MGT: CH 11, 7, 12 & 18 Quiz

PROVIDING EMPLOYEES WITH NEEDED SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE:

Orientation - introducing a new employee to his or her job and the organization. There are two types of orientation: Work unit orientation (i.e. clarifies how his/her job contributes to the unit's goals, introduction to coworkers, etc.) Organization orientation (i.e. informs the new employee about company's goals, history, philosophy procedures, rules, HR policies) Employee Training is an important HRM activity. As job demands change, employee skills have to change. Managers are responsible for deciding what type of training employees need, when they need it, and what form that training should take. In 2011, U.S. business firms spent more than $59 billion on formal employee training.

PERSONAL FACTORS THAT CAN CREATE STRESS

Personal factors that can create stress include: family issues, personal economic problems, and inherent personality characteristics. Because employees bring their personal problems to work with them, a full understanding of employee stress requires a manager to be understanding of these personal factors. Type A Personality - people who have a chronic sense of urgency and an excessive competitive drive. Type B personality - people who are relaxed and easygoing and accept change easily.

Strategy and Structure

- An organization's structure should facilitate goal achievement. Because goals are an important part of the organization's strategies, it's only logical that strategy and structure are closely linked. - Certain structural designs work best with different organizational strategies. • The organic structure works well for organizations pursuing meaningful and unique innovations. • The mechanistic organization works best for companies wanting to tightly control costs.

Why is Controlling Important?

- Controls let managers know whether their goals and plans are on target and what future actions to take. - Control systems provide managers with information and feedback on employee performance. - Protecting the workplace - controls enhance physical security and help minimize workplace disruptions.

Control Process Step 2: Comparing Actual Performance Against the Standard

- Determining the degree of variation between actual performance and the standard. - Range of variation - the acceptable parameters of variance between actual performance and the standard.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCES

- Downsizing - Sexual harassment - Family-friendly benefits - Employee healthcare costs - Employee pension plans

Change Agent (catalyst)

Change agents can be a manager within the organization, but could be a non-manager—for example, a change specialist from the HR department or even an outside consultant.

Change Management

Change management involves getting individuals and groups ready, willing, and able to implement and sustain new ways of working.

Structure Change

Changing an organization's structural components or its structural design.

People Change

Changing attitudes, expectations, perceptions, and behaviors of the workforce - something that is not easy to do.

Employee Health Care Costs

Companies are trying to control skyrocketing employee health care costs. Since 2002, health care costs have risen an average of 15 percent a year ... Smokers cost companies about 25% more than non-smokers.

COMMITMENT CURVE

Contact - Individuals have knowledge that the change exists Awareness - Individuals are aware of basic scope and concepts of the change Understanding - Individuals understand how the change impacts the company and their functional area Positive Perception - Individuals understand how the impacts of the change will benefit them Adoption - Individuals are willing to work with and adopt processes and systems Institutionalization - Individuals accept that new processes and systems are the way work is done -- the new status quo Internalization - Individuals make the change their own and create innovative ways to use and improve the processes and systems

Feedback control

Control that takes place after a work activity is done.

Feed forward control

Control that takes place before a work activity is done.

Concurrent Control

Control that takes place while a work activity is in progress.

Contingent workers

Temporary, freelance, or contract workers whose employment is contingent upon demand for their services. - Some are now referring to these workers as the independent work force, since there's no dependent relationship between worker and organization.

Workplace Violence

The U.S. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health still says that each year, some 2 million American workers are victims of some form of workplace violence.

Organizational performance

The accumulated results of all the organization's work activities. • It's a multifaceted concept, but managers need to understand the factors that contribute to organizational performance.

WHY DO PEOPLE RESIST CHANGE?

The ambiguity and uncertainty that change introduces: • The comfort of old habits • A concern over personal loss of status, money, authority, friendships, and personal convenience • The perception that change is incompatible with the goals and interest of the organization

Productivity

The amount of goods or services produced divided by the inputs needed to generate that output.

Chain of Command

The continuous line of authority that extends from upper levels of an organization to the lowest levels of the organization—clarifies who reports to whom. To understand the chain of command, you have to understand three other important concepts: Authority, Responsibility, Unity of command.

