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Q:
Organizational socialization is best described as a process of _____ where newcomers try to make sense of and adapt to the company's environment.
A. cooperation and stability
B. power and restructuring
C. negotiation and concession-making
D. learning and adjustment
E. managing and delegating
Q:
According to the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) theory, job applicants:
A. with a variety of personal characteristics are preferred by organizations, resulting in a more heterogeneous organization.
B. avoid employment in companies whose values seem incompatible with their own values.
C. do not typically pay much heed to organizational values when applying for work.
D. avoid other applicants if they are competing for the same jobs.
E. are attracted to companies who are likely to provide them with the greatest financial rewards.
Q:
Which of the following statements is consistent with the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) theory?
A. Job applicants who later become organizational members tend to be attracted to co-workers who share their values and assumptions.
B. Organizations have a natural tendency to attract, select, and retain people with values that are consistent with the organization's own culture.
C. Attraction, selection and attrition are part of the natural life-cycle of organizational members.
D. Employees get attached to organizations that meet their reward expectations.
E. Attraction followed by selection inevitably leads to attrition in the future.
Q:
An organization's culture begins with its _____.
A. clients
B. country-level managers
C. employees
D. founders and leaders
E. auditors
Q:
When merging two organizations, a separation strategy is most commonly applied when:
A. both companies have relatively weak cultures that are generally ineffective.
B. one company has an effective culture and employees at the other company would embrace that culture if applied to them.
C. the two organizations operate in distinct industries.
D. the acquired firm's culture doesn't work, whereas the culture of the acquiring firm does work.
E. a bicultural audit reveals that both companies have very similar cultures.
Q:
Which strategy for merging two distinct cultures is most appropriate when the two merging companies are in unrelated industries or operate in different countries, because the most appropriate cultural values tend to differ by industry and national culture?
A. Deculturation
B. Assimilation
C. Separation
D. Integration
E. Negotiation
Q:
Which of the following is true about using the strategy of integration for merging different corporate cultures?
A. It works best when people realize that their existing cultures are good enough, which motivates them to stick to their dominant values.
B. It is the fastest strategy for merging different corporate cultures.
C. It is potentially safe because neither party is preserving the existing culture.
D. It should be considered when the merging companies have strong cultures and distinct cultures.
E. It creates a new composite culture that preserves the best features of the previous cultures.
Q:
Which strategy for merging two distinct cultures is most effective when the two companies have relatively weak cultures with overlapping values?
A. Deculturation
B. Assimilation
C. Separation
D. Integration
E. Negotiation
Q:
A deculturation strategy of merging two corporate cultures should be applied:
A. when employees at the acquired company willingly embrace the cultural values of the acquiring organization.
B. when both firms operate successfully in different industries.
C. when employees in the acquired firm want to hold on to their firm's culture even though it does not fit the external environment.
D. when both the firms have weak cultures.
E. when the merging companies agree to remain distinct entities with minimal exchange of culture or organizational practices.
Q:
In which strategy does the acquiring company impose its culture and business practices on the acquired organization?
A. Deculturation
B. Assimilation
C. Separation
D. Integration
E. Bicultural audit
Q:
_____ occurs when employees at the acquired company willingly embrace the cultural values of the acquiring organization.
A. Deculturation
B. Assimilation
C. Separation
D. Integration
E. Negotiation
Q:
When the acquired firm has a weak culture, it is best to use the _____ merger strategy.
A. disambiguation
B. separation
C. deculturation
D. assimilation
E. integration
Q:
One of the first steps to minimize a cultural clash in a merger is to:
A. significantly reduce the strength of the culture in both the organizations.
B. conduct a bicultural audit.
C. significantly increase the strength of the culture in both organizations.
D. replace the chief executives in both organizations before merger negotiations begin.
E. replace the employees with new ones.
Q:
The main purpose of a bicultural audit is to:
A. determine whether a company's organizational culture is sufficiently strong.
B. estimate the number of dominant and subcultural values that exist in an organization.
C. find out whether people from different countries have the same corporate cultures.
D. identify and diagnose differences in the corporate cultures of merging organizations.
E. teach new employees the organization's dominant cultural values.
Q:
Employees at SuperTech Services seek out opportunities rather than wait for them to arrive. They also have a strong learning orientation. This implies that SuperTech has:
A. a weak organizational culture.
B. a strong counterculture.
C. relatively few artifacts representing the organization's culture.
D. a culture that is misaligned with its external environment.
E. an adaptive culture.
Q:
Which of the following is a characteristic of an adaptive corporate culture?
