Deck 1: Introduction to the Field of Organizational Behavior

Question 1

The best indicator of a company's effectiveness is how well it achieves its stated objectives.

Answer 1

False
Explanation: Any leadership team could set corporate goals that are easy to achieve, yet would put the organization out of business.These goals could also be left in the dust by competitors' more aggressive objectives.Worse still, some goals might aim the organization in the wrong direction.Consequently, goal attainment is not part of organizational effectiveness.

Question 2

Investment portfolio studies suggest that specific OB characteristics are important "positive screens" for selecting companies with the best long-term share appreciation.

Answer 2

True
Explanation: The bottom-line value of organizational behavior is also supported by investment portfolio studies.These investigations suggest that specific OB characteristics (employee attitudes, work/life balance, performance-based rewards, leadership, employee training and development, and so forth) are important "positive screens" for selecting companies with the best long-term share appreciation.

Question 3

Organizational behavior knowledge is strictly for managers, not for working level employees.

Answer 3

False
Explanation: A common misunderstanding is that organizational behavior is for managers.Although OB knowledge is critical for effective management, this book pioneered the broader view that the idea in this book are valuable for everyone who works in and around organizations.

Question 4

Studying OB does not make a difference in one's career success.

Question 5

In order for something to be called an organization, it must have certain assets such as buildings and equipment.

Question 6

Studying OB at multiple levels is not recommended as it could lead to perceptual errors.

Question 7

A company's success is only mildly influenced by the quality of its CEO.

Question 8

Three challenges organizations are facing include globalization, increasing workforce diversity, and emerging employment relationships.

Question 9

According to the open systems perspective, most organizations have one working part rather than many sub-components.

Question 10

Until the 1930s, most organizational research and practice tried to improve work efficiency by changing working conditions and job duties.Employee thoughts and feelings were ignored and usually considered irrelevant.

Question 11

Open systems cannot exist without dependence on an external environment, whereas closed systems can exist without dependence on an external environment.

Question 12

The greatest value of OB knowledge is that it helps us to get things done in the workplace.

Question 13

Organizational effectiveness is considered the "ultimate dependent variable" in organizational behavior.

Question 14

Organizational behavior encompasses the study of how organizations interact with their external environments.

Question 15

The "human relations" school of management emphasized the study of employee attitudes and informal group dynamics in the workplace.

Question 16

All organizations have a collective sense of purpose, whether it's producing oil or creating the fastest Internet search engine.

Question 17

German sociologist Max Weber wrote about rational organizations and systematic ways to organize work processes and motivate employees through goal setting and rewards.

Question 18

OB knowledge is beneficial not only to an individual, but also to an organization's financial health.

Question 19

Organizational behavior emerged as a distinct field around the 1940s.Before that, organizations had not been studied at all.

Question 20

The best yardstick of organizational effectiveness is a composite of four perspectives: open systems, organizational learning, high-performance work practices, and stakeholders.

Question 21

Employee involvement is a widely recognized high-performance work practice.

Question 22

The stakeholder perspective also provides a strong case for ethics and corporate social responsibility.

Question 23

Organizations that have high employee turnover will be better able to retain intellectual capital within the organization.

Question 24

The perspective that effective organizations incorporate several workplace practices that leverage the potential of human capital is called high-performance work practices.

Question 25

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

Question 26

The knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees are examples of structural capital.

Question 27

Values are relatively stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or courses of action in a variety of situations.

Question 28

High performance work practices build human capital, which improves performance as employees develop skills and knowledge to perform the work.

Question 29

Stakeholder relations are a static, fixed condition.

Question 30

Stakeholders of an organization are shareholders, customers, suppliers, governments and any other groups with a vested interest in the organization.

Question 31

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

Question 32

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

Question 33

The best organizational practices are those built on the notion that organizations are closed systems.

Question 34

The organizational learning perspective is focused on physical resources that enter and are processed in the organization.

Question 35

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

Question 36

According to the organizational learning perspective, an effective organization not only learns but also unlearns certain routines and patterns of behavior.

Question 37

Working in a self-directed team reduces employee motivation because employees in such a team will support individualistic behaviors rather than team behaviors.

Question 38

Managing and satisfying the interests of stakeholders is not very challenging because stakeholders all have the same interests and goals.

Question 39

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

Question 40

Labor unions are an example of a type of stakeholder in a company.

Question 41

Everyone agrees that organizations need to cater to a wide variety of stakeholders.

Question 42

Germany, France, and the U.S.A.all have work-life balances below the global average.

Question 43

Work/life balance refers to minimizing conflict between work and non-work demands.

Question 44

Surface-level diversity is evident in a person's decisions, statements, and actions.

Question 45

Globalization refers to economic, social, and cultural connectivity with people in other parts of the world.

