Management 311 Exam 1 Study Guide
1. What is OB?
1.1. Organizational behavior: a field of study devoted to understanding,
explaining, and ultimately improving human behavior in organizations
○ “Simply put, it’s about people at work; how they feel, think, and
act, and how that impacts organizational outcomes.”
2. What is job performance?
2.1. The core concept that everything else is going to relate to and predict
●Job performance: the value of the set of behaviors that contribute,
either positively or negatively, to organizational goal accomplishment
○ It is not just the outcomes or the number of sales
○ It is the set of behaviors that lead to these organizational
outcomes (like number of sales)
○ Job performance is both positive and negative
■ All the good things that get you to that goal, and all the bad
things that prevent you from getting to that goal
○ These behaviors specifically contribute to organizational
outcomes
■ Example: consider the behavior of a server in a world-class
restaurant. Texting during a break is not relevant, but texting
while taking a customer’s order IS (in a negative way), so
that behavior is relevant to the server’s job performance
3. Task performance
3.1. Task Performance: the behaviors directly involved in transforming
organizational resources into the goods or services an organization
produces
■ The simplest/most obvious
■ These are core to your job (like a job description)
● Example: as an accountant, you’re doing things in excel, creating
reports, etc.
