Deck 6: Human Resource Decision Making in Organizations

Question 1

_____ is a critical dimension of procedural justice that refers to the perception that a person applying rules to a decision had no vested interest in the outcome of the decision.

A) Consistency
B) Free from bias
C) Voice
D) Information accuracy
E) Ethicality

Answer 1

B

Question 2

The WorkerAdjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires that employers give at least 60 days' notice for a mass layoff.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

The contingent workforce are the most desirable alternative for recruitment.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

The easiest way for a company to manage an increase in the demand for staff is by:

A) offering overtime opportunitiesfor employees.
B) announcing early retirements for experienced employees.
C) downsizing the organization by selling off some of its physical assets.
D) recruiting temporary workers.
E) recruiting full-time workers.

Question 5

Voice, a critical dimension of procedural justice, refers to the perception that:

A) the rules were applied the same way to everyone involved.
B) a person applying the rules had no vested interest in the outcome of a decision.
C) the decision rules conform to personal standards of ethics and morality
D) a person had some control over the outcome in a decision.
E) the opinions of the various groups affected by a decision have been considered in the decision.

Question 6

_____ refers tothe decisions abouthow many employees should be on the payroll at any time.

A) Representativeness
B) Attrition rate
C) Rightsizing
D) Headcount
E) Realistic job preview

Question 7

Which of the following is an advantage of employing part-time workers in an organization?

A) They are an extremely valuable input to firms in the manufacturing sector.
B) They are available round the clock and on all days to extend technical support.
C) They rarely require training for doing their job which saves costs for an organization.
D) They are highly skilled and are familiar with the work assigned.
E) They are usually not covered by benefits offered by an organization, thus lowering the labor cost.

Question 8

Which of the following can be used by an organization tosystematically planfora gradual decrease in theworkforce?

A) Employing temporary workers
B) Early retirements
C) Involuntary terminations
D) Retention programs
E) Layoffs

Question 9

Ethics and law always coincide precisely.

Question 10

Interactional justice refers to quality of the interpersonal treatment people receive when a decision is made.

Question 11

As a part of progressive disciplinary program, a verbal warning provided to an employee is documented and provided to the human resource department.

Question 12

Cinergy Inc., a Midwestern gas and electric utility company, agreed not to penalize workers who left the company before the age of 65 and also offered those workers a bonus equivalent to two weeks' pay for every year of employment with Cinergy.Cinergy is:

A) generating a pool of qualified applicants.
B) encouraging voluntary early retirement.
C) terminating unproductive employees.
D) practicing job enrichment strategies.
E) carrying out involuntary turnover strategy.

Question 13

Sally's boss, Kim, prepared a list of workers to be laid off in the next quarter.Sally felt that Kim did not handle the situation professionally since she displayed the names of the workers on the notice board causing embarrassment to those workers.In this case, Kim has _____.

A) conformed to procedural justice
B) managed voluntary turnoverefficiently
C) violated interactional justice
D) violated distributive justice
E) applied public-policyas anexception to the at-will rule

Question 14

The morale and commitment of employees with survivor syndrome increases dramatically.

Question 15

Daniel, and his friends, Heith and Lenin, were employed by Informationz Inc., a software company.The management of the company recently laid off few of its employees to cut costs.In the process, Daniel and his friends were laid off.However, Daniel was not frustrated about the company's decision as he felt the decision of the company was unbiased as his friends also lost their job.Daniel's perception in this case is an example of _____.

A) interactional justice
B) procedural justice
C) restorative justice
D) distributive justice
E) informational justice

Question 16

Employee leasing involves paying a fee to a company that provides a pool of employees on a temporary basis.

Question 17

Distributive justiceisinsignificant in determining an employee's reactions to pay decisions.

Question 18

Nature of the work that a person does is usually NOT a factor for assessing job satisfaction.

Question 19

Which of the following is true of the contingent workforce?

A) Itrefers to employees who feel guilty over keepingtheir jobs when others lost theirjobs.
B) It includes employees who work for more than 50 hours a week.
C) It includes all part-time employees who are employed by organizationsto fill in for permanent employees.
D) It refers to individuals who are permanent employees of an organization.
E) It includes only those part-time employees who are employed by an organization for a span of two weeks.

