BUSI 240 Week 2 Discussion Board Forum 1 Replies Example

Discussion Board Forum 1 Replies: Responding to Classmates' Key Terms

BUSI 240 Organizational Behavior and Management, Discussion Board Forum 1 Replies

Thread by [Student Name]

The classmates and their threads are composites; the textbook and studies cited are real, and textbook locations are given by chapter.

Reply to Kendra

Kendra, your thread explained organizational citizenship behaviors well, especially your example of a coworker who stayed late to help train a new hire without being asked. The textbook lists these behaviors among the main types of individual behavior that organizations depend on, alongside task performance and staying with the organization (McShane & Von Glinow, 2015, ch. 1).

I would add research showing that these behaviors matter beyond individual kindness. Podsakoff et al. (2009) combined many studies and found that citizenship behaviors were related not only to how managers rated individuals but also to unit-level results, including productivity, efficiency, customer satisfaction and lower turnover. That suggests a team where people help one another is measurably more effective, not just more pleasant. It also raises a management problem: because these behaviors are voluntary, they are easy to overlook in performance reviews and easy to discourage by rewarding only individual output. A sales team paid purely on personal commission, for example, gives people little reason to help a struggling colleague close a deal. Some organizations try to solve this by adding peer recognition or team bonuses, so that helping others becomes visible and valued rather than invisible.

Have you seen a workplace where the people who helped others most were the ones who got passed over for recognition?

Reply to Darius

Darius, your thread on conscientiousness made a strong case that dependable, organized employees tend to perform well. The textbook (McShane & Von Glinow, 2015, ch. 2) describes conscientiousness as one of the five dimensions of personality, along with emotional stability, openness to experience, agreeableness and extraversion.

The evidence for your argument is long-standing. Barrick and Mount (1991) combined studies across professional, police, managerial, sales and skilled or semiskilled jobs and found that conscientiousness was the one Big Five trait consistently related to performance in all of the occupational groups. Other traits, such as extraversion, mattered mainly in particular jobs like sales and management. That is a useful point for hiring: conscientiousness seems to help almost everywhere, while other traits help only where the work calls for them. Even so, the correlations were modest, so a personality score alone would sort job candidates only roughly. Skills, experience and the situation still matter a great deal, which is a reminder from the MARS model we studied in the first chapters.

I wonder, though, whether very high conscientiousness can become a weakness in jobs that change quickly. Have you worked with someone whose need for order made it hard to adapt?

Reply to Megan

Megan, I appreciated your thread on values and your point that employees whose personal values match their organization's tend to be happier. The textbook calls this values congruence (McShane & Von Glinow, 2015, ch. 2) and notes that it affects satisfaction, loyalty and decision making.

When Kristof-Brown et al. (2005) pooled the fit literature, the match between an employee and the employer's culture showed its biggest payoffs in attitudes, such as liking the job, feeling loyal and planning to stay, and much smaller payoffs in how well people actually performed. In other words, fit seems to keep people engaged and in place more than it makes them perform better. That distinction could help a manager hiring for culture: fit may reduce turnover, but it should not replace evidence of skill. In a small business where losing an employee is costly, the retention benefit alone may justify paying attention to values during interviews, for example by asking candidates to describe a workplace where they felt they belonged.

There is also a risk in hiring only for fit, since a team of people with identical values may resist new ideas. How would you balance values fit with diversity of thought on a team you led?

References

Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1991.tb00688.x

Kristof-Brown, A. L., Zimmerman, R. D., & Johnson, E. C. (2005). Consequences of individuals' fit at work: A meta-analysis of person-job, person-organization, person-group, and person-supervisor fit. Personnel Psychology, 58(2), 281-342. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.00672.x

McShane, S. L., & Von Glinow, M. A. (2015). Organizational behavior: Emerging knowledge, global reality (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Podsakoff, N. P., Whiting, S. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & Blume, B. D. (2009). Individual- and organizational-level consequences of organizational citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1), 122-141. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013079