Q&A Hero

Q: If a dysfunctional norm is very deeply ingrained in a team, the best strategy is probably to: A. tell the group that corporate leaders are willing to tolerate the dysfunctional norm. B. disband the group and replace it with people having more favorable norms. C. supplement the existing group with one or two people having more favorable norms. D. introduce rewards that support the dysfunctional norm. E. provide direct reinforcement and punishment to the employees.

Q: How do norms affect the behavior of team members? A. They encourage members to try new behaviors not previously sanctioned by the team. B. They encourage the members to think out of the box and provide innovative solutions. C. They help the team regulate and guide the behaviors of its members. D. They help the team move from the forming to storming stages of team development. E. They enable team members to have complete autonomy in their functioning.

Q: Which of the following is a major problem associated with team building activities? A. They cannot be used to clarify the team's performance goals. B. They do not focus on improving relations among team members. C. Team building consists of informal activities rather than formal activities. D. Team building attempts slow down the team development process. E. They are used as general solutions rather than specific solutions.

Q: During the _____ stage of team development, team members shift their attention away from task orientation to a relationship focus. A. forming B. storming C. norming D. adjourning E. performing

Q: Which of the following generally occurs during the storming stage of team development? A. Members learn about each other and evaluate the benefits and costs of continued membership. B. Members shift their attention away from task orientation to a socio-emotional focus as they realize their relationship is coming to an end. C. Members learn to coordinate their actions and become more task-oriented. D. Members develop their first real sense of cohesion and, through disclosure and feedback, make an effort to understand and accept each other. E. Members try to establish norms of appropriate behavior and performance standards.

Q: A diverse team is better than a homogeneous team: A. when designing and launching a new product or service. B. on tasks requiring a high degree of cooperation. C. in situations where the team must reach the performing stage of team development quickly. D. in most organizational activities as they will have fewer conflicts. E. if the team is working on a project that involves routine tasks.

Q: Teams with strong fault lines: A. experience more dysfunctional conflict within the team. B. proceed more quickly through the team development process. C. have team members with similar demographic and professional backgrounds. D. have very few members in the team. E. have better interpersonal relations.

Q: "Fault lines" are more likely to occur when teams: A. have very few members. B. are involved in sequential interdependence. C. engage in participative management. D. are highly interdependent. E. are diverse.

Q: Which are the task-related characteristics in the "five C's" of effective member behaviors? A. Comforting and communicating B. Cooperating and conflict resolving C. Coordinating and communicating D. Conflict resolving and coordinating E. Comforting and cooperating

Q: Which of the following competencies would primarily assist team maintenance? A. Cooperating B. Coordinating C. Communicating D. Comforting E. Concentrating

Q: Employees with _____, in which work output is exchanged back and forth among individuals, should be organized into teams to facilitate coordination in their interwoven relationship. A. pooled interdependence B. reciprocal interdependence C. counterproductive norms D. high levels of social loafing E. a very high level of heterogeneity

Q: Pooled interdependence is: A. essential for team effectiveness. B. the same as reciprocal interdependence. C. stronger than sequential interdependence. D. the best way to avoid social loafing. E. is the lowest level of interdependence.

Q: Two company divisions produce completely different products but must seek funding from head office for a capital expansion project. The relationship between these two divisions would be best described as:A. total interdependence.B. sequential interdependence.C. reciprocal interdependence.D. anticipatory interdependence.E. pooled interdependence.

Q: Which of the following types of task interdependence exists among production employees working on assembly lines? A. Sequential interdependence B. Total independence C. Reciprocal interdependence D. Pooled interdependence E. Alternate interdependence

Q: Which of the following is not a factor that favors effective team behavior? A. Individual rewards for contributions to the team B. Information systems that support the team C. Close physical layout of team members D. Leadership that supports team behavior and structures E. Distinctive clusters of work assigned to the team

Q: The phenomenon that occurs when people exert less effort when working in groups than when working alone is referred to as _____. A. team cohesiveness B. social identity C. pooled interdependence D. team conformity E. social loafing

Q: Keeping the team size sufficiently small and designing tasks such that each team member's performance is measurable are two ways to: A. minimize team cohesiveness. B. add more roles to the team. C. increase the risk of forming dysfunctional norms. D. minimize social loafing. E. minimize the process losses.

