Deck 10: Organizational Change and Innovation: Lifelong Challenges for the Exceptional Manager

Question 1

Employees may resist change to its disruption of cultural traditions or group relationships, personality conflicts, lack of tact or poor timing and nonreinforcing reward systems.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Demassification refers to a trend of customer groups becoming segmented into mass markets and resulting mass communication, mass behavior, and mass values.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

BP handled the 2010 oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico in a reactive manner.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Resistance to change can be considered to be the interaction of causes such as employee or change-agent characteristics.

Question 5

Lots of people don't like change due to a predisposition toward change, surprise and fear of the unknown, loss of status or job security, and poor timing.

Question 6

One of the strengths of Virgin Group Ltd. is its ability to enter new businesses quickly; that is, for fast speed to market.

Question 7

The marketplace is becoming less homogeneous and moving toward more niche products.

Question 8

An example of an inside force for organizational change is secondhand shops suffering from a recession-induced decline in thrift store donations, even as consumer demand for used goods went through the roof.

Question 9

Jim Collins, researcher of enduring great companies, found that there are five stages of institutional decline which are largely self-inflicted.

Question 10

Resistance to change is an emotional/behavioral response to real or imagined threats to an established work routine as subtle as passive resignation and as overt as deliberate sabotage.

Question 11

Reactive change involves making carefully thought-out changes in anticipation of possible or expected problems or opportunities.

Question 12

Supertrend is a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.

Question 13

Whether organizational change is administrative or technological, it can be adaptive, innovative, or radically innovative, depending on (1) the degree of complexity, cost, and uncertainty and (2) its potential for generating employee resistance.

Question 14

People are generally uncomfortable about change even in apparently minor matters.

Question 15

Employee problems and manager behaviors are internal forces for change in the organization.

Question 16

Internal forces for change include demographic characteristics among U.S. workers, social and political pressures, and technological advancements.

Question 17

Technology is any machine or process that enables an organization to gain a competitive advantage in changing materials used to produce a finished product.

Question 18

Forces for change may consist of forces inside the organization such as demographic characteristics, technological advancements, shareholder, customer and market changes, and social and political pressures.

Question 19

Two supertrends include offshore suppliers changing the way we work; and knowledge, not information, becoming the new competitive advantage.

Question 20

Walt Disney Company's investing $1 billion into a wearable technology that it hopes will revolutionize the way visitors spend money at Walt Disney World, featuring a website ("My Disney Experience") and data-collecting wristbands ("MagicBands") that interact with scanners throughout the 40-square-mile theme park, is an example of proactive change.

Question 21

Corporate restructurings threaten to eliminate jobs and generally trigger strong resistance.

Question 22

An example of innovative change is a department store deciding to adopt a new practice used by competitors by staying open 24 hours a day, requiring employees to work flexible schedules, which may be felt as moderately threatening.

Question 23

Job dissatisfaction within an organization is not a valid indicator that change is needed.

Question 24

Adaptive change is the introduction of a practice that is new to the organization.

Question 25

During annual inventory week, a department store may ask its employees to work 12 hours a day instead of the usual 8. During tax-preparation time, the store's accounting department may imitate this same change in work hours. Although accounting employees are in a different department from stockroom and sales employees, it's expected they wouldn't be terribly upset by the temporary change in hours since they've seen it in effect elsewhere in the store. This is an example of innovative change.

Question 26

Conflict is inherent in most organizations.

Question 27

In the unfreezing stage, managers try to instill in employees the motivation to change, encouraging them to let go of attitudes and behaviors that are resistant to innovation. For this "unfreezing" to take place, employees need to become dissatisfied with the old way of doing things. Managers also need to reduce the barriers to change during this stage.

Question 28

The most complex, costly, and uncertain kind of change is known as adaptive change.

Question 29

Kotter's change step of anchoring new approaches in the culture corresponds to unfreezing in Lewin's model.

Question 30

For most organizations, change is hard, and the tools for survival are time and money.

Question 31

Adaptive change is the least threatening type of change and is therefore least likely to create resistance.

Question 32

When radically different changes are introduced without warning, without any official announcements, the office rumor mill will go into high gear, and affected employees will become fearful of the implications of the changes.

Question 33

According to Lewin, for refreezing to take place, people need to become dissatisfied with the old way of doing things.

Question 34

In the freezing stage, employees need to be helped to integrate the changed attitudes and behavior into their normal ways of doing things.

Question 35

Benchmarking is a technique that must be used in the unfreezing stage of Lewin's change model.

Question 36

During the changing stage of Lewin's change model, managers should model the change themselves, as well as coach employees and reinforce the desired behaviors.

Question 37

A passive resignation can be a form of resistance to change in the workplace.

Question 38

In the changing stage of change of Lewin's change model, employees need to be given new information, perspectives, and models for behavior.

Question 39

Because radically innovative change will be felt as extremely threatening to managers' confidence and employees' job security, it may well tear at the fabric of the organization.

Question 40

Trust between change agents and employees can reduce resistance to change.

Question 41

An OD intervention that works in one country should not be blindly applied to a similar situation in another country.

Question 42

An example of transformational innovation is when Keurig created a new category of coffee/tea preparation by offering cup-at-a-time pod-style brewing.

Question 43

An OD intervention that worked in the United States may not work well in another country.

Question 44

Hard data about absenteeism, turnover, and profitability are used in the evaluation, or step 3, of the OD process.

