Chapter 8
Empowerment and Participation
1. Empowerment helps enhance employee feelings of self-efficacy.
2. Participative managers typically turn their management responsibilities over to empowered
employees.
3. Participation helps employees become good organizational citizens who take ownership for
results rather than nonresponsible, machinelike performers.
4. Participation can have statistically significant effects on performance and satisfaction.
5. Participative programs result in mental and emotional involvement that produces generally
favorable outcomes for both the employees and the organization.
6. Participation increases the power of employees but not their managers.
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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Difficulty: Medium
7. A prerequisite for participation is that employees must have enough time to participate before
action is required.
8. At times, a manager may find it necessary to limit the participation used with one employee
while consulting freely with another.
9. Intrinsically satisfying tasks may diminish the need for greater participation, while routine
tasks may suggest that participation could produce fruitful results.
10. Managers who are low in emotional intelligence are unlikely to be able to use participative
approaches effectively.
11. When employees have more participation than they want, they are “participatively neutral.”
12. Participation will be more successful where employees feel they have a valid contribution to
make.
13. A large percentage of employees regularly make suggestions in most firms; the rest may feel
no significant level of involvement in suggestion programs.
14. Some supervisors view employee suggestions as criticisms of their own ability and practices.
15. The quality-circle approach helps employees feel they have some influence on their
organization even if not all their recommendations are accepted by higher management.
16. The total quality management (TQM) approach gets only the most technically competent
employees involved in the process of searching for continuous improvements in their operations.
17. A more formal version of the group-decision approach is the self-managing team.
18. The act of participation in itself establishes better communication with both the group and
the organization.
19. One of the greatest impediments to success is the lack of support for, or even resistance to,
participative programs by top management.
20. Participation appears to be rooted deeply in the culture of free people around the world and
is probably a basic drive in human beings.
1. With the _____, individuals fail to acknowledge properly their own expertise and
accomplishments and erroneously attribute their success to luck, or charm, instead of talent,
competence, or perseverance.
A) impostor phenomenon
B) self-fulfilling prophecy
C) snowball effect
D) bandwagon effect
2. All of the following are suggested approaches to empowerment EXCEPT:
A) holding employees accountable for job performance outcomes.
B) giving employees discretion over job performance.
C) reducing emotional support.
D) providing successful role models.
3. Which of the following factors enhances job-related self-efficacy?
A) Overwhelming jobs
B) Job mastery
C) Unwanted changes
D) Negative leadership
4. _____ is the mental and emotional involvement of people in group situations that encourages
them to contribute to group goals and share responsibility for them.
A) Centralization
B) Participation
C) Empowerment
D) None of the above
5. Participation entails all of the following ideas EXCEPT:
A) ethnocentrism.
B) involvement.
C) contribution.
D) responsibility.
6. All of the following participative practices will help expedite goals EXCEPT:
A) providing power opportunities earlier to minority workers in an increasingly diverse
workforce.
B) placing more responsibility at higher levels of the organization.
C) speeding up the approval process.
D) creating participative conditions that allow interested employees to experience feelings of
empowerment in their work.
7. Which of the following actions is a contribution of subordinates in a leader–member
exchange model of leadership?
A) Delegation
B) Performance
C) Rewards
D) Mentoring
8. Participative employees are:
A) highly stressed from working under an authoritarian manager.
B) generally more satisfied with their work and their supervisor.
C) bound to have low levels of self-efficacy.
D) none of the above.
9. The _____ view of management is that power is a fixed quantity, is legitimate, and flows
downward, so someone must lose what another gains.
A) democratic
B) consultative
C) autocratic
D) benevolent
10. Which of the following statements reflects participative view power?
A) It is applied by management.
B) It flows downward.
C) It is a fixed amount.
D) It is applied by shared ideas in a group.
11. Which of the following statements is NOT a prerequisite for participation?
A) Neither party should feel that its position is threatened by participation.
B) Employees should have enough time to participate before action is required.
C) The potential benefits of participation should be greater than the costs.
D) All employees, regardless of mental capacity, should participate.
12. Which of the following is NOT a restraint on the area of job freedom for a department?
A) The number of employees in the department
B) The physical environment
C) Personal limitations
D) Collective-bargaining agreements
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Ans: A
Page: 213
Difficulty: Medium
13. A(n) _____ manager makes and announces decisions.
A) anarchist
B) consultative
C) autocratic
D) benevolent
14. Which of the following statements is true of the consensus decision making style?
A) It involves managers making and announcing decisions.