Q: Social loafing occurs: A. more in smaller rather than larger teams. B. more when the task is boring than when it is interesting. C. more in tasks with high interdependence. D. more when employees believe the team's objective is important. E. more among employees with collectivist rather than individualistic values.

Q: In team dynamics, process losses are best described as: A. productivity losses that occur when individual members need to learn a new task. B. information lost due to imperfect communication among team members. C. resources expended towards team development and maintenance. D. knowledge lost when a team member leaves the organization. E. knowledge lost when tacit knowledge is converted to structural knowledge.

Q: Fellow team members often monitor performance more closely than a traditional supervisor. This is particularly true where the team's performance depends on: A. technological factors. B. the special efforts of members. C. certain skills of members. D. the aptitudes of members. E. the worst performer in the group.

Q: The drive to bond and the dynamics of social identity theory both explain why people: A. join informal groups. B. tend to ignore team norms whenever possible. C. have difficulty feeling cohesive in teams. D. engage in social loafing. E. work better alone than in teams.

Q: According to social identity theory: A. teams are never as productive as individuals working alone. B. the most effective teams have a large number of members. C. the team development process occurs more rapidly for heterogeneous teams than for homogeneous teams. D. people define themselves by their group affiliations. E. teams are less productive in performing complex tasks.

Q: _____ provides an explanation of why people belong to informal groups. A. Need to defend B. Social identity theory C. Confirmation bias D. Social loafing E. Cognitive dissonance

Q: Which of the following types of teams are best known for having a champion who uses bootlegging to develop new products, services, or procedures?A. SkunkworksB. Communities of practiceC. Task forcesD. Informal groupsE. Production teams

Q: Synergie Inc. formed a team to improve revenues for its service stations along major highways in Malaysia. This team, which included a service station manager, a truck driver, and four or five marketing executives, disbanded after it had reviewed the Malaysian service stations and submitted a business plan. This team is called a(n):A. skunkworks.B. bootleg group.C. informal group.D. community of practice.E. task force.

Q: Informal groups:A. are initiated by the organization for special purposes.B. exist primarily for the benefit of their members.C. perform routine organizational goals.D. always have a high level of interdependence.E. perform uncommon tasks of the organization.

Q: A task force refers to any:A. informal group that has the same members as the permanent task-oriented group.B. formal group whose members work permanently and spend most of their time in that team.C. formal group whose members must be able to perform all of the tasks of the team.D. temporary team that investigates a particular problem and typically disbands when the decision is made.E. temporary team that has members in different locations who depend on information technologies to communicate and coordinate their work effort.

Q: Groups are considered teams only when: A. they operate without any supervisor. B. everyone in the department has the same set of skills. C. employees directly interact with each other and coordinate work activities. D. all employees are located in the same physical area. E. most of the employees have the same level of motivation to accomplish goals.

Q: The nominal group technique is not applied in real-world settings.

Q: The nominal group technique removes the problems of evaluation apprehension and production blocking.

Q: The nominal group technique tends to produce more and better ideas than do traditional interacting groups.

Q: The nominal group technique is a variation of brainstorming.

Q: Electronic brainstorming significantly reduces the problem of production blocking.

Q: As director of new projects, you have just learned that cash flow problems have forced your organization to cut back product development activities. This means that two of the eight projects currently being developed must be terminated along with the employees working on those projects (about 25 per cent of employees in your unit). You have a good knowledge of these projects as well as the performance and seniority of employees who work in your unit. While some projects clearly have a high chance of success, the long-term potential of a couple of them is unknown. Identify the best level of employee involvement in this situation and describe three factors (contingencies) that support this level of involvement.

Q: Creative Finance Ltd. wants to introduce practices that would enhance creativity among employees in solving some of the financial institution's ongoing work process problems. Identify and describe three types of activities that encourage creativity including a specific example of things that might be done in each activity.

Q: A consumer products company wants more creativity in its research and development operations. The company has spent large amounts of money on creativity training sessions that have helped somewhat, but the VP of research and development believes that the fundamental conditions must be altered to foster more creativity. Describe three conditions (other than training) that this organization should establish to increase the level of creativity in its research and development operations. Briefly explain how each condition might improve creativity.

Q: WesTech Components wants to hire several people for jobs requiring a high degree of creativity. Identify three individual characteristics that WesTech should consider when selecting job applicants who have a high potential for creativity.

