Deck 5: Organizations, Societies, and Global Relationships

Question 1

The Catholic pope is an example of which type of authority?

A) traditional
B) rational-legal
C) charismatic
D) bureaucratic

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Which answer best describes the Peter principle?

A) The more a bureaucracy tries to be efficient, the more forms there are to fill out.
B) Never underestimate the power of the secretary.
C) Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.
D) Work expands to fill the available time.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Which answer best describes Parkinson's law?

A) The more a bureaucracy tries to be efficient, the more forms there are to fill out.
B) Never underestimate the power of the secretary.
C) Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.
D) Work expands to fill the available time.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Which one of these accurately describes how a problem has changed from the past in the digital age?

A) People are expected to do less than they did in the past.
B) Employees used to be monitored less carefully than they are now.
C) Interaction can be more easily controlled in a centralized way.
D) There used to be a problem with too little information in writing; now, there is the danger of too much in written form.

Question 5

______ is a problem in bureaucracies where rules are required needlessly and often slow progress or increase amount or complexity of work.

A) Red tape
B) The Peter principle
C) Bounded rationality
D) Informationalism

Question 6

Peter works in a college office. He spends most of his day sending forms back to students when they have filled them out incorrectly, even when they contain all the information he needs. Peter has a ______ personality.

A) charismatic
B) traditional
C) bureaucratic
D) tedious

Question 7

There are three different types of authority that vary by ______.

A) what type of domination they represent
B) what makes the authority legitimate
C) how many people are subject to the authority
D) how peaceful or violent they are

Question 8

Daniel works for a company where employees ask one another for guidance, rather than ask their supervisors. This company is an example of a(n) ______ bureaucracy.

A) informal
B) formal
C) collegial
D) ideal

Question 9

Due to the explosive growth of digital communication, micro-level and macro-level phenomena ______.

A) are more segregated
B) are more intertwined
C) are reducing the expansion of globalization
D) are more separate from individual influence

Question 10

Societies are filled with ______, which are collectives purposely constructed to achieve particular ends.

A) governances
B) organizations
C) formations
D) systems

Question 11

Joan calls a computer company for assistance and is transferred to several different people. After she had been on hold for 20 minutes, she is disconnected. What has Joan just experienced?

A) the Peter principle
B) red tape
C) legal-rational authority
D) informationalism

Question 12

Capitalism and bureaucracy best exemplify what Max Weber meant by ______.

A) rationalization
B) ethnomethodology
C) systemization
D) organization

Question 13

The order of succession to the British throne is an example of ______ authority.

A) rational
B) charismatic
C) organizational
D) traditional

Question 14

According to Max Weber, a(n) ______ is a model in which the degree of rationality is greatly exaggerated.

A) prototype
B) ideal type
C) real type
D) model type

Question 15

Martin Luther King Jr. was an example of which type of authority?

A) traditional
B) rational-legal
C) charismatic
D) bureaucratic

Question 16

A major twentieth-century theorist on bureaucracy who defined the bureaucratic personality is ______.

A) Max Weber
B) Robert Merton
C) Talcott Parsons
D) Manuel Castells

Question 17

What is the only type of authority associated with bureaucracy?

A) traditional
B) charismatic
C) rational-legal
D) organizational

Question 18

When Rita (the owner of a local store) makes demands of her subordinates (workers), they listen and follow through. In her working environment, Rita practices _____.

A) bureaucracy
B) assumed authority
C) charismatic authority
D) domination

Question 19

A(n) ______ is a highly rational and efficient organization.

A) internet site
B) corporation
C) network
D) bureaucracy

Question 20

Yahoo and the March of Dimes are examples of ______.

A) organizations
B) corporations
C) micro-level systems
D) bureaucracies

Question 21

Which sociologist differentiated between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft societies?

A) Émile Durkheim
B) Robert Merton
C) Ferdinand Töennies
D) Manuel Castells

Question 22

Which one of these sociological concepts addresses the new realities of organizations supplementing bureaucracies?

A) informal organizations; anomic organizations
B) gendered organizations; network organizations
C) atomic organizations; classed organizations
D) nature versus nurture

Question 23

Women face the ______, in which they cannot get promoted past a certain level in bureaucratic organizations despite their qualifications.