Employee Pension Plan Costs

The days when companies could afford to give employees a broad-based pension that provided them a guaranteed retirement income have changed. - Pension commitments have become such an enormous burden that companies can no longer afford them. In fact, the corporate pension system has been described as "fundamentally broken."

The Purpose of Control

To ensure that activities are completed in ways that lead to the accomplishment of organizational goals.

Internal collaboration

When managers believe collaboration among employees is needed for more coordinated and integrated work efforts, they can use several different structural options.

Organizational Development (OD)

change techniques / methods that focus on people and the nature and quality of interpersonal work relationships. - TRANSLATED: These are the programs that are used to implement change!

Employee empowerment

Giving employees more authority (power) to make decisions.

Views of change process: The Calm Waters Metaphor

- Kurt Lewin's description of the change process as a break in the organization's equilibrium state. According to Lewin, successful change can be planned and requires: • Unfreezing the status quo • Changing to a new state • Refreezing to make the change permanent

Traditional Controls

- Ratio analysis • Liquidity ratios measure an organization's ability to meet its current debt obligations. • Leverage ratios examine the organization's use of debt to finance its assets and whether the organization is able to meet the interest payments on the debt. • Activity ratios assess how efficiently the firm is using its assets. • Profitability ratios measure how efficiently and effectively the firm is using its assets to generate profits. - Budget Analysis • Quantitative standards • Deviations

The Economy's effect on HRM

- The global economic downturn has left, what many experts believe to be, an enduring mark on HRM practices worldwide. - U.S. workers have dramatically lowered their career and retirement expectations for the foreseeable future.

Employee Labor Unions

A Labor union is an organization that represents workers and seeks to protect their interests through collective bargaining. - In unionized organizations, many HRM decisions are dictated by collective bargaining agreements, which usually define things such as recruitment sources; criteria for hiring, promotions, and layoffs; training eligibility; and disciplinary practices.

Organizational effectiveness

A measure of how appropriate organizational goals are and how well those goals are being met.

Balanced Scorecard

A performance measurement tool that examines more than just the financial perspective. - Measures a company's performance in four areas: • Financial • Customer • Internal processes • People/innovation /growth assets

Realistic Job Preview (RJP)

A preview of a job that provides both positive and negative information about the job and the company.

Organizational Design

A process involving decisions about six key elements: 1. Work specialization 2. Departmentalization 3. Chain of command 4. Span of control 5. Centralization and decentralization 6. Formalization

Flextime (or flexible work hours)

A scheduling system in which employees are required to work a specific number of hours a week but are free to vary those hours within certain limits.

Management Information System (MIS)

A system used to provide management with needed information on a regular basis. • Data - an unorganized collection of raw, unanalyzed facts (e.g., an unsorted list of customer names). • Information - data that has been analyzed and organized such that it has value and relevance to managers.

Task force (or ad hoc committee)

A temporary committee or team formed to tackle a specific short-term problem affecting several departments.

Management by walking around

A term used to describe when a manager is out in the work area interacting directly with employees.

Control process

A three-step process of measuring actual performance, comparing actual performance against a standard, and taking managerial action to correct deviations or inadequate standards.

Telecommuting

A work arrangement in which employees work at home and are linked to the workplace by computer.

Compressed workweek

A workweek where employees work longer hours per day but fewer days per week.

Disciplinary actions

Actions taken by a manager to enforce the organization's work standards and regulations.

Technology / Processes Change

Adopting new equipment, tools, work processes or operating methods that displace old skills and require new ones.

Virtual Organization

An organization that consists of a small core of full-time employees and outside specialists temporarily hired as needed to work on projects. - An example is when Second Life, a company creating a virtual world of colorful online avatars, was building its software. Founder Philip Rosedale hired programmers from around the world and divided up the work into about 1,600 individual tasks, "from setting up databases to fixing bugs." The process worked so well, the company used it for all sorts of work.

