MGMT Exam Chpts 9-12

How do companies typically fare when they are accused of discrimination and must go to court to defend themselves?

Companies lose, on average, two-thirds of the discrimination cases brought against them.

_____ consists of differences such as personality and attitudes that are learned only through extended interaction with others and are communicated through verbal and nonverbal behaviors.

Deep-level diversity

Which of the following is a legal problem employers may encounter in seeking, providing, or using employment references as part of the selection process.

Defamation lawsuits

_____ is intentional discrimination that occurs when people are purposefully not given the same hiring, promotion, or membership opportunities because of their race, sex, age, ethnic group, national origin, or religious beliefs.

Disparate treatment

Which of the following statements explains why diversity makes good business sense?

Diversity helps companies attract and retain talented employees.

_____ is the degree to which someone is not angry, depressed, anxious, emotional, insecure, or excitable.

Emotional stability

A work team is a small number of people who have been assigned responsibility for pursuing a common purpose, achieving performance goals, and improving interdependent work processes.

False

Activity-based diversity training teaches employees the practical skills they need for managing a diverse work force, skills such as flexibility and adaptability, negotiation, problem solving, and conflict resolution.

False

Which of the following is an example of surface-level diversity?

Gender

The fastest-growing population group in the United States is _____.

Hispanic Americans

Which of the following scenarios is an example of matrix departmentalization?

InsureClef Inc., an insurance company, has departments that focus on major commercials and small businesses and has departments that focus on the different products that the company offers across its clientele.

Which of the following statements is true regarding the discrimination and fairness paradigm?

It focuses only on surface-level dimensions of diversity.

Which of the following statements is true regarding the access and legitimacy paradigm?

It strives to create a demographically diverse work force that attracts a broader customer base.

Which of the following factors is considered while conducting an objective performance measure?

Output of an employee

_____ can be best defined as fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance such as cost, quality, service, and speed.

Reengineering

Which of the following methods of training should be used when the objective of training is practicing, learning, or changing behaviors?

Role-playing

Which of the following job positions most likely requires people with high degree of extraversion?

Salesperson

_____ occurs when people are treated differently because of their gender.

Sex discrimination

_____ teaches employees the practical abilities they need for managing a diverse work force, abilities such as flexibility and adaptability, negotiation, problem solving, and conflict resolution.

Skills-based diversity training

_____ is defined as the degree to which a job is perceived to have a substantial impact on others inside or outside the organization.

Task significance

Which of the following typically happens during the storming stage of team development?

Team members begin to work together, and different personalities and work styles clash.

Which of the following is a topic that can be asked during a job interview?

The employment history of the applicant

Which of the following statements about federal employment laws is true?

The intent of these laws is to make factors such as gender, race, or age irrelevant in employment decisions.

Which of the following approaches to job redesign entails more than simply providing variety in job tasks?

The job characteristics model

A virtual organization is part of a network in which many companies share skills, costs, capabilities, markets, and customers with each other.

True

Cognitive conflict is strongly associated with improvements in team performance, and affective conflict is strongly associated with decreases in team performance.

True

In a decentralized organization, workers closest to problems are authorized to make the decisions necessary to solve the problems on their own.

True

In general, skill-based pay is most effective for managing the performance of self-managing and self-directing teams.

True

In spite of their disadvantages, companies continue to create and use specialized jobs because they are very economical.

True

In the decision-making process, teams can do a much better job than individuals in defining the problem and generating alternative solutions.

True

Norms are informally agreed-upon standards that regulate team behavior. They are valuable because they let team members know what is expected of them.

True

Organizational structure is the description of the vertical and horizontal configuration of departments, authority, and jobs within a company.

True

Self-designing teams have all the characteristics of self-managing teams, but they can also control and change the design of the teams themselves, the tasks they do and how they do them, and who belongs to the teams.

True

Specialized jobs are characterized by simple, easy-to-learn steps; low variety; and high repetition.

True

Team norms may be associated with either positive or negative outcomes for the company.

True

To choose the best training method, a company should consider such factors as the number of people to be trained, the cost of training, and the objectives of the training.

True

To enhance work team effectiveness, managers should carefully set team goals and priorities and take care when selecting, training, and compensating team members.

True

Which of the following is the approach to managing interorganizational processes that can be best described as one which changes its composition depending on what an organization wants at the moment?

Virtual organizations

_____ are best defined as groups of geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers who use a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task.

Virtual teams

Which of the following statements regarding downsizing is true?

When downsizing, outplacement programs can help the company maintain a positive image in the community.

Which of the following is a direct measure of job applicants' capability to do a job?

Work sample test

When managers delegate work, three transfers occur. The three transfers are responsibility, authority, and _____.

accountability

Unlike _____, which punishes companies for not achieving specific gender and race ratios in their work forces, diversity programs seek to benefit both organizations and their employees by encouraging organizations to value all kinds of differences.

affirmative action

Brown Beverages Corp. uses a cross-functional team to develop four to six new beverages annually. Brown Beverages Corp. most likely uses a cross-functional team because it:

allows the company to use employees from various departments with varying perspectives to attack the task.

