Management, 9e (Kinicki)
Chapter 10 Organizational Change and Innovation: Lifelong Challenges
for the Exceptional Manager
1) The marketplace is becoming less homogeneous and moving toward more niche products.
2) Reactive change involves making carefully thought-out changes in anticipation of possible or
expected problems or opportunities.
3) Walt Disney Company’s investment of $1 billion into a wearable technology that it hopes will
revolutionize the way visitors spend money at Walt Disney World, featuring a website (“My
Disney Experience”) and data-collecting wristbands (“MagicBands”) that interact with scanners
throughout the 40-square-mile theme park, is an example of proactive change.
4) B corporations are ones whose stocks are NOT listed on NASDAQ or as part of the Dow Jones
Industrial Average.
5) During annual inventory week, a department store may ask its employees to work 12 hours a
day instead of the usual 8. During tax-preparation time, the store’s accounting department may
work similar hours. Although accounting employees are in a different department from stockroom
and sales employees, it’s reasonable to expect that the accounting employees wouldn’t be terribly
upset by the temporary change in hours because they’ve seen it in effect elsewhere in the store.
This is an example of innovative change.
6) An example of innovative change is a department store deciding to adopt a new practice used by
competitors by staying open 24 hours a day and requiring employees to work flexible schedules, a
change that employees are likely to see as moderately threatening.
7) Adaptive change is the least threatening type of change and is therefore least likely to create
resistance.
8) Corporate restructurings threaten to eliminate jobs and generally trigger strong resistance.
9) Crowdsourcing is an example of innovation.
10) Procter & Gamble modified a liquid detergent to make it available as a concentrated powder in
a pouch. P&G’s new product is an example of an improvement innovation.
11) Which of the following is NOT a supertrend shaping the future of business?
A) more niche products
B) information becoming a competitive advantage
C) traditional companies struggling with radically innovative change
D) offshore suppliers affecting U.S. business
E) faster speed-to-market
12) ________ change is made in response to arising problems or opportunities. BP’s response to an
explosion on a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico is an example of this kind of change.
A) Radical
B) Incremental
C) Proactive
D) Reactive
E) Process
13) Which of the following is an example of a proactive change?
A) Mirabel’s staff is unhappy about the long hours they have been working and several of them
quit before she knows there is a problem.
B) Mirabel’s group sends a product that is nearing its launch date back to the drawing board based
on a competitor’s superior new offering.
C) Mirabel cannot get permission to hire another person until her group misses several deadlines.
D) Mirabel is constantly “putting out fires,” responding to daily crises in her group.
E) Mirabel explores improvements in bonus structures with her staff and begins to implement
them despite the fact that her employees are generally content.
14) Walmart’s implementation of RFID, a type of technology that allows it to improve inventory
tracking, is an example of a(n) ________ change because Walmart already had a very effective
technology tracking system in place before it implemented RFID.
A) reactive
B) incremental
C) cultural
D) responsive
E) proactive
15) Which of the following is an example of a force for change originating outside the
organization?
A) productivity issues
B) conflict management
C) structural reorganization
D) social and political pressures
E) absenteeism
16) The increasing diversity of the American workforce, and the fact that people aged 18–34 are
more likely to be living with their parents than with a spouse or partner, are both examples of a(n)
________ force for change.
A) market
B) demographic
C) social and political
D) political
E) economic
17) The invention of a machine to make plastic corks for wine bottles has severely affected
companies that produce traditional cork. The invention of the machine for making plastic corks is
an example of a(n) ________ advancement.
A) market
B) social and political
C) technological
D) demographical
E) economic
18) In the Internet Age, retailers like Amazon and Apple are not constrained by physical shelf
space and can offer consumers a much wider variety of products; yet small sales, one or two rather
than millions of items at a time, can produce big profits. This development is an example of
A) the marketplace becoming more segmented and moving toward more niche products.
B) declining population in developed countries.
C) China becoming the second-largest economic power.
D) the rise of business-to-business technology.
E) instant-gratification shopping.
19) Which of the following is an inside force for change?
A) domestic competition
B) recession
C) advancements in automation
D) immigration
E) low productivity and turnover
20) Which of the following is NOT an inside force that indicates organizational change might be
needed?
A) high turnover
B) excessive conflict between managers and employees
C) increased competition
D) high levels of stress among employees
E) job dissatisfaction
21) Firms such as Patagonia and Seventh Generation actively collect information about customer
preferences and try to address them in their new products. Patagonia and Seventh Generation are
actively trying to adapt to
A) shareholder, customer, and market changes.
B) social and political pressures.
C) human resource concerns.
D) managers’ behavior.
E) technological advancements.
22) The human resource manager at Creative Minds Inc. has just calculated that the employee
absenteeism rate for 2017 is 18 percent higher than it was in 2016, and the turnover rate increased
20 percent over the same time period. Which of the following is NOT an option she should
consider for improving the situation?
A) Wait until 2018 and see what the turnover rate is at the end of that year.
B) Deal with employees’ possible work overloads.
C) Identify causes of job dissatisfaction.
D) Address and adjust job design.
E) Identify possible employee role conflicts.
23) Lexie, a new manager, must enforce sales report deadlines, but her team is struggling. She
creates a new system to streamline the process and helps everyone understand why the deadlines
are important. On which of the following internal forces is Lexie trying to have an impact?
