Deck 10: Developing High Performance Teams

Question 1

Self-directed work teams are designed for production processes but not for administrative or service activities.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Self-directed work teams tend to work better in cultures with low power distance.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Self-directed work teams are typically responsible for a specialized skill,such as accounting or maintenance.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Volvo's Kalmer and Uddevalla plants have developed a near-perfect sociotechnical system where the social and technical systems are designed for maximum productivity and employee wellbeing.

Question 5

Self-directed work teams control most work inputs,work processes,and output quality.

Question 6

Virtual teams are usually permanent functional groups that communicate mainly through weekly face-to-face meetings.

Question 7

In sociotechnical systems theory,joint optimization refers to the idea that a balance must be struck between the social and technical systems.

Question 8

Virtual team members are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives.

Question 9

Supervisors tend to adjust more easily to their new roles in self-directed work teams when they have worked in high-involvement workplaces.

Question 10

Joint optimization represents a team-based version of autonomy in job enrichment.

Question 11

Many union leaders are concerned that self-directed work team practices may cause them to lose hard-fought union member rights.

Question 12

Self-directed work teams are more difficult to implement in high power distance cultures.

Question 13

According to sociotechnical systems theory,the work site's social and technological systems should become more compatible to improve team dynamics and job enrichment.

Question 14

Employees with individualistic values tend be more satisfied working in self-directed work teams.

Question 15

When companies introduce self-directed work teams,supervisors must change from command and control bosses to hands-off facilitators.

Question 16

Members of SDWTs have enriched and enlarged jobs.

Question 17

According to sociotechnical systems theory,self-directed work teams operate best where they are responsible for an entire work process that is fairly independent of other work units.

Question 18

Controlling key variances and joint optimization are two elements found in all team building activities.

Question 19

In most self-directed work teams,the supervisor assigns tasks that individual team members perform.

Question 20

Self-directed work teams operate best when they are highly interdependent with other work teams.

Question 21

Knowledge-based trust develops over time.

Question 22

The shift towards knowledge-based rather than production-based work has made virtual teamwork feasible.

Question 23

Knowledge-based trust is based on the belief that the other party will deliver its promises because punishments would be applied if they fail to deliver those promises.

Question 24

Due to globalization,companies are usually unable to form virtual teams.

Question 25

Virtual teams have more cohesiveness when they are able to meet face-to-face.

Question 26

The team effectiveness model does not apply to virtual teams.

Question 27

Due to the lack of face-to-face communication,virtual teams tend to have fewer problems with status differences.

Question 28

Virtual teams are becoming more common because companies are encouraging employees in distant parts of the organization to share knowledge with each other.

Question 29

Virtual teams have more difficulty than conventional teams at performing ambiguous and complex tasks.

Question 30

Calculus-based trust is the best form of trust to have in virtual teams.

Question 31

Compared with conventional teams,virtual teams experience fewer problems as the number of team members increases.

Question 32

The shift from production to knowledge-based work has resulted in fewer virtual teams than in the past.

Question 33

Calculus-based trust is based on the belief that the other party will deliver its promises because punishments would be applied if they fail to deliver those promises.

Question 34

Identification-based trust is the most robust or sturdy form of trust in work relationships.

Question 35

Virtual teams operate best in tasks that require no interdependence among team members.

Question 36

When people join teams,they usually begin with a very low level of trust in the other team members.

Question 37

Trust occurs when we have positive expectations about another party's intentions and actions toward us in situations involving vulnerability.

Question 38

A critical feature of virtual teams is that they are co-located.

Question 39

One problem with virtual teams is that they create more silos of knowledge.

Question 40

In a typical virtual team,one member located near headquarters is the source of all communication among team members.

Question 41

Constructive conflict encourages participants to re-examine their assumptions and logic.

Question 42

Evaluation apprehension causes employees to present ideas to the group even though the ideas are silly and a waste of the group's time.

Question 43

The trust that new team members feel towards their teammates is fragile and easily weakened.

Question 44

Group polarization is a condition in which team members cannot agree on a solution to a problem because some team members hold completely opposing views about the issue.

Question 45

An important rule in brainstorming is that no one is allowed to evaluate or criticize another team member's ideas.

Question 46

One problem with constructive conflict is that it can easily slide into personal attacks.

Question 47

Groupthink goes beyond the problem of conformity by focusing on how decisions go awry when team members try to maintain harmony.