Q: Describe the four stages of the creative process.

Q: What is intuition? What are its major implications in decision making?

Q: A large financial institution is losing market share to savvy upstart companies and it has asked its top marketing executive to identify the main reasons for their sliding performance. Describe three barriers that might cause the marketing executive to poorly identify the problem(s) and include an illustrative example for each barrier.The students could discuss the following problems discussed in the text.

Q: Describe the rational choice paradigm of decision making.

Q: Selene and Rita Selene and Rita are both engineers at a highly innovative technology company. They are both very creative people. Selene has 15 years of engineering background, a high need for achievement and strong task motivation, whereas Rita prides herself on her high openness to experience, strong self-direction and her ability to evaluate the potential usefulness of ideas. According to the characteristics of creative people, which areas are Rita's strongest? A. Independent imagination and experience B. Persistence and practical intelligence C. Cognitive and practical intelligence D. Experience and persistence E. Intelligence and independent imagination

Q: ABC Corporation Dora and Keith are managers at ABC Corporation. Keith is having problems in his department with a lack of innovation. In response, he consults the corporate procedures manual and speaks with his boss about the right way to solve the problem. Dora is also having a similar problem in her own department but decides to confront it by hosting team luncheons where she can learn new perspectives and discuss new "outside the box" ways to deal with the problem. Dora is an example of a(n) _______________ thinker. A. divergent B. innovative C. procedural D. convergent E. illumination

Q: InnoBLAST, Inc. George is a manager for InnoBLAST Inc., a web-based applications company. In an attempt to promote new ideas, George decides to allow his engineering team to devote 15% of their work time to whatever projects they would like to work on and reduces their assigned workload. He then institutes a 30 minute period each morning where the team members are asked to look over their current project list for the day and develop more knowledge about a task before they move on to work on their assigned tasks. The time period set aside each morning should help promote which stage of the creative process? A. Preparation B. Incubation C. Illumination D. Verification E. Both preparation and incubation

Q: InnoBLAST, Inc.George is a manager for InnoBLAST Inc., a web-based applications company. In an attempt to promote new ideas, George decides to allow his engineering team to devote 15% of their work time to whatever projects they would like to work on and reduces their assigned workload. He then institutes a 30 minute period each morning where the team members are asked to look over their current project list for the day and develop more knowledge about a task before they move on to work on their assigned tasks.George is attempting to promote:A. employee relations.B. employee creativity.C. employee work/life balance.D. a learning-oriented culture.E. task-orientation.

Q: Sarine's Dolls With funding from her family, Sarine is currently developing a new line of dolls for her business which she hopes will take her company to the next level. At first, she encountered some minor problems with the construction of the dolls and spent a fair amount of money engineering a way to enable them to be like she envisioned. Unfortunately, she then found out that there was a patent protecting the way the dolls arms were connected, so she spent more money redesigning the dolls. After an unexpectedly uninterested response from the public in the dolls, she decided that they needed to be marketed differently in order to sell. So Sarine allocated more resources to marketing and had the packaging of the dolls redesigned and created new set of advertising materials. The cost of manufacturing these dolls has now exceeded four times the initial proposed cost, but she is determined to make it work. She is embarrassed by how this has gone, but continues to put on a brave front. What could Sarine have done differently in order to avoid this escalation of commitment with her decisions? A. Ensure that the people who evaluate the decisions are not the people who originally made them. B. Publicly establish a preset level at which the decision is abandoned or reevaluated. C. Find a source of systematic and clear feedback. D. Involve several people in the evaluation of the decision. E. All of these would be effective.

Q: Paragon Company Alvin, the production manager at the Paragon Company, wants to select the best supplier of raw materials from among several vendors. He has several choices and has done research into which company provides the best services and products. One company is known to be extremely timely, another is much lower in price but often late in deliveries, and the third is well-known to provide the highest quality products available. According to the rational choice decision making process, the first step in solving this problem would be: A. Choosing the best decision process. B. Evaluating the decision inputs. C. Researching the problem. D. Identifying the problem or opportunity. E. All of these should occur simultaneously.

