Workforce Diversity or the Demographic

Workforce diversity or the demographic mix of different genders, races ethnicities, ages, and able-bodiediness in the workforce, is becoming increasingly important, as the use of demographic differences in employment is covered by a series of federal, state/provincial, and local laws outlawing discrimination. However, both mental and physical aptitudes and abilities are still used in matching individuals to organizations and jobs in terms of personality and capacity. The 'Big Five' personality framework consists of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. A useful personality framework consists of social traits, personal conceptions, emotional adjustment, and personality dynamics, where each category represents one or more personality dimensions.

Chapter 5

The perceptual process involves the perceiver, the setting, and the perceived. Common perceptual distortions include stereotypes or prototypes. Halo effects, selective perception, projection, contrast effects, and expectancy. Managing the perceptual process involves the management of impressions, management of the self and others and managing the information attention and selection stages of perception. Managing the information organizing stage, the information interpretation stage, the information storage and retrieval stage, and being sensitive to effects of the common perceptual distortions are all key to an effective perceptual process. Attribution theory involves emphasis on the interpretation stage of the perceptual process and consideration of whether individuals' behaviors result primarily from external causes or from causes internal to the individuals.

Chapter 14

Leadership is a special case of interpersonal influence to get an individual or group to enact the leader's objective. Leadership and management differ in that management is designed to promote stability or to make the organization run smoothly, whereas the role of leadership is to promote adaptive change. Trait, or great person, approaches to leadership argue that leadership traits have a major impact on differentiating between leaders and non-leaders and predicting leadership outcomes. Leader situational contingency approaches argue instead that leadership, in combination with various situational contingency variables, can have a major impact on outcomes. Attribution theory extends traditional leadership approaches by recognizing that substantive effects cannot always be objectively identified and measured. The new leadership focus consists of classifying leadership into charismatic, transformation, and visionary modes of leadership, and the leadership of self-directing work teams.