Deck 8: Quality Teamwork

Question 1

High-performing organizations recognize that the potential contributions of employees are much greater in the traditional organizations.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

SMTs have resulted in increased employee commitment to the organization and the ability to attract and retain the best people.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

The focus of Six Sigma teams is to address immediate problems.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Leadership teams, virtual teams, and project teams, are usually crossfunctional.

Question 5

Cross-functional teams are natural vehicles for implementing large-scale organizational changes.

Question 6

One of the reasons why people join teams is that they want to use team meetings to address personal agendas.

Question 7

Team members could take up their roles based on the two major orientations: task-oriented and time-oriented.

Question 8

People who work together every day to perform a complete unit of work are referred to as _____ teams.

A) self-managed
B) natural work
C) virtual
D) project

Question 9

Which of the following teams is not usually cross-functional?

A) Leadership teams
B) Virtual teams
C) Natural work teams
D) Project

Question 10

Which of the following is not one of the criteria for team effectiveness?

A) The team must achieve its goals of quality improvement.
B) The team must have the potential for rapid adaptation to changing conditions.
C) The team must maintain or increase its strength as a unit.
D) The team must remain uninfluenced by the rest of the organization.

Question 11

Research has found that implementing team charters has led to all the following benefits except:

A) reduced intragroup conflict.
B) improved speed of making decisions.
C) higher group member satisfaction.
D) increased exposure to litigation.

Question 12

Which of the following statements about team processes is not true?

A) Teams that spend more time diagnosing problems have been shown to be much more effective than those that proceed immediately to solutions.
B) An argument against performance appraisals is that they tend to foster mediocrity and discourage risk taking.
C) The selection of trivial problems by teams indicates that management has done an effective job of sharing information about the business with team members.
D) Remaining aware of the need to improve team processes should also guard against the tendency to downplay the potential contributions of non-team members.

Question 13

Which of the following statements about teams is not true?

A) Natural work teams complement rather than replace the traditional organization of work.
B) Self-managed teams are empowered to take corrective action and resolve day-to-day problems.
C) Virtual teams require that team member roles and objectives must be made more explicit.
D) Problem-solving teams are limited in membership to employees of a specific department.

Question 14

Research has shown that _____ are better suited to well-defined, familiar tasks, where the emphasis is on efficient production.

A) heterogeneous groups
B) homogenous groups
C) cross-functional teams
D) problem-solving teams

Question 15

Which of the following statements is not true regarding the impact of culture, team-composition, and diversity in an organizational context?

A) People from collectivistic cultures appear to be more accepting of self-managed teams.
B) Cultural values play a role in an employee's support of, or resistance to, self-managed teams.
C) Heterogeneous groups are better at tasks that require creative thinking.
D) Informational diversity negatively influences group performance.

Question 16

Research has found that people in _____ like the United States have more of a tendency to resist self-managed teams.

A) individualistic cultures
B) capitalistic countries
C) multicultural states
D) developed nations

Question 17

Which of the following is not a type of diversity, as discussed in the text?

A) Informational diversity
B) Social category diversity
C) Geopolitical diversity
D) Value diversity

Question 18

Define the concept of teams and describe its significance.

Question 19

Compare leadership teams and quality improvement teams.

Question 20

List the members of a Six Sigma team.

Question 21

Briefly describe the various processes in the team process.