Exam 3

Which of the following is a difference between rituals and ceremonies?

Ceremonies are usually formal, whereas rituals are informal.

The process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party is called

conflict

NewTel is a telephone company with a policy of filling positions internally through promotions, rather than hiring from outside. Until recently, the company had a strong engineering focus and tended to promote people to senior executive positions from the engineering areas. Consequently, almost all of the company's 14 senior executives joined the company over 20 years ago as junior engineers. There is increasing pressure on NewTel to become more market and service oriented. As a result, four people were hired last year from retail firms to fill new senior executive positions in marketing and service departments. The external hires were necessary because current employees were not sufficiently qualified. Now, there are signs of tension among senior executives, particularly during budget deliberations where there is limited discretionary spending on new corporate activities. The four new hires have been thwarted in their attempts to have the company invest more in marketing and customer service instead of investing in technological research, and they blame the senior executives for being hard-headed. The conflict episodes are being viewed by both sides as personal attacks rather than attempts to resolve the problem. The conflict at NewTel appears to be a

relationship conflict.

In organizational settings, power is defined as

the capacity to influence others.

Which of the following is a characteristic of an adaptive corporate culture?

Employees continuously question past practices.

________ refers to any behavior that attempts to alter someone's attitudes or behavior.

Influence

________ is the cornerstone of effective value creation.

Information

Which of the following is a disadvantage of the integration strategy?

It is usually slow and potentially risky due to many forces preserving the existing culture.

________ leadership includes behaviors such as listening to employees for their opinions and ideas, and showing consideration of employee needs.

People-oriented

________ involves calling upon higher authority or expertise, or symbolically relying on these sources to support the influencer's position.

Upward appeal

Which of the following types of third-party intervention approaches do managers and those in other positions of authority usually adopt?

inquisitional

One problem of employee involvement strategy in minimizing resistance to change is that it

is very time-consuming.

Which of the following is an artifact?

language

Servant leadership emphasizes the notion that

leaders serve followers, rather than vice versa.

When team norms encourage ________, team members learn to appreciate honest dialogue without personally reacting to any emotional display during the disagreements.

openness

Which of the following interpersonal conflict management styles represents a purely win‒win orientation?

problem solving

The "optimal conflict" perspective on organizational conflict is that

some level of conflict is necessary and promotes organizational effectiveness.

People who seldom trust coworkers and tend to use cruder influence tactics have

strong Machiavellian values.

Which of the following are the observable indicators of organizational culture?

artifacts

When the acquired firm has a weak, but similar culture compared to the acquiring firm, it is best to use the ________ merger strategy.

assimilation

________ represents the heart of transformational leadership.

Strategic vision

Which of the following is TRUE about organizational culture?

The strength of an organization's culture refers to how widely and deeply employees hold the company's dominant values and assumptions.

According to the action research model, which of the following occurs during the "diagnose the need for change" step?

analysis of data

Which of the following is a third-party conflict resolution strategy with low process control and high decision control?

arbitration

Employees have ________, ranging from sarcasm to ostracism, to ensure that coworkers conform to team norms.

coercive power

Which of the following sources of conflict is typically associated with mergers and acquisitions, where everyone wants the company to succeed, but they fight over the "right way" to do things because of their unique experiences in the separate companies

differentiation

The perceived ability to manage uncertainties in the business environment is a form of ________ power.

expert

A best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA)

represents the estimated cost of walking away from the relationship.

Jackie is the CEO of a struggling company. She has listened to her employees' concerns about where the corporation is going and has developed a new vision that she feels will help foster a common bond throughout the organization. Jackie then hosted a company-wide picnic where she delivered an inspiring speech about the new plans for the business, including her plans for more open communication between management and employees. After her speech, management and employees all participated in trust-building exercises, and then each employee had a one-on-one conversation with Jackie. Which perspective of leadership most closely resembles Jackie's actions?

transformational

Grace makes sure that she walks by her boss's office several times a day and tries to greet and make eye contact with her. She is trying to increase her

visibility

________ literally refers to how much you are located between others in a network.

Betweenness

Which of the following statements is TRUE of countervailing power in organizational relationships?

Countervailing power is the weaker party's power to maintain the stronger party's continued participation in the relationship.

Which of the following statements is TRUE about superordinate goals?

They are higher order aspirations such as the organization's strategic objectives.

Which of the following is a leadership style identified in path-goal theory?

achievement-oriented leadership

Your centrality in a social network is determined by your

betweenness, closeness, and degree centrality.

Organizational stories are most effective at communicating organizational culture only when they

describe real people and are assumed to be true.

Managers at Trendy Fashions, a large retail chain, experience conflict and organizational politics. The company's customer service ratings suffer, and managers point to other departments as the cause of the problem. The conflicts and politics further contribute to the customer service problems. The CEO of this chain hears about the appreciative inquiry process and thinks this might be a good technique to use to improve this situation. He needs more information on this process. The CEO needs to know that the first step in his appreciative inquiry change effort will begin with

identifying the positive elements of an organization or work unit that is performing well.

One way that communication minimizes resistance to change is by

illuminating the future.

Which of the following factors leads to relationship conflicts in teams?

low levels of communication

One advantage of countercultures is that they

maintain surveillance over and critically review the company's dominant culture.

Which third-party conflict resolution strategy manages the process and context of interaction between the disputing parties but does not impose a solution on the parties?

mediation

In the context of elements of organizational culture, which of the following falls under shared assumptions?

mental models

Effective managers should

minimize the relationship conflicts that exist in the organization.

Legitimate power occurs when

people in certain roles can request a set of behaviors from others.

