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Entrepreneurship and Effective Small Business Management, 11e, Global Edition
(Scarborough)
Chapter 21 Staffing and Leading a Growing Company
1) The process of influencing and inspiring others to work to achieve a common goal and then
giving them the power and freedom to achieve it is called:
A) management.
B) goal or objective setting.
C) performance appraisal.
D) leadership.
2) Today's leader is different from leaders in the past in that he/she:
A) is now like an orchestra conductor, guiding the members through the proper use of power.
B) is like a referee in a TV wrestling match, running about, yelling directions, and keeping the
organization's members from killing themselves.
C) is like the leader of a jazz band, guiding individual and group creativity and innovation.
D) is in tight control of resources and authority but delegating responsibility and opportunity.
3) Effective leaders are noted for their:
A) ability to get their followers to do what they themselves can't or won't do.
B) ability to provide guidance based on values for making decisions.
C) willingness to assign responsibility while retaining authority so they can monitor employee
success.
D) focused seriousness in achieving goals, working hard and then harder.
4) If you were evaluating your college administration for effective leadership behaviors, you
need to look for:
A) their ability to husband and protect resources from misuse.
B) their short-term focus, their ability to see the detail needing to be accomplished.
C) the ability to encourage creativity in employees.
D) all of these things.
5) ________ is the process of influencing and inspiring others to work to achieve a common goal
and then giving them the power and the freedom to achieve it.
A) Leadership
B) Meditation
C) Training
D) Management
6) If a company is to succeed, a leader must perform four vital tasks which include:
A) knowing what to do.
B) motivate workers to higher levels of performance.
C) knowing how to do.
D) wanting to do something.
7) Sometimes effective communication is blocked between leaders and followers by:
A) information overload or ambiguity in the communication.
B) the followers' use of the grapevine.
C) the lack of nonverbal signals in an e-mail message.
D) the leader being too empathetic when talking with followers.
8) Miguel and Jamie are talking. Miguel keeps using baseball metaphors as he is giving
instructions to Jamie. Not having any experience with baseball, Jamie is only understanding
about half of what Miguel is saying. Miguel and Jamie are experiencing ineffective
communication because of:
A) information overload.
B) Miguel not expressing his feelings.
C) ambiguity in the communication.
D) the conflicting verbal and nonverbal messages Jamie is giving to Miguel.
9) To increase the effectiveness of communication between the small business owner and his/her
employees, he/she should practice:
A) selective listening.
B) being more sympathetic when listening.
C) giving as much information as possible in each communication.
D) telling the truth and encouraging feedback.
10) Tom is counseling an employee who is facing corrective discipline for a serious error in
judgment on the job. The employee is very upset. Tom is trying to understand how the employee
feels and strives to tell the employee he knows that this is a tough time and that the employee is
upset. Tom is using ________ to improve his communication with the employee.
A) feedback
B) empathy
C) clear organization in his thoughts
D) ambiguity
11) The grapevine in most organizations is:
A) almost always incorrect in its content.
B) nonexistent in organizations where management communicates face to face and by memo.
C) the first place employees hear about major organizational changes.
D) generally only used by troublemakers and gossips within the organization.
12) When it comes to hiring in the small business:
A) each hire is very important because bad hires are very expensive.
B) it is only moderately expensive because bad hires can be quickly fixed due to the small
business's flexibility.
C) they tend to be in full compliance of EEOC and HRM laws, more so than large companies
because the hiring process is done by very few individuals.
D) the small business owner is almost always in violation of some federal regulation due to the
lack of an HRM professional on staff.
13) Kim, the human resources manager, is conducting an orderly and systematic evaluation of all
the facts about a new position in order to determine what kind of employee to hire and how to
compensate the position. This is called a:
A) job description.
B) human resource plan.
C) job specification.
D) job analysis.
14) When conducting a job analysis, an employer needs to focus on questions about:
A) duties and tasks to be performed daily.
B) the skill, experience, and education necessary to perform the job.
C) when certain people will be needed by the company due to growth.
D) employee work habits.
15) A ________ outlines the duties and responsibilities associated with a job and the working
conditions involved.
A) job analysis
B) job description
C) job specification
D) human resource plan
16) Lusia, the director of human resources, is discussing the duties and responsibilities of a new
position and its working conditions with Delmar, the manager over the position. Lusia and
Delmar are discussing the:
A) job description.
B) human resource plan.
C) job specification.
D) job analysis.
17) Gustavo is writing up a ________ in order to describe the best job candidate in terms of
skills, education, experience, and other personal job-related characteristics.
A) job specification
B) human resource plan
C) job description
D) job analysis
18) A job specification:
A) determines when certain people will be needed by the company due to growth.
