Flashcards · 9990 · A Level Topic 6

Specialist Option 4: Organisational Psychology (A Level) flashcards

27 cards on A Level Topic 6, subtopics 4.1 to 4.5. Pick a subtopic or study them all.

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What are the five needs in Maslow's hierarchy?: From the base: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. Lower needs must be largely met before higher ones motivate.
What three needs does McClelland's theory of achievement motivation describe?: The need for achievement, the need for affiliation and the need for power. People differ in which need is strongest.
What are SMART goals in goal-setting theory (Latham and Locke)?: Goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Specific, challenging goals with feedback raise performance.
What is Vroom's VIE (expectancy) theory?: Motivation depends on expectancy (effort will lead to performance), instrumentality (performance will lead to reward) and valence (how much the reward is valued).
Extrinsic vs intrinsic motivators at work: Extrinsic: rewards from outside the task, such as pay, bonuses, profit-sharing and performance-related pay. Intrinsic: non-monetary rewards such as praise, respect, recognition, empowerment and belonging.
What are the three needs in Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory?: Competence, autonomy and relatedness. Landry et al. (2019) applied the theory to cash rewards: the same gift card framed as appreciation, not as control, raised need satisfaction, intrinsic motivation and performance.

What are universalist theories of leadership?: Theories that leaders share qualities that work in any situation: great person, charismatic and transformational leaders.
What did the Ohio and Michigan behavioural studies identify?: Two broad kinds of leader behaviour: task-focused (initiating structure; production-oriented) and people-focused (consideration; employee-oriented).
What are Scouller's three levels of leadership?: Public (behaviour seen by groups), private (one-to-one handling of individuals) and personal (the leader's own beliefs, self-awareness and growth).
What did Cuadrado et al. (2008) study?: Leadership style and gender: 136 Spanish students rated a male or female leader using a masculine or feminine style. Feminine styles were rated more favourably for both sexes; women were not penalised for masculine styles.
What are Kelley's (1988) two dimensions of followership?: Independent, critical thinking versus dependent, uncritical thinking; and active versus passive engagement. They give five styles: exemplary, alienated, conformist, passive and pragmatist.

What are the stages of group development (Tuckman and Jensen)?: Forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.
What is groupthink?: Faulty group decision-making in which the desire for agreement overrides realistic appraisal: signs include an illusion of invulnerability, pressure on dissenters and self-censorship.
Social facilitation vs social loafing: Social facilitation: the presence of others improves performance on simple or well-learned tasks. Social loafing: people put in less effort when working in a group than alone.
What did Earley (1993) show about social loafing across cultures?: Social loafing was more common among people from individualistic cultures; those from collectivist cultures loafed less when working with their in-group.
What did Claypoole and Szalma (2019) study?: Electronic performance monitoring and sustained attention: whether being monitored improved concentration on a vigilance task, as social facilitation would predict.
Name Thomas–Kilmann's five conflict-handling modes: Competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating.

What is the Hawthorne effect?: Workers change their behaviour, often improving productivity, because they know they are being studied, rather than because of the change in conditions itself (e.g. Kompier, 2006).
Rapid vs slow shift rotation: Rapid rotation changes shifts every few days, so the body clock never fully adjusts. Slow rotation changes shifts every few weeks, giving time to adjust between changes.
Errors of omission, commission, sequencing and timing: Omission: failing to do something. Commission: doing something wrong. Sequencing: doing steps in the wrong order. Timing: doing something too early or too late.
What did Swat (1997) study?: The monitoring of accidents and risk events in four industrial plants: of 83 accidents, at least 45.8% involved poor housekeeping, and most minor incidents went unreported.
How was a token economy used to reduce accidents (e.g. Fox et al., 1987)?: Workers earned tokens (stamps exchangeable for goods) for working without accidents. Accidents and days lost fell, and the improvement lasted for years.

What is Herzberg's two-factor theory?: Hygiene factors (pay, conditions, supervision) prevent dissatisfaction but do not motivate. Motivators (achievement, recognition, responsibility) produce job satisfaction.
What is Hackman and Oldham's job characteristics theory?: Five core job characteristics (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback) create psychological states (meaningfulness, responsibility, knowledge of results) that lead to motivation and satisfaction.
Job enrichment vs rotation vs enlargement: Enrichment: adding responsibility and decision-making. Rotation: moving workers between tasks. Enlargement: adding more tasks at the same level.
What is the Job Descriptive Index (JDI)?: A questionnaire measuring job satisfaction across facets: the work itself, pay, promotion opportunities, supervision and co-workers.
What did Giacalone and Rosenfeld (1987) find about sabotage?: Unionised factory workers rated reasons that would justify sabotage. Those who accepted more reasons justified slowdowns, destructiveness and causing chaos more readily, but not dishonesty.