Q: Employees should NOT make the decision alone (without the manager's involvement) when: A. their goals and norms conflict with the organization's objectives. B. they lack commitment to decisions made by the boss alone. C. they possess more knowledge than the manager. D. the employees are likely to disagree with each other regarding the preferred solution. E. the problem calls for a nonprogrammed decision.

Q: A higher level of employee involvement is preferable when: A. management and employees possess the same information regarding the problem. B. the problem relates to a nonprogrammed decision. C. employee's goals and norms conflict with the organization's objectives. D. employees are likely to disagree with each other regarding the preferred solution. E. most of the employees in the organization are inexperienced.

Q: The benefits of employee involvement increase with: A. the routineness and similarity of the problem or opportunity. B. management's knowledge of the situation. C. the standardization and repetitiveness of the problem or opportunity. D. the number and similarity of employees involved in the decision. E. the novelty and complexity of the problem or opportunity.

Q: Decision structure, risk of conflict, and decision commitment are the: A. three conditions required for bounded rationality. B. factors that support implicit favorites. C. contingencies of employee involvement. D. factors that lead to escalation of commitment. E. constraints of team decision making.

Q: Which of the following is true at the highest level of employee involvement? A. Participation involves asking employees for information. B. The entire decision making process is handed over to employees. C. Specific employees provide information to the management, and management makes the recommendations. D. Employees tend to disagree with each other regarding the preferred solution. E. Employees are told about the problem and they provide recommendations to the decision maker.

Q: Which of the following is the lowest level of employee involvement? A. Consult with individuals B. Ask employees for specific information C. Describe the problem to employees and ask for information D. Create a team to make the decision E. Create a team to make recommendations

Q: Which of these is also referred to as participative management? A. Employee involvement B. Escalation of commitment C. Creativity D. Implicit favorite E. Divergent thinking

Q: Which of the following involves listing different dimensions of a system and the elements of each dimension and then looking at each combination? A. Cross pollination B. Impromptu storytelling C. Redefining the problem D. Morphological analysis E. Illumination

Q: What do impromptu storytelling, morphological analysis, and artwork have in common? A. They are forms of cross-pollination. B. They increase the risk of bounded rationality. C. They are forms of associative play. D. They significantly weaken the creative process. E. They used mainly to improve the rational choice process.

Q: People tend to be more creative when they:A. have a reasonable level of job security.B. are secluded from others in the organization.C. are under extreme time-pressure.D. have relatively low experience.E. have low openness to experience.

Q: You have just received seed money for a new e-commerce business and you want to hire a dozen people with a high level of creative potential. To hire the most creative people, you would select applicants who have: A. no experience in this industry, high analytic intelligence, and relatively low need for achievement. B. high degree of nonconformity, value self-direction, and relatively low need for affiliation. C. strong mental models regarding their field of knowledge, high synthetic intelligence, and relatively high need for social approval. D. high need for affiliation, high need for achievement and high need for social approval. E. low openness to experience, high need for social approval, and relatively low need for affiliation.

Q: A marketing specialist needed to find a new way of marketing the company's main product to its potential clients. While watching a movie one evening, the marketing specialist saw a scene that gave her inspiration for a new marketing plan. According to the creative process model, which of the following is the next stage in the creative process after such inspiration? A. Preparation B. Incubation C. Verification D. Illumination E. Morphological analysis

Q: The illumination stage in the creative process: A. provides a tested solution to complex problems. B. occurs after the verification stage in the process. C. generates long-lasting thoughts in the memory. D. is characterized by convergent thinking. E. can be quickly lost if not documented.

Q: In the creative process, which of the following refers to the experience of suddenly becoming aware of a unique idea? A. Incubation B. Illumination C. Preparation D. Verification E. Convergent thinking

Q: Which of the following is assisted by incubation in the creative process? A. Escalation of commitment B. Prospect theory effect C. Convergent thinking D. Divergent thinking E. Decision choice

Q: Which of the following refers to calculating the conventionally accepted "right answer" to a logical problem? A. Divergent thinking B. Convergent thinking C. Logical validity D. Escalation of commitment E. Confirmation bias

Q: An organization asks its employees to reframe the problems in a unique way and generate different approaches to the problems. Which of the following stages in the creative process would assist this? A. Verification B. Preparation C. Experimentation D. Illumination E. Incubation

Q: The first stage of the creative process is: A. divergent thinking. B. preparation. C. experimentation. D. illumination. E. intuition.

