1. A collectivist Chinese manager is most likely to use which of the following techniques for conflict management?
Authoritative command
Pressurizing
Avoiding
Direct confrontation
2. ________ teams are defined as groups of employees who perform highly related or interdependent jobs and take on many of the responsibilities of their former supervisors.
Cross-functional
Problem-solving
Self-managed work
Independent
3. To retain its edge in the organic health food market, Natura has established a high-priority team comprised of senior executives from the company’s production, marketing, and research divisions. These employees work together closely to study consumer attitudes about organic health foods and come up with a closely monitored development and marketing strategy for new products. This ensures that each division is informed of the specific needs, timelines, and expected outcomes of the strategy. It also makes Natura a company that adapts to changes in market trends swiftly. The team Natura uses here is of the ________ type.
problem-solving
cross-functional
traditional
self-managed work
4. ________ is defined as a phenomenon in which the norm for consensus overrides the realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action.
Groupthink
In-group favoritism
Social loafing
Cyberloafing
5. Matt works as a sales representative at Tandem Industries which manufactures and sells bicycles. He is the best salesperson on the floor, but he also receives the highest number of customer complaints for late deliveries. Which of the following, if true, best explains this situation?
The company keeps inventory levels low in order to reduce costs.
The company’s sales and logistics functions are tightly integrated.
The company’s manufacturing facility is functioning at optimum capacity.
The company uses enterprise solutions to manage inventory.
6. Shirley Shands is a hard worker but Debra, her manager, is irritated with her. While Debra concedes that Shirley’s work gives her no cause for complaint, Debra is tired of the interruptions in her work because of Shirley asking for repeated clarifications over what exactly she has to say in e-mails or phone calls. She often requests Debra to proofread her e-mails before sending them, and Debra feels she sends too many e-mails instead of just speaking to the person concerned. From the scenario, we can conclude that ________.
Shirley suffers from communication apprehension
Shirley and Debra come from a high-context culture
Debra is engaging in social loafing
Shirley uses filtering when communicating with Debra
7. Synergy Inc. has recently assigned some of its best employees to form a cross-functional team and complete a project from a new client. Many of the employees on this team are apprehensive about the structure and dynamics of how they will function as a group and accomplish this goal. To energize the employees, their immediate manager is holding a meeting with them next week where he will provide them some additional training in strategies and methods that may work well for the team. The manager’s initiative to hold this meeting fulfills the ________ function of communication
information
filtering
emotional expression
control
8. Genepa Corporation manufactures home appliances and other electronic products. Genepa is planning to introduce a new refrigerator model. The marketing manager at Genepa has developed a marketing plan for this new product and wants to communicate this plan to all the employees in the marketing department. Which of the following is most likely to be the best form of communication for communicating this plan?
Written communication
Oral communication
Grapevine communication
Nonverbal communication
9. The two general approaches to negotiation are ________ bargaining and ________ bargaining.
affective; reflective
formal; informal
emotional; rational
distributive; integrative
10. The informal communication network in an organization is
determined by organization
rooted in issues of minimal importance to employees
characterized by ambiguity
based on clear and factual information
11. Jordan is a sales officer who has been underperforming over the last three months. At the last monthly operations cycle meeting, he was given a warning. As the time for the next meeting draws close, Jordan fears his boss reprimanding him. Two days before the meeting, Jordan informs his manager that he has confirmed six deals in the last few days, one of which involves multiple orders for their machines. He, however, skips the detail that these are the only six orders he has been able to obtain in the whole month. Which one of the barriers to effective communication is depicted here?
Information overload
Language
Grapevine
Filtering
12. Which of the following is a unique advantage of lateral communication?
Lateral communication facilitates coordination at the intradepartmental level.
Lateral communication occurring with management’s knowledge and support can be beneficial even if it does not follow the formal vertical structure.
Lateral communication helps in the transmission of ideas and information.
Lateral communication facilitates emotional expression, enhances motivation, and helps the organization control its employees effectively.
