Deck 18: Organization Change and Development

Question 1

Competition is a force for change because unless an organization matches or surpasses its competitors in at least one competitive area, it will not survive.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Group members might resist change because change could cause groups to develop new sets of norms.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

The adoption of new technology usually changes task relationships as employees learn new skills or techniques to operate the technology.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Many organizations have created the role of ethics officer, a person to whom employees can report ethical lapses on the part of the organization's managers or turn to for advice when faced with ethical business dilemmas.

Question 5

Organic structures foster the development of skills that enable employees to be creative and responsive when developing solutions to new problems.

Question 6

Impediments to organizational change are found at the organization, group, and individual levels.

Question 7

The culture of an organization usually expedites the changes brought on by global forces.

Question 8

Organization change is a series of techniques and methods for increasing the adaptability of organizations.

Question 9

When change causes power struggles and organizational conflict, there is less likelihood of resistance to the change.

Question 10

Tunnel vision increases organizational inertia because the organization must spend time and effort to secure agreement about the source of a problem before it can even consider how the organization should respond to the problem.

Question 11

As more women have entered the work force, companies have had to accommodate the needs of dual-career and single-parent families.

Question 12

Organizational culture is a primary force for change within an organization.

Question 13

Economic and political forces continually affect organizations and compel them to change how and where they produce goods and services.

Question 14

Managing a diverse work force is one of the biggest challenges to confront organizations in the 2000s.

Question 15

Central to the ability to capture and sustain a competitive advantage is the ability to excel in the most important area of all - responsiveness to customers.

Question 16

A specific country recently had a political revolution. A company within the country could have been forced to turn over it's privately owned equipment to the new government.

Question 17

In order to obtain a technological advantage, a company must skillfully manage the process of innovation, another source of change.

Question 18

Smaller organizations do not have to worry about the effects of global, economic, and political forces on their activities.

Question 19

Organizations are realizing that the ultimate source of competitive advantage and organizational effectiveness lies in fully utilizing technology.

Question 20

Research suggests that one of the main reasons for some organizations' inability to change is organizational inertia.

Question 21

Total quality management is an intensive, one-time effort by all of an organization's functions to find new ways to improve the quality of its goods and services.

Question 22

Socio-technical systems theory asserts that organizations should choose specific kinds of control systems that match the technical nature of the work process.

Question 23

Reengineering focuses on business functions and not business processes.

Question 24

A business process is any activity that promotes the quick delivery of goods and services to customers or a process that promotes high quality or low costs.

Question 25

Force field theory asserts that organizational change occurs when forces for change strengthen, resistance to change lessens, or both happen simultaneously.

Question 26

The values and norms in an organization's culture do not serve as a source of resistance to change.

Question 27

Revolutionary change causes repercussions at all levels in an organization.

Question 28

Poor quality often originates at crossover points or handoffs, that is, when people turn over the work they are doing to people in different functions.

Question 29

People tend to welcome change and the new opportunities it brings.

Question 30

Individuals within an organization may be inclined to resist change because of uncertainty, selective perception, and force of habit.

Question 31

In a TQM program, the "command and control" model of management must give way to an "advise and support" model.

Question 32

Escalation of commitment weakens groupthink.

Question 33

Revolutionary change is gradual, incremental, and narrowly focused.

Question 34

Most employees are excited when change occurs in an organization because they view the change as beneficial for the whole organization.

Question 35

Organizations that take up reengineering start the process by focusing on the existing products and services.

Question 36

A mechanistic structure develops as an organization grows and is a principal source of inertia, especially in large organizations.

Question 37

Types of change can be classified as either incremental or drastic.

Question 38

Group members may unite to preserve the status quo and to protect their interests at the expense of other groups.

Question 39

Total quality management (TQM) promotes revolutionary organizational change.

Question 40

Research has shown that personal habits are relatively easy to change.

Question 41

The result of radical organizational restructuring and reengineering is bottom-up change.

Question 42

When used as an agent of change, innovation is associated with a high level of risk because the outcomes of research and development activities are often uncertain.

Question 43

Managers should avoid analyzing their business processes too often because it is time consuming and costly.

Question 44

Top-down change is a gradual process.