Question 20

Providing employees with overtime opportunitiesisespecially beneficial when the increased need for humanresources is short term.

Question 21

Julie fired Annette owing to poor performance.Which of the following is likely to decrease Annette's chances of getting her job back?

A) If Julie has a written report of Annette's poor performance
B) If Annette claims that her performance had been consistent for the past two appraisals
C) If Julie has conveyed to Annette about her poor performance only by word of mouth
D) If Annette is a member of a labor union
E) The company has hired a new employee to fill the vacancy

Question 22

_____states that an employer has the ability toterminate any employee,at any time, for any reason, or for noreason at all.

A) Procedural justice
B) Consistency
C) Employment at will
D) Ethicality
E) Representativeness

Question 23

Allison often stays after his work hours to help co-workers with their training and tasks.This is an example of _____.

A) organizational citizenship behavior
B) job embeddedness
C) employment at will
D) representativeness
E) job enrichment

Question 24

Job satisfaction is independent of:

A) a person's co-workers.
B) benefits and compensations given to a person.
C) supervisors under whom a person works.
D) job enrichment.
E) job embeddedness.

Question 25

Hanks, a supervisor at an international firm, observes that Tom, one of his subordinates, often extends his lunch breaks and also leaves early to home.Hanks wants to use progressive disciplinary method to change Tom's behavior.Next time Hanks observes the same kind of behavior from Tom, he should _____.

A) keep a written record of the incident in Tom's personnel file
B) suspend Tom for a week
C) ask the human resources department for help
D) give Tom a verbal warning
E) provide a negative performance appraisal for Tom

Question 26

_____ describes employees who feel guilty over keepingtheir jobs when others lost theirjobs.

A) Anxiety syndrome
B) Retention syndrome
C) Survivor syndrome
D) Stockholm syndrome
E) Down syndrome

Question 27

_____ is the degree towhich an employee identifieswith an organization andis willing to exert effort onbehalf of the organization.

A) Job enlargement
B) Job enrichment
C) Employment at will
D) Job embeddedness
E) Organizational commitment

Question 28

Voluntary turnover occurs when:

A) employees choose to leave the organization for a variety of reasons.
B) a facility is closed and all of its workers are put out of work.
C) an unsatisfactory employee must be terminated.
D) job satisfaction is very high.
E) managers choose to leave job vacancies unfilled.

Question 29

For a merger or acquisition to be successful,:

A) the human resource department should not interfere in decision making.
B) the human resource department of the new firmshould play the role of a final arbiter.
C) all the employees should identify the new firm and cooperate with one another.
D) a large scale fresher recruitment should be carried out and old employees should be laid off
E) policies of the large firm of the merger or acquisition should be implemented abolishing the policy of the small firm.

Question 30

Which of the following disciplinary problems is most likely to lead to immediate termination?

A) Errors in work products
B) Selling narcotics on the job
C) Frequent absenteeism
D) Failure to complete work on time
E) Tardiness

Question 31

John often gets into heated arguments with his boss over his job responsibilities.In this example, he is more likely to be dissatisfied with his job due to _____.

A) his high sense of ethicality
B) poor career advancement
C) his relationship with his supervisors.
D) his relationship with his coworkers.
E) his negative personality

Question 32

Which of the following is a difference between suspension and termination?

A) Suspension is a part of a progressive disciplinary program, while termination is not a part of a progressive disciplinary program.
B) Suspension lasts for a day or for a few weeks, while termination marks the end of employment relationship.
C) An employee is not paid during the period of suspension, while an employee is paid in the process of termination.
D) Suspension invariably leads to legal problems for an employer, while termination rarely leads to legal problems for an employer.
E) Suspension is called permanent layoff, while termination is called temporary layoff.

Question 33

Caroline, a senior analyst at Radan Corp., has a physically challenged child who studies in a special school near her office.Though she is unhappy with her current job and is offered another job with a better pay scale in another state, she does not want to quit her current job as she gets a lot of time to take care of her child.This is an example of _____.