B) It involves managers deciding with groups.
C) It involves managers asking groups for recommended action before deciding.
D) It involves managers asking groups to come to a decision regarding an issue.
15. Which of the following styles of management involves managers asking groups for
recommended action before taking a decision?
A) Democratic management
B) Consultative management
C) Participative committee
D) Consensus decision making
16. _____ is a combination of two personal abilities—self-awareness and self-management—
and two social competencies—social awareness and relationship management.
A) Emotional intelligence
B) Empowerment
C) Impostor phenomenon
D) Intelligence quotient
17. Managers with high emotional intelligence:
A) have very good self-management abilities but poor relationship management competencies.
B) are poor in practicing participative management styles.
C) set an example through their sensitivity, humility, and comfort with ambiguity.
D) typically lack sensitivity to employee emotions and needs and have poor self-awareness.
18. Which of the following statements is true of differing employee needs for participation?
A) Employee participation programs are successful regardless of the validity of contributions.
B) All employees desire similar levels of participation.
C) Educated people tend to have lower performance when not allowed to contribute.
D) Higher-level workers often seek less participation.
19. The success of any participative program is contingent upon all managers agreeing to:
A) focus solely on individual contributors.
B) identify the issues to be addressed.
C) operate outside organizational policies.
D) avoid seeking others’ perspectives.
20. Which of the following is typically the responsibility of an employee toward making a
participative program successful?
A) Identifying the issues to be addressed
B) Seeking to use the perspectives of others
C) Specifying the level of involvement desired
D) Allocating fair rewards
21. Which of the following guidelines should be followed in order to make a quality circle
successful?
A) Train operational level workers and not supervisors in facilitation skills.
B) Apply the group’s skills to problems external to the circle’s work area.
C) Use these programs for addressing long-term issues exclusively.
D) Obtain continuous support from top management.
22. All of the following participative programs accent team work EXCEPT:
A) quality circle programs.
B) suggestion programs.
C) self-managing teams.
D) total quality management.
23. Which of the following is the defining feature of total quality management (TQM)?
A) It gets every employee involved in the process of searching for continuous improvements in
their operations.
B) It is a form of participation that accents individual initiative instead of group problem solving
and teamwork.
C) It ensures that work groups are given a large degree of decision-making autonomy and are
expected to control their own behavior and results.
D) All of the above.
24. Which of the following statements is true of rapid-cycle decision making?
A) It involves the creation of a self-managing team.
B) It is an inclusive and transparent process.
C) It seldom yields definitive outcomes.
D) It requires final judgments to be made by the CEO when consensus cannot be achieved.
25. A key feature of self-managing teams is _____.
A) total autonomy
B) the diminished role of the manager
C) the extensive training of employees in statistical methods
D centralized decision making
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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Difficulty: Medium
26. Which of the following programs for participation offers the highest degree of participative
decision making?
A) Self-managing teams
B) Total quality management
C) Employee ownership
D) Just-in-time
27. Which of the following statements is true of the benefits of participation?
A) All the benefits of participation are intangible.
B) Managers find it extremely easy to adjust to their new roles in a high-involvement system.
C) The top management team guarantees its consistent support to the participative program.
D) Employees show more commitment toward their goals.
28. Which of the following factors impedes the success of a participative program?
A) Managers confessing their own vulnerability and seeking help
B) Theory Y beliefs by managers
C) Lack of preparation for new roles in an empowered environment
D) Managers viewing themselves as partners with employees
29. Which of the following is NOT a key trait of servant leaders?
A) Treating others with respect
B) Admitting mistakes
C) Asking for help
D) Listening passively
30. The main goal of servant leadership is to:
A) make and announce decisions.
B) show reluctance in admitting mistakes.
C) help others develop their talents fully.
D) avoid the development of one’s own skills.
1. Explain the five broad approaches to empowerment.
2. Explain in detail how consent and participation improve motivation.
3. What does the leader-member exchange model of leadership suggest?
4. List the prerequisites for participation.
5. How does a manager’s emotional intelligence affect the use of participation?
6. What are the responsibilities to be fulfilled by employees for the success of participative
programs?
7. Give a brief description of quality circles.
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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
their organization even if not all their recommendations are accepted by higher management.
They also provide opportunities for personal growth, achievement, and recognition.
Page: 218
Difficulty: Medium
8. Describe the employee ownership plan.
9. What are the benefits of participation?
10. What are the managerial concerns about participation?