Deck 2: Individual Behavior, Personality, and Values

Question 1

Proficiency refers to how well an employee responds to, copes with, and supports new circumstances and work patterns.

Answer 1

False
Explanation: Adaptability refers to how well an employee responds to, copes with, and supports new circumstances and work patterns.

Question 2

An employee creates unnecessary conflicts with his coworkers at his workplace.This is an example of organizational citizenship behavior.

Answer 2

False
Explanation: Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) include various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organization's social and psychological context.In this case, the employee is creating unnecessary conflicts with his coworkers.It is a counterproductive behavior.

Question 3

Situational factors are working conditions within the employee's control.

Answer 3

False
Explanation: Situational factors include conditions beyond the employee's immediate control that constrain or facilitate behavior and performance.

Question 4

American employees are absent from scheduled work at an alarming average of 20 days per year.

Question 5

Learned capabilities refer to the skills and knowledge that one has actually acquired.

Question 6

Competencies refer to the complete set of motivations, abilities, role perceptions, and situational factors that contribute to job performance.

Question 7

The MARS model identifies the four main factors that influence individual behavior: motivation, ability, role perceptions, and situational factors.

Question 8

A good match between an employee's competencies and his/her job requirements tends to increase both job performance and the employee's well-being.

Question 9

The forces within a person affect that individual's motivation.

Question 10

Aptitudes are natural talents that help individuals to learn specific tasks more quickly and perform them better than other people.

Question 11

The four elements of the MARS model affect all voluntary workplace behaviors and performance.

Question 12

Presenteeism refers to employees who attend work even though their capacity to work is significantly diminished by illness, fatigue, personal problems, or other factors.

Question 13

Motivation is an external force on the person that causes him/her to engage in specific behaviors.

Question 14

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

Question 15

Role perceptions are the extent to which people understand the job duties assigned to them.

Question 16

Role perceptions are important because they represent how good an employee feels about their job and increase motivation.

Question 17

According to the MARS model of individual behavior and performance, employee performance will remain high even if one of the four factors is low in a given situation.

Question 18

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) include various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organization's social and psychological context.

Question 19

Intensity refers to the fact that motivation is goal-directed, not random.

Question 20

Employees who experience job dissatisfaction, workplace incivility, or work-related stress are more likely to be absent or late for work because taking time off is a way of temporarily withdrawing from those situations.

Question 21

The most researched and respected clustering of personality traits is the MARS model.

Question 22

Personality traits are more evident in situations where an individual's behavior is subject to social norms and reward systems.

Question 23

Phoebe, a manager at a firm, was conventional, resistant to change, and unimaginative.This implies that Phoebe possessed openness to experience.

Question 24

Agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness are three of the "Big Five" personality dimensions.

Question 25

Extraverts are people who are quiet, cautious, and less interactive with others.

Question 26

Sensing, feeling, and judging are three of the "Big Five" personality traits.

Question 27

Personality is completely determined by heredity.

Question 28

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator measures the personality traits described by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung.

Question 29

Conscientiousness is one of the best personality traits for predicting job performance in most job groups.

Question 30

The MBTI is an excellent predictor of job performances and is recommended for employment selection.

Question 31

Personality is a relatively stable pattern of behaviors and internal states that explains a person's behavioral tendencies.

Question 32

The MBTI instrument is mostly used for team building and career development.

Question 33

Values are stable, evaluative beliefs about what is important in a variety of situations.

Question 34

The "Big Five" personality dimensions represent five clusters that represent most personality traits.

Question 35

People with a high score on the neuroticism personality dimension tend to be more relaxed, secure, and calm.

Question 36

One dimension of Schwartz's Values Circumplex has openness to change at one extreme and conservation at the other extreme.

Question 37

People arrange values into a hierarchy of preferences, called a value system.

Question 38

Conscientiousness refers to the extent that people are sensitive, flexible, creative, and curious.

Question 39

Personality traits are the best predictors of work performance.

Question 40

People with a perceiving orientation are less flexible and effective in their functioning.

Question 41

Values and personality traits are related to each other and are essentially the same thing.

Question 42

Work environments influence our behavior, so they necessarily encourage or discourage values-consistent behavior.

Question 43

Distributive justice is sometimes known as a consequential principle because it focuses on the consequences of our actions, not on how we achieve those consequences.

Question 44

One type of factor that can change a person's moral sensitivity is expertise or knowledge of prescriptive norms or rules.

Question 45

Mindfulness refers to the level of empathy a person has when referring to their moral sensitivity.

Question 46

The distributive justice principle of ethical decision making advocates the principle that benefits should be distributed among people irrespective of their abilities and similarities.

Question 47

Collectivism is a cross-cultural value describing the degree to which people in a culture emphasize personal duty to the groups in which they belong.

Question 48

In terms of cross-cultural values, people in the United States tend to have relatively high individualism, middle to high achievement orientation, and medium to low power distance.

Question 49

Which of the following directly influences an employee's voluntary behavior and performance?

A)Role perceptions
B)Moral intensity
C)Corporate social responsibility
D)Uncertainty avoidance
E)Income

Question 50

Utilitarianism suggests that we should choose the option that provides the highest degree of satisfaction to those affected.

Question 51

Person-organization values congruence occurs when a person's values are similar to the organization's dominant values.

Question 52

The ideal situation in organizations is to have employees whose values are perfectly congruent with the organization's values.

Question 53

One limitation with some research on cross-cultural values is that it incorrectly assumes that everyone within a specific country holds similar values.