Learning Organization

An organization that has developed the capacity to continuously learn, adapt, and change. - In a learning organization, employees continually acquire and share new knowledge and apply that knowledge in making decisions or doing their work. - Some organizational theorists even go so far as to say that an organization's ability to do this—that is, to learn and to apply that learning—may be the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.

Legal Environment of HRM

An organization's HRM practices are governed by a country's laws. A number of important laws and regulations affect what you can and cannot do legally as a manager. Many U.S. organizations have affirmative action programs: Affirmative Action - organizational programs that enhance the status of members of protected groups.

Organic organization

An organizational design that's highly adaptive and flexible.

Mechanistic organization

An organizational design that's rigid and tightly controlled.

Project Structure

An organizational structure in which employees continuously work on projects. - Unlike the matrix structure, a project structure has no formal departments where employees return at the completion of a project. Instead, employees take their specific skills, abilities, and experiences to other projects. Also, all work in project structures is performed by teams of employees.

Team Structure

An organizational structure in which the entire organization is made up of work teams. • Employee empowerment is crucial because no line of managerial authority flows from top to bottom

Matrix Structure

An organizational structure that assigns specialists from different functional departments to work on one or more projects. • One unique aspect of this design is that it creates a dual chain of command because employees in a matrix organization have two managers: their functional area manager and their product or project manager, who share authority.

Organizational Change

Any alterations in the people, structure, or technology of an organization.

Employee theft

Any unauthorized taking of company property by employees for their personal use.

Sexual harassment

Any unwanted action or activity of a sexual nature that explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, performance, or work environment.

Organizing

Arranging and structuring work to accomplish an organization's goals. It's an important process during which managers design an organization's structure.

Size and Structure

As an organization grows larger, its structure tends to change from organic to mechanistic with increased specialization, departmentalization, centralization, and rules/regulations.

Family-friendly benefits

Benefits that accommodate employees' needs for work-life balance (e.g. on-site child care, summer day camps, flextime, job sharing, time off for school functions, telecommuting, and part-time employment).

CHANGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Cultures are naturally resistant to change. A culture takes a long time to form, and once established, it tends to become entrenched. Strong cultures are particularly resistant to change because employees have become so committed to them. What "favorable conditions" facilitate cultural change? • Dramatic Crisis - an unexpected financial setback, the loss of a major customer, or a dramatic technological innovation by a competitor. • Leadership changes hands - new top leadership can provide an alternative set of key values. • The organization is young and small. • Culture is weak.

Demographic Trends Of HRM

Demographic trends will continue to play an important role in the Human Resource function as the pool of workers change i.e. increase in older workers ready for retirement and greater ethnic diversity in the U.S. - The oldest, most experienced workers (those born before 1946) make up 6 percent of the workforce. - The baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) make up 41.5 percent of the workforce. - Gen Xers (those born 1965 to 1977) make up almost 29 percent of the workforce. - Gen Yers (those born 1978 to 1994) make up almost 24 percent of the workforce.

Work specialization

Dividing work activities into separate job tasks. • Individual employees "specialize" in doing part of an activity rather than the entire activity in order to increase work output. It's also known as division of labor • Early proponents of work specialization believed it could lead to great increases in productivity. • Overspecialization can result in human diseconomies such as boredom, fatigue, stress, poor quality, increased absenteeism, and higher turnover

BRIDGES: MANAGING TRANSITIONS

ENDING - Letting go of the old ways and the old identities people had. The first phase of transition is an ending, and a time when you need to help people to deal with their losses NEUTRAL ZONE - Going through an in-between time when the old is gone but the new isn't fully operational. We call this time the neutral zone: it is when the critical psychological realignments and re-patterning take place NEW BEGINNING - Coming out of the transition and making a new beginning. This is when people develop the new identity, experience the energy and discover the new sense of belonging and purpose that makes the change begin to work

Communities of Practice

Groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in that area by interacting on an ongoing basis.

Control Process Step 1: Measuring Actual Performance

How We Measure - personal observations, statistical reports, oral reports, and written reports. - What We Measure - what is measured is probably more critical to the control process than how it's measured.

