IO Final Exam

Mary wants the Vice President of her company to know about the sudden resignation of one of her colleagues, but she knows that it will take several days for the information to pass through channels. Mary mentions the information to the office secretary, because she knows that the office secretary has lunch every day with the V.P.'s secretary. Which of the following factors assures that the message will be sent through the grapevine?

All of the above

The organizational grapevine provides

All of the above

Which of the following is NOT a feature associated with effective teams?

All of the above are features of effective teams

Which of the following is NOT one of the six behaviors associated with transformational leaders?

Communication of shared group goals

Which of the following terms does NOT apply to the organizational grapevine?

Efficiency?

A manager's asking for input from subordinates before making a decision is using a democratic decision making process.

False

According to Cobb's episodic model of power, the ability to influence is more important than power in a formal situation.

False

According to Fiedler's contingency model, task-oriented leaders are likely to be successful in most situations.

False

After a leadership training program has been completed, there is no way to determine success.

False

Charismatic leaders are likely to be most effective in situations where environmental conditions are very stable.

False

Decentralized networks are typically controlled by the organizational status of network members

False

Face-to-face communication between superiors and subordinates has been found to be negatively correlated with worker satisfaction.

False

Group polarization is the tendency for groups to make less extreme decisions than the individuals that comprise the group would have made alone.

False

In courtrooms, juries use democratic decision making

False

One way to increase power is to increase dependency on other people.

False

Power is rarely connected to effective leadership

False

The decision-making model holds that leaders make the most effective decisions using one specific strategy.

False

The existence of the grapevine is almost always harmful to organizations.

False

The least preferred coworker is the one with whom the leader has the least contact

False

The power corollary in organizations states that legitimate, reward, and coercive power tend to go together.

False

There is no way to measure power bases.

False

"Groupthink" refers to the situation where

Group members arrive at a consensus without a critical analysis

Which of the following statements is NOT true concerning organizational communication?

It is not important to job performance.

Research indicates that more charismatic United States presidents were

More effective in dealing with the economy.

Which statement is NOT true regarding rumors?

Rumors in organizations are usually false

Teams that have complete responsibility for whole tasks, products, or service lines are called

Self- managing work teams.

Which of the following is NOT a potential drawback to sensitivity training?

Skills gained may not transfer to work settings

Researchers speculate that charismatic leaders may possess exceptionally high

Social skills.

The Clara Dress Co. has developed a new team of six professionals. This team would likely be most effective in which of the following tasks?

The team would be equally effective in all of the above tasks.

According to Fiedler's contingency model, position power is the leader's ability to hire, fire, discipline, and reward.

True

Censoring a message is characteristic of filtering.

True

Expert power is becoming ever more important in today's work settings.

True

Gaining work-related expertise can increase one's power in an organization.

True

Groupthink is a syndrome characterized by a concurrence-seeking tendency which overrides the ability of a cohesive group to make critical decisions.

True

If leadership training is to be effective, the organization must support new behaviors.

True

Lateral communication in organizations can both increase and decrease work productivity.

True

Manner of dress is a form of nonverbal communication

True

Nonverbal expressiveness may be related to success in hiring interviews.

True

One cause of organizational politics is the increased use of group decision making

True

Organizational politics can take many forms and can even benefit the organization

True

Research has indicated that effective managers have good decoding/listening skills.

True

Research on redesigning jobs indicates that in certain situations leaders may be unnecessary.

True

Serving as a communication source is linked to increased levels of job satisfaction

True

The path-goal theory of leadership breaks down initiating structure and consideration behaviors into more narrowly defined categories.

True

The strategy for applying the leader-member exchange model to improving leader effectiveness is simply to improve the quality of relationships between a leader and each of his or her followers.

True

The transmission of false rumors via the grapevine is relatively rare.

True

Written procedures and job descriptions typically reduce organizational politics

True

Teams are most effective when they are working together on tasks that individuals can complete very effectively.

True?

Which of the following is NOT a dimension of organizational politics?