A) glass ceiling
B) glass escalator
C) pink elevator
D) pink ceiling

Question 24

______ is the major reason there are greater risks to society than ever before.

A) McDonaldization
B) Cultural imperialism
C) Globalization
D) Informationalism

Question 25

To say we are a "risk society" means ______.

A) our main issue is risk and how to minimize or prevent it
B) we take more risks than we have in the past
C) we think of risk taking as more desirable than we have in the past
D) one society risks things for other societies

Question 26

As a leading ______ theorist, Talcott Parsons had a ______ view of macro-level societies.

A) symbolic interaction; constructionist
B) conflict; negative
C) structural-functionalist; positive
D) ethnomethodologist; dismissive

Question 27

The concept of the ______ describes what can happen to women who experience upward mobility when an organization is going through a difficult time.

A) glass ceiling
B) glass elevator
C) glass escalator
D) glass cliff

Question 28

Many people are now filling out their own tax forms and printing out their own postage stamps at home. The people who are doing so are referred to as ______.

A) consumers
B) producers
C) prosumers
D) orientators

Question 29

McDonaldized systems in the realm of consumption must be more ______ than the traditional bureaucracy.

A) bureaucratic
B) flexible
C) customer-friendly
D) ruthless

Question 30

Sexual harassment can consist of many types of unwanted sexual attention such as jokes, remarks, or sexual advances, but to be illegal, ______.

A) it must come from a high-ranking man to a lower ranking woman
B) it must be offensive not just to the victim but to the workplace culture as a whole
C) it must be recurrent or severe enough to create a hostile workplace
D) it must directly influence someone's pay or promotion

Question 31

Many factories and companies are linked through knowledge and information. This is referred to as ______.

A) knowledge inferential
B) information sourcing
C) informationalism
D) intelligence systems

Question 32

Companies, such as Dell, have organizations located in other countries besides the United States, where customer service questions are handled. This is referred to as ______.

A) downsizing
B) offshore outsourcing
C) informationalism
D) McDonaldization

Question 33

People who live in a large city, such as Los Angeles, may feel a sense of being disconnected from one another. People living in these cities, according to the text, would be living in a ______.

A) gemeinschaft society
B) gazelle-like society
C) gesellschaft society
D) primitive society

Question 34

According to the examples provided in the book, which one of these organizations has faced major problems in conforming to contemporary realities?

A) the NFL
B) Ford
C) Netflix
D) Microsoft

Question 35

One strategy of companies who use offshore outsourcing for customer service calls for U.S. customers is "national identity management." This means ______.

A) helping to educate people on calls about their home country
B) selecting national identities with accents that sound trustworthy to Americans
C) cross-marketing products to the outsource country and the United States
D) posing as an American on calls, complete with an adopted American hometown and Americanized name

Question 36

Ulrich Beck argued that we have moved from an industrial society to a(n) ______ society.

A) unequal
B) risk
C) oligarchic
D) technocratic

Question 37

Which one of the following is true regarding informationalism?

A) The new technologies are not flexible and can't adapt.
B) Technologies act on information.
C) Some organizations are not defined by networking logics.
D) The specific technologies associated with information are not merging into a highly integrated system.

Question 38

A very small, tight-knit neighborhood that is characterized by a strong sense of community would be referred to as a ______.

A) gemeinschaft society
B) gesellschaft society
C) gazelle-like society
D) primitive society

Question 39

When organizations today lack _____, there is a strong likelihood that they will _____.

A) agency; prosper
B) flexibility; disappear
C) community; grow
D) outsourcing; decline

Question 40

John is a boss who is very stern with his employees, and they follow every command he gives to them. John is someone who exemplifies ______.

A) weak domination
B) strong domination
C) rational-legal authority
D) strong subordination

Question 41

The leaders of cults often have outgoing and engaging personalities and therefore are referred to as people who exert charismatic authority.

Question 42

Potency refers to the likelihood that commands will be obeyed by subordinations.

Question 43

According to the text, the U.S. government is an example of a(n) ______.

A) state
B) nation
C) nation-state
D) oligarchy

Question 44

Some countries distribute negative information about other countries, hoping to gain favor in the eyes of the public. This is an example of a(n) ______.