Human resource planning

Ensuring that the organization has the right number and kinds of capable people in the right places and at the right times. HR planning entails two steps: (1) assessing current human resources and (2) meeting future HR needs. • Job analysis - an assessment that defines jobs and the behaviors necessary to perform them. • Job description - a written statement that describes a job - typically job content, environment, and conditions of employment. • Job specification - a written statement of the minimum qualifications a person must possess to perform a given job successfully (e.g. knowledge, skills and attitudes needed)

Major HRM Laws

Equal Pay Act: 1963: Prohibits pay differences for equal work based on gender. Civil Rights Act, title VII: 1964(amended 1972): Prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, or gender. Americans with Disabilities Act: 1990: Prohibits discrimination against individuals who have disabilities or chronic illnesses, also requires reasonable accommodations for these individuals. Family and Medical Leave Act: 1993: Gives employees in organizations with 50 or more employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year for family or medical reasons. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act: 1996: Permits portability of employees insurance from one employer to another. Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) 1970: Establishes mandatory safety and health standards in organizations. Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act (COBRA) 1985: Requires continued health coverage following termination. (paid by employee).

Performance management system

Establishes performance standards used to evaluate employee performance. More than 70 percent of managers admit they have trouble giving a critical performance review to an underachieving employee. How do managers determine who gets paid what? Skill-based pay - a pay system that rewards employees for the job skills they can demonstrate. Under this type of pay system, an employee's job title doesn't define his or her pay category, skills do (e.g. manufacturing, technically innovative organizations). Variable pay - a pay system in which an individual's compensation is contingent on performance. 90 percent of U.S. organizations use some type of variable pay plans

EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL FORCES FOR CHANGE

External • Changing consumer needs and wants • New governmental laws • Changing technology • Economic changes Internal • New organizational strategy • Change in composition of workforce • New equipment • Changing employee attitudes

Departmentalization

How jobs are grouped together is called Departmentalization. Five common forms of departmentalization are used: • Functional: - Grouping jobs by functions performed • Product: - Grouping jobs by product line • Geographical: - Grouping jobs on the basis of territory or geography • Process: - Grouping jobs on the basis of product or customer flow • Customer: - Grouping jobs by type of customer and needs

Recruitment

Locating, identifying, and attracting capable applicants.

Control Process Step 3: Taking Managerial Action

Managers can choose among three possible courses of action: do nothing, correct the actual performance, or revise the standards. Because "do nothing" is self explanatory, let's look at the other two. 1. Correct the Actual Performance: - Immediate corrective action - corrective action that corrects problems at once in order to get performance back on track. - Basic corrective action - corrective action that looks at how and why performance deviated before correcting the source of deviation. 2. Revise the Standard - if performance consistently exceeds the goal, then a manager should look at whether the goal is too easy and needs to be raised. - Managers must be cautious about revising a standard downward

Delivering Effective Performance Feedback

Managers need to provide their employees with feedback so that the employees know where they stand in terms of their work.

Global OD

OD techniques that work for U.S. organizations may be inappropriate in other countries and cultures.

Open innovation

Opening up the search for new ideas beyond the organization's boundaries and allowing innovations to easily transfer inward and outward. For instance, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, Dell, Best Buy, and Nike have all created digital platforms that allow customers to help them create new products and messages.

Productivity Example

Precision Plastics makes 5,000 products each week. Total weekly labor hours are 1,250. What is the productivity? Productivity = Output / Input = Units Produced per Week (5,000) / Labor hours per Week (1,250) = = 4 units / hour

Decruitment

Reducing an organization's workforce.

Selection

Screening job applicants to ensure that the most appropriate candidates are hired. • A valid selection device is characterized by a proven relationship between the selection device and some relevant criterion. • A reliable selection device indicates that it measures the same thing consistently.

STIMULATING INNOVATION

The definition of innovation varies widely, depending on who you ask. We're going to define it by first looking at the concept of creativity. Creativity - the ability to combine ideas in a unique way or to make an unusual association. Innovation - turning the outcomes of the creative process into useful products, services, or work methods. Thus, the innovative organization is characterized by its ability to generate new ideas that are implemented into new products, processes, and procedures designed to be useful—that is, to channel creativity into useful outcomes

Centralization

The degree to which decision making is concentrated at the upper levels of the organization. If top managers make key decisions with little input from below, then the organization is more centralized.

