeconomic factors. Values influence
3. What are the components of an individual’s attitude? Relate each component to an attitude you
currently have about something.
From the dispositional view of attitudes, the three components are affect, cognition, and intention.
4. Do terminal or instrumental values have a larger influence on your behavior at work? Explain.
Terminal values reflect our goals that are subject to change whereas instrumental values are our
preferred ways of behaving. Terminal values influence what we want to accomplish; instrumental
5. Think of a person you know who seems to have positive affectivity. Think of another who has
more negative affectivity. How constant are they in their expressions of mood and attitude?
6. How does perception affect behavior? What stereotypes do you form about people? Are they
good or bad?
Perception is the set of processes by which an individual becomes aware of and interprets information
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Most people have stereotypes about other people, no matter how hard they may try to conceal or
overcome them. The most notable have been the stereotypical views of other ethnic groups. Other
7. Recall a situation in which you made attributions and describe them using the framework
supplied in Figure 4.5.
Students’ answers will, of course, vary on this question. Some students may have some difficulty
8. Do you consider yourself a Type A or a Type B person? Why? Do you think a person who is a
Type A can change to become more like a Type B? If so, how?
Type A people tend to be more competitive, more aggressive, more dedicated to work, and more
Students probably will argue that people indeed have the capacity to change, especially if there are
urgent reasons to do so. If a person is experiencing serious stress or burnout as a result of Type A
9. What are the major stressors for a student? What consequences are students most likely to
suffer as a result of too much stress?
Students might identify life stressors such as being away from home for the first time, having to make
new friends, and worries about finances and the challenge to “make the family proud.” They might
10. Do you agree that a certain degree of stress is necessary to induce high energy and motivation?
Most students will recall examples of people in stressful situations who found the strength to do
GROUP EXERCISE – The Effect of Emotion On Team Performance
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Learning Objective: Explain why emotions are important to organizations.
Task: In teams, students role-play a particular emotion. Students identify each team’s role by reading the
description below:
Role 1: Grouchy, negative affect
Role 2: Calm
Role 3: Happy, positive affect
Role 4: Calm
For the next few minutes, each team discusses possible slogans for the field of organizational behavior
and identifies its favorite idea. When your instructor tells you, your role will change to the following:
Role 1: Calm
Role 2: Happy, positive affect
Role 3: Calm
Role 4: Grouchy, negative affect
Teams spend the next few minutes discussing the best ways for the manager of a local McDonald’s
restaurant to improve employees’ job engagement and decide on three ideas.
Questions:
1. Did your emotion influence your own performance or behavior in your team?
2. Did any emotional contagion occur in your team? If so, was the positive (happy) or negative (grouchy)
emotion more contagious? Why do you think this was so?
3. What could a leader do to effectively manage a team’s emotion? Is it worth trying?
VIDEO EXERCISE
Recycline Preserve: Strategy and the Partnership Advantage
Summary: Recycline began in 1996 when founder Eric Hudson designed an innovative toothbrush out
of all-recycled material. Today, Recycline’s eco-friendly product line, Preserve, includes a range of
personal care items, tableware, and kitchen goods. In 2007, Whole Foods and Recycline launched a line
of kitchenware products that included colanders, cutting boards, mixing bowls, and storage containers.
Through its various partnerships, Recycline was able to take an untested product and sell it at the nation’s
largest and most respected natural foods store. Whole Foods in turn used its experience and resources to
ensure the product sold well.
1. What roles do attitudes, values, and emotions play at a firm like Recycline? What role do your
existing attitudes about recycling affect how you see a company like Recycline?
2. What is your perception of CEO Eric Hudson? On what do you base your perception? What is
the public’s perception of green products according to marketing Director C.A. Webb? Why do
some people have that perception, and what can Recycline do to change it?
Different people will often perceive a person or situation differently, both in what they selectively
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In the video, Marketing Director C.A. Webb says that consumers perceive that they have to sacrifice
when buying green products. In particular, many people think that eco-friendly products are inferior
3. Would you want to work for Recycline? Why or why not?
Now What?
Imagine meeting with a subordinate who has been working at Happy Time Toys for a month and can’t yet
meet the company’s goals. The subordinate tried hard to perform well during the training session to look
good compared to the other new hires, but the others are doing a lot better on the job. The subordinate
communicates frustration about being unable to learn the new job. What do you say or do? Go to this
chapter’s “Now What?” video, watch the challenge video, and choose a response. Be sure to also view the
outcomes of the two responses you didn’t choose.
OB Concepts Applied: self-efficacy; learning and performance goal orientations; learning styles;
person-job fit; supplementary fit; realistic job preview
Discussion Questions
1. What attitudes did the employee develop about his performance on the job? How were they
formed?
Joe felt like he could not perform the job as well as others. He stated that he did well in training and
2. What role do attributions play in how the employee responded to challenges of learning to do
his job? What role do attributions play in how a manager might respond to a subordinate’s
performance?
For Joe, he is trying to explain why he did so well in training yet seems unable to master the job now
that he is actually performing the job. Joe sees other workers making their daily production levels
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By focusing on the wrong aspect of training, he was setting in place a chain of events that would end
in his inability to meet his daily production levels.
Attributions come into play for Alex when determining an internal or an external attribution to Joe’s
3. In what ways does fairness influence how the subordinate responded to the situations you
viewed?
Joe did not feel the “hang in there, it will get better” method was fair because he quit. He left angry
4. What other solutions might you have suggested to address the situation? Explain your answer
using concepts form the chapter.
Student’s answers will vary. I feel the offer of a two-week mentor or coach is good solution,
especially if Joe’s skills seem efficient to perform the job. Maybe offering retraining is another