B) evaluates employee work habits.
C) translates the duties of the position into qualifications.
D) identifies the skill, experience, and education necessary to perform the job.
19) To conduct an effective interview, the manager or small business owner should:
A) only make minimal preparations to permit spontaneity in the interview.
B) use close-ended questions in order to maintain control of the interview.
C) not allow employees to spend time with the candidate to avoid them asking illegal questions.
D) ask candidates for examples of both successes and failures.
20) When conducting the job interview, the small business owner should:
A) begin by explaining the job and the company and asking low key questions.
B) talk as much as he/she listens.
C) never use hypothetical questions.
D) focus on the candidate's verbal responses, largely ignoring the nonverbals.
21) When it comes to enforcing employment laws and the job interviewing process, the EEOC:
A) flatly outlaws certain specific questions.
B) watches for questions that can lead to employment discrimination.
C) provides an interviewing guide with approved questions for use by the entrepreneur.
D) is largely unconcerned about job interviews in small businesses unless someone files a
complaint.
22) When checking references, the small business owner:
A) can largely ignore the references of professional job candidates.
B) should also talk with previous employers, not just the references provided.
C) may only ask for confirmation of employment dates, job title, and salary information.
D) is able to ask any question of the reference to find about things he/she could not ask the
candidate.
23) A company's culture:
A) plays an important part in the development of the company's competitive advantage.
B) generally has little effect on employee behavior due to the more powerful influence of
national culture.
C) is relatively easy to change and adapt to changing company strategies.
D) arises more from the employees than from the founder, emphasizing the importance of the
hiring process.
24) If a business owner goes to self-directed work teams, he/she is most likely using the
________ style of management.
A) team-based
B) big-team venture
C) entrepreneur-plus-employee team
D) small partnership
25) The implementation of teams fails sometimes because:
A) too many high performers are placed on one team and they compete with each other.
B) the implementation of team-based pay inhibits individual achievement and the whole team
suffers.
C) the team leader and team members do not receive adequate training.
D) of all of these things.
26) Teams can be helped to succeed by:
A) placing a few underperformers on the team to minimize internal conflict.
B) forming teams around natural work flows, giving them specific tasks.
C) keeping pay based on individual effort.
D) not permitting teams' involvement in the assessment of their own performance.
27) In the stages of team development, a team is at the performance stage when it:
A) has its highest expectations.
B) recognizes fully the time and effort that will be involved.
C) begins to reset its goals and roles.
D) achieves commitment to the process and task.
28) ________ is the degree of effort an employee exerts to accomplish a task.
A) Empowerment
B) Job performance
C) Motivation
D) Open book management
29) When workers are empowered:
A) there tends to be increased confusion over specific responsibilities.
B) they are more successful on the job.
C) they initially experience significant anxiety of using their skills.
D) the company will lose about 20% of its workforce that doesn't want the responsibility.
30) Empowerment works best in work environments where:
A) mistakes are quickly identified and punished.
B) authority and responsibility are given out incremental to the most trusted employees.
C) managers function as coaches not as bosses.
D) there is minimal training.
31) Open book management is one technique that supports:
A) a job redesign strategy.
B) the empowering of employees.
C) job enrichment.
D) effective job hiring.
32) Jasmine is cross-training employees so they can move among several different jobs in order
to provide more challenging work for them and to make better use of their skills for the
company. Jasmine is involved in:
A) job simplification.
B) job enlargement.
C) job enrichment.
D) job rotation.
33) When a small business owner increases the variety of skills needed on a job, permits the
worker to complete an entire job rather than a portion of it, and gives the worker more freedom
of decision on how to perform the job, the owner is using:
A) job simplification.
B) job enrichment.
C) job enlargement.
D) job rotation.
34) When employees can set their own work hours within certain guidelines, they are involved
in:
A) flextime.
B) flexplace.
C) job sharing.
D) hoteling.
35) ________ is a group of workers from different functional areas of a company who work
together as a unit largely without supervision, making decisions and performing tasks that once
belonged only to managers.
A) Team-based management
B) Small partnership
C) Self-directed work team
D) Entrepreneur-plus-employee team
36) ________ involves giving workers at every level of the organization the authority, the
freedom, and the responsibility to control their own work, to make decisions, and to take action
to meet the company's objectives.
A) Empowerment
B) Open-book management
C) Job simplification
D) Job enlargement
37) For a pay-for-performance system to work, it should:
A) be exclusive; only the best performers may be part of the plan.
B) make sure that pay and performance are clearly and closely linked.
C) be complex enough to include all elements that affect performance.