A. Employees hold a common mental model that the organization's success depends on their personal wellbeing.
B. Employees continuously question past practices.
C. Employees tend to be more reactive.
D. Employees tend to take the view that any activity beyond their job description is not their job.
E. Employees are more individualistic and do not experiment with new ideas outside their work profiles.
Q:
Organizations with an adaptive corporate culture:
A. are unlikely to survive in the long run.
B. have employees who see things from an open systems perspective.
C. tend to be less ethical than organizations with non-adaptive cultures.
D. have no artifacts to keep their culture in place.
E. are focused inward to employee needs.
Q:
Organizations that tolerate or encourage subcultures with dissenting values:
A. usually go quickly out of business.
B. usually build stronger cultures to counteract those dissenting values.
C. may eventually use those dissenting values to build a new set of dominant values in the future.
D. do not have any corporate culture.
E. have a very rigid corporate culture.
Q:
Which of the following is true about mental models?
A. Mental models usually help to improve organizational effectiveness.
B. Mental models are one of the artifacts of organizational culture.
C. Mental models are mainly used to decipher an organization's culture.
D. Mental models can blind employees to new opportunities and unique problems.
E. Mental models are unrelated to organizational culture.
Q:
Which of the following tends to happen when an organization's culture is misaligned with its external environment?
A. The corporate culture gets stronger.
B. The organization's subcultures weaken.
C. The organization has more difficulty anticipating and responding to stakeholder needs.
D. The organization is unable to develop subcultures.
E. The various subcultures within the organization keep changing.
Q:
Which of the following statements about the strength of organizational culture and organizational performance is true?
A. Organizations with stronger cultures tend to perform better than those with weak cultures when the culture content fits the external environment.
B. There is no relationship between an organization's cultural strength and its performance.
C. Organizations with stronger cultures tend to perform better only when they acquire other organizations with distinct cultures.
D. Organizations with stronger cultures almost always perform poorly compared to those with weak cultures.
E. Organizations with stronger cultures perform poorly if they have subcultures.
Q:
Which of the following is true about organizational culture?
A. It is suggested that companies with strong cultures tend to be more successful, irrespective of any conditions.
B. Companies have strong cultures when the dominant values are held mainly by a few people at the top of the organization.
C. Most employees across all subunits understand the dominant values but choose to ignore them.
D. The life span of strong organizational cultures is almost always short.
E. The strength of an organization's culture refers to how widely and deeply employees hold the company's dominant values and assumptions.
Q:
Which of the following is a verbal symbol of cultural values?
A. Speeches at ceremonies
B. Expressions of anger
C. Shared assumptions
D. Beliefs
E. Rituals
Q:
Language is:
A. programmed routines of daily organizational life that dramatize the organization's culture.
B. not good at highlighting the values of organizational subcultures.
C. verbal symbols of cultural values that reveal how employees describe customers, express anger, and greet stakeholders.
D. physical structures that convey the dominant values of an organization's culture.
E. games that people play to defy the dominant culture and, instead, support countercultural beliefs and values.
Q:
Which of the following is an artifact?
A. Values
B. Language
C. Assumptions
D. Beliefs
E. Corporate cult
Q:
Whenever a team in Ads Today, an advertising firm, wins a new contract, the successful team rings a loud bell and breaks out a bottle of champagne. In organizational culture, this practice would be considered:
A. unethical.
B. a ceremony.
C. a mental model.
D. a symptom of a culture that is out of touch with its external environment.
E. irrelevant to the meaning or study of organizational culture.
Q:
Ceremonies are:
A. programmed routines of daily organizational life that dramatize the organization's culture.
B. more formal artifacts than rituals.
C. verbal symbols of cultural values that reveal how employees talk to one another, describe customers, express anger, and greet stakeholders.
D. physical structures that convey the dominant values of an organization's culture.
E. games that people play to defy the dominant culture and, instead, support countercultural beliefs and values.
Q:
At meetings of a major consumer products firm, employees habitually stand up when the most senior executive at the meeting enters the room. This practice represents:
A. evidence that the meeting has employees who hold countercultural values.
B. an adaptive culture in the company.
C. a ritual that probably symbolizes the organization's dominant culture.
D. a form of deculturation that eventually undermines the organization's dominant culture.
E. that the company's espoused values differs from its enacted values.
Q:
Rituals are:
A. programmed routines of daily organizational life that dramatize the organization's culture.
B. more formal artifacts than ceremonies.
C. verbal symbols of cultural values that reveal how employees talk to one another, describe customers, express anger, and greet stakeholders.
D. physical structures that convey the dominant values of an organization's culture.
E. games that people play to defy the dominant culture and, instead, support countercultural beliefs and values.
Q:
Organizational stories are most effective at communicating organizational culture only when they:
A. make employees emotional.
B. are told by senior executives to the public.
C. describe real people and are assumed to be true.
D. are descriptive rather than prescriptive.
E. tend to pressurize individual performance.
Q:
Which of these statements about organizational stories is true?
