Exam 10: Flexibility, Empowerment, and Partnership

The goal of job control unionism is to replace managerial subjectivity and favoritism with decision making by union representatives.

The four types of flexibility needed by businesses include all of the following except:

In the 21^st century, the hierarchical structures of organizations stemming from scientific management are being replaced with flatter organizational structures and flexible specialization.

Total quality management programs are an example of reengineering attempts to improve the efficiency of the workplace.

A significant problem for the union involved in the Saturn experiment in self-directed work teams was establishing and maintaining its credibility as an advocate for the employees.

What criteria does a nonunion employee committee or representation plan need to meet to be considered legal under the NLRA?

Probably the most ambitious and successful labor-management partnership in the U.S. is the ______________ Labor-Management Partnership.

What is meant by labor-management partnerships and what challenges do they pose for unions?

An example of a continuous process strategy that use statistical methods to measure defects and guide continuous improvement is:

As early as the 1940's, unionists argued that because workers perform their job tasks over and over they often have good ideas for improving productivity, increasing quality, and lowering costs. They predicted that management's failure to capitalize on this would ultimately restrict flexibility and have a negative impact on efficiency.

Which of the following terms is least preferred by unions when describing efforts to make joint decisions in the workplace?

Reengineering is distinguished from continuous improvement in that it focuses on large, one-time improvements in business processes, rather than small, incremental steps toward improvement.

The Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, is an example of the successful implementation of self-directed work teams in a traditional scientific management-based industry.

Fordism was a specialized case of applying scientific management principles to assembly line production.

Detailed systems of narrow job classifications that restrict employees from doing work outside their specific job description are a barrier to:

The Kaiser Permanente Labor-Management Partnership was unsuccessful in changing the underlying working relationship between the Kaiser management and the union representing its employees.

The American version of "lean production" has been called:

The dominant paradigm of work structure in the U.S. for much of the 20^th century was:

Job control unionism became an acceptable model for the U.S. for all of the following reasons except:

Skill-based pay, quality circle and other forms of innovation aimed at improving worker involvement in business have largely failed in unionized settings.