Deck 14: Organizational Culture

Question 1

Organizational countercultures can potentially help the organization maintain its standards of performance and ethical behavior.

Answer 1

True
Explanation: One of the two important functions of countercultures is that they maintain the organization's standards of performance and ethical behavior.

Question 2

Organizational countercultures further strengthen the organization's dominant culture.

Answer 2

False
Explanation: Countercultures embrace values or assumptions that directly oppose the organization's dominant culture.

Question 3

Many of the popular organizational culture models and measures oversimplify the variety of organizational cultures and correctly assume that organizations can easily be identified within these categories.

Answer 3

False
Explanation: Many of the popular organizational culture models and measures oversimplify the variety of organizational cultures and falsely presume that organizations can easily be identified within these categories.

Question 4

Organizational culture is not defined by espoused values.Instead, it consists of shared enacted values.

Question 5

There is broad agreement among organizational behavior researchers on the categories of organizational cultures.

Question 6

When an organization's culture changes, it shifts from one unified condition to a new unified condition with only temporary ambiguity during the transition.

Question 7

Subcultures contradict the dominant culture by espousing parallel assumptions and values.

Question 8

Artifacts provide valuable evidence about a company's culture.

Question 9

Organizational culture consists of shared values, but not shared assumptions.

Question 10

An organizations' culture is usually quite blurry, so much so that it cannot be estimated through employee surveys alone.

Question 11

Organizational culture consists of the values and assumptions shared within an organization that also dictates the correct way of thinking about and acting on problems and opportunities facing the organization.

Question 12

Espoused values are usually socially undesirable.

Question 13

Rituals support organizational culture by providing social prescriptions of the ways things should or should not be done around the organization.

Question 14

Organizational countercultures can potentially create conflict and dissension among employees.

Question 15

Artifacts of organizational culture may include the building's design, the way people are greeted and the food served in the company's cafeteria.

Question 16

Most organizational culture models oversimplify the diversity of cultural values in organizations.

Question 17

To have their greatest effect, organizational stories must describe real people and recount true past events.

Question 18

Values are conscious perceptions, while assumptions are nonconscious.

Question 19

Organizations differ in their relative ordering of shared values.

Question 20

Implicit mental models are part of an organization's culture.

Question 21

Organizational culture fulfills people's need for social identity.

Question 22

Organizational stories are the programmed routines of daily organizational life that dramatize an organization's culture.

Question 23

Assimilation is the most common form of cultural merging strategy.

Question 24

Language reflects an organization's dominant values but not the values of its subcultures.

Question 25

Ceremonies are more formal artifacts than rituals.

Question 26

Corporate culture makes it harder for employees to understand what is expected of them.

Question 27

Efficiency-focused cultures are likely to be more important for companies in environments with strong competition and standardized products.

Question 28

In corporate cults, the culture is so strong that it focuses employees on one mental model so much that they may fail to see issues from different perspectives.

Question 29

Having a strong culture is always a positive influence on organizational effectiveness.

Question 30

The kinds of desks an organization has can convey cultural meaning.

Question 31

Organizations with adaptive cultures are unable to maintain a stable value system and, consequently, tend to perform poorly in the long run.

Question 32

The assimilation strategy is the most likely to result in a culture clash.

Question 33

The first step in a bicultural audit is to identify strategies and prepare action plans to bridge the two organizations' cultures.

Question 34

One way to change an organization's culture is to change its artifacts.

Question 35

Organizational culture is a social control mechanism.

Question 36

An example of a ritual is how visitors are greeted as they enter the company's offices.

Question 37

Very strong cultures often become dysfunctional when they discourage dissenting subcultural values.

Question 38

Organizational culture can sometimes be reshaped by applying transformational leadership and organizational change practices.

Question 39

The deculturation strategy is most appropriate when the merging companies are in unrelated industries.

Question 40

The strength of an organization's culture refers to how widely and deeply employees hold the company's dominant values and assumptions.

Question 41

A strong culture depends on a stable workforce.

Question 42

_____ are unconscious, taken-for-granted perceptions or ideal prototypes of behavior that are considered the correct way to think and act toward problems and opportunities.

