Deck 10: Power and Influence in the Workplace

Question 1

Employees are losing their expert power as society moves from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Power is defined as influence in motion.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Legitimate power is created whenever the organization assigns a supervisor formal authority over subordinates.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

The right to control information flow in the organization is a form of legitimate power.

Question 5

Employees with low power distance are more likely to comply with legitimate power.

Question 6

Subordinates have some reward power over their bosses through 360-degree feedback systems.

Question 7

Power is the act of changing another person's attitudes and behaviour.

Question 8

Power does not exist until the power holder actually applies power to influence someone else.

Question 9

You cannot have power over others unless others believe you have that capacity.

Question 10

Prevention,forecasting,and absorption are three contingencies of power in organizations.

Question 11

Referent power is mainly developed through a person's interpersonal skills.

Question 12

One potent form of legitimate power occurs where people withhold the right to control the information that others receive.

Question 13

People might gain power by convincing others that they have something of value.

Question 14

Employees with a high power distance tend to have higher deference to authority.

Question 15

Legitimate power is an agreement between people that one person has the right to request specific behaviours from the other person.

Question 16

Three general strategies to help organizations cope with uncertainty are prevention,creation,and deception.

Question 17

Peer pressure typically represents a form of coercive power.

Question 18

Some employees and departments gain power by forecasting uncertainties in the organization's environment.

Question 19

Countervailing power refers to the power that the dominant person in a relationship uses as a backup when the primary source of power fails to work as planned on the dependent person.

Question 20

The norm of reciprocity creates a feeling of obligation to help someone who has helped you in the past.

Question 21

Social network centrality is dependent on one's "betweenness."

Question 22

Professions gain power in the marketplace by reducing their substitutability through the control of tasks and knowledge.

Question 23

The four contingencies of power include substitutability,visibility,referent,and utilitarian.

Question 24

First-line supervisors may have legitimate,reward,and coercive sources of power,but their actual power is often limited by a lack of discretion.

Question 25

Some writers describe charisma as both a "gift" and a "curse" within the charismatic person.

Question 26

Locating oneself within social networks helps to increase a person's expert power and centrality.

Question 27

Referent power is associated with charisma.

Question 28

Social networking can potentially increase a person's power by increasing the person's visibility and centrality.

Question 29

Social capital tends to be diluted with the number of network ties.

Question 30

Social networking generates power through socialism.

Question 31

By avoiding written documentation of special procedures,maintenance workers in a tobacco-processing factory are maximizing their expert power through nonsubstitutability.

Question 32

Even though you should be visiting clients most of the time,you make a point of stopping by the office each day so your boss sees that you are working.This increases your power by increasing your centrality.

Question 33

Social networks exist everywhere because people have a drive to protect themselves.

Question 34

Playing the "face time" instead of working productively behind closed doors is a strategy for gaining increased visibility at work.

Question 35

The gap between two clusters of people in a social network is called a structural hole.

Question 36

People can gain power in organizations by knowing what the social networks around them look like.

Question 37

A good strategy for women who want to be part of social networks is to learn how to play golf.

Question 38

An employee's ability to influence others increases as the source of his or her power becomes more substitutable.

Question 39

People have more power when their actions quickly affect many other people throughout the organization.

Question 40

Displaying one's diplomas and degrees on office walls is one way professionals increase their visibility.

Question 41

Exaggerating one's resumé is categorized within the influence strategy of persuasion.

Question 42

One feature of influence is that it operates down the corporate hierarchy,but not up or across that hierarchy.

Question 43

Because impression management is inherently unethical,it is discouraged by career professionals.

Question 44

Silent authority and deference to authority are related concepts.

Question 45

Impression management is a common strategy for people trying to get ahead in the workplace.

Question 46

People are more persuasive when listeners believe they have expertise and credibility.

Question 47

The inoculation effect causes listeners to generate counterarguments to the anticipated persuasion attempts.

Question 48

Silent authority,assertiveness,and exchange are three sources of power.

Question 49

Studies have found that people with power over others have more difficulty empathizing.

Question 50

A coalition gains power by symbolizing the legitimacy of the issue supported by the coalition.

Question 51

Exchange,ingratiation,and persuasion are considered hard influence tactics.

Question 52

Extreme forms of assertiveness include blackmailing colleagues.

Question 53

People who feel powerful usually are more likely to rely on stereotypes.

Question 54

People who have more power over others tend to engage in more automatic rather than mindful thinking.

Question 55

Upward appeal is not considered a type of influence tactic.

Question 56

A coalition attempts to influence people outside the group by pooling the resources and power of its members.

Question 57

People are more persuasive when they rely on logical arguments and avoid emotional appeals.

Question 58

When the issue is extremely important to listeners,the speaker's personal characteristics are more important than the message content in persuading listeners.

Question 59

Influence is an essential process in organizations through which people coordinate their efforts.

Question 60

In persuasive communication,the inoculation effect involves warning listeners that others will try to influence them in the future and that they should be aware of the opponent's arguments.

Question 61

Organizational politics tends to increase in situations where decisions become routinized and programmed.

Question 62

People who have expertise tend to have more influence using persuasion.

Question 63

Supervisors who use ingratiation and impression management tactics tend to lose the respect of their staff.

Question 64

Organizational leaders can minimize organizational politics by making decision rules more complex and ambiguous.

Question 65

The preferred influence tactics vary across cultures.

Question 66

Machiavellian values help employees to recognize and avoid using political tactics in organizational settings.

Question 67

Organizational politics occurs when someone attempts to influence others for the purpose of promoting personal interests.

Question 68

Research indicates that ingratiation is more commonly used by managers in Canada than by managers in Hong Kong.

Question 69

How we dress and the way we behave politely towards others represents a type of influence strategy.

Question 70

People with an internal locus of control and strong Machiavellian values are more likely to engage in organizational politics.

Question 71

Establishing effective change management practices helps to minimize organizational politics.

Question 72

Power is only _____ and not ______.

A)good;bad
B)weak;strong
C)potential;behaviour
D)apparent;hidden
E)intended;unintended

Question 73

Negotiation and the norm of reciprocity are associated with the influence process of exchange.

Question 74

In organizational settings,power is defined as:

A)the practice of trying to influence another person.
B)the capacity to influence others.
C)the act of changing another person's attitudes and behaviours.
D)the extent to which one person is required to follow another person's commands even though he or she does not want to follow those commands.
E)any situation where one person is dependent on another person,who is not at all dependent on the first person.

Question 75

The most appropriate influence tactic depends on personal,organizational,and cultural values.

Question 76

Forming coalitions is considered a political tactic,whereas cultivating networks is not.

Question 77

Organizational politics can result in lower job satisfaction,and high levels of work-related stress.

Question 78

Organizational politics flourish when resource allocation decisions are ambiguous and complex with no formal rules.

Question 79

Organizational politics refers to any use of power to influence others.

Question 80

"Soft" influence tactics such as persuasion tend to build compliance rather than commitment to the influencer's request.