MGMT 609 Week 1 Quiz

MGMT 609 Week 1 Quiz | Assignment Help | kogod-school-of-business-american-university

1.4 Quiz

Question 1

Counter-factual thinking is:

Select one:

 a. Good, because it focuses on seeing things as they might have been, or developing multiple different explanations for what happened. 

 b. Good, because it focuses on seeing things as they may be in the future, or developing a single, original explanation for what happened.

 c. Bad, because it causes managers to focus on non-factual, inaccurate explanations of past events.

Question 2

Triangulation, in the context of organizational behavior, usually means:

Select one:

 a. Finding out how many different people see a situation

 b. Using multiple sources of statistical data to develop an organizational diagnosis.

 c. A form of politicking based on co-opting the issues that others care about in an organization. 

 d. The dysfunctional communication patters that occurs when a third person becomes an intermediary between two individuals who avoid direct communication.

Question 3

Is competitive success attained through people strategies?

Select one:

 a. Always, because organizations are simply collections of people doing business together, and therefore treating employees or customers badly will hurt the business.

 b. Not in all cases, because some companies have other sources of competitive advantage, or benefit from favorable labor market conditions.

 c. Never, because organizational success is almost entirely a function of the effectiveness systems, resources, and strategies, and depends very little upon which individuals are hired to carry them out.

 d. Always, because attracting competent workers, making sure they are working effectively and responding to product and technology changes always matters to organizational success regardless of market conditions, labor markets, etc. 

Question 4

The attention given to today's successful companies as examples of effective management reflects..

Select one:

 a. The fact that today's companies are the best source of relevant, contemporary management practices, because successful management must be contextualized to current conditions.

 b. An important shift in the management profession, in which managers increasingly rely on the practical experience of current firms, rather than abstract, outdated research. 

 c. An effective response to the anxiety managers have today about the difficulty and ambiguity of their work, which helps tame the tendency to jump from one management fashion to another without proper implementation.

 d. A faddish approach to shaping management decisions, which is ineffective not only because of the limited value of the management practices borrowed from current "star" firms, but also because it promotes a tendency to jump from one management fashion to another without proper implementation.

Question 5

Irrational behavior in the workplace...

Select one:

 a. Must be gradually but firmly controlled and sanctioned as the harmful and logic-free behavior that it is, because trying to rationalize it would play into the hands of the person acting inappropriately. 

 b. Should be ignored in most cases, because unless it interferes with primary workplace responsibilities, it is probably just a harmless coping mechanism not worth the time to over-analyze.

 c. In most cases us grounds for swift disciplinary action, because what matters is how it damages the organization, not whatever the private, irrational thinking is that motivated it.

 d. May have, at least in part, a rational basis that should be understood (e.g., the consequence of hidden but logical motivations and incentives), which can then inform efforts to correct it.

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