The achievement of stretch goals is made easier when the team members have _____.

bureaucratic immunity

Justin, a prospective employer, calls a prior employer on a job applicant's behalf to find out the opinion of the former employer about the job applicant. If the prior employer provides unsubstantiated negative information, then the job applicant _____.

can sue the prior employer for defamation

The primary advantage of a structured interview is its ability to:

compare applicants more easily.

The term _____ refers to both the financial and nonfinancial rewards organizations give employees in exchange for their work.

compensation

A(n) _____ is a form of matrix departmentalization in which managers from different parts of the matrix report to matrix managers, who help them sort out conflicts and problems.

complex matrix

Maria, the owner of a large multinational company, believes that the different regional centers should not have to run to her for all decisions. She believes that the company can be more efficient if the people closest to the problem have the ability to make the decisions necessary to solve the problems. To implement her beliefs, Maria has delegated power to the regional centers of the company. This is an example of _____.

decentralization

The primary benefit of the _____ is that it generally brings about fairer treatment of employees and increases demographic diversity.

discrimination and fairness paradigm

Sarah, the manager of Litelife Inc., does not hire people over the age of 40 in her company. She believes that older people will bring down the energy of her company. Her action is unfair and discriminating. In this scenario, Sarah's action is an example of _____.

disparate treatment

A(n) _____ is a formal assessment that measures employee and management attitudes, investigates the extent to which people are advantaged or disadvantaged with respect to hiring and promotions, and reviews companies' diversity-related policies and procedures.

diversity audit

In a recent meeting, the supervisors of a county voted unanimously to conduct a(n) _____, which would provide an accounting of how well the makeup of local boards and commissions reflects the racial, gender, cultural, geographic, and ethnic diversity of the county.

diversity audit

People with high degree of _____ respond well under stress.

emotional stability

To help companies reduce age discrimination, their managers can _____.

ensure that younger and older workers interact with each other

Disadvantages of _____ include difficulty in cross-departmental coordination, slow decision making, and managers and workers with narrow experience and expertise.

functional departmentalization

In general, _____ works best in relatively stable environments where employees can focus on improving the productivity, cost savings, or quality of their current work system.

gainsharing

With _____ pay structures, there are big differences from one pay level to another.

hierarchical

The city of Bridgedale issued a new recruitment publication for its Fire Service. The publication lists all of the qualifications needed to become a firefighter. This recruitment pamphlet can be best categorized as a(n) _____.

job specification

Elena works in a data processing department for a large credit reporting service and is bored. She spends her days entering an endless stream of monotonous data into much larger databases. According to the job characteristics model (JCM), one of the primary reasons for her boredom would most likely be a _____.

low degree of task identity

Because of problems associated with conflicts over schedules, budgets, and available resources, and the availability of employees, _____ often evolves from a simple form to a more complex form.

matrix departmentalization

A(n) _____ is an organization that is characterized by specialized jobs and responsibilities; precisely defined, unchanging roles; and a rigid chain of command based on centralized authority and vertical communication.

mechanistic organization

A group of workers in a medical examiner's office decided that they would not wear light-colored denim jeans to work because such casual wear seemed unprofessional. This informal agreement was made although the office did not have a dress code policy. The workers created a(n) _____.

norm

Someone is described as having a mind-boggling breadth to his curiosity. In terms of the Big Five Personality Dimensions, this person would be described as having a high degree of _____.

openness to experience

The three types of task interdependence are:

pooled, sequential, and reciprocal.

PRO Pharma Corp. went bankrupt in the year 2009. In 2014, the CEO of PRO Laboratories established a project team and wanted it to help the company to become "the most valuable pharmaceutical company." In this scenario, the project team is given a(n) _____.

stretch goal

The _____ interview uses only standardized, job-related interview questions that are prepared ahead of time so that all candidates are asked the same questions.

structured

The primary disadvantage of customer departmentalization is:

that it leads to duplication of resources.

In the autonomy continuum, the correct sequence, from low team autonomy to high team autonomy, is:

traditional work groups, employee involvement teams, semi-autonomous work groups, self-managing teams, and self-designing teams.

A salesperson who works in the shipping division is told by the accounting department that he must turn in a weekly expense account. His supervisor in the shipping division wants expense accounts submitted monthly. The salesperson is likely experiencing a problem with _____.

unity of command

Jennifer applied for the job of a waitress at Sam's Coffee shop. During the recruitment, the recruiter asked her to make five different types of beverages and wait the tables for an hour. In this scenario, the recruiter performed a(n) _____ test.

work sample

Identify the correct statement about team conflicts.

Affective conflict occurs when team members disagree because their different experiences and expertise lead them to different views of the problem and solutions.

The Terra College of Arts launched a comprehensive diversity initiative, which includes frequent seminars, workshops, and conventions for faculty, staff, and students, aimed at helping them gain a better understanding of diversity. Which of the following diversity training is used by the college?

Awareness training

_____ ask raters to rate the frequency with which workers perform specific behaviors representative of the job dimensions that are critical to successful job performance.

Behavioral observation scales

_____ means that teams no longer have to go through the frustratingly slow process of multilevel reviews and sign-offs to get management approval before making changes.

Bureaucratic immunity