Exam 6: Applied Performance Practices

NuGlass Ltd.manufactures glass for commercial products.The production process has several interdependent tasks and employees in those tasks need to coordinate their work for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.Management wants each employee to learn several jobs so that the production group can be more flexible.Describe one type of reward system that would best motivate employees to learn several jobs,and identify a potential disadvantage of this reward system.

A high degree of autonomy,task identity,and task significance are important conditions for:

Some critics argue that financial rewards discourage creativity and distract employees from the meaningfulness of the work itself.

A large retail organization previously divided work among its four employee benefits staff into distinct specializations.One person answered all questions about superannuation (pension plans),another answered all questions about various forms of paid time off (e.g.vacations),and so on.These jobs were recently restructured so that each employee benefits person answers all questions for people in a particular geographic area.For example,one staff member is responsible for all employee benefits inquiries from anyone in a particular geographic region.This job restructuring is an example of:

Self-leadership has become increasingly important in contemporary organizations.Identify and describe any three components of self-leadership.Then explain how each of those three self-leadership components potentially improves employee motivation and/or performance.

Which of the following is an individual incentive?

Job specialization increases work efficiency,but it tends to reduce employee motivation.

ABC Ltd has a large secretarial pool on the third floor of company headquarters where professional and lower-level managers have their reports and other documents word-processed.The tasks are received by the secretarial pool coordinator and assigned randomly (on an availability basis)to secretaries in the pool.The secretaries often do not know the managers or professionals for whom the word-processing assignment is being completed.They rarely find out about the quality of their work because revisions are often sent to other secretaries in the pool due to the rotating work assignment system.Some assignments involve simple word-processing while others require complex formatting using more sophisticated word-processing software.Some secretaries don't mind working in the pool,but most are there because it represents the entry-level secretarial position.They resent the lack of control over work assignments and look forward to being transferred to other secretarial jobs in the firm where there is more freedom to schedule their own work activities.Turnover in the pool is much higher than for other support staff at ABC Ltd.Would job enlargement (combining tasks)be an effective job design strategy for employees in ABC's secretarial pool?

Job enrichment tends to increase the quality of products or services.

One problem with linking rewards to job performance is that managers rely on different criteria when estimating employee performance levels.

One of the most important characteristics of empowerment is that it is a personality trait.

Which of the following systematically evaluates the worth of each job within the organization?

Herzberg's motivator-hygiene theory led to more serious study of:

Job evaluation mainly supports the competency approach to rewards.

The job characteristics model identifies five core job characteristics and three psychological states.

Gainsharing plans apply to production jobs,not to services such as medical operations.

Competency-based rewards pay employees based on their performance results.

Job evaluations are used in which type of reward system?

Which reward system tends to discourage poor performers from voluntarily leaving the organization?

Employees assembling complete computer modems would have higher task identity than those assembling only one component and passing it along to others for further assembly.