Q&A Hero

Q: Employees experience more meaningfulness when working in jobs that allow them to receive feedback about their performance and accomplishments.

Q: Employees are more likely to feel empowered in jobs with a high degree of autonomy, task identity, and task significance.

Q: The dimension of "meaning" in discussing empowerment is when employees view themselves as active participants in the organization; that is, their decisions and actions have an influence on the company's success.

Q: People are empowered when they feel self-determination, meaning, competence, and impact regarding their role in the organization.

Q: Companies are applying job specialization when employees are made directly responsible for specific customers and having them communicate directly with those customers.

Q: Job enrichment tends to increase the quality of products or services.

Q: Forming natural work units tends to increase task identity and task significance.

Q: Two ways to enrich jobs are by clustering jobs into natural groups and by establishing client relationships.

Q: Research suggests that increasing job enlargement increases employee motivation almost as much as job enrichment.

Q: A video journalist is someone who performs all jobs previously done by a traditional news teamfrom operating the camera to reporting the story. Thus, a video journalist is an example of job enlargement and job enrichment.

Q: Job enlargement increases skill variety.

Q: Employees in jobs with low task variability have nonroutine work patterns.

Q: Task variability refers to how much the job can be performed using known procedures and rules.

Q: Required social interaction with other employees is known as task interdependence.

Q: All employees feel more motivated to perform their jobs when the core job characteristics are increased.

Q: Increasing the core job characteristics will not increase employee motivation for those who lack the required skills.

Q: According to the job characteristics model, experienced meaningfulness increases with the level of job feedback.

Q: Task significance is the degree to which the job affects the organization and/or larger society.

Q: Employees assembling complete computer modems would have higher task identity than those assembling only one component and passing it along to others for further assembly.

Q: Task identity is the degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the organization and/or larger society.

Q: The job characteristics model identifies five core job characteristics and three psychological states.

Q: Motivator-hygiene theory highlights the idea that job content is an important source of employee motivation.

Q: Motivator-hygiene theory has been soundly rejected by research studies.

Q: According to Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory, only characteristics of the job (and not the work environment) motivate employees.

Q: Job specialization increases work efficiency, but it tends to reduce employee motivation.

Q: Adam Smith introduced the principles of scientific management.

Q: Scientific management is mainly associated with high levels of job specialization.

Q: Scientific management is the process of systematically dividing work into its smallest possible elements and standardizing work activities to achieve maximum efficiency.

Q: Job specialization increases training costs and makes it more difficult for companies to match employee aptitudes to jobs for which they are best suited.

Q: Job specialization increases efficiency because it includes fewer mental and physical skills, shorter work cycles, less variety of tasks, and more precise job matching.

Q: Longer work cycles give employees more frequent practice with the task, so jobs are mastered more quickly.

Q: Cycle time is the time required to complete the task before starting over with another item or client.

Q: Job design is the result of division of labor in which work is subdivided into separate jobs assigned to different people.

Q: Companies motivate employees mainly by designing interesting and challenging jobs.

Q: Money is the only thing that motivates people to join an organization and perform effectively.

Q: Team rewards increase employee preferences for team-based work arrangements.

Q: Companies should use individual-level performance-based pay when jobs are highly interdependent.

Q: Where subjective measures of performance are necessary, companies should rely on multiple sources of information.

Q: Inconsistencies and bias in reward systems are often increased because of gainsharing.

Q: Very large rewards (relative to an employee's regular income) can result in lower, rather than higher, performance.

Q: Employee stock ownership plans give employees the right to purchase company stock at a predetermined price up to a fixed expiration date.

Q: Employee stock ownership plans and stock options tend to create an "ownership culture" in which employees feel aligned with the organization's success.

Q: Employee stock ownership plans and stock options are two types of organizational-level performance-based rewards.

Q: Gainsharing plans appropriate only for production jobs, not for services such as medical operations.

Q: Gainsharing plans focus on cost reductions and increased labor efficiency.

Q: Competency-based rewards tend to improve levels of product and service quality.

Q: Skill-based pay plans give an employee a higher pay rate for those days that he or she performs two or more jobs at the same time.

Q: Competency-based rewards pay employees based on their seniority in the organization.

Q: Competency-based rewards are consistent with the concept of employability.

Q: An advantage of competency-based rewards is that measuring employee competencies is mostly done through objective measurement methods.

Q: Job status-based rewards discourage employees from hoarding resources.

Q: Job status-based rewards potentially motivate employees to compete with each other.

Q: Job evaluation mainly supports the competency approach to rewards.

Q: Most job evaluation methods give higher value to jobs that require more skill and effort.

Q: A problem with seniority-based rewards is that they cause higher turnover.

Q: The largest portion of most paychecks is based on a person's membership and seniority in an organization.

Q: People with a high power distance tend to have a high respect and priority for money.

Q: Your supervisor is intrigued by the concept of self-leadership and wants to know more about it. Discuss how she can encourage self-leadership and which conditions would encourage self-leadership to be more likely to occur.