Question 54

People with high achievement orientation tend to value assertiveness, competitiveness, and materialism.

Question 55

Individualism and collectivism are mutually exclusive values found in certain countries and places.

Question 56

Moral sensitivity is the degree to which an issue demands the application of ethical principles.

Question 57

One problem with applying the individual rights principle of ethical decision making is that one individual right may conflict with another.

Question 58

People with high power distance expect relatively equal power sharing.

Question 59

Under Schwartz's Values Complex, the value category of self-direction refers to the pursuit of pleasure, enjoyment and the gratification of desires.

Question 60

An ethical code of conduct is a statement about desired practices, rules of conduct and philosophy about the organization's relationship to its stakeholders and the environment.

Question 61

Travel Happy Corporation gives simple accounts to newly hired employees, and then adds more challenging accounts as employees master the simple tasks.This practice mainly:

A)improves role perceptions.
B)increases person-job matching.
C)reduces employee motivation.
D)provides more resources to accomplish the assigned task.
E)improves employee aptitudes.

Question 62

Assisting coworkers with their work problems, adjusting work schedules to accommodate coworkers, and showing genuine courtesy toward coworkers are some of the forms of:

A)role perception.
B)counterproductive behavior.
C)task performance.
D)organizational citizenship.
E)job matching.

Question 63

Which of the following are external to the individual but still affect his/her behavior and performance?

A)Motivations
B)Role perceptions
C)Situational factors
D)Abilities
E)Resolutions

Question 64

Which of the following refers to a person's beliefs about what behaviors are appropriate or necessary in a particular situation?

A)Natural aptitudes
B)Role perceptions
C)Competencies
D)Locus of control
E)Situational factors

Question 65

_________ is the relatively stable pattern of behaviors and consistent internal states that explain a person's behavioral tendencies.

A)personality
B)values
C)motivation
D)locus of control
E)job satisfaction

Question 66

Lawrence stole a clock from his workplace.Which of the following refers to Lawrence's activity?

A)Productive behavior
B)Counterproductive behavior
C)Task performance
D)Organizational citizenship behavior
E)Job matching

Question 67

_____ represents the forces within a person that affect the direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior.

A)Motivation
B)Personality
C)Values
D)Ethics
E)Ability

Question 68

_____ refers to goal-directed behaviors under the individual's control that support organizational objectives.

A)Organizational citizenship
B)Counterproductive behavior
C)Task performance
D)Maintaining attendance
E)Intensity

Question 69

All technical employees at a paper mill take a course on how to operate a new paper-rolling machine.This course will improve job performance mainly by altering employees':

A)aptitudes.
B)role perceptions.
C)motivation.
D)organizational citizenship.
E)learned capabilities.

Question 70

Motivation affects a person's _____ of voluntary behavior.

A)direction, intensity, and persistence
B)antecedents, consequences, and reinforcers
C)size, shape, and weight
D)aptitudes, abilities, and competencies
E)agreeableness, locus of control, and ethical sensitivity

Question 71

To reduce the amount of non-recyclable waste that employees throw out each day, a major computer company removed containers for non-recyclable rubbish from each office and workstation.This altered employee behavior mainly by:

A)increasing employee motivation to be less wasteful.
B)helping employees to learn how to be less wasteful.
C)altering situational factors so that employees have more difficulty practicing wasteful behavior.
D)increasing aptitudes that make employees less wasteful.
E)increasing organizational citizenship so that employees will be less wasteful.

Question 72

Which of the following refers to the natural talents that help employees learn specific tasks more quickly and perform them better?

A)Persistence levels
B)Direction
C)Intensity
D)Aptitude
E)Commitment

Question 73

Which of the following concepts consists of aptitudes, skills, and competencies?

A)Motivation
B)Personality
C)Values
D)Ethics
E)Ability

Question 74

Which of the following refers to the fact that motivation is goal-directed, not random?

A)Persistence
B)Direction
C)Intensity
D)Aptitude
E)Competencies

Question 75

You have just hired several new employees who are motivated, able to perform their jobs, and have adequate resources.However, they are not sure what tasks are included in their job.According to the MARS model, these new employees will likely:

A)emphasize the utilitarianism principle in their decision making.
B)have lower job performance due to poor role perceptions.
C)have high job performance because they are motivated and able to perform the work.
D)have above-average organizational citizenship.
E)have a high degree of differentiation according to Holland's classification of occupations.

Question 76

An individual's personality:

A)changes several times throughout the year.
B)is formed only from childhood socialization and the environment.
C)is less evident in situations where social norms, reward systems, and other conditions constrain behavior.
D)does not provide an enduring pattern of processes.
E)is more prominent when rewards for behavior are substantial.

Question 77

Which of the following best represents the amount of effort allocated to a particular goal?

A)Persistence
B)Direction
C)Intensity
D)Aptitude
E)Competencies

Question 78

Presenteeism is more common among employees with:

A)sick leave pay.
B)financial buffers.
C)low centrality.
D)high centrality.
E)high job security.

Question 79

Absenteeism is higher in organizations where there is(are):

A)weak absence norms.
B)low workplace incivility.
C)high amounts of presenteeism.
D)meager sick leave benefits.
E)high work-related stress.

Question 80

Which of the following identifies the four factors that directly influence individual behavior and performance?

A)Utilitarianism
B)MARS model
C)Schwartz's model
D)Holland's model
E)Myers-Briggs Type Indicator