Deck 7: Teams in Organizations

Question 1

Scholars note that the same heart surgeons have lower death rates for similar procedures when performed in hospitals where they do more operations.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

A team is a small group of people with complementary skills,who work actively together to achieve a common purpose for which they hold themselves collectively accountable.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Teams that recommend things consist of people with formal responsibility for leading other groups.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

The functional silos problem occurs when members of functional units focus on external issues and do not focus to a sufficient degree on their own areas of responsibility.

Question 5

Cross-functional teams,or task forces,are created for special problem-solving efforts.

Question 6

A quality circle is a small group of persons who meet periodically to discuss problems relating to quality,productivity,or cost,and to develop solutions for them.

Question 7

Teams that make or do things are functional groups and work units that perform ongoing tasks such as marketing departments.

Question 8

The head of a formal group serves a linchpin role that ties the group horizontally and vertically with the rest of the organization.

Question 9

Teams that recommend things typically work with a target completion date and disband once their purpose has been fulfilled.

Question 10

Virtual teams are ones whose members meet at least part of the time electronically and with computer support.

Question 11

Employee involvement teams describe a wide variety of teams whose members meet regularly to collectively examine important workplace issues.

Question 12

Teams that run things may exist at all levels of responsibility,from the individual work unit composed of a team leader and team members to the top management team composed of a CEO and other senior executives.

Question 13

Virtual teams have members who convene and work together electronically via computers.

Question 14

The informal structures and their embedded social relationships that are active in an organization are identified by social network analysis.

Question 15

Employee involvement teams discuss ways to enhance product or service quality,better satisfy customers,improve productivity,and enhance the quality of work life.

Question 16

Temporary work groups often appear on organizational charts as departments,divisions,and teams.

Question 17

The catchwords for an effective team are empowerment,participation,and diversity.

Question 18

Informal teams have the potential to speed up the workflow by enabling people to assist each other in ways that formal lines of authority fail to provide.

Question 19

A potential advantage of virtual teams is that members have very little,if any,direct personal contact.

Question 20

Cross-functional teams bring together persons from different organizations and industries to work on a common task.

Question 21

The performance advantages of teams over individuals are most evident in three situations: 1)when there is no clear "expert" for a particular task,2)when the problems are complex and require a division of labor,and 3)when a riskier decision need be made.

Question 22

Members of a true self-managing work team make decisions on establishing strategy and providing resources to achieve it.

Question 23

A team member might withdraw or tend toward social loafing when asked to do something he/she isn't very good at.

Question 24

The team viability criterion of group effectiveness refers to groups with members who believe that their participation and experiences are positive and meet important personal needs.

Question 25

Self-managing teams have structural and management implications for organizations because they largely eliminate the first-line supervisors.

Question 26

A potential advantage of virtual teams is that computer mediation focuses interaction and decision making on facts and objective information rather than on emotional considerations.

Question 27

The member satisfaction criterion of group effectiveness means that members are sufficiently satisfied to continue working well together on an ongoing basis and/or to look forward to working together again in the future.

Question 28

Synergy is the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Question 29

Self-managing teams are small groups that are empowered to make the decisions needed to manage themselves on a day-to-day basis.

Question 30

Formal work units,but not temporary task forces or virtual teams,pass through a series of life cycle stages.

Question 31

An effective group is one that achieves high levels of task performance,member satisfaction,and team viability.

Question 32

Self-managing teams differ from the more traditional work group in that team members assume duties otherwise performed by a manager or first-line supervisor.

Question 33

Members of a true self-managing work team make decisions on selecting new team members,training them for job skills,and evaluating performance.

Question 34

The potential benefits of self-managing teams include productivity and quality improvements,production flexibility,and faster response to technological change,but not reduced absenteeism and turnover or improved work attitudes and quality of work life.

Question 35

In general,social facilitation theory indicates that working in the presence of others creates an emotional arousal or excitement that stimulates behavior and therefore affects performance.

Question 36

Social loafing,also known as the "Ringlemann effect," occurs when people work less hard in a group than they would individually.

Question 37

Research shows that teams tend to make less risky decisions than individuals.

Question 38

Self-managing teams are also known as self-directed teams.

Question 39

Ringlemann identified two reasons why people may not work as hard in groups as they would individually: (a)their individual contributions are less noticeable in the context of a group; and (b)group goals are often less well defined than individual goals.

Question 40

Multiskilling occurs when team members are trained in performing more than one job on the team.

Question 41

Heterogeneity may limit the team in terms of ideas,viewpoints,and creativity.

Question 42

Heterogeneous teams have members who are diverse in demography,experiences,life styles,and cultures,among other variables.

Question 43

The norming stage of the team development process is sometimes called "total integration."

Question 44

The technical demands of a task include relationships,ego involvement,controversies over ends and means,and the like.

Question 45

During the norming stage of team development,coalitions or cliques may form as individuals compete to impose their preferences on the team and to achieve a desired status position.

Question 46

A study reported by Rutgers University professor Donald McCabe found that 86 percent of MBA students reported cheating by plagiarizing,downloading essays from the Web,and more.

Question 47

CEO and founder of Amazon.com,Jeff Bezos' simple rule when it comes to the size of a product development team is "No team should be larger than two pizzas can feed."

Question 48

FIRO-B theory suggests that groups whose members have compatible needs are likely to be more effective than groups whose members have incompatible needs.

Question 49

The storming stage of team development is a period of high emotionality and tension among the team members.

Question 50

In the storming stage of team development,members are interested in getting to know each other and discovering what is considered acceptable behavior,in determining the real task of the team,and in defining team rules.

