Deck 6: Foundations of Employee Motivation

Question 1

Skill-based pay plans give an employee a higher pay rate for those days that he or she performs two or more jobs at the same time.

Answer 1

False
Explanation: Skill-based pay plans are a specific variation of competency-based rewards in which people receive higher pay based on their mastery of measurable skills.

Question 2

Competency-based rewards pay employees based on their seniority in the organization.

Answer 2

False
Explanation: Competency-based rewards pay employees based on how well they demonstrate each of those competencies.

Question 3

Competency-based rewards tend to improve levels of product and service quality.

Answer 3

True
Explanation: Product or service quality tends to improve with competency-based rewards, because employees with multiple skills are more likely to understand the work process and know how to improve it.

Question 4

Employee stock ownership plans and stock options tend to create an "ownership culture" in which employees feel aligned with the organization's success.

Question 5

Job specialization increases training costs and makes it more difficult for companies to match employee aptitudes to jobs for which they are best suited.

Question 6

Gainsharing plans apply to production jobs,not to services such as medical operations.

Question 7

The largest portion of most paychecks is based on a person's membership and seniority in an organization.

Question 8

Team rewards increase employee preferences for team-based work arrangements.

Question 9

Job evaluations systematically evaluate the worth of each job within the organization by measuring its required skill,effort,responsibility and working conditions.

Question 10

People with a high power distance tend to have a high respect and priority for money.

Question 11

An advantage of competency-based rewards is that measuring employee competencies is mostly done through objective measurement methods.

Question 12

Gainsharing plans focus on cost reductions and increased labor efficiency.

Question 13

Employee stock ownership plans give employees the right to purchase company stock at a predetermined price up to a fixed expiration date.

Question 14

Competency-based rewards are consistent with the concept of employability.

Question 15

Job evaluation mainly supports the competency approach to rewards.

Question 16

A problem with seniority-based rewards is that they cause higher turnover.

Question 17

Employee stock ownership plans and stock options are two types of organizational-level performance-based rewards.

Question 18

Job status-based rewards discourage employees from hoarding resources.

Question 19

Companies should use individual-level performance-based pay when jobs are highly interdependent.

Question 20

Job status-based rewards potentially motivate employees to compete with each other.

Question 21

Task identity is the degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the organization and/or larger society.

Question 22

Job enlargement increases skill variety.

Question 23

According to the motivator-hygiene theory,people are mainly motivated by characteristics of the job itself,not by working conditions or other factors external to the job.

Question 24

A video journalist is someone who performs all jobs previously done by a traditional news team-from operating the camera to reporting the story.Thus,a video journalist is an example of job enlargement and job enrichment.

Question 25

Increasing the core job characteristics will not increase employee motivation for those who lack the required skills.

Question 26

Task significance is the degree to which the job affects the organization and/or larger society.

Question 27

Job specialization increases work efficiency,but it tends to reduce employee motivation.

Question 28

Two ways to enrich jobs are by clustering jobs into natural groups and by establishing client relationships.

Question 29

Job enrichment tends to increase the quality of products or services.

Question 30

All employees feel more motivated to perform their jobs when the core job characteristics are increased.

Question 31

Forming natural work units tends to increase task identity and task significance.

Question 32

Scientific management is the process of systematically dividing work into its smallest possible elements and standardizing work activities to achieve maximum efficiency.

Question 33

According to the job characteristics model,experienced meaningfulness increases with the level of job feedback.

Question 34

Research suggests that increasing job enlargement increases employee motivation almost as much as job enrichment.

Question 35

Adam Smith introduced the principles of scientific management.

Question 36

The job characteristics model identifies five core job characteristics and three psychological states.

Question 37

According to Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory,only characteristics of the job (and not the work environment) motivate employees.

Question 38

Motivator-hygiene theory highlights the idea that job content is an important source of employee motivation.

Question 39

Scientific management is mainly associated with high levels of job specialization.

