Deck 10: Networking, Social Capital, and Integrating Across Teams

Question 1

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of organizational founding teams?

A) They influence organizational development.
B) They create new organizational communities and populations.
C) They are sequestered from the general organizational environment.
D) When they disband, they can create a large amount of employment volatility.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Whether a deliberate choice by a leader, or ostracized by the organization, __________ are sequestered from the rest of the company, often for security or intellectual reasons.

A) surveying teams example--a company that takes customer votes on which products to be offered at retail)
B) broadcasting teams example--an internal affairs department)
C) x-teams - example--two market competitors teaming up to achieve a shared goal)
D) insulating teams - example--the scientific team that developed the atomic bomb)

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Teams that are underbounded have __________; in contrast, teams that are overbounded have __________.

A) leaders that are present; leaders that are absent
B) leaders that are absent; leaders that are present
C) many external ties, but cannot bring its members together; high loyalty but an inability to integrate with others
D) high internal loyalty, but cannot integrate with others outside the team; many external ties, but cannot bring its members together

Answer 3

C

Question 4

As a link between different subgroups, Berta is a boundary spanner between different functional units. Berta is alone at the critical junction between these organizational networks, and serves an important role as an) __________.

A) information broker
B) advice tie
C) trust tie
D) leader

Question 5

Which of the following is TRUE regarding a team's efforts to team build social capital?

A) Teams should strengthen their team cohesion by avoiding socializing informally with anyone except their teammates outside of work.
B) Rapid access to information and political support is greater for teams whose members socialize during their free time with the organization's upper management.
C) Leaders from whom subordinates sought friendship or advice tend to have relatively negative views of their team's social structure.
D) Extra team relationships always have a negative impact on team performance.

Question 6

What is a common operational characteristic of marketing teams?

A) They concentrate on their internal processes, and simply inform others of what they are doing.
B) They have little outside contact, and make decisions about how to serve its customers from within.
C) They are tasked with letting others outside the team know what they are doing after they have made decisions.
D) They actively tailor their communications to suit the needs, interests, and objectives of the organization.

Question 7

A clique network is __________; a boundary-spanning network is __________.

A) closed, dense, and self-contained; less dense, more unique, and more varied
B) less dense, more unique, and varied; closed, dense, and self-contained
C) friendship ties; advice ties
D) advice ties; friendship ties

Question 8

The leader centrality-performance hypothesis focuses on the network structure of the team leader. Which statement best summarizes the key idea of the hypothesis?

A) Team leaders who do not have well-established relationships with their subordinates make better decisions.
B) Team leaders from whom subordinates seek advice or friendship tend to make better decisions.
C) Team leaders who consult with the leaders of other teams make better decisions.
D) Team leaders who engage their subordinates in conflict make better decisions.

Question 9

Boundary spanning can be stressful and challenging. What characterizes role overload??

A) When a person does not have enough responsibility to justify their membership on the team.
B) When a person has too much work to do in the time available.
C) When there is too much overlap among members' roles on the team.
D) When there are too many people on the team filling too many roles.

Question 10

A situational example of a multi-team system is:

A) two teams interface directly and interdependently toward the accomplishment of shared goals. Although the teams pursue different proximal goals, they share at least one common goal.
B) a diverse network that crosses organizational boundaries and functional areas to achieve a common goal.
C) a team that is sequestered from the larger corporate environment to accomplish a security-sensitive goal.
D) a team that concentrates on their internal processes, and informs others in a public way of their goal progress.

Question 11

__________ are highly externally oriented; their members forge dense networks across the organization, enable rapid execution of ideas, and may sometimes find they have to cross competitive, organizational borders to achieve a shared goal.

A) Broadcasting teams
B) Marketing teams
C) X-teams
D) Surveying teams

Question 12

Managers and team members can increase their social capital by doing all of the following EXCEPT:

A) determining the brokers in their networks.
B) identifying structural holes in their organization.
C) diversifying their networks.
D) reducing the size of their networks.

Question 13

In regard to common roles in workgroups, the person who provides meanings about what the team is doing, how successful it is to people outside of the team, and the interpretation of what the team is perceived to be doing is best termed an):

A) advisor.
B) gatekeeper.
C) interpreter.
D) lobbyist.

Question 14

Social capital is distinct from human capital. Social capital is best described as the:

A) sum total of the skills, talents, abilities, and education of a person's achievements.
B) organizational strategy of making sure that every team member has sufficient resources to perform their jobs.
C) practice of more talented team members educating less talented team members.
D) value that people add to their teams and organizations through their ties and relationships to other people.

Question 15

The differential performance of women in business is often caused by their disadvantaged social position most frequently due to:

A) socially accepted modes of interacting, termed gender scripts, built through socializing activities that could have different social connotations between people of the opposite sex.
B) different team expectations in regard to the appropriate career aggressiveness for women.
C) socio-economic differences.
D) insufficient time, between family and career obligations, to build a substantial and diverse career network.

Question 16

One disadvantage of a clique network is/are __________; one disadvantage of a boundary-spanning network is/are __________.

A) high cohesion; it leverages diversity
B) increased efficiency; it capitalizes on opportunity
C) groupthink; the power struggles
D) the indispensable members; the biased communication

Question 17

One advantage of a clique network is __________; one advantage of a boundary-spanning network is __________.

A) power; conflict management
B) conflict management; power
C) high cohesion; greater innovation and diversity
D) greater innovation and diversity; high cohesion

Question 18

Regarding Exhibit 10-5 and team effectiveness and organization-focused behavior, what type of boundary-management behavior is best categorized under the skill of "relating"?

A) Obtaining external support
B) Influencing the team
C) Diagnosing member behavior
D) Being socially and politically aware

Question 19

X-teams are highly externally oriented. The typical cycle of an x-team involves which order of these processes?

A) Exploration, exploitation, exportation
B) Exportation, exploration, exploitation
C) Exploitation, exploration, exportation
D) Exploration, exportation, exploitation

Question 20

Regarding Joshi's model of external team networking Exhibit 10-8), which of the following is NOT one of the model's key implications for teams?

A) Develop networks outside of the organization with professional associations and internally with caucus groups.
B) Actively develop networks with minority groups to gain access to diverse perspectives and ideas.
C) Focus inwardly to increase communication and trust to utilize the benefits of external networks.
D) Actively promote team culture adoption within the larger organization.

Question 21

People in teams bond along three specific types of ties: friendship, trust, and advice. Trust-ties involve __________; advice-ties involve __________.

A) friends; professionals
B) professionals; friends
C) an emotional and cognitive component; instrumental relationships
D) instrumental relationships; an emotional and cognitive component

Question 22

Four interplaying characteristics determine the extent to which negative relationships hurt team and organizational effectiveness. According to Labianca and Brass's model, which of the following is NOT one of those characteristics?

A) Relationship strength-the intensity of dislike amongst different team members.
B) Reciprocity-if an individual is the object or source of dislike or if the dislike is reciprocated.
C) Expert exchange-the exchange of expertise amongst members.
D) Social distance-if the negative relationship tie is direct or indirect.

Question 23

Menon and Pfeffer offer two explanations for outsider bias in knowledge valuation. The first involves organizational incentives that reward managers when they learn from outsiders; the second best explanation is:

A) internal knowledge is more readily available and subject to greater scrutiny, whereas "scarce" external knowledge is unique.
B) managers see internal ideas as developmentally finished and irrelevant to their project at hand.
C) managers feel that by using internal resource information they would be giving someone else a chance at getting credit or a reward for a good idea.
D) organizational red tape that slows access to internal knowledge makes managers more interested in researching external knowledge resources.