Question 48

Evaluation apprehension is most common in meetings attended by people with different levels of status or expertise.

Question 49

Group polarization partly occurs because team members become comfortable with more extreme positions when they realize through open discussion that other members hold similar views.

Question 50

Production blocking occurs when employees are unable to complete their tasks because they spend too much time in meetings.

Question 51

Groupthink is more likely to occur when the team has experienced recent success in other decision-making problems.

Question 52

Production blocking causes team members to pay less attention to the conversation or to forget their own ideas.

Question 53

One of the rules of brainstorming is that no one is allowed to piggyback or build on the ideas of other team members.

Question 54

A symptom of groupthink is that the team feels comfortable with risky decisions because possible weaknesses are suppressed or glossed over.

Question 55

Group polarization causes teams to make more extreme decisions than the average individual in the group would make alone.

Question 56

One of the main advantages of brainstorming is that this process removes most production blocking.

Question 57

Many potentially valuable ideas never get presented to the group because individuals think they are silly and would make them look equally silly to the team.

Question 58

Research indicates that trust in virtual teams tends to decrease rather than increase over time.

Question 59

Groupthink and evaluation apprehension are two characteristics of effective decision-making teams.

Question 60

Constructive conflict occurs when team members hold different opinions and assumptions and debate the issues through an open,healthy dialogue.

Question 61

The Delphi method allows the decision-making team to meet face-to-face whenever they want.

Question 62

Team building activities rarely include follow-up consultation to ensure what was learned in the activity was transferred back on the job.

Question 63

Electronic brainstorming significantly reduces the problem of production blocking.

Question 64

One benefit of team building is that it doesn't affect the team development process.

Question 65

Electronic brainstorming is any situation in which team members communicate through email and other computer technologies to make decisions.

Question 66

The nominal group technique tends to produce more and better ideas than do traditional interacting groups.

Question 67

Brainstorming sessions tend to spread more enthusiasm among participants than in electronic brainstorming sessions.

Question 68

SDWTs tend to be more useful where:

A) employees perform identical tasks.
B) employees require direct supervision to motivate them.
C) employees perform tasks that are independent of each other.
D) all of these conditions exist.
E) none of these conditions exists.

Question 69

Self-directed work teams:

A) have not yet been introduced into Canada.
B) rely on supervisors to communicate between the team and senior management.
C) perform a variety of tasks but have little autonomy regarding how to perform those tasks.
D) are more common in Canada than in the United States.
E) None of these statements is true.

Question 70

Electronic brainstorming relies mainly on email and electronic chat rooms to make decisions.

Question 71

The nominal group technique removes the problems of evaluation apprehension and production blocking.

Question 72

Self-directed work teams:

A) are informal groups.
B) usually exist as communities of practice.
C) have substantial autonomy over the execution of a complete task.
D) consist of a group of employees led by their immediate supervisor.
E) are common in Europe but rarely found in North America.

Question 73

Which of the following allows employees to collectively plan,organize,and control work activities with little or no direct involvement of a higher-status supervisor?

A) Gainsharing plans
B) Production teams
C) Joint health and safety committees
D) Self-directed work teams
E) None of these is true.

Question 74

SDWTs are best suited to situations where:

A) employees perform highly interdependent tasks.
B) management wants to closely monitor employee performance.
C) employees perform identical tasks.
D) employees do not get along with each other.
E) all of these conditions exist.

Question 75

One advantage of team building activities is that they solve a variety of problems with team composition.

Question 76

Some team-building interventions clarify the team's performance goals and increase the team's motivation to accomplish these goals.

Question 77

Which of these statements about self-directed work teams (SDWTs)is TRUE?

A) SDWTs typically work in a separate building from other employees in the organization.
B) SDWTs are responsible for most work inputs, workflow activities and output quality standards.
C) SDWTs are mainly identified as groups that operate as virtual teams at least once each week.
D) SDWTs represent a very low level of employee involvement.
E) All of these statements are true.

Question 78

Team building interventions often fail because they are offered as a three-day jump-start rather than an ongoing process.

Question 79

Dialogue is a team building process that attempts to help team members build trust and open communication.

Question 80

Members of SDWTs have jobs that are:

A) typically in services rather than production.
B) enlarged but not enriched.
C) enriched but not enlarged.
D) specialized with a high division of labor.
E) both enlarged and enriched.