Q: Self-leadership provides a different way of thinking about motivating employees. Identify and fully describe three of the elements of the self-leadership model and briefly explain how self-leadership differs from other applied motivation practices.

Q: The chief executive officer of a mid-sized manufacturing company has hired you to design the work site and to make any other changes necessary for employees to feel more empowered. Briefly define empowerment and describe three important conditions you would ensure to improve empowerment among the employees.

Q: Explain the three critical psychological states that affect employee motivation and satisfaction in the context of the job characteristics model.

Q: Briefly explain the benefits and problems of job specialization.

Q: Compare and contrast gainsharing with employee share ownership plans.

Q: Describe a reward system that would best motivate employees to learn several jobs. Identify potential disadvantages of this reward system.

Q: ClamCo, a large energy company, was once a bureaucratic organization that valued long service and promotions through a steep hierarchy. After several years of difficult change, it is now a much flatter organization that places more responsibility with self-directed work teams. Explain what changes ClamCo probably would have made to align its reward system with this new corporate philosophy.

Q: Briefly describe how organizations reward people for job status. Discuss three potential problems with rewarding employees for their job status.

Q: A cable TV company redesigned jobs so that one employee interacts directly with customers, connects and disconnects their cable service, installs their special services and collects overdue accounts in an assigned area. They also decided to do away with scripted customer interaction manuals and allow each employee to determine how best to interact with each customer. Previously, each task was performed by a different person and the customer interacted only with someone at the head office. This change most likely increased each employee's _______________. A. skill variety B. task identity C. task significance D. autonomy E. all of these

Q: A large retail organization previously divided work among its four employee benefits staff into distinct specializations. One person answered all questions about superannuation (pension plans), another answered all questions about various forms of paid time off (e.g. vacations), and so on. These jobs were recently restructured so that each employee benefits person answers all questions for people in a particular geographic area. For example, one staff member is responsible for all employee benefits inquiries from anyone in a particular geographic region. This restructuring most likely increased each employee's _________________. A. sense of ownership B. absenteeism C. tendency to overwork D. self-talk E. competence

Q: Steelweld, a car parts manufacturer, pays employees a higher hourly rate as they learn to master more parts of the work process. Employees earn $10 per hour when they are hired and they can earn up to $20 per hour if they master all 12 work units in the production process.Which of the following is most likely a benefit Steelweld is trying to achieve with this reward system?A. The attraction of applicants.B. The minimization of pay discrimination.C. The motivation of task performance.D. The creation of an ownership culture.E. The improvement of workforce flexibility.

Q: Katie decided to do a more enjoyable task after completing a task that she disliked. This instance is an example of: A. self-reinforcement. B. job enrichment. C. job specialization. D. self-monitoring. E. job feedback.

Q: _____ is the process of keeping track at regular intervals of one's progress toward a goal by using naturally occurring feedback. A. Job feedback B. Self-monitoring C. Natural grouping D. Job specialization E. Task significance

Q: Which of the following elements does self-leadership include? A. Job specialization B. Task identity C. Mental imagery D. Job evaluation E. Task significance

Q: According to the self-leadership model, which of the following is true about positive self-talk? A. It should never be practiced on the job. B. It represents the most important way to monitor our own performance. C. It occurs when employees are unable to control their own behavior on the job. D. It improves self-efficacy and employee motivation. E. It must occur only after the task has been accomplished.

Q: Which of the following are included under constructive thought patterns in self-leadership? A. Self-talk and mental imagery B. Gainsharing and employee stock ownership plans C. Personal goal setting and self-monitoring D. Job rotation and job enrichment E. Task identity and task significance

Q: Before meeting a new client, a salesperson visualizes the experience of meeting the person and effectively answering some of the challenging questions the client might ask. This activity is an example of: A. poor performance. B. constructive thought patterns. C. rewarding competencies. D. job rotation. E. empowerment.

Q: Which of the following steps occurs in self-leadership immediately after identifying goals that are specific, relevant, and challenging? A. Designing natural rewards B. Self-monitoring C. Self-reinforcement D. Constructive thought patterns E. Track keeping

Q: Which of the following is the first step in self-leadership? A. Establishing client relationships B. Practicing gainsharing C. Personal goal setting D. Constructive thought patterns E. Self-reinforcement

Q: Which of these statements about self-leadership is true? A. Employees with a low degree of conscientiousness have a more natural tendency to apply self-leadership. B. Some elements of self-leadership come from sports psychology. C. Self-leadership is practiced by people with particular personality characteristics and cannot be learned. D. External locus of control helps in applying self-help strategies. E. Self-leadership behaviors are more frequently found in people with lower levels of extroversion.

Q: The process of influencing oneself to establish the self-direction and self-motivation needed to perform a task is known as:A. self-reinforcement.B. self-talk.C. self-leadership.D. self-influence.E. self-steering.

Q: A high degree of autonomy, task identity, and task significance are important conditions for: A. job specialization. B. competency-based pay. C. empowerment. D. scientific management. E. piece rate system.