A)Values
B)Organizational artifacts
C)Languages
D)Beliefs
E)Shared assumptions

Question 43

Attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) theory explains why companies are able to attract and select people who fit the culture, but later on have difficulty in creating a stronger culture.

Question 44

The organizational culture dimension of attention to detail is characterized by _____.

A)tolerance
B)fairness
C)precision
D)collaboration
E)security

Question 45

Realistic job previews improve organizational socialization by ensuring that applicants develop more accurate pre-employment expectations.

Question 46

Which of the following organizational culture dimension is characterized by risk taking, and low cautiousness?

A)Stability
B)Innovation
C)Outcome orientation
D)Aggressiveness
E)Respect for people

Question 47

Organizational socialization is the process by which individuals create social norms to interact within the organization.

Question 48

Reality shock occurs on or before the first day of work, then quickly subsides.

Question 49

Impression management can distort pre-employment for employers.

Question 50

The best way to determine an organization's shared assumptions is to:

A)interview executives.
B)look for evidence of its corporate value statements.
C)determine what the organization's enacted values are.
D)read public relations statements produced by the organization.
E)ask customers to evaluate the company's effectiveness.

Question 51

Reality shock occurs when you perceive a discrepancy between your pre-employment expectations and on-the-job reality.

Question 52

Which of these statements about shared assumptions is true?

A)They are not taken-for-granted perceptions, but rather conscious decisions.
B)They are so deeply embedded they probably cannot be discovered by surveying employees.
C)They are the same as espoused values.
D)They are revealed through corporate value statements.
E)They rise to the surface only when employees let them.

Question 53

An individual's beliefs about the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between that person and an employer is called a mental model.

Question 54

The main problem with the encounter stage of socialization is that outsiders rely on indirect information about what it is like to work in the organization.

Question 55

Reward systems have little or no effect on strengthening corporate culture.

Question 56

Co-workers are important organizational socialization agents.

Question 57

A transactional psychological contract is a long-term attachment to a company.

Question 58

Organizational socialization is a process of both learning and adjustment.

Question 59

The three stages of socialization are pre-employment socialization encounter, and role management.

Question 60

Organizational socialization begins on the first day of employment and continues throughout one's career within the company.

Question 61

At meetings of a major consumer products firm, employees habitually stand up when the most senior executive at the meeting enters the room.This practice represents:

A)evidence that the meeting has employees who hold countercultural values.
B)an adaptive culture in the company.
C)a ritual that probably symbolizes the organization's dominant culture.
D)a form of deculturation that eventually undermines the organization's dominant culture.
E)that the company's espoused values differs from its enacted values.

Question 62

Whenever a team in Ads Today, an advertising firm, wins a new contract, the successful team rings a loud bell and breaks out a bottle of champagne.In organizational culture, this practice would be considered:

A)unethical.
B)a ceremony.
C)a mental model.
D)a symptom of a culture that is out of touch with its external environment.
E)irrelevant to the meaning or study of organizational culture.

Question 63

Which of the following organizational culture dimension is characterized by competitiveness and a low emphasis on social responsibility?

A)Stability
B)Innovation
C)Outcome orientation
D)Aggressiveness
E)Respect for people

Question 64

What is the significance of artifacts in organizational culture?

A)Artifacts are the same as organizational culture.
B)Artifacts are the residual parts of the organization that cannot fit into its culture.
C)Artifacts represent the directly observable symbols and signs of an organization's culture.
D)Artifacts are the main observable indicators that the organization does not have a culture.
E)Artifacts mainly reflect the subcultures that conflict with an organization's dominant culture.

Question 65

Which of these statements about organizational stories is true?

A)Organizational stories are just stories; most employees have a hard time believing them.
B)Stories communicate organizational culture if they describe positive events, whereas they undermine organizational culture if they describe negative events.
C)Organizational stories are descriptive, but not prescriptive.
D)Stories are most effective at communicating corporate culture when they describe real events with real people.
E)Organizational stories advise people what not to do, but leave out the solutions and suggestions.

Question 66

Rituals are:

A)programmed routines of daily organizational life that dramatize the organization's culture.
B)more formal artifacts than ceremonies.
C)verbal symbols of cultural values that reveal how employees talk to one another, describe customers, express anger, and greet stakeholders.
D)physical structures that convey the dominant values of an organization's culture.
E)games that people play to defy the dominant culture and, instead, support countercultural beliefs and values.

