Deck 1: Introduction to the Field of Organizational Behaviour

Question 1

The open systems perspective emphasizes that organizations are effective when they maintain a good "fit" with their external environments.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

At present there is only one organizational behaviour perspective which adequately defines organizational effectiveness.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

The study of organizational behaviour wasn't formally organized until the 1970s

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Organizational behaviour knowledge helps us influence people and organizational events.

Question 5

Organizational behaviour emerged as a distinct field around the 1940s.

Question 6

The major organizational effectiveness perspectives are considered detailed extensions of the closed systems model.

Question 7

Almost all organizational behaviour theories share an implicit or explicit objective of making organizations more effective.

Question 8

Evidence indicates that applying organizational behaviour knowledge tends to improve the organization's financial performance.

Question 9

Organizational effectiveness, not profitability, is considered the "ultimate dependent variable" in organizational behaviour.

Question 10

In order to be considered an organization, a business must have buildings and equipment.

Question 11

The most efficient companies are not necessarily the most effective ones

Question 12

One problem with the term "organizational effectiveness'' is that it has too many substitute labels, as well as too many different definitions.

Question 13

All organizations have a collective sense of purpose.

Question 14

An important principle in organizational behaviour is that OB theories should never be used to question or rebuild one's mental models.

Question 15

More than 1,000 years ago, Chinese factories were producing 125,000 tons of iron each year.

Question 16

One problem with the open systems perspective is that it neglects to focus on how well the organization operates internally.

Question 17

Social entities are called organizations only when their members work interdependently toward some purpose.

Question 18

Scholars have been studying organizational behaviour since the days of Greek philosophers.

Question 19

The goal attainment definition of effectiveness focuses on whether the organization achieves its stated goals.

Question 20

Successful organizations only need to concentrate on achieving efficient transformation processes.

Question 21

Structural capital refers to buildings and other depreciable tangible assets.

Question 22

One of the fastest ways to acquire knowledge is to hire individuals or purchase entire companies that have valued knowledge.

Question 23

Organizational unlearning is particularly important for organizational change.

Question 24

The organizational learning perspective is also known as the knowledge management perspective.

Question 25

Experimentation is considered a valid knowledge acquisition strategy.

Question 26

Intellectual capital includes relationship capital

Question 27

Successful organizations should never ''unlearn'' knowledge that they have previously gained, because all knowledge is valuable.

Question 28

The most obvious form of intellectual capital is one's level of education.

Question 29

Stakeholders are individuals, organizations, or other entities that affect, or are affected by the organization.

Question 30

A key variable in the high-performance work practices (HPWP) model is employee competence.

Question 31

Knowledge acquisition can only be achieved through formal education.

Question 32

Intellectual capital represents the stock of knowledge held by an organization.

Question 33

Knowledge management develops an organization's capacity to acquire, share, use, and store valuable knowledge.

Question 34

Organizational efficiency refers to the amount of outputs relative to inputs in the transformation process.

Question 35

Organizational memory includes knowledge embedded in the organization's systems and structures.

Question 36

Human memory plays a critical role in organizational memory.

Question 37

Intellectual capital includes, among other things, the knowledge captured in an organization's systems and structures.

Question 38

One criticism of the high-performance work practices perspective is that it promotes shareholder and customer satisfaction at the expense of employee well-being.

Question 39

As organizations grow, they tend to develop more subsystems making coordination among them become more complex.

Question 40

The high-performance work practices perspective supports the idea that organizations should strive to find "one best way" to do things.

Question 41

Surface-level diversity refers to observable demographic and other overt differences in people.

Question 42

Stockholders are stakeholders

Question 43

Values are relatively stable, long-lasting beliefs about what is important in a variety of situations.

Question 44

People born between 1946 and 1964 are referred to as Baby Boomers

Question 45

The "triple-bottom-line" philosophy says that successful organizations focus on financial performance three times more often than do less successful organizations.

Question 46

Reduced job security and increased work intensification may be partly caused by globalization.

Question 47

Ethics refers to the study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad.

Question 48

Research indicates that baby boomers and Generation X employees bring the same values and expectations to the workplace.

Question 49

According to your text, 47 percent of Canadians identify themselves as members of a visible minority group.

Question 50

Milton Friedman is the greatest advocate of the triple-bottom-line philosophy

Question 51

The integrative model of organizational behaviour ties individual and team processes, and outcomes to organizational effectiveness.

Question 52

Workforce diversity does not consider the differences in psychological characteristics of employees.

Question 53

Three of the most prominent workforce diversity forms are:

Question 54

Globalization may have both positive and negative implications for people working in organizations.

Question 55

Emerging evidence is that companies with a positive CSR reputation tend to have better financial performance.

Question 56

Values guide our preferences and motivate our actions.

Question 57

Values represent an individual's short-term beliefs about what will happen in the future.

Question 58

The concept of values is an important aspect of the stakeholder perspective

Question 59

One reason why workplace values have become more important is that employees increasingly value command-and-control direct supervision.

Question 60

In the integrative model of organizational behaviour, individual outcomes are referred to as the ultimate dependent variable.

Question 61

Most organizational behaviour theories have been developed by OB scholars rather than from other disciplines.

Question 62

Work-live balance refers to minimizing conflict between work and nonwork demands

Question 63

Information technology has created challenges, such as tethering people to their jobs for longer hours, reducing their attention spans at work, and increasing techno-stress.

Question 64

Communications, marketing, and information systems are three emerging fields from which organizational behaviour is now acquiring knowledge.

Question 65

Work-life balance refers to the length of time one remains in the workforce during one's lifetime.

Question 66

The best-known form of remote work is telework

Question 67

Studies suggest that deep-level diversity exists across generations

Question 68

One of the most consistent observations is that telework is ranked as one of the most popular perks.

Question 69

Successful teleworkers tend to be self-motivated and are able to fulfill their social needs outside of the work context.

Question 70

Research indicates that teleworkers have higher productivity than other staff, likely because they experience less stress and tend to transfer some former commuting time to work time.

Question 71

One employment relationship trend is the focus away from work-life balance and virtual work, because of the extra stress these place on workers.

Question 72

The emerging employment relationship in Canada is that people must give up their legal rights regarding employment discrimination in return for long-term employment.

Question 73

The field of organizational behaviour relies on common sense to understand organizational phenomena.

Question 74

Teleworking forces employers to evaluate employee performance based on ''face time'' rather than work output.

Question 75

Sociology is one of the few disciplines that has not made any contribution to organizational behaviour knowledge.

Question 76

Teams with diverse members usually take longer to perform effectively.

Question 77

When we describe multiculturalism we are primarily referring to surface-level diversity.

Question 78

According to one study, Millennials and Gen-Xers value extrinsic rewards significantly more than Boomers.

Question 79

Workforce diversity potentially improves decision making and team performance on complex tasks.

Question 80

Psychology and sociology have contributed many theories and concepts to the field of organizational behaviour.