A. Organizational stories are just stories; most employees have a hard time believing them.
B. Stories communicate organizational culture if they describe positive events, whereas they undermine organizational culture if they describe negative events.
C. Organizational stories are descriptive, but not prescriptive.
D. Stories are most effective at communicating corporate culture when they describe real events with real people.
E. Organizational stories advise people what not to do, but leave out the solutions and suggestions.
Q:
What is the significance of artifacts in organizational culture?
A. Artifacts are the same as organizational culture.
B. Artifacts are the residual parts of the organization that cannot fit into its culture.
C. Artifacts represent the directly observable symbols and signs of an organization's culture.
D. Artifacts are the main observable indicators that the organization does not have a culture.
E. Artifacts mainly reflect the subcultures that conflict with an organization's dominant culture.
Q:
Which of the following are the observable indicators of organizational culture?
A. Assumptions
B. Artifacts
C. Values
D. Beliefs
E. Mental models
Q:
One of the functions of _____ is that it is a spawning ground for emerging values that keep the firm aligned with the needs of customers, suppliers, society, and other stakeholders.
A. a multicultural organization
B. a shared value
C. a subculture
D. an espoused value
E. urban culture
Q:
One advantage of countercultures is that they:
A. rarely exist in real organizations.
B. maintain surveillance over and critically review the company's dominant culture.
C. prevent organizations from developing a corporate culture.
D. ensure that corporate mergers occur without any culture clashes.
E. discourage conflict and dissension among employees.
Q:
The themes shared most widely by employees represent:
A. the organization's dominant culture.
B. the organization's deculturation process.
C. the organization's counterculture.
D. artifacts held mainly by senior executives in the organization.
E. rituals prevalent in the organization.
Q:
Which of the following organizational culture dimension is characterized by competitiveness and a low emphasis on social responsibility?
A. Stability
B. Innovation
C. Outcome orientation
D. Aggressiveness
E. Respect for people
Q:
The organizational culture dimension of attention to detail is characterized by _____.
A. tolerance
B. fairness
C. precision
D. collaboration
E. security
Q:
Which of the following organizational culture dimension is characterized by risk taking, and low cautiousness?
A. Stability
B. Innovation
C. Outcome orientation
D. Aggressiveness
E. Respect for people
Q:
The best way to determine an organization's shared assumptions is to:
A. interview executives.
B. look for evidence of its corporate value statements.
C. determine what the organization's enacted values are.
D. read public relations statements produced by the organization.
E. ask customers to evaluate the company's effectiveness.
Q:
Which of these statements about shared assumptions is true?
A. They are not taken-for-granted perceptions, but rather conscious decisions.
B. They are so deeply embedded they probably cannot be discovered by surveying employees.
C. They are the same as espoused values.
D. They are revealed through corporate value statements.
E. They rise to the surface only when employees let them.
Q:
_____ are unconscious, taken-for-granted perceptions or ideal prototypes of behavior that are considered the correct way to think and act toward problems and opportunities.
A. Values
B. Organizational artifacts
C. Languages
D. Beliefs
E. Shared assumptions
Q:
Realistic job previews improve organizational socialization by ensuring that applicants develop more accurate pre-employment expectations.
Q:
Reality shock occurs on or before the first day of work, then quickly subsides.
Q:
Reality shock occurs when you perceive a discrepancy between your pre-employment expectations and on-the-job reality.
Q:
The main problem with the encounter stage of socialization is that outsiders rely on indirect information about what it is like to work in the organization.
Q:
The three stages of socialization are pre-employment socialization encounter, and role management.
Q:
Organizational socialization begins on the first day of employment and continues throughout one's career within the company.
Q:
An individual's beliefs about the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between that person and an employer is called a mental model.
Q:
Organizational socialization is the process by which individuals create social norms to interact within the organization.
Q:
Attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) theory explains why companies are able to attract and select people who fit the culture, but later on have difficulty in creating a stronger culture.
Q:
One way to change an organization's culture is to change its artifacts.
Q:
Organizational culture can sometimes be reshaped by applying transformational leadership and organizational change practices.
Q:
The deculturation strategy is most appropriate when the merging companies are in unrelated industries.
Q:
The assimilation strategy is the most likely to result in a culture clash.
Q:
The first step in a bicultural audit is to identify strategies and prepare action plans to bridge the two organizations' cultures.
Q:
Organizations with adaptive cultures are unable to maintain a stable value system and, consequently, tend to perform poorly in the long run.
Q:
Very strong cultures often become dysfunctional when they discourage dissenting subcultural values.
Q:
Efficiency-focused cultures are likely to be more important for companies in environments with strong competition and standardized products.
Q:
In corporate cults, the culture is so strong that it focuses employees on one mental model so much that they may fail to see issues from different perspectives.
Q:
Explain the statement, "Structure follows strategy."