A) demographic characteristics
B) shareholder, customer, and market changes
C) manager’s behavior
D) human resource concerns
E) social and political pressures
24) Studies exploring nurses’ perceptions about using PDAs in their daily patient practice found
initial resistance, with some nurses concerned about the cost and short technological life cycle of
these devices. As part of the ________ stage of change, the nurses’ managers try to instill in them
the motivation to change, encouraging them to let go of attitudes and behaviors that are resistant to
innovation.
A) unfreezing
B) freezing
C) change
D) refreezing
E) thawing
25) Fresh and Clean, Inc. is considering implementing a system that will pay its cleaning workers
based on the number of completed residential jobs, coupled with satisfactory ratings on random
inspections to ensure quality. This system is new to the organization, and it is an example of
________ change.
A) adaptive
B) innovative
C) familiar
D) radically innovative
E) highly complex
26) South Beach Insurance is about to begin using a program that will change the way its adjusters
settle insurance claims. Adjusters will be able to complete an adjustment and issue a check right at
the scene of the accident. Although employees are uncertain that the new system will work, other
insurance agencies have been successful with this approach. At South Beach Insurance, the new
program represents ________ change.
A) motivated
B) innovative
C) adaptive
D) radically innovative
E) refusal to
27) Deliver Fast’s customer complaints have increased because its drivers often get lost when
attempting deliveries, which means that the deliveries arrived late. The drivers have resisted using
GPS systems, claiming they know their territories. But managers are now encouraging them to
look for the best solution to the increased level of customer complaints. Deliver Fast is in the
________ stage of Lewin’s change model.
A) changing
B) unfreezing
C) evaluation
D) learning
E) refreezing
28) ________ is an emotional/behavioral response to real or imagined threats to an established
work routine.
A) Change agency
B) Benchmarking
C) OD intervention
D) Radical innovation
E) Resistance to change
29) Which of the following is NOT a factor that affects the level of resistance to change?
A) the gender of the change agent
B) employee characteristics and perceptions of change
C) the change agent’s leadership style
D) change agent-employee relationship
E) the change agent’s ability to empathize with the employee‘s perspective
30) The two cofounders of Impact Technology, a data-storage firm in Research Triangle Park,
North Carolina, were feuding with each other because one founder couldn’t stick to his decisions,
which drove the other founder crazy. Who should work with the warring executives in separate
sessions to solve the problem?
A) organizational behavior specialist
B) family doctor
C) informational technologist
D) acquisition consultant
E) labor relations specialist
31) Employees are likely to see an adaptive change as
A) highly threatening.
B) moderately threatening.
C) least threatening.
D) significantly complex, costly, and uncertain.
E) totally unacceptable.
32) At Toys and Games, employees know that during the December shopping season they are
often required to work different schedules, weekends, and overtime. The December work
schedules at Toys and Games is an example of a(n) ________ change because workers have
experienced it in the past. (They experience it every December.)
A) reactive
B) adaptive
C) innovative
D) incremental
E) radically innovative
33) As owner and senior accountant at a tax preparation firm, Ben is changing the work schedule
of all employees, including managers and accountants, for the months of March and April, the
company’s busiest time. He is requiring everyone to work on weekends, just as he has during the
tax-preparation season for the last ten years. How does Ben predict the employees will react?
A) They will be terribly upset and will quit.
B) They will be moderately upset but not be willing to quit.
C) They will be moderately upset and complain.
D) They will hardly be upset or not be upset at all.
E) They will be terribly upset but not quit.
34) ________ change introduces a new practice to an organization but one that is not new to the
industry.
A) Proactive
B) Adaptive
C) Innovative
D) Reactive
E) Radically innovative
35) An innovative change involves ________ complexity, cost, and uncertainty.
A) no
B) minimum
C) hidden
D) moderate
E) extreme
36) Merchants Credit Union has decided that tellers must rotate through a new weekend shift on
Saturday afternoons because several of its financial competitors have recently begun to offer
additional hours to customers. Merchants Credit Union is implementing a(n) ________ change.
A) radically innovative
B) reactive
C) adaptive
D) proactive
E) innovative
37) A(n) ________ change involves introducing a practice that is new to the industry, such as
using drones (rather than delivery trucks) to deliver products to customers.
A) revolutionary
B) adaptive
C) radically innovative
D) reactive
E) innovative
38) Beam Satellite Network has decided to offer a one-hour appointment window for customers
needing installation or repair of its service, which will require the company to have several
technicians on call. Beam hopes this practice will give it an advantage over the competition, none
of which have adopted such a practice. Beam Satellite Network is introducing a(n) ________
change.
A) reactive
B) innovative
C) radically innovative
D) adaptive
E) active
39) Which of the following is NOT a leading reason that employees resist change?
A) individual predisposition toward change
B) lack of personal ethics
C) fear of failure
D) climate of mistrust
E) non-reinforcing reward systems
40) Lewin’s change model consists of
A) three stages: unfreezing, changing, and refreezing.
B) three forces: employee characteristics, change agent characteristics, and change agent–
employee relationships.
C) four steps: recognize problems, gain allies, overcome resistance, and execute.
D) three types: adaptive, innovative, and radically innovative.
E) three steps: diagnosis, intervention, and evaluation.
41) During Lewin’s changing stage, managers should
A) reduce the barriers to change.
B) make employees dissatisfied with the present situation.
C) reinforce the desired change.
D) give employees new information, perspectives, and models for behavior.
E) encourage employees to exhibit the new change.