Question 67

One advantage of countercultures is that they:

A)rarely exist in real organizations.
B)maintain surveillance over and critically review the company's dominant culture.
C)prevent organizations from developing a corporate culture.
D)ensure that corporate mergers occur without any culture clashes.
E)discourage conflict and dissension among employees.

Question 68

Which of the following are the observable indicators of organizational culture?

A)Assumptions
B)Artifacts
C)Values
D)Beliefs
E)Mental models

Question 69

Which of the following is a verbal symbol of cultural values?

A)Speeches at ceremonies
B)Expressions of anger
C)Shared assumptions
D)Beliefs
E)Rituals

Question 70

Which of the following is true about organizational culture?

A)It is suggested that companies with strong cultures tend to be more successful, irrespective of any conditions.
B)Companies have strong cultures when the dominant values are held mainly by a few people at the top of the organization.
C)Most employees across all subunits understand the dominant values but choose to ignore them.
D)The life span of strong organizational cultures is almost always short.
E)The strength of an organization's culture refers to how widely and deeply employees hold the company's dominant values and assumptions.

Question 71

Which of the following tends to happen when an organization's culture is misaligned with its external environment?

A)The corporate culture gets stronger.
B)The organization's subcultures weaken.
C)The organization has more difficulty anticipating and responding to stakeholder needs.
D)The organization is unable to develop subcultures.
E)The various subcultures within the organization keep changing.

Question 72

Which of the following is an artifact?

A)Values
B)Language
C)Assumptions
D)Beliefs
E)Corporate cult

Question 73

The themes shared most widely by employees represent:

A)the organization's dominant culture.
B)the organization's deculturation process.
C)the organization's counterculture.
D)artifacts held mainly by senior executives in the organization.
E)rituals prevalent in the organization.

Question 74

Organizations that tolerate or encourage subcultures with dissenting values:

A)usually go quickly out of business.
B)usually build stronger cultures to counteract those dissenting values.
C)may eventually use those dissenting values to build a new set of dominant values in the future.
D)do not have any corporate culture.
E)have a very rigid corporate culture.

Question 75

Organizational stories are most effective at communicating organizational culture only when they:

A)make employees emotional.
B)are told by senior executives to the public.
C)describe real people and are assumed to be true.
D)are descriptive rather than prescriptive.
E)tend to pressurize individual performance.

Question 76

Which of the following is true about mental models?

A)Mental models usually help to improve organizational effectiveness.
B)Mental models are one of the artifacts of organizational culture.
C)Mental models are mainly used to decipher an organization's culture.
D)Mental models can blind employees to new opportunities and unique problems.
E)Mental models are unrelated to organizational culture.

Question 77

One of the functions of _____ is that it is a spawning ground for emerging values that keep the firm aligned with the needs of customers, suppliers, society, and other stakeholders.

A)a multicultural organization
B)a shared value
C)a subculture
D)an espoused value
E)urban culture

Question 78

Language is:

A)programmed routines of daily organizational life that dramatize the organization's culture.
B)not good at highlighting the values of organizational subcultures.
C)verbal symbols of cultural values that reveal how employees describe customers, express anger, and greet stakeholders.
D)physical structures that convey the dominant values of an organization's culture.
E)games that people play to defy the dominant culture and, instead, support countercultural beliefs and values.

Question 79

Ceremonies are:

A)programmed routines of daily organizational life that dramatize the organization's culture.
B)more formal artifacts than rituals.
C)verbal symbols of cultural values that reveal how employees talk to one another, describe customers, express anger, and greet stakeholders.
D)physical structures that convey the dominant values of an organization's culture.
E)games that people play to defy the dominant culture and, instead, support countercultural beliefs and values.

Question 80

Which of the following statements about the strength of organizational culture and organizational performance is true?

A)Organizations with stronger cultures tend to perform better than those with weak cultures when the culture content fits the external environment.
B)There is no relationship between an organization's cultural strength and its performance.
C)Organizations with stronger cultures tend to perform better only when they acquire other organizations with distinct cultures.
D)Organizations with stronger cultures almost always perform poorly compared to those with weak cultures.
E)Organizations with stronger cultures perform poorly if they have subcultures.