Deck 6: Applied Performance Practices

Question 1

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

Answer 1

True
Explanation: Competency-based rewards improve workforce flexibility and are consistent with the emerging idea of employability.

Question 2

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

Answer 2

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 3

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

Answer 3

True
Explanation: Membership-based and seniority-based rewards (sometimes called "pay for pulse") represent the largest part of most paychecks.Some employee benefits, such as free or discounted meals in the company cafeteria, remain the same for everyone, whereas others increase with seniority.

Question 4

Job evaluation mainly supports the competency approach to rewards.

Question 5

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

Question 6

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

Question 7

Gainsharing plans focus on cost reductions and increased labor efficiency.

Question 8

Most job evaluation methods give higher value to jobs that require more skill and effort.

Question 9

Where subjective measures of performance are necessary, companies should rely on multiple sources of information.

Question 10

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

Question 11

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

Question 12

Gainsharing plans appropriate only for production jobs, not for services such as medical operations.

Question 13

Job status-based rewards discourage employees from hoarding resources.

Question 14

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

Question 15

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

Question 16

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.

Question 17

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

Question 18

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

Question 19

Inconsistencies and bias in reward systems are often increased because of gainsharing.

Question 20

Very large rewards (relative to an employee's regular income) can result in lower, rather than higher, performance.

Question 21

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

Question 22

Money is the only thing that motivates people to join an organization and perform effectively.

Question 23

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

Question 24

Adam Smith introduced the principles of scientific management.

Question 25

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 26

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

Question 27

Job specialization increases efficiency because it includes fewer mental and physical skills, shorter work cycles, less variety of tasks, and more precise job matching.

Question 28

Motivator-hygiene theory has been soundly rejected by research studies.

Question 29

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

Question 30

Longer work cycles give employees more frequent practice with the task, so jobs are mastered more quickly.

Question 31

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

Question 32

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

Question 33

Cycle time is the time required to complete the task before starting over with another item or client.

Question 34

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 35

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

Question 36

Companies motivate employees mainly by designing interesting and challenging jobs.

Question 37

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

Question 38

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

Question 39

Job design is the result of division of labor in which work is subdivided into separate jobs assigned to different people.

Question 40

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

Question 41

Employees in jobs with low task variability have nonroutine work patterns.

Question 42

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 43

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

Question 44

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

Question 45

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

Question 46

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

Question 47

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

Question 48

The dimension of "meaning" in discussing empowerment is when employees view themselves as active participants in the organization; that is, their decisions and actions have an influence on the company's success.

Question 49

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

Question 50

Required social interaction with other employees is known as task interdependence.

Question 51

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

Question 52

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

Question 53

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

Question 54

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

Question 55

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

Question 56

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

Question 57

Empowerment flourishes in organizations with a learning orientation.

Question 58

Task variability refers to how much the job can be performed using known procedures and rules.

Question 59

Empowerment tends to decrease personal initiative among employees.

Question 60

Job enlargement increases skill variety.

Question 61

Employees require some degree of autonomy to engage in self-leadership.

Question 62

Which of the following is a disadvantage of financial rewards based on membership or seniority?

A)It encourages hierarchy.
B)It doesn't directly motivate performance.
C)It reinforces status differences.
D)It relies on subjective measurement of competencies.
E)It may weaken job content motivation.

Question 63

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 64

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

Question 65

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

Question 66

Which of the following rewards 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- or seniority-based rewards

Question 67

Employees are more likely to engage in self-monitoring in companies that emphasize infrequent measurement of performance.

Question 68

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 69

Mental imagery excludes visualizing completion of a task.

Question 70

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)Team performance-based rewards

Question 71

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 72

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

Question 73

Self-leadership includes the practice of self-reinforcement.

Question 74

Which of the following type of reward systems uses job evaluations?

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

Question 75

According to the survey reported in the text, what percentage of Americans say their pay is "variable, such that a portion is dependent upon your individual performance/productivity" targets?

A)25%
B)32%
C)43%
D)51%
E)67%

Question 76

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

Question 77

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

Question 78

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 79

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 80

Which of the following is an advantage of using competency based financial rewards?

A)It minimizes the stress of insecurity.
B)It motivates employees to compete for promotions.
C)It improves workforce flexibility.
D)It motivates task performance.
E)It minimizes pay discrimination.