Question 51

Homogeneous teams have members who are similar with respect to such variables as age,gender,race,experience,ethnicity,and culture.

Question 52

The willingness of a team to disband when the job is done and to work well together in future responsibilities is an important long-run test of team success.

Question 53

The optimal size for teams is between five and seven members.

Question 54

Tasks that are complex in social demands require unique solutions and more information processing,whereas task that are complex in technical demands involve difficulties in reaching agreement on goals or methods for accomplishing them.

Question 55

Status congruence occurs when a person's position within the group is equivalent in status to positions held outside of the group.

Question 56

In the norming stage of team development,holding the team together may become more important to some members than working on the team's tasks.

Question 57

In the norming stage of team development,the group really begins to come together as a coordinated unit.

Question 58

Members of a homogenous group vary with respect to age,gender,race,ethnicity,experience,culture,and similar characteristics.

Question 59

Members of homogeneous teams experience difficulty in building social relations and engaging in the interactions needed for teamwork.

Question 60

The five stages of team development are forming,storming,norming,performing,and adjourning.

Question 61

Teams whose members convene and work together electronically via networked computers are called __________.

A)project teams
B)cybernetic teams
C)virtual teams.
D)implicit teams
E)networked teams

Question 62

The term __________ applies to a wide variety of teams whose members meet regularly to collectively examine important workplace issues.

A)employee engagement team
B)employee connection team
C)employee participation team
D)employee empowerment team
E)employee involvement team

Question 63

Teams that __________ may exist at all levels of responsibility,from the individual work unit composed of a team leader and team members to the top management team composed of a CEO and other senior executives.

A)review things
B)recommend things
C)run things
D)evaluate things
E)make or do things

Question 64

Most self-managing teams include between __________ members.

A)1 and 4
B)5 and 15
C)20 and 35
D)50 and 65
E)80 and 100

Question 65

The potential benefits of informal groups include all of the following EXCEPT:

A)informal groups have the potential to speed up the workflow.
B)informal groups enable people to assist each other in ways that formal lines of authority fail to provide.
C)informal groups enable members to establish important goals for the formal work unit.
D)informal groups help individuals satisfy needs that are unmet in a formal group.
E)informal groups can provide their members with social satisfaction,security,and a sense of belonging.

Question 66

Even though homogeneous teams may struggle in the short run to resolve issues,they are also likely to develop enhanced performance potential once things are worked out.

Question 67

Members of __________ can solve problems with a positive combination of functional expertise and integrative or total systems thinking.

A)cross-functional teams
B)self-directed teams
C)cross-departmental teams
D)virtual teams
E)statutory teams

Question 68

__________ consist of persons with natural affinities for one another,and who tend to work together,sit together,take breaks together,and even do things together outside of the workplace.

A)Interest groups
B)Affiliation groups
C)Friendship groups
D)Connection groups
D)Familiarity groups

Question 69

The __________ occurs when members of functional units stay focused on matters internal to the function and minimize their interactions with members of other functions.

A)limited perspective problem
B)restriction of perspective problem
C)functional niche problem
D)functional silos problem
E)limited vision problem

Question 70

Self-managing teams are also known as __________.

A)virtual teams
B)self-directed work teams
C)task teams
D)silo teams
E)employee teams

Question 71

__________ teams bring together people from different functional departments or work units to work on a common task.

A)Cross-functional
B)Self-directed
C)Virtual
D)Self-managed
E)Employee involvement

Question 72

The __________ is another name for the functional silos problem.

A)individual unit problem.
B)serviceable group problem
C)functional chimney problem
D)hyper-focused team problem
E)exclusive over-assemblage problem

Question 73

Members of a true self-managing work team make decisions on all of the following EXCEPT:

A)establishing strategy and providing resources to achieve it.
B)scheduling work and allocating tasks.
C)training for job skills and evaluating performance.
D)selecting new team members.
E)controlling the quality of work.

Question 74

The diversity-consensus dilemma is the tendency for diversity in groups to make working together more difficult,even though diversity itself expands the skills and perspectives available for problem solving.

Question 75

Members of teams that __________ must have good long-term working relationships with one another,solid operating systems,and the external support needed to achieve effectiveness over a sustained period of time.

A)plan things
B)reengineer things
C)recommend things
D)make or do things
E)review things

Question 76

Researchers have found that females score higher than males on social sensitivity.

Question 77

Team members and leaders can do all of the following to help their teams achieve high performance EXCEPT:

A)putting personal talents to work.
B)building disagreement so that the team gets multiple opinions.
C)persuading others to cooperate
D)accepting suggestions.
E)communicating ideas.

Question 78

Groups that form spontaneously through personal relationships or special interests,and not by any specific organizational endorsement,are called __________.

A)informal groups
B)virtual groups
C)temporary groups
D)interim groups
E)ad hoc groups

Question 79

Teams that __________ typically work with a target completion date and disband once their purpose has been fulfilled.

A)recommend things
B)run things
C)study things
D)make or do things
E)review things

Question 80

The potential advantages of virtual teams include all of the following EXCEPT:

A)virtual teams bring cost effectiveness to teamwork where members are unable to meet easily face-to-face.
B)virtual teams can bring speed to teamwork where members are unable to meet easily face-to-face.
C)virtual teams bring the power of the computer to bear on typical team needs for information processing and decision making.
D)virtual team members may have very little,if any,direct personal contact.
E)computer mediation focuses interaction and decision making on facts and objective information rather than on emotional considerations.