Question 45

Process innovation is a change in the way a product or service is conceived, manufactured, or disseminated.

Question 46

To carry out the diagnosis, OD consultants or managers use some combination of questionnaires, surveys, interviews, meetings, records, and direct observation to ascertain people's attitudes and to identify problem areas.

Question 47

Organizational development (OD) is a set of techniques for implementing planned change to make people and organizations more effective.

Question 48

The third step of the OD process is evaluation, which uses employee surveys, interviews, and observation to ascertain initial attitudes and problem areas.

Question 49

OD focuses specifically on people in the change process.

Question 50

An example of a core innovation is when Procter & Gamble modified a liquid detergent to make it available as a concentrated powder in a pouch.

Question 51

Evaluation, step 2. What Shall We Do about It?, is the treatment step of OD in which problems are corrected.

Question 52

Innovation is the activity of creating new ideas and converting them into useful applications, which is different from invention and creativity.

Question 53

OD has three steps: diagnosis, intervention, and conflict.

Question 54

Innovation is mostly the product of hard work and dedication rather than a "eureka" moment of epiphany.

Question 55

Wealth and money is one of six seeds of innovation according to Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation.

Question 56

Feedback is used to refine the diagnosis after the evaluation step in the OD process.

Question 57

Blaming, reluctance to experiment, and a self-serving bias can lessen an employee's ability to learn from failure.

Question 58

In OD, single interventions have been found to work better than multiple interventions.

Question 59

A process innovation is a change in the appearance or the performance of a product or a service or the creation of a new one.

Question 60

The OD process includes three steps: diagnosis, intervention, and evaluation, followed by feedback to further refine the diagnosis.

Question 61

An employee's resistance is partly based on his or her perception of change, which is influenced by the attitudes and behaviors exhibited by the change agent, and the level of trust between change agent and the employee.

Question 62

Resistance can be considered to be the interaction of three causes: (1) employee characteristics, (2) change agent characteristics, and (3) the supervisor-employee relationship.

Question 63

Which of the following is an example of a force for change originating outside the organization?

A) productivity issues
B) conflict management
C) structural reorganization
D) social and political pressures
E) absenteeism

Question 64

The three most important ways to encourage innovation are by providing the right organizational culture, resources, and reward system.

Question 65

According to Jim Collins, undisciplined pursuit of more and grasping for salvation are stages of institutional ___________.

A) decline
B) change
C) intervention
D) resistance
E) innovation

Question 66

Inside forces for change include which of the following?

A) domestic competition
B) recession
C) advancements in automation
D) immigration
E) low productivity and turnover

Question 67

In the Internet Age, retailers like Amazon and Apple are not constrained by physical shelf space and can offer consumers a much wider variety of products, yet small sales, one or two rather than millions of items at a time, can produce big profits. This is an example of __________.

A) the marketplace becoming more segmented and moving toward more niche products
B) declining population in developed countries
C) China becoming the second-largest economic power
D) the rise of business-to-business technology
E) instant-gratification shopping

Question 68

To make innovation happen, you need to recognize problems and opportunities, gain allies, overcome employee resistance, and execute well.

Question 69

A change that is made in response to arising problems or opportunities is called __________.

A) radical change
B) incremental change
C) proactive change
D) reactive change
E) process change

Question 70

Which of the following is an example of a proactive change?

A) Ciara's staff is unhappy about the long hours they have been working and several of them quit before she knows there is a problem.
B) Ciara's group sent a product that was nearing its launch date back to the drawing board based on a competitor's superior new offering.
C) Ciara cannot get permission to hire another person until her group misses several deadlines.
D) Ciara is constantly "putting out fires," responding to daily crises in her group.
E) Ciara explores improvements in bonus structures with her staff and begins to implement them despite the fact that her employees are generally content.

Question 71

An organizational culture that doesn't just allow but celebrates failure is vital toward fostering innovation.

Question 72

Companies are likely to innovate even if the culture and climate do not support it.

Question 73

Which of the following is an effective way to deal with change and innovation?

A) Insist on success.
B) Increase work rules and hierarchy.
C) Copy others' successes.
D) Jump right into it.
E) Have the courage to follow your ideas.

Question 74

What finally will make or break an organization's attempts at bringing new products and services to market is execution-the process of discussing hows and whats, of using questioning, analysis, and follow-through to achieve the results promised and ensure accountability.

Question 75

The increasing diversity of the American workforce is an example of a(n) ______ force for change.

A) market
B) demographic
C) social and political
D) political
E) economic

Question 76

The invention of a machine to make plastic corks for wine bottles has severely affected companies that produce traditional cork. This is an example of a(n) ______ advancement.

A) market
B) social and political
C) technological
D) demographical
E) economic

Question 77

Resistance to change is an emotional/behavioral response to real or imagined threats to an established work routine.

Question 78

Walmart's implementation of RFID, a type of technology that allows it to improve inventory tracking, is an example of a(n) ______ change.

A) reactive
B) incremental
C) cultural
D) responsive
E) proactive

Question 79

An organizational culture that celebrates failure helps foster innovation.

Question 80

Which of the following is not a supertrend shaping the future of business?

A) more niche products.
B) information becoming a competitive advantage.
C) traditional companies struggling with radically innovative change.
D) offshore suppliers affecting U.S. business.
E) faster speed-to-market.