Question 45

Reengineering and TQM are highly interrelated and complementary, although one is evolutionary and the other revolutionary.

Question 46

Action research is a strategy for generating and acquiring the knowledge needed to define an organization's desired future state and to plan a change program that will help it reach that state.

Question 47

Adopting a bottom-up approach to change allows managers to obtain input from employees at all levels in the change process and lessen their resistance.

Question 48

An organization that resorts to restructuring usually increases the complexity of its organizational structure by adding divisions, departments, or levels in the hierarchy.

Question 49

In Lewin's view, implementing change is a three-step process: unfreezing the organization from its present state, making the change, and refreezing the organization in the new desired state so that its members do not revert to their previous work attitudes and role behaviors.

Question 50

The first step in action research involves managers' determining the future state of the organization.

Question 51

Bottom-up change is harder to implement than top-down change because it provokes more resistance.

Question 52

Innovation is one of the most difficult instruments of change to manage.

Question 53

When organizations rely on innovation as the source of their competitive advantage, they need to adopt mechanistic structures.

Question 54

Like a doctor, managers have to distinguish between symptoms and causes during the diagnosis stage of action research.

Question 55

Outside consultants who are experts in managing change are known as external change agents.

Question 56

An internal change agent is a manager from within an organization who is knowledgeable about the situation that must be changed.

Question 57

Internal change agents can be so involved with what is going on within the organization that they cannot see the true source of the problems.

Question 58

The term "E-engineering" refers to companies' attempts to use all kinds of information systems to improve their performance.

Question 59

Many plans to introduce change, such as restructuring, are quick and easy to implement and, ultimately, are successful.

Question 60

A "product champion" is an expert manager who heads a new product team working on an innovative product from the beginning of its development to when it is commercially introduced.

Question 61

Team building is a common method of improving relationships within a group.

Question 62

Organization development is a series of techniques and methods that managers can use in the action research program to increase the adaptability of their organization.

Question 63

Participation replaces empowerment by increasing employees' involvement in decision making and giving them greater autonomy to change work procedures.

Question 64

Even when plant closures or massive layoffs are planned, it is still best to inform employees about what will happen to them as downsizing occurs.

Question 65

The more revolutionary the change, the more likely it is for an organization to focus its OD techniques on the group level.

Question 66

Process consultation bears little resemblance to either counseling or sensitivity training.

Question 67

Quality circles are groups of employees working together to find better ways to do their work.

Question 68

Organizations that do not change often are likely candidates for revolutionary, top-down change.

Question 69

The owner of a small greeting card company does not want to challenge her staff to look at the production of greeting cards or the greeting card market in new ways. The owner has worked with her staff since the company began twenty yeas ago. Which of the forces of change is the owner NOT willing to adjust?

A) social
B) ethical
C) competitive
D) economic

Question 70

A new supermarket is opening next to an older supermarket. While the older supermarket has been in the community for fifty years, the new supermarket has much more room and can therefore carry far more products than the older one. With what force of change will the older store MOST LIKELY have to deal?

A) political
B) global
C) ethical
D) competitive

Question 71

During an organizational confrontation meeting, all managers of an organization meet to deal with the issue of whether the organization is effectively meeting its goals.

Question 72

________ is the movement of an organization away from its present state and toward some desired future state to increase its effectiveness.

A) Organizational progress
B) Organizational change
C) Organizational development
D) Organizational momentum

Question 73

During sensitivity training, members who have problems dealing with others meet in a group with a trained facilitator to learn more about how they and other group members view the world.

Question 74

One of the advantages of the action research process is that it is relatively quick and can aid in making organizational change in six months or less.

Question 75

Because change causes conflict, bargaining can counter resistance to change.

Question 76

The goal of intergroup training is to improve organizational performance by focusing on the joint activities and outputs of a function or a division.

Question 77

Organizational leaders should never use coercion to force employees to accept change.

Question 78

Organizational mirroring is an OD technique designed to improve the effectiveness of interdependent groups.

Question 79

While managers should worry about communication during the change process, they need not worry about educating their employees.

Question 80

The goal of organization development is to improve organizational effectiveness and help people reach their potential and realize their goals.