Important terms in Organisational Behaviour/ Organisational Psychology/ Industrial Psychology

Important terms in Organisational Behavior  Organisational Psychology/ Industrial Psychology

1. Attitude: The cluster of beliefs, feelings and behavioural intentions towards an object.
2. Behaviour Modification: A theory in behavioural science that explains learning in terms of the antecedents and consequences of behavior.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Behavioural Audit: A diagnosis of cultural relations between companies prior to a merger and determination of the extent to which cultural clashes are likely to occur.
4. Brainstorming: A freewheeling face-to-face meeting where team members are not allowed to criticize but are encouraged to speak freely in order to generate as many ideas as possible for building on the ideas of others.
5. Change agent: Anyone who possesses enough knowledge and power outside the group by pooling the resources and power of its members.
6. Cognitive Dissonance: A psychological tension that occurs when people perceive an inconsistency between their beliefs, feelings and behavior.
7. Conflict: The process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party.
8. Emotional Intelligence: The ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in oneself and others.
9. Emotions: Psychological episodes toward an object, person, or an event that create a state of readiness.
10. Employability: An employment relationship in which people perform a variety of work activities (rather than holding specific jobs) and are expected to continuously learn skills that will keep them employed.
11. Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs): Counselling services that help employees overcome personal or organizational stressors and adopt more effective coping mechanisms.
12. Employee Involvement: The degree to which employees influence how their work is organized and carried out.
13. Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP): A reward system that encourages employees to buy shares of an organization.
14. Empowerment: A psychological concept in which people experience more self-determination, meaning, competence, and impact regarding their role in the organization.
15. Extroversion: A “Big Five” personality dimension that characterizes people who are outgoing, talkative, sociable, and assertive.
16. Goals: The ultimate objective that employees try to accomplish in an organization.
17. Goal Setting: The process of motivating employees and clarifying their role perceptions by establishing performance objectives.
18. Grapevine: An unstructured and informal communication found in an organization.
19. Group: two or more people with a unifying relationship.
20. Impression Management: Practice of actively shaping one’s public image.
21. Informal Groups: Two or more people who form a unifying relationship based on personal rather than organizational goals.
22. Introversion: A “Big Five” personality dimension that characterizes people who are quiet, shy and cautious.
23. Intuition: the ability to know when a problem or opportunity exists and select the best course of action without conscious reasoning.
24. Johari Window: the model of personal and interpersonal understanding that encourages disclosure and feedback to increase the open area and reduce the blind, hidden, and unknown areas of oneself.
25. Knowledge Management: Any structured activity that improves an organisation’s capacity to acquire, share, and use knowledge in ways that improve its survival and success.
26. Learning: A relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of a person’s interaction with the environment.
27. Locus of Control: A personality trait referring to the extent to which people believe events are within their control.
28. Machiavellian Values: the belief that deceit is a natural and acceptable way to influence others.
29. Management by Objectives (MBO): A participative goal-setting process in which organizational objectives are cascaded down to individual employees.
    
30. Management By Walking Around (MBWA): A communication practice in which executives get out of their offices and learn from others in the organization through face-to-face interaction.
31. Mental Imagery: Mentally practicing a task and visualizing its successful completion.
32. Motivation: The force operating within an individual that affect his or her direction, intensity and persistence of voluntary behavior.
33. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): A personality inventory designed to identify individual’s basic preferences information.
34. Need for Achievement (nAch): A learned need in which people want to accomplish reasonably through their own efforts.
35. Need for Affiliation (nAff): A learned need in which people seek approval/conformation from others for their wishes and expectations.
36. Need for Power (nPow): A learned need in which people want to control over other others.
37. Need: Deficiencies that energize or trigger behavior.
38. Negotiation: Two or more conflicting parties attempt to resolve their divergent goals by redefining the terms of their interdependence.
39. Organisational Behaviour: The study of what people think, feel, and do in an organisation.
40. Organisational Culture: The basic pattern of shared assumptions, values and beliefs governing the way employees within an organisation think about and act on problems and opportunities.
41. Organisational Design: The process of creating and modifying organisationa structure.
42. Organisational Politics: Behaviours that people perceive as self-serving tactics for personal gain at the expense of others in an organisation.
43. Organisational Structure: The division of employees and the pattern of co-ordination, communication, work flow, and forma power that direct an organisation’s activities.
44. Organisation: Groups of people who work interdependently toward attainment of common objectives.
45. Perception: The process of receiving information about and making sense of the world around us.
46. Personality: The relatively stable pattern of behaviours and consistent states that explain a person’s behavioural tendencies.
47. Positivism: A view held in quantitative research in which reality exists independent of perceptions and interpretations of people.
48. Power: The capacity of a person, team, or organisation to influence others.
    
49. Process Consultation: Helping an organisation to solve its problems on its own by making it aware of organizational processes, the consequences of those processes, and the means by which they can be changed.
50. Punishment: A means of decreasing the frequency or future probability of a behavior through the introduction of a consequence.
51. Referent Power: The capacity to influence others based on the identification and respect they have for the power holder.
52. Refreezing: The latter part of the change process in which systems and conditions are introduced that reinforces and maintains the desired behavior.
53. Role Ambiguity: A lack of clarity and predictability of the outcomes of one’s behavior.
54. Role Conflict: Incompatibility of expectations associated with a person’s role.
55. Role Perception: A person’s beliefs about the specific task assigned to him or her, their relative importance, and the preferred behavior to accomplish those tasks.
56. Self-Efficacy: A person’s belief that an individual has the ability, motivation, and resources to complete a task successfully.
57. Stakeholer: They include the shareholders, customers, suppliers, Government and other groups with a vested interest in the organisation.
58. Stereotyping: The process of assigning traits to people based on their membership in a social category.
59. Stress: An individual’s adaptive response to a situation that is perceived as challenging or threatening to the person’s well-being.
60. Team Building: Any formal activity intended to improve the development and functioning of a team.
61. Utilitarianism: The moral principle stating that decision makers should seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people when choosing among alternatives.
62. Valence: The anticipated satisfaction or dissatisfaction that an individual feels toward an outcome.
63. Values: Stable, long-lasting beliefs about what is important in a variety of situations, which guide our decisions and actions.
64. Workaholic: A person who is highly involved in work, feels compelled to work, and has a low enjoyment of work.
65. Workplace Bullying: Offensive, intimidating, or humiliating behavior that degrades, ridicules, or insults another person at work.