Equity Theory
✗ "Equity theory = feeling dissatisfied with your raise or complaining to your manager."
✓ Equity theory is fundamentally about SOCIAL COMPARISON RATIOS (OP/IP vs. ORP/IRP). Dissatisfaction only triggers the theory when comparing your ratio to a relevant social referent's ratio.
Expectancy Theory — P→O
✗ "To increase P→O expectancy, just motivate employees with bigger bonuses."
✓ Increase P→O by demonstrating you have resources to deliver, showing past reliability, and shifting to rewards within your control (praise, better projects). If employees don't believe performance leads to reward, valence is irrelevant.
Financial Incentives
✗ "Adding a bonus to a task will always increase motivation."
✓ Financial incentives can UNDERMINE intrinsic motivation by signaling the task is "work," implying distrust, shifting attention from task to reward, and encouraging cost-benefit thinking. Money motivates compliance, but compliance may be all you get.
SWOT Stage
✗ "SWOT is used during strategy formulation."
✓ SWOT belongs in "Assessing the Current Reality" — Step 2 of the strategy process. Formulating strategy is Step 3, after you understand your situation.
Five Forces Framing
✗ "The Five Forces tells you how Company X is doing."
✓ Five Forces is about the INDUSTRY, not a single firm. The definition of the industry itself is critical and somewhat subjective — getting it wrong changes all your answers.
Patent Expiry & Five Forces
✗ "Patent expiry mainly affects rivalry."
✓ Patent expiry increases the THREAT OF NEW ENTRY because patents are a key barrier to entry. Competitors can now enter with similar products.
Coercive Power Over Time
✗ "Coercive power is just as effective as other power types over time."
✓ Coercive power may force short-term compliance but reduces trust, liking, and credibility over time — eroding referent, expert, and informational power. Formal authority is a very limited long-term source of power.
Transformational vs. Transactional
✗ "A transformational leader doesn't need to be transactional."
✓ Transactional leadership is the necessary baseline — it clarifies goals and ties performance to outcomes. Transformational leadership builds on top of it for exceptional results. Both are required; passive leadership is the failure mode.
Strong Culture & Performance
✗ "A strong culture always leads to better firm performance."
✓ The relationship is NOT straightforward. Strong culture ONLY improves performance when it's also an adaptability/learning culture. A strong, non-adaptive culture underperforms when the environment changes.
Task vs. Relationship Conflict
✗ "All conflict hurts team performance."
✓ Task conflict (about the work) is functional and associated with process GAINS — better decisions, more perspectives. Only relationship conflict (interpersonal issues) is dysfunctional and causes process losses.
Reciprocal vs. Pooled Interdependence
✗ "Team process matters equally regardless of interdependence type."
✓ Team process is MOST important in reciprocal interdependence. When each member depends on all others at multiple points, coordination failures cascade — process losses are largest. In pooled interdependence, members work more independently and failures are more contained.
Tuckman's Model Placement
✗ "Tuckman's stages are part of team design."
✓ Tuckman's 5-stage model belongs in the DEVELOPMENT phase (Context → Design → Development → Outcomes). The Development phase encompasses the group's entire working experience — norms, punctuated equilibrium, and group process all live here too.
Ethnocentrism
✗ "Ethnocentrism is mostly caused by conscious prejudice."
✓ Ethnocentrism is more attributable to IGNORANCE than conscious prejudice. It often stems from a lack of cross-cultural awareness — not malicious intent. The core cause of most cultural misunderstandings is different values and norms.
Dark Triad & Leadership
✗ "Leaders never have dark triad traits."
✓ Research shows leaders have a HIGHER likelihood of dark triad traits (narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy) than the general population. These traits may provide short-term influence advantages but at long-term ethical and organizational cost.
Enacted vs. Espoused Values
✗ "If a company says it values X, then X guides behavior."
✓ Espoused values (what the org says) ≠ Enacted values (what actually guides behavior). The gap between them is a major source of cultural confusion and mistrust. Visible artifacts can be misleading without understanding the underlying assumptions.