Formalization

The degree to which jobs within the organization are standardized and the extent to which employee behavior is guided by rules and procedures. In highly formalized organizations, there are explicit job descriptions, numerous organizational rules, and clearly defined procedures covering work processes. - Highly formalized jobs offer little discretion over what is to be done. - Low formalization means fewer constraints on how employees do their work.

Decentralization

The degree to which lower level employees provide input or actually make decisions.

Performance

The end result of an activity. Therefore ... performance can be either positive or negative.

EXTERNAL FACTORS THAT AFFECT THE HRM PROCESS

The entire HRM process is influenced by the external environment. Those factors most directly influencing it include: the economy, employee labor unions, governmental laws and regulations, and demographic trends.

Organizational Structure

The formal arrangement of jobs within an organization. 1. Top managers 2. Middle managers 3. First-Line Managers 4. Nonmanagerial Employees.

Views of change process: White-Water Rapids Metaphor

The lack of environmental stability and predictability requires that managers and organizations continually adapt (manage change actively) to survive. - Disruptions in the status quo are not occasional and temporary, and they are not followed by a return to calm waters. - Today, any organization that treats change as the occasional disturbance in an otherwise calm and stable world runs a great risk. - Too much is changing too fast for an organization or its managers to be complacent.

Unity of command

The management principle that each person should report to only one manager. Without unity of command, conflicting demands from multiple bosses may create problems

Span of control

The number of employees who can be effectively and efficiently supervised by a manager.

Responsibility

The obligation or expectation to perform. And employees should be held accountable for their performance! Assigning work authority without responsibility and accountability can create opportunities for abuse. Likewise, no one should be held responsible or accountable for work tasks over which he or she has no authority to complete.

Downsizing

The planned elimination of jobs in an organization - When an organization is faced with an economic recession, declining market share, too aggressive growth, or poorly managed operations - one option for improving profits is to eliminate some of the excess workers

Controlling

The process of monitoring, comparing, and correcting work performance.

Benchmarking

The search for the best practices among competitors or non-competitors that lead to their superior performance.

Service profit chain

The service sequence from employees to customers to profit.

Benchmark

The standard of excellence to measure and compare against.

Corporate Governance

The system used to govern a corporation so that the interests of corporate owners are protected. • The Role of Boards of Directors - a group, independent from management, looking out for the interests of shareholders who were not involved in the day-to-day management of the organization.

Acceptance theory of authority (Chester Barnard)

The view that authority comes from the willingness of subordinates to accept it. If an employee didn't accept a manager's order, there was no authority.

Organizational chart

The visual representation of an organization's structure.

Authority

the rights inherent in a managerial position to tell people what to do and to expect them to do it. Managers in the chain of command have authority to do their job of coordinating and overseeing the work of others. Authority can be delegated downward to lower-level managers, giving them certain rights while also prescribing certain limits within which to operate.

TECHNIQUES FOR REDUCING RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

• Education and communication • Participation (e.g. decision-making) • Facilitation and support • Negotiation • Manipulation and co-optation • Coercion

Workplace Privacy

• Employers can (and do) • read your e-mail • tap your telephone • monitor your work by computer • store and review computer files • monitor you in an employee bathroom or dressing room • track your whereabouts in a company vehicle

WHAT CAUSES STRESS?

• Role Conflicts - work expectations that are hard to satisfy. • Role Overload - having more work to accomplish than time permits. • Role Ambiguity - when role expectations are not clearly understood. • Interpersonal Demands - pressures created by other employees. • Organization Structure - excessive rules and an employee's lack of opportunity to participate in decisions. • Organizational Leadership - the supervisory style of the organization's managers.

SIDE EFFECTS OF CHANGE: EMPLOYEE STRESS

• Stress - the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure placed on them from extraordinary demands, constraints, or opportunities. - Stressors - factors that cause stress.