Weakening or removing the restraining forces would

provide no motivation for change.

Although Joanna expects much from her employees, the people that work for Joanna identify with her values, like her, and respect her as a person. Joanna has ________ power.

referent

Which of the following is the most common form of influence in high power distance cultures?

silent authority

Which of the following refers to availability of alternatives?

substitutability

Which of the following leadership styles in path-goal theory is the same as people-oriented leadership?

supportive

According to the emerging view on organizational conflict, there are two types of conflict with opposing consequences. They are

task conflict and relationship conflict.

Charisma refers to

the personal traits that provide referent power over others.

Creating an urgency for change is most closely associated with

the process of increasing the driving forces.

Persuasion works best

through media-rich communication channels.

As a manager of XYZ Company, you are assigned to resolve a conflict between two departments of your organization, Department A and Department B. Both parties have equal power. Both parties are under time pressure to resolve the conflict. You also realize that the parties lack trust/openness for problem solving. If instead of equal power, Department A had considerably more power than Department B, what would Department B's best conflict resolution style be?

yielding

________ involves actively applying legitimate and coercive power to influence others.

Assertiveness

________ leadership refers to how well leaders are aware of, feel comfortable with, and act consistently with their self-concepts.

Authentic

Which of the following is the most accurate definition of leadership?

Leadership is influencing, motivating, and enabling others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organization.

________ theory identifies conditions that either limit the leader's ability to influence subordinates or make a particular leadership style unnecessary.

Leadership substitutes

What is the relationship between emotional intelligence and relationship conflicts?

Relationship conflict is less likely to occur if emotional intelligence is high

Your team is allocated a project involving a major client, the Beswick Company. Although the organization has many clients, this client, and project, is the largest source of revenue and affects the work of several other teams in the organization. The project requires continuous involvement with the client, so any problems with the client are immediately felt by others in the organization. Jamie, a member of your team, is the only person in the company with whom this client is willing to deal. It can be said that Jamie has

a low degree of substitutability.

Jessie and Preston are both managers at CPA4U, a large accounting firm. Each has a very different management style. Jessie frequently checks on her subordinates to see if there is any way she can help them to complete their projects. As a supervisor in the financial sector, Jessie maintains her moral integrity and is not swayed by pressures to take shortcuts. She tries to know a little bit about her employees' outside interests and always remembers everyone's birthday. Preston keeps to himself more and communicates with his subordinates mainly through emails; he's not particularly interested in his employees' after-work activities. His subordinates know exactly what is expected of them; they submit daily reports on their progress toward the weekly goals he has assigned them. Which type of leader is Preston?

a task-oriented leader

According to the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) theory, job applicants

avoid employment in companies whose values seem incompatible with their own values.

Which of these refers to the degree and nature of interdependence between the power holder and others?

centrality

At a meeting, the senior management of a firm cites the accomplishments of lower-level employees and announces the rewards for good performance. Such meetings occur annually at the firm. In the context of organizational artifacts, this is specifically an example of a(n)

ceremony

The highest priority and first strategy required for any organizational change is to

communicate the need for change.

Which of the following leadership styles in path-goal theory is the same as task-oriented leadership?

directive

The four stages of appreciative inquiry, in order, are

discovery, dreaming, designing, and delivering.

Which of these forces push organizations toward a new state of affairs?

driving forces

BusCorp. wants to introduce a new procedure to improve how customer requests are handled. This change will require employees to break old routines and adopt new role patterns. The company decides to adopt two new programs, one in which employees learn how to work in teams as the company changes. The other involves forming task forces within the company to help determine new customer service practices. The formation of task forces to minimize resistance to change is an example of

employee involvement.

Employees are more likely to comply with a supervisor's legitimate power when the

employees have high power distance.

Which of the following is an example of ingratiation?

flattering a boss

Which of the following conflict management styles may be necessary when it is apparent that the other party will take advantage of information sharing and other cooperative strategies?

forcing

Social networks exist everywhere because people

have a drive to bond.

BarkBark Inc. and Happy Toys Ltd. are considering a merger and are worried that their two organizational cultures will clash. They perform a detailed diagnosis by collecting and analyzing data about the employees of the two companies. They identify several overlapping values, which they feel can be combined into a cohesive new culture. What type of cultural merge would be best in this situation?

integration

Which strategy for merging two distinct cultures is most effective when the two companies have relatively weak cultures with overlapping values?

integration

The chief executive of Telecommco, a large telecommunications company, wants to restructure the organization so that product leaders would have more power than the executives in charge of each region. The regional executives try to prevent this restructuring because it would weaken their power and possibly reduce their salaries in the long term. The product leaders also put up some resistance because they feel that things work just fine the way they are. This action by the regional executives is primarily an example of resistance due to

negative valence of change.

Bezel Systems is introducing a few organization wide changes. A coalition of employees will clearly lose out from the proposed changes and they have enough power to cause the change effort to fail. Assuming that the change effort can proceed slowly and cost is not an issue, the preferred strategy for dealing with this resistance to change is

negotiation

Which of the following refers to the strategy in which employees deliberately inflate problems with changes that they did not initiate, just to prove that those ideas were not superior to their own?

not-invented-here syndrome

The organizational culture dimension of attention to detail is characterized by

precision

The customer-service department at Park-E Bank complains it is unable to keep track of its new business clients as the department handling data compilation has failed to enable a free exchange of information between the two departments. This has hindered the customer-service department to follow up on its customers' queries and update their relationship status with the bank. This has also impacted the department's sales target. This scenario exemplifies conflict due to

task interdependence.