Question 40

Employees assembling complete computer modems would have higher task identity than those assembling only one component and passing it along to others for further assembly.

Question 41

Employees engage in self-monitoring in companies that emphasize less frequent measurement of performance.

Question 42

People with a high level of conscientiousness have difficulty applying self-leadership strategies.

Question 43

The problem with membership and seniority-based rewards is that they:

A) discourage people from remaining with the organization.
B) are difficult to use in organizational settings.
C) do not directly motivate job performance.
D) increase turnover.
E) discourage people from remaining with the organization and they do not directly motivate job performance.

Question 44

Which of the following rewards represent the largest part of most paychecks?

A) Membership-based rewards
B) Job status-based rewards
C) Individual job performance-based rewards
D) Competency-based rewards
E) Performance-based rewards

Question 45

Self-leadership borrows ideas from social learning theory and research in sports psychology on constructive thought processes.

Question 46

Companies are applying job specialization when employees are made directly responsible for specific customers and having them communicate directly with those customers.

Question 47

Self-leadership includes the practice of self-reinforcement.

Question 48

Mental imagery helps us to anticipate and work out solutions to potential obstacles in our work.

Question 49

Positive self-talk motivates employees by increasing their effort-to-performance expectancy.

Question 50

Employees experience more meaningfulness when working in jobs that allow them to receive feedback about their performance and accomplishments.

Question 51

Employees with a high degree of autonomy engage in self-leadership.

Question 52

People are empowered when they feel self-determination,meaning,competence,and impact regarding their role in the organization.

Question 53

Which reward system tends to discourage poor performers from voluntarily leaving the organization?

A) Performance-based pay
B) Skill-based pay
C) Piece-rate rewards
D) Competency-based pay
E) Membership and seniority-based pay

Question 54

Empowerment tends to decrease personal initiative among employees.

Question 55

Employees are more likely to feel empowered in jobs with a high degree of autonomy,task identity,and task significance.

Question 56

An element of self-leadership involves keeping track of our progress toward goals.

Question 57

Self-leadership suggests that goals should be set by the employee's supervisor with or without the employee's involvement.

Question 58

Self-leadership is dependent solely on the individual.

Question 59

Mental imagery excludes visualizing completion of a task.

Question 60

Empowerment flourishes in organizations with a learning orientation.

Question 61

A mid-sized city introduced a reward system whereby employees would find ways to reduce costs and increase work efficiency.Every employee would receive a portion of the surplus budget resulting from these cost savings.Which of the following reward systems is this city using?

A) Gainsharing plan
B) Commission system
C) Piece rate plan
D) Share option plan
E) Commission plan

Question 62

Steelweld,a car parts manufacturer,pays employees a higher hourly rate as they learn to master more parts of the work process.Employees earn $10 per hour when they are hired and they can earn up to $20 per hour if they master all 12 work units in the production process.Which of these reward systems is being applied by Steelweld?

A) Skill-based pay
B) Piece-rate pay
C) Job evaluation system
D) Seniority-based pay
E) Membership-based pay

Question 63

Which of these contemporary organizational behavior practices was popularized by Fredrick Taylor in his work on scientific management?

A) Goal setting
B) Job enrichment
C) Membership-based reward system
D) Seniority-based reward system
E) Competency-based reward system

Question 64

Which of the following is an advantage of job specialization?

A) The quality of work increases.
B) Jobs can be mastered quickly.
C) Employees are more involved with their jobs.
D) The work is less repetitive.
E) Task specialization has no clear advantages to the organization.

Question 65

Which of the following does scientific management include?

A) Assigning employees to fixed hourly wages.
B) Systematically dividing a job into its smallest possible elements and assigning these divided tasks to employees who are best qualified to perform them.
C) Combining tasks so employees perform an entire work process from beginning to end.
D) Encouraging employees to set their own goals and have positive thoughts about their work performance.
E) Encouraging employees to complete an entire task single handedly.

