MGT 331 Chapter 6

Which approach to performance management identifies financial and nonfinancial performance measures and organizes them into a single model?

Balanced scorecard

Albert works as a salesperson making $18 an hour plus 5% of every sale he makes. He receives two weeks of paid vacation a year, as well as 50% matching in a 401K retirement fund. In this scenario, $18 an hour represents Albert's __________

Base pay

The extent to which goals are challenging, attainable, and require effort is known as goal ___________.

Difficulty

What is the second step in the performance appraisal process?

Documentation

What term refers to the degree to which employees have the authority to set their own work goals, make decisions, and solve problems?

Empowerment

After carefully considering the most recent employee survey results, you decide that Applebee's core issue is that employees feel that they have no control over how they do their jobs, which makes them feel unable to provide the best customer service that they can. Knowing this, which critical psychological state will you be most targeting in your job redesign initiative?

Experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work

Many state police officers live at the barracks and work long hours for one week and then have a full week off. This is an example of ________.

Extended work schedule

Compensation should also be a ______ reward for the individual's contributions to the organization.

Fair

According to goal-setting theory, which of the following strategies is NOT likely to result in improved performance?

Setting unspecified goals so that workers can establish their own measures

Perquisites

Special privileges awarded to selected members of an organization, usually top managers. They can include a car and driver, first-class travel, and a golf club membership.

Brett and Lina work in different departments, but both receive 3% raises. Most of Brett's coworkers receive a 5% raise. Most of Lina's coworkers receive a 1% raise. Brett is unhappy with his raise, but Lina is happy with hers. Brett and Lina have different reactions to their raises because their raises have different _________.

Symbolic value

Base Pay

The amount of pay received as a reward for work.

Goal specificity

The clarity and precision of a goal.

Goal difficulty

The extent to which a goal is challenging and requires effort. If a goal is perceived as unattainable, people are less motivated to try. The ideal goal difficulty level is challenging, but attainable.

Goal commitment

The extent to which a person is personally interested in reaching the goal.

Improve skill variety

The performance of a variety of activities that use different skills, rather than a narrow job.

What is the central feature of a 360-degree feedback system?

Wide-ranging feedback, as well as subjective measures of performance

Rather than focusing narrowly on objective performance, such as sales increases or productivity gains, _______________ often focuses on such things as interpersonal relations and style.

360-degree feedback

flexible reward system

Allows employees to choose the combination of benefits that best suits their needs (usually within a fixed range or budget). A younger worker might prefer to have daycare assistance, a mid career worker might prefer a more generous healthcare plan, and older workers might want greater contributions to their retirement plans.

If some of your employees need daycare, some want greater retirement contributions, and some want a more generous healthcare plan, which is the best reward system to implement?

Flexible reward system

To provide useful information for the decision maker, performance appraisals must be three things. Valid and reliable are two of the three things. What is the third?

Free from bias

You manage a work group of ten secretaries who take turns answering phones, sorting mail, and typing and filing correspondence. Using the job characteristics theory, how can you assure that this team is happy and productive?

Give them autonomy in deciding how to organize the workload

James did not like the fact that he had no input in his productivity goal. Because of this, his ______________ was low and he did not take it as seriously as if he had set the same goal himself.

Goal acceptence

Carol always tries extremely hard to reach her performance goal. She takes it personally when she falls short, which rarely happens because she is so dedicated to reaching it. Carol's _____________ is high.

Goal commitment

Job Design

How organizations define and structure jobs. Deciding which jobs will be responsible for which tasks is the core of job design.

The foundation of good performance management is correctly _______________________ and choosing the best method(s) for measuring it.

Identifying what should be measured

Feedback

Important for a performer to understand his or her effectiveness and what behaviors he or she might need to change to meet the manager's expectations.

One of the themes that came out of the survey responses is that employees feel bored and unchallenged because they only do a narrow job. According to the job characteristics theory, which of the following should you do to address this issue?

Improve skill variety

Pensions are an example of __________.

Indirect compensation

Both Jane and Alison currently work full-time and want to work fewer hours. You would hate to lose either of them, so what type of intervention would be best for this job and situation?

Job sharing

To reduce discrimination, the courts and Equal Employment Opportunity guidelines have mandated that performance measurements be based on which of the following?

Job-related criteria

After organizational and subsidiary goals are set, each manager meets with each subordinate to explain the unit goals to the subordinate. Together the two determine how the subordinate can contribute to the unit's goals most effectively. This is called _____________________.

Management by objectives

The _______________ approach is essentially a collaborative goal-setting process through which organizational goals systematically cascade down through the organization.

Management by objectives

Participative pay System

May involve the employee in the system's design, administration, or both.

What makes job specialization difficult to implement, even though it seems as if it would be highly effective?

Monotony associated with each task

Which is true of the evidence concerning the validity of the balanced scorecard approach to performance management?

Most of the evidence is anecdotal in nature

These two things are at the core of the balanced scorecard.

Organization vision and strategy

As a new manager, you hope to improve employee motivation by creating a suggestion box. Your action gives the employees greater ___________.

Participation

You believe that your manufacturing employees could produce more parts per hour, but that they need to be motivated to do it. You want to tie their earnings to the number of defect-free parts they produce every day.

Piecework program

Which of the following is NOT a method companies use to improve job design?

Raising pay for most standardized jobs

Task Significance

Refers to the perceived importance of the job and how it affects the lives or work of others both inside and outside the organization.

Why does the work teams approach tend to be more effective in countries such as Japan and Sweden?

Their work and rewards are team centered

When might a company best choose to use an extended work schedule?

There's a high cost of transitioning between employees.

What is a reason why management by objectives (MBO) efforts can sometimes fail?

Top management's goals aren't represented