Exam 11: Section 1: Managing Human Resource Systems

The fastest-growing population group in the United States is_________ .

Which of the Big Five personality measures has the greatest impact on behavior in organizations?

What are the Big Five personality dimensions? Explain the significance of the Big Five personality dimensions. Specify how one of more of those dimensions might be used to select or place applicants for employment in a particular job or company.

Diversity exists in organizations when there is a variety of demographic, cultural, and personal differences among the customers who do business with them.

Activity-based diversity training teaches employees the practical skills they need for managing a diverse work force, skills such as flexibility and adaptability, negotiation, problem solving, and conflict resolution.

The term____________ refers to the degree to which someone is cooperative, polite, flexible, forgiving, good natured, tolerant, and trusting.

Unlike_________ forces, , which punishes companies for not achieving specific gender and race differences in their work programs seek to benefit both organizations and their employees by encouraging organizations to value all kinds of differences.

A(n)____________ is a formal assessment that measures employee and management attitudes, investigates the extent to which people are advantaged or disadvantaged with respect to hiring and promotions, and reviews companies' diversity-related policies and procedures.

To make sure that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else, organizations can ____________.

The term ____________refers to the degree to which someone is organized, hard-working, responsible, persevering, thorough, and achievement-oriented.

In the nursing home industry, pairing two younger workers with an older worker creates more job opportunities for the older workers. Furthermore, this pairing could be a significant advantage in nursing homes where an older worker may have more sensitivity to aging problems. This would be an example of a type of mentoring called ____.

Wal-Mart It all started when seven female employees in San Francisco sued for employment discrimination. Then a federal judge granted class-action status to the suit, allowing 1.5 million women who have worked or now work for Wal- Mart to join the lawsuit and ordered the company to turn over 250 computer tapes containing payroll, performance, and promotion data for the last six years. When those data were analyzed by a statistics professor, here is what he found: Job Women Men Women Men Store Manager \ 89,300 \ 105,700 14.30\% 85.70\% Co-Manager \ 56,300 \ 59,500 22.80\% 77.20\% Asst. Manager \ 37,300 \ 39,800 35.70\% 64.30\% Mgt. Trainee \ 22,400 \ 23,200 41.30\% 58.70\% Cashier \ 13,800 \ 14,500 92.50\% 7.50\% Women were consistently paid less than men in the same jobs, especially store managers. And, while 65 percent of Wal­Mart's million­plus employees were female, a much smaller percentage of women held key management jobs, again especially store manager positions (just 14.3 percent). Even after controlling for seniority, part-time status, store location, and job title, women were still paid 34 cents less per hour than male workers. Consistent with these data, it took the average woman 4.4 years to be promoted to assistant manager and 10 years to become a store manager, compared to just 2.9 years and 8.6 years, respectively, for the average man. Of course, Wal-Mart appealed the judge's decision to expand the case from the seven original plaintiffs to the class­action suit with 1.5 million women. That appeal and then an eventual trial or settlement may take years. The question now is what does Wal-Mart do in the interim? Certainly, pressure is building for Wal-Mart to address these issues. Even Wal-Mart stockholders are not happy. A spokesperson for Libra Investments, which owns 30,000 shares of Wal­Mart stock, said, "We are increasingly concerned about the number of lawsuits filed against Wal-Mart and the number of negative articles in the press. We believe there is a long-term financial risk to shareholders, from community resistance to stores to [price-to- earnings] contraction." One of the things Wal-Mart decided in response is that it will promote women and minorities proportionate to how many apply for managerial jobs. Lee Scott, Wal­Mart's CEO, said, "If 50 percent of the people applying for the job of store manager are women, we will work to make sure that 50 percent of the people receiving those jobs are women." Not everyone, however, believes this is an equitable or legal solution. Roger Clegg, a lawyer for the Center for Equal Opportunity in Virginia, said, "Based on what [CEO Lee] Scott said, that's fine if 50 percent of the people who are most qualified happen to be female, but if all the most qualified applicants are women, they should be hiring all women, not just 50 percent. And conversely, if less than 50 percent women are the most qualified, they shouldn't be hiring 50 percent women. Wal-Mart, in its panic to reassure people that it wouldn't discriminate against women and minorities, is saying it will be discriminating against men and non-minorities, and that's illegal." Wal­Mart, however, maintains that its approach is fair, legal, and does not constitute a quota for the promotion of women and minorities. The other significant change that Wal-Mart is making to its organizational structure and leadership is the addition of a corporate compliance department, which will be responsible for overseeing workers' pay as well as work hours and breaks (Wal-Mart has also been sued for allegedly not paying workers the overtime pay they deserved and for not giving workers the work breaks to which they're entitled on a daily basis), and for making sure that Wal­Mart's practices are in compliance with federal, state, and local employment laws wherever it does business throughout the world. CEO Lee Scott described the 140­person compliance office as "the eyes and ears of the board and management team." -Refer to Wal-Mart. What is one strategy Wal-Mart can use to alleviate the alleged gender discrimination?

Which of the following jobs would be most likely to require someone who has high degree of extraversion?

Surface-level diversity refers to differences such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, and physical disabilities that are observable, typically unchangeable, and easy to measure.

What is organizational plurality? Define the paradigm for managing diversity with which is it associated.

Among the paradigms for managing diversity, only the learning and effectiveness paradigm focuses on integrating deep-level diversity differences in addition to dealing with surface-level diversity.

To help companies reduce age discrimination, their managers can________ .

According to the text,_________ typically amount to more than 90 percent of employees' salaries.

_________is a term that describes a situation in organizations when there is a variety of demographic, cultural, and personal differences among the people who work there and the customers who do business there.

Jean-Marie has excellent keyboarding skills and enters data for a marketing research firm. Jean-Marie is also vision-impaired. In order to perform his job, Jean-Marie needs a computer monitor that produces oversized print so he can read it. Providing the monitor to facilitate Jean-Marie's job performance is an example of____________ .