Exam 16: Managing Change and Stress

What are target elements of change? Why is it important to managers to know about these?

Describe how to be a successful change agent.

Glenda, the Plant Manager for ABC Corporation, views the results from the latest survey of employee attitudes. The results show that job satisfaction in the manufacturing plant has dropped significantly since the last survey. This is a ________ source of change.

If speed is essential and the initiators of the change possess considerable power, management should adopt the participation and involvement approach to managing resistance to change.

The advantage of _________ as a means of overcoming change is that it can be a relatively quick and inexpensive solution to resistance problems.

Which of the following is false about stress?

Luckily for managers, a disposition to resist change is not a real personality characteristic.

Define stress. Describe the model of occupational stress, listing variables in each of the categories in the model.

Sam has worked for the company for 30 years and is very good, although slow at his job of putting together reports on the department's performance. Recently, Susan, his new manager, talked with him about adopting a new software program that would make his job easier and quicker to accomplish, and allow him to take on additional responsibilities. Sam doesn't want to adopt this new software, because his old way of doing the reports has worked just fine. How would you describe the most likely cause of Sam's resistance?

Nola graduated from her MBA program last year and took on a high-paying position as a consultant-in-training at McCrabree Consulting. She often works 60-80 hours per week, and mostly her assignments are in cities across the country; she rarely stays home for more than two days at a time. This is all part of the way consulting operates, as she was told by the people who ran the firm's orientation session. In fact, at that session, the facilitator brought in consultants who had worked at the firm for several years who stressed that the firm believes in pushing employees to the limit. Nola is definitely feeling the stress! What would you characterize as the level of her stressors?

The kind of change that is at the high end of the continuum of complexity, cost, and uncertainty is:

Employee dissatisfaction is a symptom of an underlying employee problem that should be addressed.

Strategic plans are based on analyses of an organization's strengths, weaknesses, organization, and threats, a "SWOT" analysis.

Harold's boss has just told him that he will be moved to a new office in order to allow space for a new copier for the office. Harold is very unhappy with the prospect of having to pack up all his things and then reorganize them in his new area. He also is having trouble understanding why the new copier has to be in his space, instead of someone else's. How would you describe the most likely cause of Harold's resistance?

Experimental University's president recently announced that instead of professors giving grades to students in their classes, students would give themselves grades. This would be a(n) _________ change.

An example of social and political pressures for change is:

One of the components of an organization's readiness for change is the perceived personal consequences of change.

Describe the eight steps of Kotter's model for leading organizational change.

Mr. Honcho, CEO of MBA Bank, decides that the organization needs to provide more convenient service to customers. He decides to increase the bank's service hours from 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday, to 12 hours a day, plus 8 hours a day each weekend day. He has his assistant compile a report that gives data on how the number of open hours of many banks is correlated with their customers' satisfaction, and presents these data to his executive committee. What stage of Lewin's change process is Mr. Honcho operating in?

The systems approach to change is based on the notion that even a small change has a cascading effect throughout an organization.