Question 66

Which of the following is true about stock option plans?

A) They refer to bonuses from the work unit's cost savings and productivity improvement.
B) They give employees the right to purchase company stock at a predetermined price up to a fixed expiration date.
C) They directly award bonuses to employees based on cost savings and increased labor productivity.
D) They tend to weaken employee commitment to the organization.
E) They encourage employees to buy company stock, usually at a discounted price or through a no-interest loan.

Question 67

Which of the following refers to the result of the division of labor in which work is subdivided into separate jobs assigned to different people?

A) Piece rate system
B) Job rotation
C) Job specialization
D) Profit-sharing bonus
E) Gainsharing plan

Question 68

According to Herzberg,which of the following is a hygiene factor?

A) Autonomy
B) Job security
C) Responsibility
D) Personal growth
E) Esteem need

Question 69

A unique feature of Herzberg's motivator-hygiene theory is that it:

A) states that improving motivators increases job satisfaction but does not decrease job dissatisfaction.
B) states that employees can be satisfied with their jobs but not motivated to perform their jobs.
C) identifies job specialization as the main source of higher need fulfillment.
D) views job satisfaction and dissatisfaction as opposites.
E) recognizes money as the primary motivator in organizational settings.

Question 70

Which of the following are "golden handcuffs" that potentially increase continuance commitment?

A) Performance-based rewards
B) Job status-based rewards
C) Team-based rewards
D) Competency-based rewards
E) Membership/seniority-based rewards

Question 71

Which of the following reward systems uses job evaluations?

A) Competency-based reward system
B) Job status reward system
C) Individual performance reward system
D) Seniority-based reward system
E) Task performance-based reward system

Question 72

_____ is the degree to which a job requires completion of a whole or identifiable piece of work,such as assembling an entire broadband modem rather than just soldering in the circuitry.

A) Skill variety
B) Task significance
C) Job feedback
D) Job rotation
E) Task identity

Question 73

Which of the following awards motivate employees to compete for promotions?

A) Performance-based rewards
B) Competency-based rewards
C) Team-based rewards
D) Job status-based rewards
E) Membership/seniority-based rewards

Question 74

Which of the following is true about skill-based pay plans?

A) They discourage employees from learning new jobs.
B) They create a psychological distance between employees and managers.
C) They discourage poor performers from leaving the organization.
D) They can be expensive because they motivate employees to spend more time learning new jobs.
E) They motivate employees to compete for promotions.

Question 75

Gainsharing plans tend to:

A) increase efficiency without paying employees any financial reward.
B) distribute a portion of company profits to employees in the form of company stock.
C) create a reasonably strong effort-to-performance expectancy.
D) reward individuals for their own personal performance rather than team or organizational performance.
E) increase efficiency without paying employees any financial reward creating a reasonably strong effort-to-performance expectancy.

Question 76

Which of the following is an individual incentive?

A) Gainsharing plan
B) Piece rate plan
C) Share option
D) Share ownership
E) Employee stock ownership plan

Question 77

Which of the following is most consistent with employability-namely,that employees are expected to continuously learn skills that will keep them employed?

A) Job evaluation systems
B) Job status rewards
C) Competency-based rewards
D) Individual performance-based rewards
E) Membership-based rewards

Question 78

When applied to non-management employees,which of the following has a weak connection between the reward and individual effort?

A) Piece rate pay
B) Commission
C) Profit-sharing bonus
D) Gainsharing plan
E) Job evaluation

Question 79

Which of these performance-based rewards tends to create a connection between the employee's work effort and the reward received?

A) Profit-sharing plan
B) Employee stock ownership plan
C) Gainsharing plan
D) Employee stock option plan
E) Stock option

Question 80

Which of the following tend to create an ownership culture and align employee behaviors more closely to organizational objectives?

A) Job evaluations
B) Commissions
C) Piece rate plans
D) Employee share ownership plans
E) Stock option plans and employee stock ownership plans