A) forceful retention
B) voluntary turnover
C) normative commitment
D) job enrichment
E) job embeddedness

Question 34

Which of the following is true of job description index?

A) It is one of the oldest method to assess job satisfaction which is no longer in use.
B) It uses only pay for assessing one's job satisfaction.
C) It is used to measure job satisfaction.
D) It rarely uses supervision as a parameter in assessing job satisfaction.
E) It has a single overall measure for job satisfaction.

Question 35

Which of the following is true of realistic job previews?

A) They mainly give information on factors that are potential sources of dissatisfaction.
B) They seldom include information on compensations.
C) They provide accurate information about the job to an applicant.
D) They are usually used with experienced employees of a firm.
E) They are seldom used to measure the satisfaction of employees in their job.

Question 36

Which of the following is a major cause for involuntary turnover in an organization?

A) Unsatisfactory pay and benefits
B) ​Poor performance of an individual
C) A high score on the dimension of representativeness
D) Poor rapport with co-workers
E) A high score on the dimension of ethicality

Question 37

Today, there is a severe shortage of nurses in some medical specialties, and hospitals are working hard to retain their current nursing staff.Which of the following options would be most effective in retaining nurses?

A) Conducting realistic job previews
B) Creating an environment for job enrichment
C) Conducting engagement surveys
D) Increasing job embeddedness
E) Announcing early retirement benefits

Question 38

An advantage of retaining effective employees is that:

A) they master the skill of using conventional methods at work.
B) they help in fostering representativeness at workplace.
C) they exhibit high flexibility and work round the clock.
D) they help in avoiding expenses involved in replacing them.
E) they exhibit high levels of ethicality in their work.

Question 39

Exceptions to the doctrine of employment at will is inapplicable when:

A) an employee is terminated based on his or her race.
B) an employee is an objectivelydocumented poor performer.
C) an employee is discharged for refusing to commit a crime.
D) an individual has a contractual right to his or her job.
E) anindividual'sright to due process has been violated.

Question 40

Which of the following is most likely to be an effective retention strategy to retain engineers and computer scientists of a high-tech software company for an extended period of time?

A) Providing realistic job previews
B) Announcing attractive retirement benefits
C) Giving stock options that cannot be exercised for the first five years of employment
D) Reducing the job requirements to make the jobs simpler and easier to do
E) Regularly administering job satisfaction surveys

Question 41

How does retention strategies address the causes of job dissatisfaction?

Question 42

Scenario 6.1
In 2003, managers at BabyBlooms Corp., a national retailer of baby products, noticed that sales and profits were slumping.Store managers were instructed not to fill any vacant positions, which saved some money.However, by January, 2004, it was essential that BabyBlooms cut expenses further.The firm decided to offer incentives for top managers if they decided to leave before their tenure out of free will.Expenses still remained high, and in May, the firm asked store managers to reduce staff by laying off 10 percent of its workers (about two workers per store).When those cuts were still not enough, management called for store closings in some locations.For example, one of the store closing was announced to employees on August 1 and accomplished by December 1.In locations where stores were not closed, managers were ordered to terminate any under-performing employees, identified by low performance appraisal scores in the last two evaluations.
Refer to Scenario 6.1.In the scenario,one of the store closing was announced to employees on August 1 and accomplished by December 1.In this case, the company has followed the _____

A) ​Fair Labor Standards Act
B) ​Landrum-Griffin Act
C) ​Privacy Act
D) Labor Management Relations Act
E) WorkerAdjustment and Retraining Notification

Question 43

Scenario 6.1
In 2003, managers at BabyBlooms Corp., a national retailer of baby products, noticed that sales and profits were slumping.Store managers were instructed not to fill any vacant positions, which saved some money.However, by January, 2004, it was essential that BabyBlooms cut expenses further.The firm decided to offer incentives for top managers if they decided to leave before their tenure out of free will.Expenses still remained high, and in May, the firm asked store managers to reduce staff by laying off 10 percent of its workers (about two workers per store).When those cuts were still not enough, management called for store closings in some locations.For example, one of the store closing was announced to employees on August 1 and accomplished by December 1.In locations where stores were not closed, managers were ordered to terminate any under-performing employees, identified by low performance appraisal scores in the last two evaluations.
Refer to Scenario 6.1.The scenario is the best example of _____.