D) be administered by an outside agency on a contract basis to avoid bias.
38) When motivating employees, small business owners need to know that:
A) money always motivates and never loses its power to motivate.
B) today's workers are more materialistic than in the past.
C) today's workers are far more concerned about job security than money.
D) some of the greatest motivators are the simplest—praise, recognition, etc.
39) A motivational tool that also helps to guide performance and lets the owner know that his/her
company is accomplishing its operational goals is:
A) benchmarking.
B) feedback.
C) job redesign.
D) a human resource audit.
40) The first step in establishing a feedback loop is deciding:
A) who will be responsible for the measurement of performance.
B) how to measure performance criteria.
C) what will be measured.
D) why it will be measured.
41) Jackson is comparing this month's operational costs, productivity, accident rate, etc., to the
goals his boss set with him at the beginning of the year. Jackson is at what point in the feedback
loop?
A) Comparing performance against standards
B) Deciding what to measure
C) Deciding how to measure performance
D) Conducting a performance appraisal
42) In the feedback loop, the final and most important step is when the manager/small business
owner:
A) compares actual performance against the standards.
B) takes action to improve performance.
C) finds who is responsible for either shortfalls or surpassing of standards.
D) plans for the future.
43) A ________ is used by the owner of a small business to determine wage and salary increases,
need for training, overall job progress, etc., among other things.
A) human resource plan
B) job redesign
C) compensation plan
D) performance appraisal
44) Employees' biggest complaint about performance appraisals tends to be:
A) they are unfair and do not measure what they actually do.
B) that they only happen periodically, generally once a year.
C) that they are more demotivating than motivating.
D) most managers don't know how to conduct them.
45) An effective performance appraisal system:
A) focuses on behavior, action, and results.
B) focuses on fixing employee weaknesses.
C) is both personal and general in terms of the comments made.
D) is dominated by the manager giving feedback and asking if he/she is understood.
46) ________ involves cross-training employees so they can move from one job in the company
to others, giving them a greater number and variety of tasks to perform.
A) Job enlargement
B) Job simplification
C) Open-book management
D) Job rotation
47) Which one of the following should NOT be part of a leader's behavior?
A) Sets clear goals
B) Shares their vision
C) Maintains distance with employees
D) Rewards employees who meet or exceed the firm's performance targets
48) Effective leaders exhibit certain behaviors. An example would be:
A) behave with integrity in all situations and at all times.
B) look into future.
C) communicate with employees.
D) All of the above
49) Two functions are interrelated and remain a continuing challenge to achieve for leaders.
They are:
A) staff their organization with the right people and then create the most appropriate work
environment.
B) behave with integrity in all situations and at all times.
C) respect and support their employees.
D) focus employees' efforts on challenging goals and keep them driving toward those goals.
50) The first objective of a job analysis is to develop a job description. The second objective is to
create a:
A) job interview outline.
B) advertisement in the newspaper.
C) job specification.
D) None of the above
51) Some of the most valuable interview questions attempt:
A) to gain insight into the candidate's ability to reason and be logical.
B) to be creative.
C) Both A and B
D) to be similar to the job description.
52) Many courses have team projects. A team can be powerfully effective in terms of
performance when:
A) their mission and performance targets are realistic and known to the team members.
B) the team has the needed skill.
C) the nature of the work is compatible with the use of teams.
D) All of the above
53) The most important role the entrepreneur can play in his/her company is that of manager.
54) Management skills keep the leader under some degree of control.
55) An effective leader helps employees focus their efforts on goals and keeps them driving to
accomplish them.
56) An important part of effective leadership is not only communicating with employees but also
providing them with the resources necessary to achieve their goals.
57) The small business leader performs four vital tasks; communicating the vision, finding the
necessary resources to accomplish the vision, finding the external expertise to help accomplish
the vision, and the ability to motivate his/her own workers to achieve the vision.
58) Leadership is like management in that it maintains order and structure in the accomplishment
of goals.
59) Leaders recognize that helping workers see the company's overarching goal is just one part
of effective communication.
60) Sometimes personal defense mechanisms and confusing verbal and nonverbal messages
interfere with leader/follower communication.
61) To improve communication, leaders should use written means, e-mail, memos, notes, etc., to
ensure clarity and to be able to track that instructions were given.
62) Listening is the entrepreneur's most important communication skill.
63) Hiring is very important for the small company, because the typical entry-level hire that quits
in six months costs the company about $5,000 besides the wages and benefits paid.
64) Leadership is the process of influencing and inspiring others to work to achieve a common
goal and then giving them the power and the freedom to achieve it.
65) Job description explains what a job entails and the duties the person filling it is expected to
perform.