Question 46

Systematic research investigation produces evidence-based management which involves making decisions and taking actions based on this research evidence.

Question 47

Corporate social responsibility has no effect on financial performance.

Question 48

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

Question 49

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

Question 50

The observable demographic or physiological differences in people, such as their race, ethnicity, gender, age, and physical disabilities is called deep-level diversity.

Question 51

Employees who are born between 1946 and 1964 are referred to as Generation X employees.

Question 52

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 53

Telework is better suited to those who are seeking sufficient fulfilment of social needs elsewhere in their life.

Question 54

An organization's employees use information technology to perform their jobs away from the traditional physical workplace.This is an example of virtual work.

Question 55

According to research, although telecommuting significantly increases employee stress and reduces productivity and job satisfaction, it makes employees feel more empowered.

Question 56

Deep-level diversity refers to the observable demographics such as age, gender and race.

Question 57

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

Question 58

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

Question 59

Teams with diverse employees usually perform effectively in a shorter amount of time.

Question 60

Globalization offers numerous benefits to organizations in terms of larger markets, lower costs, and greater access to knowledge and innovation.

Question 61

The contingency anchor in organizational behavior suggests that we need to diagnose a situation to identify the most appropriate action under those specific circumstances.

Question 62

The field of organizational behavior relies on qualitative rather than quantitative research to understand organizational phenomena.

Question 63

Which organizational behavior perspective discusses inputs, outputs, and feedback?

A)Organizational learning
B)Open systems
C)Multidisciplinary
D)Systematic research
E)Intellectual capital

Question 64

Which of these statements is true about the field of organizational behavior?

A)It examines how individuals and teams in organizations relate to one another and to their counterparts in other organizations.
B)OB researchers systematically study various topics at a common level rather than at multiple levels.
C)Information technology has almost no effect on organizational behavior.
D)The field of organizational behavior relies exclusively on ideas generated within the field by organizational behavior scholars.
E)The origins of organizational behavior are traced mainly to the field of economics.

Question 65

Which of the following statements is true about organizational behavior?

A)OB researchers systematically study various topics at a single level rather than at multiple levels.
B)It is concerned with the study of people who work independently.
C)It does not include the study of collective entities.
D)It is less effective in studying people who interact in highly organized fashion.
E)It includes team, individual, and organizational level analyses.

Question 66

All popular management concepts rely on hard evidence that proves they are valid.

Question 67

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

A)Contingency anchor
B)Grounded theory
C)Open systems
D)Virtual teams
E)Telecommuting

Question 68

Communications and information systems are two emerging fields from which organizational behavior is now acquiring knowledge.

Question 69

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

Question 70

Organizational behavior 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, predict, and influence the behaviors of others in organizational settings.
E)is important only for the managers of an organization.

Question 71

Organizational behavior views organizations as:

A)non-systems.
B)a single unitary subsystem.
C)open systems.
D)closed systems.
E)a system without interactions with the external environment.

Question 72

The evidence-based management approach embraces scientific methods because they produce more valid theories to guide management decisions.

Question 73

Which of the following perspectives of organizational effectiveness argues that companies take their sustenance from the environment and, in turn, affect that environment through their outputs?

A)Stakeholder
B)Systematic research
C)High-performance work practice
D)Organizational learning
E)Open systems

Question 74

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

Question 75

The systematic research anchor relies mainly on qualitative data and subjective procedures to test hypotheses.

Question 76

In the field of organizational behavior, organizations are described as:

A)entities which are considered a legal grouping of people and systems.
B)groups of people who work independently to achieve a collective goal.
C)social entities with a publicly stated set of formal goals.
D)groups of people with independent profit-centered motives and objectives.
E)groups of people who work interdependently towards some purpose.

Question 77

According to the open systems view of organizations, _____ is (are) an input for organizations.

A)incentive plans
B)products
C)financial resources
D)employee motivation
E)employee behavior

Question 78

Which of the following statements is true of organizational behavior knowledge?

A)It is relevant to everyone who works in organizations.
B)It should never be used to influence the behavior of other people.
C)It should be used by managers and senior executives alone.
D)It should not be used by subordinates to influence the behavior of their managers.
E)It is less significant when the level of interpersonal interaction is high.

Question 79

A firm has good associations with its customers, suppliers, and others who provide added mutual value for the firm.Name the form of intellectual capital that is possessed by the firm due to its good associations.

A)Structural capital
B)Intellectual capital
C)Human capital
D)Knowledge capital
E)Relationship capital

Question 80

The open systems anchor of organizational behavior states that:

A)organizations affect and are affected by their external environments.
B)organizations can operate efficiently by ignoring changes in the external environment.
C)people are the most important organizational input needed for effectiveness.
D)organizations should avoid internal conflicts to achieve efficiency.
E)organizations should be open to internal competition to be able to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage.