Deck 1: Introduction to the Field of Organizational Behaviour

Question 1

One problem with the open systems perspective is that it neglects to focus on how well the organization operates internally.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

An important principle in organizational behaviour is that OB theories should never be used to question or rebuild one's mental models.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Intellectual capital represents the stock of knowledge held by an organization.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

At present there is only one organizational behaviour perspective which adequately defines organizational effectiveness.

Question 5

The most efficient companies are not necessarily the most effective ones.

Question 6

Intellectual capital includes,among other things,the knowledge captured in an organization's systems and structures.

Question 7

Organizational behaviour knowledge helps us influence people and organizational events.

Question 8

Evidence indicates that applying organizational behaviour knowledge tends to improve the organization's financial performance.

Question 9

Scholars have been studying organizational behaviour since the days of Greek philosophers.

Question 10

Social entities are called organizations only when their members work interdependently toward some purpose.

Question 11

All organizations have a collective sense of purpose.

Question 12

The goal attainment definition of effectiveness focuses on whether the organization achieves its stated goals.

Question 13

Organizational efficiency refers to the amount of outputs relative to inputs in the transformation process.

Question 14

Knowledge management develops an organization's capacity to acquire,share,use and store valuable knowledge.

Question 15

Almost all organizational behaviour theories share an implicit or explicit objective of making organizations more effective.

Question 16

The open systems perspective emphasizes that organizations survive by adapting to changes in the external environment.

Question 17

In order for something to be called an organization it must have buildings and equipment.

Question 18

As organizations grow,they tend to develop more subsystems and coordination among them become more complex.

Question 19

Organizational effectiveness,and not profitability,is considered the "ultimate dependent variable" in organizational behaviour.

Question 20

The best organizational practices are those built on research suggesting that organizations are closed systems.

Question 21

Organizational memory includes knowledge embedded in the organization's systems and structures.

Question 22

Structural capital refers to buildings and other depreciable tangible assets.

Question 23

Ethics refers to the study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad.

Question 24

One of the fastest ways to acquire knowledge is to hire individuals or purchase entire companies that have valued knowledge.

Question 25

One survey reported that most Canadian would choose to leave their current job for a more environmentally friendly employer.

Question 26

One reason why workplace values have become more important is that employees increasingly value command-and-control direct supervision.

Question 27

According to a recent survey,93 percent of Canadians believe that corporate social responsibility is as important to companies as profit and shareholder value.

Question 28

The "triple bottom line" philosophy says that successful organizations focus on financial performance three times more often than do less successful organizations.

Question 29

Values represent an individual's short term beliefs about what will happen in the future.

Question 30

Task performance refers to goal-directed behaviours under the individual's control that support organizational objectives.

Question 31

The high performance work practices perspective supports the idea that organizations should strive to find "one best way" to do things.

Question 32

Successful organizations should never 'unlearn' knowledge that they have previously gained,because all knowledge is valuable.

Question 33

One criticism of the high performance work practices perspective is that it promotes shareholder and customer satisfaction at the expense of employee well-being.

Question 34

The concept of values is an important aspect of the stakeholder perspective.

Question 35

Values are relatively stable,long-lasting beliefs about what is important in a variety of situations.

Question 36

Values guide our preferences and motivate our actions.

Question 37

Stakeholders are individuals,organizations,or other entities that affect,or are affected by the organization.

Question 38

In most jobs,employees are evaluated on several performance dimensions.

Question 39

Organizational citizenship behaviours are usually described clearly in job descriptions.

Question 40

Knowledge acquisition can only be achieved through formal education

Question 41

Research indicates that baby boomers and Generation-X employees bring the same values and expectations to the workplace.

Question 42

Some researches suggest that telecommuting potentially reduces employee stress.

Question 43

Globalization may have both positive and negative implications for people working in organizations.

Question 44

One employment relationship trend is the focus away from work/life balance and virtual work,because of the extra stress these place on workers.

Question 45

Those who engage in counterproductive work behaviours do so voluntarily.

Question 46

Sick leave policies affect the employee's motivation to attend work.

Question 47

Surface-level diversity refers to observable demographic and other overt differences in people.

Question 48

When we describe multiculturalism we are primarily referring to surface-level diversity.

Question 49

Teams with diverse members usually take longer to perform effectively.

Question 50

Research has found that absenteeism is rarely,if ever,caused by situational factors.

Question 51

Recent studies have found that counterproductive work behaviours have a very small negative effect on organizational performance.

Question 52

Organizational citizenship is less likely to occur in a work environment where high cooperation already exists.

Question 53

Work/life balance refers to the length of time one remains in the workforce during one's lifetime.

Question 54

Dark-side workplace behaviours are collectively known as counterfeit citizenship work behaviours (CWBs).

Question 55

Workforce diversity does not consider the differences in psychological characteristics of employees.

Question 56

The emerging employment relationship in Canada is that people must give up their legal rights regarding employment discrimination in return for long-term employment.

Question 57

Reduced job security and increased work intensification may be partly caused by globalization.

Question 58

Joining the organization is a type of work-related behaviour.

Question 59

Workforce diversity potentially improves decision making and team performance on complex tasks.

Question 60

Employees are more likely to engage in organizational citizenship behaviours if these are outlined in their formal job duties.

Question 61

Organizational behaviour knowledge:

A) originates mainly from models developed in chemistry and other natural sciences.
B) accurately predicts how anyone will behave in any situation.
C) is more appropriate for people who work in computer science than in marketing.
D) helps us to understand and influence the behaviours of others in organizational settings.
E) None of the answers apply.

Question 62

Most organizational behaviour theories have been developed by OB scholars rather than from other disciplines.

Question 63

Psychology and sociology have contributed many theories and concepts to the field of organizational behaviour.

Question 64

Which of the following is included in the open systems perspective of organizations?

A) Inputs
B) Subsystems
C) Outputs
D) Feedback from the environment
E) All of the answers are correct.

Question 65

The field of organizational behaviour relies on common sense to understand organizational phenomena.

Question 66

Communications,marketing,and information systems are three emerging fields from which organizational behaviour is now acquiring knowledge.

Question 67

ACME Software Ltd has developed a training program to make employees more aware of how their job performance affects customers and other employees within the organization.This training program relates most closely with which of the following concepts?

A) Contingency anchor
B) Grounded theory
C) Open systems perspective
D) Marketing principles
E) Organizational efficiency

Question 68

The open systems perspective of organizational behaviour states that:

A) organizations take their sustenance from the environment and in turn affect that environment.
B) organizations can operate efficiently by focussing on what they do best and ignoring changes in the external environment.
C) people are the only important and valued organizational input.
D) organizations should be viewed as machines with one working part.
E) All of the answers are correct.

Question 69

The contingency anchor in organizational behaviour suggests that a particular action may have different consequences in different situations.

Question 70

Successful teleworkers tend to be self-motivated and are able to fulfill their social needs outside of the work context.

Question 71

Most organizational events may be studied from all three levels of analysis: individual,team and organization.

Question 72

In the field of organizational behaviour,organizations are best described as:

A) legal entities that must abide by government regulations and pay taxes.
B) physical structures with observable capital equipment.
C) social entities with a publicly stated set of formal goals.
D) groups of people who work interdependently towards some purpose.
E) any social entity with profit-centred motives and objectives.

Question 73

Which of the following perspective is consistent with the concept of organizational effectiveness?

A) Open systems perspective
B) Organizational learning perspective
C) High performance work practices perspective
D) Stakeholder perspective
E) All the answers are correct.

Question 74

Sociology is one of the few disciplines that has not made any contribution to organizational behaviour knowledge.

Question 75

Which of these statements about the field of organizational behaviour is TRUE?

A) Organizational behaviour emerged as a distinct field during the 1980s.
B) The origins of some organizational behaviour concepts date back to Plato and other Greek philosophers.
C) Information technology has almost no effect on organizational behaviour.
D) The field of organizational behaviour relies exclusively on ideas generated within the field by organizational behaviour scholars.
E) The origins of organizational behaviour are traced mainly to the field of economics.

Question 76

In virtual work,employees rely on information technology to perform jobs away from the traditional workplace.

Question 77

According to the author of Canadian Organizational Behaviour,organizational behaviour knowledge:

A) should never be used to influence the behaviour of other people.
B) should be used mostly by managers and senior executives.
C) should never replace your commonsense knowledge about how organizations work.
D) is relevant to everyone who works in organizations.
E) should never be used to influence the behaviour of other people and should be used mostly by managers and senior executives.

Question 78

Telecommuting is the most common form of virtual work.

Question 79

Which of these statements about the field of organizational behaviour is FALSE?

A) Organizational behaviour scholars study individual, team and structural characteristics that influence behaviour within organizations.
B) Leadership, communication and other organizational behaviour topics were not discussed by scholars until the 1940s.
C) Organizational behaviour emerged as a distinct field around the 1940s.
D) The field of OB has adopted concepts and theories from other fields of inquiry.
E) OB scholars study what people think, feel and do in and around organizations.

Question 80

Teleworking forces employers to evaluate employee performance based on 'face time' rather than work output.