A significant discovery in equity theory research is that people tend to keep one specific
comparison other throughout their working lives.
Shared leadership is the view that anyone in the organization may be a leader in various
ways and at various times.
All employees working in a matrix organization have two bosses.
Job sharing and telecommuting are usually considered ways to reduce stress through
increasing work/life balance.
Implicit leadership theory focuses on followers’ perceptions of leadership.
The main problem with the encounter stage of socialization is that outsiders rely on
indirect information about what it is like to work in the organization.
Pilot projects are usually more flexible and less risky than centralized,
organization-wide programs.
Employees in a department are considered a team only when they directly interact and
coordinate work activities with each other.
An individual’s self-concept can be described by four characteristics: complexity,
consistency, character, and clarity.
The only way employees get ahead is by developing their competencies.
Preconceived mental models formed by our cognitive structure help us make better and
accurate decisions.
Which of the following statements is true of the relationship conflicts in a highly
cohesive team?
A. Relationship conflicts tend to be more frequent because of the high cohesion.
B. Mediation is needed to resolve relationship conflicts among team members.
C. Relationship conflict is absent in such teams.
D. Conflicts tend to be more in such teams if it has a large number of members.
E. Relationship conflict is suppressed when the conflict occurs.
TelecommcoThe chief executive of Telecommco, a large telecommunications company,
wanted to restructure the organization so product leaders would have more power than
the executives in charge of each region. The regional executives tried to prevent this
restructuring because it would weaken their power and possibly reduce their salaries in
the long term. The product leaders also put up some resistance because they felt that
things worked the way they were.This action by the regional executives is mainly an
example of resistance due to:
A. not-invented-here syndrome.
B. fear of the unknown.
C. negative valence of change.
D. breaking routines.
E. incongruent organizational systems.
Which of the following concepts consists of aptitudes, skills, and competencies?
A. Motivation
B. Personality
C. Values
D. Ethics
E. Ability
Which of the following is the primary aspect of job enlargement?
A. Autonomy
B. Affiliation
C. Job feedback
D. Growth need strength
E. Skill variety
During a meeting, senior executives of a consumer products company were addressing
the problem of being late in detecting several consumer trends, such as the trend toward
using see-through plastics in kitchenware. While trying to determine the source of this
problem, one executive said: “The main problem here is that we need to find a better
industrial design firm to design our products.” Which of the following best describes
the decision-making problem that this executive is exhibiting?
A. The executive is engaging in escalation of commitment.
B. The executive is being too creative.
C. The executive is involved in participative decision making.
D. The executive is engaging in groupthink.
E. The executive is defining the problem in terms of a solution.
When merging two organizations, a separation strategy is most commonly applied
when:
A. both companies have relatively weak cultures that are generally ineffective.
B. one company has an effective culture and employees at the other company would
embrace that culture if applied to them.
C. the two organizations operate in distinct industries.
D. the acquired firm’s culture doesn’t work, whereas the culture of the acquiring firm
does work.
E. a bicultural audit reveals that both companies have very similar cultures.
Buffering, summarizing, and omitting are ways to:
A. reduce information overload.
B. avoid organizational risk.
C. avoid the risk of flaming.
D. improve communication between men and women.
E. increase media richness.
Which of the following describes the fundamental attribution error?
A. People seldom make attributions about their own behavior.
B. The likelihood of making an error attributing the behavior of another person
increases with your familiarity of that other person.
C. We tend to believe that other people have the same beliefs and behaviors that we
have.
D. We tend to believe the behavior of other people is caused more by their motivation
and ability than by factors beyond their control.
E. We tend to believe that colleagues perform their jobs better than we perform our job.
Which of the following tends to happen when an organization’s culture is misaligned
with its external environment?
A. The corporate culture gets stronger.
B. The organization’s subcultures weaken.
C. The organization has more difficulty anticipating and responding to stakeholder
needs.
D. The organization is unable to develop subcultures.
E. The various subcultures within the organization keep changing.
An organization asks its employees to reframe the problems in a unique way and
generate different approaches to the problems. Which of the following stages in the
creative process would assist this?
A. Verification
B. Preparation
C. Experimentation
D. Illumination
E. Incubation
What is the significance of artifacts in organizational culture?
A. Artifacts are the same as organizational culture.
B. Artifacts are the residual parts of the organization that cannot fit into its culture.
C. Artifacts represent the directly observable symbols and signs of an organization’s
culture.
D. Artifacts are the main observable indicators that the organization does not have a
culture.
E. Artifacts mainly reflect the subcultures that conflict with an organization’s dominant
culture.
Bob’s Small BusinessBob owns a small business with 12 employees. He is anticipating
a large contract in the near future which he hopes will triple his profit and double the
number of employees he will hire. Bob has always been a very likable man and a
dependable, hard-working person. He is very worried about his ability to take on twice
as many employees and continue on a successful path.From the information provided,
which of the following best encompasses Bob’s weakest leadership competency
according to the competency perspective?
A. Self-concept
B. Integrity
C. Cognitive intelligence
D. Personality
E. Practical intelligence
Fiedler’s contingency model of leadership has made an important and lasting
contribution to the study of leadership because it:
A. is the only leadership theory to adopt a contingency approach.
B. was the first theory to recognize the existence of leadership substitutes.
C. suggests that organizations need to engineer the situation to fit the leader’s preferred
style.
D. discovered that effective leaders do not have a common set of competencies.
E. is the only theory to adopt the implicit leadership perspective.
Which of the following statements portrays the essence of appreciative coaching?
A. Managers should provide frequent corrective feedback to employees.
B. Organizations should concentrate on maintaining a participative management style.
C. Employees should openly discuss their problems with their managers.
D. An organization should strike a balance between punishments and rewards.
E. Managers should concentrate on the strengths of employees rather than their
weaknesses.
According to expectancy theory, giving more valued rewards to employees with higher
job performance mainly increases motivation by:
A. strengthening the E-to-P expectancies of employees.
B. introducing a negative valence in the organization.
C. weakening the E-to-P expectancies of employees.
D. strengthening both the E-to-P and P-to-O expectancies of employees.
E. strengthening the P-to-O expectancies of employees.
People with high collectivism:
A. accept unequal distribution of power.
B. also have low individualism.
C. value harmonious relationships in the groups to which they belong.
D. value thrift, savings, and persistence.
E. appreciate the unique qualities that distinguish themselves from others.
Store #34 of CDA Hardware Associates has had below average sales over the past few
years. As head of franchise operations, you are concerned with the continued low sales
volume. The store manager wants you to diagnose the problem and recommend
possible causes. Use the MARS model of individual behavior and performance to
provide four different types of reasons why employees at Store #34 might be
performing below average. Provide one example for each type of explanation.
Briefly describe the four stages in the Four-D model of appreciative inquiry.
Discuss the conceptual anchors based on which organizational behavior is developed
and redefined.
Explain the organization-environment fit concept of the open systems perspective.
What are team norms? How are they developed in an organization?
A few organizations have recently tried to minimize employee use of email when
communicating with colleagues. Discuss two reasons why companies might want to
minimize the use of email.
Describe the three ideas of social cognitive theory that are most relevant to employee
motivation.