78) Charlotte, the manager of an electronics store in Ohio, gives her staff the authority to resolve
customer complaints. She lets the staff decide whether to issue refunds or replace merchandise in
case of consumer grievances. Which job design technique is Charlotte implementing in her
store?
A) job sharing
B) job extension
C) job rotation
D) job enrichment
E) job evaluation
79) Brenda, a researcher, is of the opinion that organizations should empower employees, and
suggests this should be done by designing work to be done by self-managing teams. Which
statement would validate Brenda’s argument?
A) Self-managing teams are highly involved in decision making.
B) Self-managing teams do not have the authority to schedule work or hire team members.
C) Organizations do not have to incur additional training expenditures.
D) Team members do not have to perform a wide variety of tasks, and they view their effort as
significant.
E) Self-managing teams consume more time and result in lower productivity.
80) Which statement is true of self-managing work teams?
A) Team members’ job duties are narrowly defined.
B) Team members usually share work assignments.
C) Team members’ joint responsibilities are minimal.
D) Team members only have the authority to schedule work.
E) Team members are only responsible for their individual tasks.
81) GGT Ad Agency, an advertising firm, requires its employees to be at work between the
hours of 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. This work rule allows employees to work additional hours
before or after the time period in order to work the full day. Identify the job design method
implemented in this scenario.
A) zero-hour contract
B) flextime
C) compressed workweek
D) telework
E) retroactive overtime
82) Which statement best describes job sharing?
A) It is a work option in which two part-time employees carry out the tasks associated with a
single job.
B) It is a work option that allows full-time employees to choose start and end times within the
guidelines specified by an organization.
C) It is a work option that empowers individual workers by adding more opportunities for
specialization in their current job duties.
D) It is a work option that enlarges jobs by combining several relatively simple jobs to form a
job with a wider range of tasks.
E) It is a work option that enlarges jobs in an organization by moving employees among several
different jobs.
83) Employees in a company’s accounting department work 10 hours a day for 4 days a week,
while employees in the other departments work 8 hours a day for 5 days a week. The flexible
work schedule option affecting the accounting department is known as
A) a zero-hour contract.
B) a compressed workweek.
C) a flexible workweek.
D) retroactive overtime.
E) telework.
84) Which scenario qualifies as a compressed workweek?
A) Employees are required to be at work from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and can choose additional
hours before or after this period.
B) Two part-time employees work in different shifts and share the tasks of a specific job.
C) Employees work in the office two days a week and work from home the other three days.
D) Employees can choose to work away from a centrally located work area.
E) Employees work 10 hours a day so that they work fewer days per week.
85) Sarah, an HR executive, observes that telework or telecommuting has been a rising trend.
She considers developing a policy to allow telecommuting at her company. Which statement is a
fact about telecommuting that would support implementing this policy?
A) Telecommuting may support a strategy of corporate social responsibility.
B) Organizations that use telecommuting require more office space.
C) Employees telecommuting may have greater absences from work.
D) A telework arrangement is easy to set up for manufacturing workers.
E) A telework arrangement is difficult to set up for people in managerial, professional, or sales
jobs.
86) Toy-Time is a firm that manufactures toys. Very often, employees of the firm are on leave,
citing physical strain as the cause. An expert hired by the company investigates the situation and
recommends investing in an ergonomics study of the work environment. In this scenario, the
expert is recommending
A) a study of the interface between individuals’ physiology and the characteristics of the physical
work environment.
B) a study of jobs to find the simplest way to structure work in order to maximize efficiency.
C) a study of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of employees in a new job.
D) a study of the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to perform a job.
E) a study of the relationship between intrinsic rewards and employee motivation in the context
of human resource management.
87) Alter App Corp. is a firm that develops software applications for other companies. After the
company moves into a new office space, most of the employees complain about the lack of
comfortable seating arrangements. Following up on the complaint, the HR department advises
management to invest in studying the ergonomics of the new office space. What would serve as
an incentive for the company to invest in the study of ergonomics?
A) Ergonomics empowers employees by giving them decision-making authority.
B) Ergonomics reduces the physical strain on employees performing a job.
C) Ergonomics reduces the number of reporting relationships in a job.
D) Ergonomics enlarges jobs by moving employees among different jobs.
E) Ergonomics increases a job’s mental demands.
88) The manager of a local grocery store introduces a short conveyor belt that allows customers
to place items on it prior to checking out. This saves the cashier from the physical strain of
bending forward and reaching into the carts to retrieve the items. This change is an example of
the ________ approach to job design.
A) telecommuting
B) job enrichment
C) ergonomic
D) flextime
E) job sharing
89) Breyers, Bear, & Associates, a consulting firm, equips all of its employees with laptop
computers, which they use at their desks and carry to client meetings. What ergonomic challenge
may result from employees using these devices throughout the day?
A) shoulder strain from carrying them around
B) pain from the tactile feedback of pressing keys
C) fatigue from taking frequent breaks to move around
D) physical strain to wrists from improper positioning for typing
E) distraction from paying attention to posture
90) Which strategy is used by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to increase
ergonomic job design?
A) issuing regulations rather than guidelines for industries
B) penalizing companies that allow employee participation in ergonomic redesign
C) enforcing violations of its requirement that employers have a general duty to protect workers
from hazards, including ergonomic hazards
D) levying fines on employers who issue computers with keyboards instead of touchscreen
tablets
E) working with organizations to design workspaces in such a manner that they meet the
standards of ergonomics
91) Ken, an HR manager at Colonial Corp., wishes to design jobs that do not exceed the mental
capabilities and limitations of employees. To do so, Ken would most likely have to
A) allow employees to opt for a compact workweek schedule.
B) control autonomy and stress error-free work.
C) increase the amount of reporting requirements and documentation.
D) train employees to multitask and self-manage teams.
E) reduce the information-processing requirements of a job.
92) In the past, hospitals deferred to physicians’ judgments in how they carry out their work.
More recently, hospitals have begun asking surgical teams to use pre-surgical checklists aimed at
avoiding miscommunications and oversights. From a job design perspective, why is this aspect
of work flow an appropriate one for a hospital to focus on?
A) Simplifying work is especially beneficial when jobs are challenging and the costs of error are
severe.
B) Simplifying work is especially important when jobs are challenging and employees are poorly
trained.
C) When jobs are complex and challenging, job design should focus on motivational issues such
as autonomy.
D) Simplifying the mental demands of the jobs may enable a hospital to replace high-priced
physicians with technicians.
E) Use of checklists will limit the amount of memorization and information required by a
surgical team.
93) A survey of employee satisfaction among a county’s 9-1-1 dispatchers found that employees
struggle to keep up with calls, feel little or no control over their situation, and constantly worry
about making mistakes. A suggestion is made to simplify the jobs in order to deal with these
sources of dissatisfaction. Why would simplifying the jobs be beneficial in this case?
A) The employees face few challenges already.
B) The costs of employee errors are severe.
C) The scope for employee errors is minimal.
D) The employees do not engage in multitasking.
E) The information-processing requirements of the job are minimal.
94) The employees at Web Light, a website design company, have been struggling to provide
quality services to clients. An investigation reveals that employees feel dissatisfied and mentally
fatigued due to the challenging nature of their jobs. Selena, the HR manager, suggests
simplifying jobs in order to reduce errors and increase accuracy. Which option would be a way
to simplify the mental demands of employees’ jobs?
A) imposing rigorous quality control standards
B) training employees to multitask between different job responsibilities
C) using software that helps with tracking progress
D) providing comfortably designed office chairs
E) increasing the information-processing requirements of the job
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95) In which use of information technology is the technology reducing mental demands and the
likelihood of errors?
A) email notifications popping up on a clerk’s screen while he is entering data
B) software that creates a graph of daily production levels for a supervisor
C) text messages arriving on a salesperson’s phone while she is meeting with a client
D) searches for office supplies that generate 12,000 results to compare
E) instant messages from a supervisor who expects responses within a few minutes
96) Discuss the steps in a work flow analysis.
97) Describe the relationship between work flow design and an organization’s structure.
98) Compare and contrast tasks, duties, and responsibilities (TDRs) and knowledge, skills,
abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) as they relate to different processes of job analysis.
99) Briefly describe the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ). What are the advantages and
disadvantages of using the PAQ as the source of job information?
100) Job analysis is so important to HR managers that it has been called the building block of
everything that personnel do. List and describe the instances that demonstrate the advantages of
using job analysis in various HR activities.
101) Explain why organizations utilize competency models.
102) What is the purpose of industrial engineering?
103) How is right job design associated with effective teamwork?
104) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has a “four-pronged” strategy for
encouraging ergonomic job design. Explain each of the four prongs.
105) Provide an example of how an employer can design jobs that empower workers to manager
their time.