Developing competitive advantage increases an organization’s ability to obtain scarce
resources.
Ego-defensiveness is a cognitive bias that leads managers to interpret events in such a
way that their actions appear in the most favorable light.
The technical approach to measuring organizational effectiveness evaluates an
organization’s ability to secure, manage, and control scarce and valued skills and
resources.
Stock-based compensation schemes help solve the agency problem.
According to Pondy, all organizational conflict arises because vertical and horizontal
differentiation lead to the establishment of different organizational subunits with
different goals and often different perceptions of how best to realize those goals.
The institutional environment is the set of values and norms that govern the behavior of
a population of organizations.
Functional structure is the foundation of horizontal differentiation.
Economies of scope are cost savings achieved when an organization manufactures
products in large volumes.
In Pondy’s model of organizational conflict, the “manifest conflict” stage comes
immediately after the “perceived conflict” stage.
Reengineering, restructuring, and innovation are three important instruments of
evolutionary change.
Routine manufacturing is characterized by high task variability and low task
analyzability.
Growth allows an organization to increase its division of labor and specialization.
Organizations pursuing differentiation business-level strategy generally operate in a
simple, stable, and slow-moving environment.
Which of the following statements is true regarding organizational culture?
A) A competitor can easily imitate another organization’s culture.
B) Culture is easy to control and manage.
C) Culture is embedded in the day-to-day interactions of functional personnel.
D) Culture cannot be a source of competitive advantage.
Long-linked technology is based on ________ task interdependence.
A) pooled
B) sequential
C) reciprocal
D) intensive
A company invites all its employees to a Christmas party. This is an example of a rite of
________.
A) passage
B) integration
C) enhancement
D) responsibility
________ are typically granted to people who create intellectual property, such as
written or visual works such as books, videogames, poems, and songs.
A) Industrial design rights
B) Trademarks
C) Patents
D) Copyrights
According to Anderson and Tushman, a technological discontinuity is a(n) ________.
A) incremental innovation
B) unprofitable new product
C) quantum innovation
D) obsolete product
The price at which one division in an organization sells a product or information about
innovations to another division in the same organization is called ________ price.
A) developmental
B) historic
C) aggregated
D) transfer
Triad Systems, every year, gives the Grindstone Award to those individuals who most
consistently demonstrate initiative, focus, dedication, and persistence. This is an
example of a rite of ________.
A) enhancement
B) passage
C) integration
D) responsibility
Which of the following types of power is most likely to be possessed by a CEO of an
organization?
A) nonsubstitutability
B) referent power
C) authority
D) expert power
________ is a cognitive bias that deceives people into assuming that extreme instances
of a phenomenon are more prevalent than they really are.
A) Frequency
B) Illusion of control
C) Ego-defensiveness
D) Cognitive dissonance
________ is a cognitive bias that causes managers to overestimate the extent to which
they can manipulate the outcomes of an action.
A) Representativeness
B) Illusion of control
C) Frequency
D) Ego-defensiveness
Which of the following statements is most likely to be true about generalists?
A) Generalists concentrate their competences and skills to compete for resources in a
single niche.
B) Generalists are more likely to use matrix organizational structure than specialists.
C) Generalists are more likely to use product differentiation strategy than the
specialists.
D) Generalists can often outcompete specialists when there is considerable uncertainty
in the environment.
Which of the following is one of the two conditions that lead to a moral hazard
problem?
A) the principal possesses more information than the agent
B) the agent has an incentive to pursue goals and objectives that are different from the
principal’s
C) the principal acts in his own best interest, as opposed to the interests of the other
stakeholders
D) the agent is given the authority to allocate scarce organizational resources
A “________” is a task force, a temporary team that is created to expedite new product
design and to promote innovation by coordinating the activities of functional groups.
Typically, this team operates at a separate facility, at a location isolated from the rest of
the organization.
A) workers’ union
B) kaizen group
C) skunk works
D) quality circle
According to the principle of systems thinking, to create a learning organization,
________.
A) decision-making should be centralized
B) managers must recognize the effects of one level of learning on the others
C) span of control should be narrow
D) middle and lower-level managers should be discouraged from risk taking
Research evidence suggests that an organization with 3,000 employees is most likely to
have ________ levels in its hierarchy.
A) five
B) six
C) seven
D) nine
Researchers analyzing what CEOs and managers do for measuring organizational
effectiveness, have pointed to ________ as the three most important processes
managers use to assess and measure how effective they, and their organizations, are at
creating value.
A) innovation, efficiency, and differentiation
B) differentiation, control, and environmental scanning
C) control, innovation, and efficiency
D) environmental scanning, control, and innovation
According to the capitalistic view, the primary goal of an organization is to ________.
A) maximize shareholder wealth
B) form long-term relationships with suppliers
C) satisfy employees
D) satisfy customers
Land is an example of a(n) ________.
A) liquid asset
B) organizational resource
C) deferred revenue asset
D) functional resource
Usually, Sales has a relatively ________ hierarchy because supervisors use ________.
A) flat; centralization
B) flat; standardization
C) tall; centralization
D) tall; standardization
The ________ approach allows managers to evaluate the organization’s ability to
secure, manage, and control scarce and valued skills and resources.
A) external resource
B) internal systems
C) technical
D) transaction
Which of the following actions taken by an organization leads to the creation of strong
property rights?
A) using 360 degrees performance evaluation method for conducting employee
appraisals
B) centralizing decision-making authority
C) giving innovative employees stock options proportional to the increase in
profitability that can be attributed to their efforts
D) giving employees an opportunity to learn new skills with the help of job rotation
With reference to the types of technologies as identified by Thompson, hospitals are
organizations that use ________ technology.
A) intensive
B) mediating
C) long-linked
D) continuous-process
Which of the following controls an organization’s behavior when it is in the “growth
through creativity” stage of Greiner’s model?
A) organizational culture
B) organizational structure
C) rules and standard operating procedures
D) industrial benchmarking
Which of the following statements is true regarding the Carnegie model?
A) The Carnegie model ignores the variation in managers’ preferences and values and
assumes different managers will evaluate different alternatives in the same way.
B) The Carnegie model offers a less accurate description of how decision-making takes
place in an organization than does the rational model.
C) The Carnegie model recognizes that decision-making takes place in an uncertain
environment where information is often incomplete and ambiguous.
D) The Carnegie model assumes that managers generate the full range of possible
alternatives before making decisions.
An organization uses task forces to coordinate the activities of various departments.
Employees also work in teams to increase coordination. This organization most likely
has a(n) ________ structure.
A) mechanistic
B) bureaucratic
C) organic
D) centralized
Discuss the Parkinson’s law problem.
What is whistle-blowing?
What are the three models of ethics?
What is environmental complexity?
Define span of control. What are the various factors that affect the span of control?
What are the disadvantages of vertical integration?
Describe the advantages of using a just-in-time inventory system.