Upward-downward

When the manufacturing group discussed the fact that their product had experienced some failures in the past few months, they agreed that the failures were due to misuse on the part of the customer, and that the quality manager typically overreacts to such reports. As a result, the group decided to increase production of the product without checking for defects. This is an example of

collective rationalizations.

Quality circles are typically

comprised of volunteers from the same work areas

Cobb (1984) proposes a(n) __________ model of power.

episodic

The last step in process consultation is

evaluation and disengagement.

According to the dimensions of organizational politics, an employee who gives secret company information to a newspaper reporter would be engaging in __________ politics.

external

An important feature of effective teams is that members share exactly the same types of knowledge and skills

f?

The use of teams in U.S. organizations is actually declining.

f?

Action research is entirely different from social science research.

false

In organizational development, a consultant usually tries to slow down or prevent change

false

The larger culture of a nation or society usually has very little influence on the culture within organizations.

false

Democratic decision making and consultative decision making are based on majority rule

false?

Cary is a stock broker who is personally in favor of advising a client to invest about one-third of his money in a high-risk investment. After discussing the investment with a group of his colleagues, Cary advises the client to put more than half of his money in the high-risk investment. This process is an example of

group polarization?

Group polarization involves

groups making decisions that are more extreme than those of individuals.

Which of the following is required in successful management by objectives programs?

guidelines for improvement

One obvious difference among the contingency theories of leadership is

how they view the leader's primary task.

Groupthink generally occurs

in highly cohesive decision making groups.

The transformational and charismatic leadership theories consider whether or not a leader can __________ followers.

inspire

The strategy for applying the leader-member exchange model of leadership

involves improving the quality of the relationships between the leader and workers.

A survey can have a positive effect on worker attitudes only if management

is interested in the employees' views.

Compared to individual decision making, group decision making

leads to conflict.

Gray and Ariss (1985) propose that politics vary across the stages of an organization's

life cycle.

The OD technique that relies on goal setting is

management by objectives

Research indicates that charismatic leaders are

most effective in situations where goals are unclear.

The organizational development technique where the OD practitioner works as a teacher to help the organization to solve its own problems is known as

process consultation.

A diagram of informal communication lines among work group or organizational members is called a(n)

sociogram.

Employees are asked detailed questions about their opinions of the organization. This information is used as the starting point for organizational change. This is an example of the OD technique known as

survey feedback

The two general approaches followed in most leadership training programs involve

teaching diagnostic skills or teaching specific new skills or behaviors.

A group of employees meet to improve their performance by identifying the strengths and weaknesses in their interactions with one another. This is known as

team building

Which model predicts that some workers will have low levels of satisfaction because they do not have close relationships with their leaders?

the leader-member exchange model

Cobb's (1984) model focuses on

the use of power in actual work settings.

When false rumors occur in organizations, the best strategy may be

to provide accurate information through the grapevine and through formal channels.

According to Perrow, technology adjusts to the organizational structure.

true

By understanding and assessing an organization's culture, it becomes easier to predict organizational behavior under different circumstances.

true

In the Lawrence and Lorsch contingency model of organizational structure, the term integration refers to the amount of collaboration among divisions of an organization.

true

Research indicates that the driving force in developing organizational culture is the structure of the organization.

true

The Woodward contingency model of organizational structure looks at how structure influences technology

true

The failure of quality circles can often be traced to lack of management support.

true

There is no firm answer to the question of whether or not organizational development programs are effective.

true

Brainstorming is a highly efficient and effective problem-solving technique.

true?

In times of crisis, it is usually best to use group decision making strategies

true?

A factor that must be considered to maximize the effectiveness of leadership training is

whether new behaviors will be accepted in the organization.

Political behavior involving a worker criticizing company practices to people outside the organization is called

whistleblowing

In Gray and Ariss' (1985) contingency model of organizational politics, in the earliest stages of an organization, the manager should

wield absolute power.

In studying informal communication networks

workers are surveyed to determine which organizational members they typically interact with.

Which of the following is the best example of a team?

workers on an assembly line

The "snowball effect" describes

workers who quit their jobs in clusters.

Which of the following is NOT usually a cause of organizational politics?

written policies and procedures