Q:
Distinguish between simple and complex environments. Which element of organizational structure best suits a complex environment?
Q:
What is a network structure? Explain.
Q:
Explain why companies are moving away from structures that organize people around geographic clusters.
Q:
Define span of control and distinguish between narrow and wide span of control.
Q:
What do cross-functional work teams typically consist of and which coordinating strategy best suits this work methodology?
Q:
ABC Production ABC Production, a consumer products firm with a functional structure, is expanding from a single product line into several diverse product groups, with most sales within one country. What form of departmentalization should it eventually adopt to manage the new conditions most effectively?
A. Divisional geographic structure
B. Network structure
C. Matrix structure
D. Divisional product structure
E. Retain the functional structure
Q:
Food4U Food4U, a wholesale grocery business, operates in one city and provides one service - stocking retailers with fresh produce. The company wants to ensure that employees develop expertise in their skill specialization and that these specializations are used efficiently. A potential problem with this form of structure is:
A. inefficient resource utilization.
B. increased costs.
C. excessive focus on clients.
D. ambiguous accountability.
E. higher dysfunctional conflict.
Q:
Food4U Food4U, a wholesale grocery business, operates in one city and provides one service - stocking retailers with fresh produce. The company wants to ensure that employees develop expertise in their skill specialization and that these specializations are used efficiently. What form of departmentalization would be most appropriate here?
A. Simple structure
B. Matrix structure
C. Geographic divisional structure
D. Functional structure
E. Product divisional structure
Q:
Tammy Tammy recently earned her degree in nursing and has begun a career path in the surgical ward at a local hospital. Her training program consists of a year-long internship, working with senior nurses. While in school, Tammy worked in a medical lab performing routine blood tests. The lab technician job required her to take a two-week course and refer to a procedures manual for her work on a daily basis. Which coordinating mechanism was most important in Tammy's job as a lab technician?
A. Direct supervision
B. Integrator roles
C. Job descriptions
D. Extensive training
E. Decentralization
Q:
Tammy Tammy recently earned her degree in nursing and has begun a career path in the surgical ward at a local hospital. Her training program consists of a year-long internship, working with senior nurses. While in school, Tammy worked in a medical lab performing routine blood tests. The lab technician job required her to take a two-week course and refer to a procedures manual for her work on a daily basis. Which coordinating mechanism is most important in Tammy's new career as a surgical nurse?
A. Direct supervision
B. An integrator role
C. Job descriptions
D. Extensive training
E. Decentralization
Q:
An organization that wants to compete through innovation should:
A. adopt an organic structure and make extensive use of informal communication to coordinate work.
B. centralize by typically giving the decision making authority to those at the top of the organizational hierarchy and formalize its organizational structure.
C. coordinate employees by establishing formal rules and procedures.
D. switch to a cost leadership strategy as quickly as possible.
E. adopt a mechanistic structure with functional departmentalization.
Q:
Two technological contingencies that influence the best type of organizational structure are:
A. dynamism and hostility.
B. organic and mechanistic.
C. variability and analyzability.
D. formalization and division of labor.
E. coordination and formalization.
Q:
Larger organizations:
A. make greater use of standardization than do smaller firms.
B. have similar structures to smaller organizations.
C. operate without any form of departmentalization for long periods of time.
D. make less use of informal communication as a coordinating mechanism.
E. are never decentralized.
Q:
A steel manufacturing firm with about 1,000 employees operates in an environment that is simple and integrated (it makes a small number of steel products to a few key customers) but also dynamic and hostile (rapidly changing technology and customer needs with many competitors). Based on the environment in which this company operates, it would be more successful with a(n):
A. organic structure.
B. centralized structure.
C. divisionalized structure.
D. matrix structure.
E. mechanistic structure.
Q:
A divisionalized structure is recommended mainly for:
A. stable environments.
B. diverse environments.
C. munificent environments.
D. integrated environments.
E. simple environments.
Q:
Organic structures are better than mechanistic structures for:
A. hostile environments.
B. stable environments.
C. munificent environments.
D. munificent and complex environments.
E. simple and stable environments.
Q:
For which type of environment should organizations adopt an organic structure?
A. Munificent environment
B. Dynamic environment
C. Stable environment
D. Simple environment
E. Routine environment
Q:
Organizational size, technology, and environment are:
A. the three dimensions of span of control.
B. three of the four ways to avoid using coordinating mechanisms.
C. three conditions that do not influence a simple structure.
D. the three factors that distinguish a virtual corporation from a network structure.
E. three of the four contingencies of organizational design.
Q:
The increasing recognition that an organization has only a few core competencies is one of the forces pushing towards more:
A. functional structures.
B. simple structures.
C. client-based divisionalized structures.
D. network structures.
E. team-based structures.