Management of People and Organizations Exam 3 Study Guide

Which organizational purpose do you think that the comparative approach is most useful for?

Administrative

_____________ power is power that is based on special knowledge, skills and expertise that the leader possesses.

Expert

If the goal is to foster commitment (rather than merely compliance), which grouping of the bases of power is more likely to foster commitment?

Expert power, referent power, and positive legitimate power

Deidra was passed over for a recent promotion that her best friend at work received instead. She is upset, but she is trying to move to a different department and is completely ignoring her friend. Deidra is using the dominating conflict-handling style. True or False

False. She is instead using the avoiding style.

The ranking technique that would require certain percentages of employees to be categorized into predetermined categories or groups based on their performance is known as:

Forced distribution

Management and production workers at a large manufacturing facility at the MXT Corporation us an incentive system where any productivity gains and cost savings are shared between the company and the workforce based on a set formula. This is an example of:

Gain sharing

Stephanie, a psychology student, had a negative first impression of her professor. As a consequence, during the end-of-term appraisal, she rates her professor low on all performance criteria. Which of the following rater errors has Stephanie committed?

Horns

Negative reinforcement is:

Increasing a behavior by taking away something displeasing.

You are concerned that the other managers in your conservative (traditional) company have not completely grasped the rapidly changing external environment that is making the company less competitive. Even though the firm's profit and loss statements and other statistics have been steadily slipping, most of them do not yet perceive an urgent need for change. You want to convince them to implement a total quality improvement program where all organizational members will contribute to changing the culture, products, services, and processes within the company to position it for long-term success. Which influence tactics would be the MOST effective?

Inspirational appeal

According to expectancy theory, compensation systems differ according to their impact on the components of motivation; the main influence of compensation is on _________________.

Instrumentality

Which of the following is an administrative procedure used to measure internal job worth using measurable or compensable factors?

Job evaluation

GV Inc. recently completed a job evaluation for an entry level position that should pay $30,000/yr. However, GV found that other companies were paying $40,000/yr to hire similar employees, so they had to offer a higher wage. This is an example of:

Labor-market competition

You are concerned that the other managers in your conservative (traditional) company have not completely grasped the rapidly changing external environment that is making the company less competitive. Even though the firm's profit and loss statements and other statistics have been steadily slipping, most of them do not yet perceive an urgent need for change. You want to convince them to implement a total quality improvement program where all organizational members will contribute to changing the culture, products, services, and processes within the company to position it for long-term success. Which influence tactics would be the LEAST effective?

Legitimating

A(n) ______________________________ is suitable for an organization with a culture that promotes individual competition.

Merit pay plan

Kendra Taylor is a small town cop whose job often entails patrolling a neighborhood far from the sheriff's office with her partners, so the sheriff rarely witnesses her work. Which of the following sources would be the most accurate rating her performance?

Peers

Which of the following is characterized as a "hard" influence tactic?

Pressure

You are the department manager and you have heard several accounts from reliable sources that one of the top performers in your department has been sexually harassing a coworker. You would hate to lose this employee, but you strongly condemn this type of behavior. You want the behavior stopped because it is the right thing to do and to avoid any legal liability the company could potentially face. What influence tactics would be the MOST effective?

Pressure

You are the department manager and you have heard several accounts from reliable sources that one of the top performers in your department has been sexually harassing a coworker. You would hate to lose this employee, but you strongly condemn this type of behavior. You want the behavior stopped because it is the right thing to do and to avoid any legal liability the company could potentially face. What influence tactics would be the LEAST effective?

Rational

Which of the following theories suggests that high employee performance not followed by monetary reward will make future high performance less likely?

Reinforcement theory

Job Co. relies primarily on supervisor evaluations of performance. Each employee has at least two supervisors who provide evaluations. One supervisor rates Josh's performance at 4/10 while another rates Josh's performance at 8/10. This big difference suggests that this performance measure has low:

Reliability

Transferring some authority and responsibilities from management to employees is know as:

Structural empowerment

Compensable factors are employee's job characteristics that:

The company is willing to pay for

The results approach relies on objective and quantifiable indicators of performance. While this approach has high acceptability and high specificity, it is often deficient because it is difficult to fully capture performance by objective indicators. True or False

True

A distributive negotiation usually involves a single issue in which one person gains at the expense of another. True or False

True.

In incentive pay systems, performance measures are of the:

individual

Performance appraisal is the process _______________________________.

through which an organization gets information on how well an employee is doing his or her job.