A) ideoscape
B) mediascape
C) technoscape
D) financescape

Question 45

Organizations refer to collectives, which are purposely constructed to achieve particular ends.

Question 46

The development of bureaucracy is one of the defining characteristics of Western society.

Question 47

According to Arjun Appadurai, there are fluid, irregular, and variable global flows that produce different results throughout the world. Appadurai calls these ______.

A) landscapes
B) globules
C) glo-flows
D) gesellschaft societies

Question 48

A customer service agent who is more interested in obtaining a customer's Social Security number rather than helping him or her resolve a particular issue has a bureaucratic personality.

Question 49

A characteristic of a space of place is that ______.

A) it has clear defensible borders
B) it allows unlimited flows of people
C) it has settings with well-defined borders
D) people feel very disconnected there

Question 50

Most bureaucratic organizations become oligarchical.

Question 51

Theories of glass ceilings for women have been based on studies of American organizations and are unlikely to apply globally.

Question 52

According to Max Weber, bureaucracies are always rational organizations.

Question 53

The most important and obvious barriers to global flows are constructed by ______.

A) nation-states
B) nations
C) continents
D) corporations

Question 54

Japan and Israel are examples of ______ because they encompass a population that defines itself by its political organizational structure and its people.

A) nations
B) states
C) oligarchies
D) nation-states

Question 55

While in a risk society, a central concern is equality.

Question 56

During times of financial depression, which type of landscape might be the focus of economists?

A) ethnoscapes
B) financescapes
C) ideoscapes
D) mediascapes

Question 57

Which one of these defines the main difference between Microsoft and Linux?

A) One is proprietary and only people at the company work on it; the other one is open source and anyone in the world can contribute to it.
B) One is only sold in the United States, and the other one is sold globally.
C) One can be used on any device, and the other one only works on laptops.
D) One is priced for individual use, and the other one is only for commercial use.

Question 58

Cases of sexual harassment often get widespread publicity, leading to overreporting of sexual harassment to company management.

Question 59

Instead of constantly adding new functions and more employees, many organizations are placing significant emphasis on their ______.

A) culture
B) core competencies
C) informal control
D) community

Question 60

The president of the United States is someone who exhibits traditional authority.

Question 61

What is meant by the term digital gold? How is digital gold accrued and used?

Question 62

Talcott Parsons was a structural-functionalist who had a very positive view of macro-level societies.

Question 63

According to Ferdinand Töennies's criteria, the Amish community is an example of a gesellschaft community.

Question 64

Identify and explain the characteristics of the three types of authority in Max Weber's theory of authority. What differentiates the types of authority? Give an example of each type.

Question 65

Spaces of flows are likely to have clear and defensible borders and are permanent in nature.

Question 66

Gemeinschaft and gesellschaft societies are ideal types.

Question 67

Discuss the concepts of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft according to Ferdinand Töennies, and give an example of each.

Question 68

According to gendered organization theorists, there are many ways by which bureaucracies do not treat all workers--especially women workers--equally. Provide two of the reasons that the text presents to support this assertion.

Question 69

Manuel Castells argued that there was a change in the flow of places over time, saying we have gone from "spaces of places" to "spaces of flows." Define these two terms, and provide one example of each.

Question 70

The text suggests that organizations that seek to control global flows face competition from organizations that are fluid and open. What is meant by this? Provide an example of competition between a traditional and an open organization. Give one example of criteria that limit the effects of openness.

Question 71

Some of the most important and most obvious barriers to global flows are those constructed by nation-states, but nation-states have been losing control over a number of global flows.

Question 72

Discuss the concept of landscapes according to Arjun Appadurai, and list three types of landscapes.

Question 73

What do the glass ceiling, glass cage, and glass cliff represent?

Question 74

A network organization can be composed of several "interconnected nodes" with a horizontal structure and fuzzy boundaries.

Question 75

Discuss three components of a bureaucracy according to Max Weber. What did Weber mean by the term ideal type?

Question 76

According to the text, formal organizations have some inadequacies, but informal organizations can help compensate for these. What is an informal organization? After defining this term, name one way by which informal organizations might compensate for formal organizations.

Question 77

Bureaucratization is mostly invisible to the consumers of the goods and services it produces.

Question 78

Contemporary organizations have been forced to become more flexible and agile than the ideal type of a bureaucracy.