A) progressive disciplinary plans
B) outsourcing
C) rightsizing
D) employment at will
E) employee retention

Question 44

Scenario 6.1
In 2003, managers at BabyBlooms Corp., a national retailer of baby products, noticed that sales and profits were slumping.Store managers were instructed not to fill any vacant positions, which saved some money.However, by January, 2004, it was essential that BabyBlooms cut expenses further.The firm decided to offer incentives for top managers if they decided to leave before their tenure out of free will.Expenses still remained high, and in May, the firm asked store managers to reduce staff by laying off 10 percent of its workers (about two workers per store).When those cuts were still not enough, management called for store closings in some locations.For example, one of the store closing was announced to employees on August 1 and accomplished by December 1.In locations where stores were not closed, managers were ordered to terminate any under-performing employees, identified by low performance appraisal scores in the last two evaluations.
Refer to Scenario 6.1.Which of the following was the second reduction strategy implemented by BabyBlooms?

A) Termination
B) Layoffs
C) Suspension
D) Upsizing
E) Early retirement

Question 45

Define the three types of justice that workers may perceive as lacking during a layoff.

Question 46

Describe a basic model of the turnover process.What other models or mechanisms have been proposed to explain turnover?

Question 47

Should an organization attempt to retain employees who prefer to leave voluntarily? Summarize the arguments for and against such action.

Question 48

Scenario 6.1
In 2003, managers at BabyBlooms Corp., a national retailer of baby products, noticed that sales and profits were slumping.Store managers were instructed not to fill any vacant positions, which saved some money.However, by January, 2004, it was essential that BabyBlooms cut expenses further.The firm decided to offer incentives for top managers if they decided to leave before their tenure out of free will.Expenses still remained high, and in May, the firm asked store managers to reduce staff by laying off 10 percent of its workers (about two workers per store).When those cuts were still not enough, management called for store closings in some locations.For example, one of the store closing was announced to employees on August 1 and accomplished by December 1.In locations where stores were not closed, managers were ordered to terminate any under-performing employees, identified by low performance appraisal scores in the last two evaluations.
Refer to Scenario 6.1.Which of the following is a least likely outcome of BabyBlooms's actions?

A) Workers will suffer from survivor syndrome.
B) Voluntary turnover will increase as employees are highly dissatisfied with the organization.
C) Job satisfaction and morale will decline.
D) There will be a rise in reports of strong organizational citizenship behavior.
E) The layoffs and store closings will be a shock to remaining workers.

Question 49

Scenario 6.1
In 2003, managers at BabyBlooms Corp., a national retailer of baby products, noticed that sales and profits were slumping.Store managers were instructed not to fill any vacant positions, which saved some money.However, by January, 2004, it was essential that BabyBlooms cut expenses further.The firm decided to offer incentives for top managers if they decided to leave before their tenure out of free will.Expenses still remained high, and in May, the firm asked store managers to reduce staff by laying off 10 percent of its workers (about two workers per store).When those cuts were still not enough, management called for store closings in some locations.For example, one of the store closing was announced to employees on August 1 and accomplished by December 1.In locations where stores were not closed, managers were ordered to terminate any under-performing employees, identified by low performance appraisal scores in the last two evaluations.
Refer to Scenario 6.1.Which of the following is more likely to be a risk associated with laying off employees of BabyBlooms Corp.?

A) ​The company is at risk of being acquired by a government owned company.
B) ​The employees who are retained tend to show less organizational citizenship behavior.
C) There are high chances for the company to go bankrupt.
D) The company has to invest large amounts to retain other employees.
E) The laid off employees have the option of suing the company for wrongful termination.

Question 50

What are organizational citizenship behaviors? Give at least three specific examples of employee actions that are organizational citizenship behaviors.What can the organization do to increase these behaviors?