Q: Incubation and verification are the: A. stages of the creative process. B. elements of bounded rationality. C. elements of the MARS model. D. stages of team decision making. E. two steps in perceptual modeling.

Q: Establishing a preset level at which the decision is abandoned or reevaluated is recommended mainly to: A. minimize reliance on an implicit favorite. B. avoid relying on mental models to recognize problems or opportunities. C. minimize escalation of commitment. D. minimize problem identification. E. reduce the incidence of satisficing.

Q: Escalation of commitment can be minimized by ensuring that: A. there are ready-made alternatives to resolve the problem. B. those who make the decision are different from those who implement and evaluate it. C. the team leader has strong opinions about the preferred options for a problem. D. organizational goals are relatively ambiguous. E. negative information is screened out to protect the self-esteem of the decision makers.

Q: When decision makers choose to continue an existing course of action because it is the less painful option at the time, this is known as: A. prospect theory effect. B. sunk costs effect. C. self-justification effect. D. self-enhancement effect. E. satisficing.

Q: Prospect theory and closing costs are two reasons why people: A. engage in escalation of commitment. B. define problems in terms of preferred solutions. C. make non-programmed decisions rather than programmed decisions. D. demonstrate satisficing behaviors. E. encourage employee involvement.

Q: _____ is the tendency to experience stronger negative emotions when losing something of value than the positive emotions experienced when gaining something of equal value. A. Implicit favoritism B. Bounded rationality C. Intuition D. Nonprogrammed decision making E. Prospect theory effect

Q: After choosing among several computer server systems, the Director of Information Systems feels very positive about the final choice. However, some of this optimism is due to the fact that the Director forgot about few of the limitations of the chosen system and unconsciously downplays the importance of the positive features of the rejected systems. The Director of Information Systems is engaging in: A. escalation of commitment. B. rational maximization. C. rational choice thinking. D. confirmation bias. E. impulsive buying.

Q: Which of the following statements is true about scenario planning?A. It is unwittingly selective in the acquisition and use of evidence.B. It is the process of planning a solution based on employee preferences.C. It is a disciplined method for imagining possible futures.D. It is an act of reframing the problem in a unique way and generating different approaches to the issue.E. It is the act of calculating the conventionally accepted right answer to a logical problem.

Q: Intuition relies on programmed decision routines that speed up our response to pattern matches or mismatches. These programmed decision routines are referred to as: A. action scripts. B. illuminations. C. rational formulae. D. solution-focused problems. E. implicit favorites.

Q: Which of the following decision-making activities tends to make the most use of tacit knowledge? A. Intuition B. Decision support systems C. Escalation of commitment D. Data mining E. Intelligent systems

Q: The most accurate view of intuition is that it is: A. a trait that people acquire mainly through heredity. B. more likely to be found in men than women. C. acquired more quickly by people whose careers extend to several unrelated industries. D. the ability to know when an opportunity exists and select the best course of action without conscious reasoning. E. an unacceptable way of making decisions in an organizational setting.

Q: Which of the following ultimately energize us to select the preferred choice? A. Logic B. Emotions C. Rational logic D. Creativity E. Intuition

Q: Which of the following is NOT a reason people engage in satisficing rather than maximization?A. They lack the capacity and motivation to process a huge volume of information.B. They rely on sequential evaluation of new alternatives.C. Decisions with many alternatives can be cognitively and emotionally draining.D. Alternatives present themselves over time, not all at once.E. It allows them to choose the alternative with the highest payoff.

Q: Satisficing refers to: A. the tendency to choose an alternative that is good enough rather than the best. B. the feeling employees experience when they are not involved in a decision in which they would have made a valuable contribution. C. a desirable outcome of decision making when several employees participate in the decision process. D. the feeling employees experience when they make the right decision. E. the tendency for decision makers to evaluate alternatives sequentially rather than comparing them all at once.

Q: The Director of Nursing is looking throughout the hospital for a new format of a work schedule for nurses. She evaluates each schedule system as soon as she learns about it. Eventually, she finds a schedule that is "good enough" for her needs and ends her search even though there may be better schedules available that she hasn't yet learned about. The Director of Nursing is engaging in: A. escalation of commitment. B. satisficing. C. perceptual defense. D. post-decisional justification. E. open rationalization.