Cross-functional training involves training employees to perform operations in areas
other than their assigned jobs.
Over the last 30 years, employee rights have narrowed as federal and state governments
enact more laws that favor employers.
Frame-of-reference training helps managers avoid errors and bias in performance
evaluations.
Employers are legally required to provide health insurance to employees.
A firm that tells employees that if they don’t take early retirement they may still lose
their jobs due to future layoffs is most likely open to age discrimination charges.
Training objectives should be stated in behavioral terms whenever possible.
Workers’ compensation covers medical care and rehabilitation costs but not income
replacement, since that falls under Social Security benefits.
As a manager, Tim wants to conduct an organizational-level assessment to determine
the advancement potential of key subordinates. The best tool for this assessment would
be a career planning workshop.
The “big picture” quality of the absolute rating system makes performance feedback too
ambiguous to be beneficial.
E-mail has helped bridge the gap between lower-level and upper-level employees in
organizations.
Compensable factors are concrete terms relating to the necessary education, skill, and
work experience for compensation at a particular level.
Most employees at Sterling Enterprises work on a team. The firm is considering the
implementation of a pay for performance plan. Which of the following would be the
most likely challenge of such a plan?
A) Establishing an HR scorecard for each team
B) Isolating individual control over work processes
C) Separating individual contributions from team contributions
D) Creating a psychological contract between teams and the firm
The Landrum-Griffin Act includes which of the following provisions?
A) Management must offer a right-to-work provision.
B) Management may not interfere with a union’s organizing efforts.
C) Unions must report their financial activities to the Department of Labor.
D) Labor union members may not participate in secret ballot elections.
Industrial democracy is primarily marked by:
A) worker involvement in plant and corporate level decisions.
B) union involvement in political rather than economic issues.
C) managers who allow nonunion employees to vote on union issues.
D) union representatives who hold executive positions on corporate boards.
Additional Case 4.3
Your retail company has 80% of its stores located in downtown metropolitan areas.
Your biggest stores are in communities where minorities represent 60% of your
customers. Your middle-management team has been changing over time so that 50% of
your managers are women and about 30% are ethnic minorities. A significant number of
your hourly employees, about 35%, have served over 20 years in their respective stores
and many are over 40 years of age. Top management feels that African-Americans are
under-represented in the hourly workforce and in middle management. They want HR
to initiate an aggressive recruitment process to address the situation.
Hispanics are the biggest minority group, besides women, in your workforce. In a
discussion about where the company should target its diversity program, the CEO
explains she wants to implement a training program for managers to raise their
sensitivity to minorities, especially Hispanics. She also notes that there are no disabled
persons in the workforce and very few Asian-Americans. Carlos, the VP of facilities,
notes that he has accommodated all the Asian-American employees he can in his MIS
and facility support services. He also argues that he only has about $10,000 in his
budget for reorganizing display space in the stores to accommodate disabled employees
and that this amount probably isn’t sufficient to accommodate a disabled employee.
Refer to Additional Case 4.3. What is a key issue for the CEO in implementing
diversity training that would focus on understanding Hispanic culture?
A) Some will wonder why the program focuses on Hispanics, since this group is
typically at a significant advantage due to high academic success rates.
B) Hispanics account for a small percentage of the U.S. workforce, and the group’s
numbers are decreasing rapidly because of immigration reform.
C) Hispanics tend to need additional educational assistance to be competitive due to
impoverished backgrounds.
D) The term “Hispanic” is a misnomer, since there are actually very diverse
subgroupings of Latinos.
A career anchor is best described as an individual’s:
A) strengths and weaknesses.
B) professional knowledge.
C) management skills.
D) core values.
The Wards Cove Packing Co. vs. Antonio case affected discrimination suits by:
A) allowing plaintiffs to collect back pay awards.
B) stressing the importance of BFOQ as a defense.
C) placing more of the burden of proof on the plaintiff.
D) challenging the fairness and necessity of the four-fifths rule.
Kari is the VP of a mid-sized plant. Employees are able to see how their work affects
the plant’s performance. The corporation is relatively flat and the market for the product
is quite stable. Which of the following would be the best choice of a
pay-for-performance plan?
A) Individual-based pay
B) Merit-based pay
C) A gainsharing plan
D) A team-based plan
You are considering three candidates for a manager’s job. Each candidate’s experience
and education are quite similar. You want to know how each candidate will perform,
given certain tasks or situations. Your best selection tool for predicting this is:
A) an assessment center.
B) personality testing.
C) psychological testing.
D) an unstructured interview.
Town House Publishing is implementing a new HR strategy, and to give it the best
chance of succeeding, the HR department should most likely:
A) increase diversity in the environment.
B) ensure managers’ commitment to the strategy.
C) create a back-up strategy to implement in case the initial strategy fails.
D) centralize management in order to communicate more effectively with employees.
If managers needed a systematic way to analyze tasks in a given situation and wanted to
use a tailored rather than a standardized questionnaire, they would most likely use a:
A) position analysis.
B) methods analysis.
C) task inventory analysis.
D) functional job analysis.
A company with a prospector strategy would most likely:
A) have a bureaucratic organizational structure.
B) give employees more responsibility.
C) use a vertical information system.
D) use hierarchy to resolve conflict.
Public sector unions differ from their private sector counterparts in that most public
sector unions:
A) require union membership.
B) are organized by location.
C) have less bargaining power.
D) have no restrictions against striking.
Which of the following would most likely enhance the perceived fairness of a
pay-for-performance system?
A) Employees receiving variable and base pay
B) Employees making final decisions on the system design
C) Managers implementing a process for making appeals
D) Managers strictly limiting the amount of employee input
Your text argues for which of the following as the best model of performance
management?
A) Separating the performance appraisal and salary review
B) Incorporating judgment and coaching in the performance review
C) Separating goal setting and action planning from the formal review
D) Replacing the formal review with informal day-to-day feedback and performance
management
The rights given workers by federal laws are known as:
A) employee rights.
B) statutory rights.
C) contractual rights.
D) residual rights.
Additional Case 3.1
You have been hired as HR Director of a company with about 100 employees. As you
begin to learn about the company, you discover that female managers are paid about
20% less than their male counterparts. When you ask why, the CEO explains that men
have families to support and women are earning extra income. As you review personnel
files, it becomes apparent that protected-class employees are promoted less often and
have longer terms between promotions and raises than white employees. A test is used
as part of the promotion process, and protected-class candidates always do about 25%
worse on it than white candidates. Another test is used to screen job applicants. It
screens out about 25% of white male applicants and about 50% of protected-class
applicants.
The firm has a hazardous products division. Traditionally, women are not hired or
promoted into that division because the CEO is concerned that the toxic nature of the
production process will adversely affect the female employees’ reproductive processes.
Refer to Additional Case 3.1. As HR Director, you should most likely inform the CEO
that the company policy prohibiting women from working in the hazardous waste
products division is:
A) a wise company policy to limit potential liability from women filing suit over birth
defects.
B) well-meaning but illegal due to the 1978 amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act.
C) illegal according to the Supreme Court decision of Griggs vs. Duke Power.
D) creating an adverse impact on women employees.
A firm should most likely use merit pay as an element of a(n):
A) team-based compensation plan.
B) plantwide compensation plan.
C) equity-based compensation plan.
D) individual-based compensation plan.
An important tool for companies seeking to maintain external equity is the use of:
A) job analysis.
B) job hierarchies.
C) Hay rating scales.
D) market survey data.
Companies provide outplacement to terminated workers for a number of reasons, such
as:
A) meeting federal requirements.
B) decreasing unemployment taxes.
C) lowering absenteeism among remaining workers.
D) reducing morale problems associated with laid-off workers.
What is the difference between work-flow analysis and job analysis? How do both
processes benefit an organization?
Describe the reasons a company would choose below-market or above-market
compensation policy and the advantages and disadvantages of open versus secret pay
policies.
The combination of peer, subordinate, and self-review is referred to as ________.
________ is a plantwide pay-for-performance plan in which a portion of the company’s
cost savings is returned to workers, usually in the form of a lump-sum bonus.
A characteristic that must be present in all employees for a particular job is called a(n)
________.
A reduction in a company’s workforce to improve its bottom line is referred to as
________.
What types of challenges and problems are faced by women in the workplace? In what
ways are employers trying to make their workplaces more “friendly” to women?
A(n) ________ is a right on the law of contracts.