13. Which of the following terms best describes the process that occurs when two or more parties decide how to allocate scarce resources?
Negotiation
Association
Integration
Differentiation
14. As a consequence of the information circulated by the grapevine in an organization, employees experience
increased member satisfaction
increased power
increased certainty
increased anxiety
15. Which of the following statements is true regarding conflict?
Diversity of goals among groups is a major source of conflict.
The less specialized the activities of the group, the greater the likelihood of conflict.
People low in the personality traits of disagreeableness, neuroticism, or self-monitoring are more likely to engage in a conflict.
The smaller the group, the greater the likelihood of conflict.
16. When one person seeks to satisfy his or her own interests regardless of the impact on the other parties to the conflict, that person is using the conflict-handling intention of
compromising
avoiding
accommodating
competing
17. When ________, the result is role conflict.
compliance with one role aids our performance in another role
compliance with the group is an attempt to understand who we are and how we fit into the world
compliance with one role requirement may make it difficult to comply with another
compliance with the group is marked by a tendency to notice and emphasize those aspects of the group that are distinctive
18. The time attendance system in the production division at MM, an automobile manufacturing company, was malfunctioning. Consequently, Greg Hill, one of the front-level managers sent it for repair. In the meantime, he placed a register where all workers of the production division had to provide their time of entry and exit from the office. At the end of the week, when looking through the time logs, he had certain concerns about a group of employees. In the next week, he personally tracked the time this group of employees spent working and realized that they were reporting a greater number of working hours than they actually worked. This group engaged in a barrier to communication called
filtering
communication apprehension
lying
silence
19. Bonnie Patterson has been a manager for seven years at Wayne and Watson, a legal consultancy firm. A good part of her workday involves holding meetings and she likes to do work on a time-bound schedule. For this reason, members of her team receive the agenda at the beginning of the meeting, followed by some time to contemplate over the issue at hand individually. Subsequently, the team members present their ideas one after the other, the group discusses them together, and lastly, a ranking is done to choose the most favored idea. This represents the ________ approach of group decision making.
interacting
brainstorming
reference group
nominal group
20. Which of the following is desirable when a crucial project is delegated to a virtual team?
Promoting a sense of independence over group spirit to encourage competition
Discouraging the sharing of unique information as it benefits some employees unfairly
Avoiding publicity of the team’s progress and success in the organization
Engaging in close monitoring of the work being done by the team throughout the project
21. The ________ view of conflict focuses on productive resolution of conflicts.
rational
managed
interactionist
transactional
22. Most people assume that a police officer should behave in a lawful manner, refrain from demonstrating favoritism to any particular group, and do his or her best to uphold the law. Which of the following terms best represents these beliefs?
Similarity
Role expectation
Dispersion of responsibility
Diversity
23. With reference to the team effectiveness model, which of the following is one of the key components of an effective team, included under the category of contextual factors?
Social loafing
Climate of trust
Team efficacy
Common purpose
24. Which of the following forms of communication is characterized by the use of only body movements, intonations, facial expressions, and physical distance to communicate?
Nonverbal communication
Written communication
Downward communication
Lateral communication
25. Janice Cooper has recently joined a hospital as a part of the internship program prescribed by the nursing school she attends. Janice, who was inspired to take up this profession by the story of Florence Nightingale, had very strong ideals about how she should behave as a nurse. She felt that as a nurse, she must be gentle, pleasant, and caring at all times so she could serve her patients well, and she often went to great lengths as an intern by putting in extra hours at the hospital and so on. The scenario reflects Janice’s
role fuzziness
role perception
role conflict
role ambiguity
26. When ________ is of importance in decision making, group decisions are preferred to individual decisions.
speed
clear responsibility
acceptance of solution
efficiency
27. Peter is working on a project. He feels that the parameters need to be changed to meet client specifications. First, he must talk to his immediate supervisor, who will then discuss the issue with her department director before any change can be implemented. Peter is most likely to be a part of the ________ type of small-group communication networks.
all-channel network
mesh network
star network
chain network
