Deck 2: Management Learning Past to Present

Question 1

For UPS, productivity standards have cut down on inefficiencies and increased productivity.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Even though the way we manage work and organizations is changing, managers today can benefit from studying the history of management thought.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

In The Evolution of Management Thought, Daniel Wren traces management as far back as 500BC.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

The scalar chain principle states that there should be a clear and unbroken line of communication from the top to the bottom of the organization.

Question 5

Mary is very concerned with worker morale, and she frequently surveys employees to determine their level of job satisfaction. She feels that people really want to work, to take more responsibility, and to make a contribution. Her approach reflects application of scientific management principles in the workplace.

Question 6

Time study is the science of reducing a task to its basic physical motions.

Question 7

The principles of scientific management were proposed by Frederick Taylor.

Question 8

Weber believed that efficiency in the utilization of resources and fairness in the treatment of employees and clients were potential advantages of bureaucratic organizations.

Question 9

Many modern management concepts have parallels in some of the historical management writings, and contemporary managers are trying to perfect many ideas that have deep historical roots.

Question 10

Henri Fayol believed that management could be taught.

Question 11

Since so much has changed in management science, the writings of classical theorists like Mary Parker Follett are not very relevant to the way organizations are managed today.

Question 12

Google's runaway success can be attributed to performance excellence based on speed, accuracy, and ease of use.

Question 13

The ideas of visionary leadership, respect for workers, cooperation and the dangers of bureaucracy have only recently been developed and written about by modern management theorists.

Question 14

Formal rules and procedures are defining characteristics of Weber's bureaucratic organization.

Question 15

Behavioural approaches assume that people are social and self-actualizing, enjoy social relationships, respond to group pressures, and search for personal fulfillment.

Question 16

Coordination refers to providing and mobilizing resources to implement a plan.

Question 17

Motion studies, conducted by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, provided the foundation for modern job simplification, work standard techniques, and incentive wage plans.

Question 18

The unity of command principle specifies that one person should be in charge of all activities that have the same performance objective.

Question 19

Frederick Taylor's four principles of scientific management focus on developing a science for every job, carefully selecting workers based on their abilities, simplifying work, introducing work standards and giving them proper incentives.

Question 20

The disadvantage of administrative principles is that it includes excessive paperwork.

Question 21

A major finding of the Hawthorne studies is physical working conditions have a much greater impact on worker performance and productivity than people's feelings, attitudes, and relationships with their co-workers.

Question 22

Physiological needs and safety needs are higher-order needs in Maslow's hierarchy of human needs.

Question 23

Mary Parker Follett's belief that businesses were services and that private profits should always be considered in relation to the public good foreshadowed today's concerns with managerial ethics and corporate social responsibility.

Question 24

According to Maslow, the more the need to be self-actualized is satisfied, the weaker it becomes.

Question 25

The Hawthorne effect is the tendency of persons singled out for special attention to perform as expected.

Question 26

Neither group atmosphere nor participative supervision was found to be an important explanatory factor for improved productivity in the relay assembly test-room studies at Western Electric's Hawthorne Works.

Question 27

Mary Parker Follett believed that making employee ownership and profit sharing in the business would create feelings of collective responsibility.

Question 28

Managers holding Theory Y assumptions approach their jobs believing that those who work for them generally dislike work, lack ambition, act irresponsibly, and prefer to be led rather than to lead.

Question 29

A key lesson from the Hawthorne studies is that people's feelings, attitudes, and relationships with co-workers have very little influence on their performance as compared with compensation and incentives.

Question 30

Both the Hawthorne studies and McGregor's Theory predict that people tend to act in ways that are consistent with what managers expect of them.

Question 31

After a series of scientific tests, Elton Mayo and his team of researchers concluded that new a "social setting" created for workers in a test room decreased the productivity of those employees.

Question 32

Based on McGregor's Theory, we would assume that Theory X managers are more effective in motivating people because they believe that their subordinates like work and are self-motivated and are willing to accept responsibility.

Question 33

Physiological needs refer to the needs for physical closeness and relationships with others.

Question 34

Self-actualization is a term used by Maslow to explain why managers who understand and help people satisfy higher-order needs at work will achieve greater levels of productivity and fulfillment.

Question 35

According to the deficit principle, a satisfied need is a motivator of behaviour.

Question 36

Maslow's ideas point managers toward finding ways to link volunteer work with opportunities to satisfy higher-order needs like esteem and self-actualization.

Question 37

The Hawthorne studies shifted the attention of managers and scholars away from the technical and structural concerns emphasized by the classical management approach toward the study of social and human concerns as keys to productivity.

Question 38

The Hawthorne studies found consistent results to support their hypothesis that both economic incentives and the physical working conditions of the workplace affect productivity.

Question 39

According to the progression principle, a satisfied need does not motivate behaviour.

Question 40

According to Elton Mayo, people would restrict their output in order to avoid the displeasure of their group, even if it meant sacrificing pay that could otherwise be earned by increasing output.

Question 41

Goods and services are inputs in an open system.

Question 42

Continuous improvement involves always searching for new ways to improve work quality and performance.

Question 43

Argyris believes that implementation of classical management ideas such as the bureaucratic organization and Fayol's administrative principles will ensure that workers are productive and efficient.

Question 44

Quantitative management is the study of the application of mathematical techniques to improve decision making and problem solving.

Question 45

According to contingency theory, appropriate managerial behaviour can be generalized or extrapolated from other situations.

Question 46

Network models break large tasks into smaller components to allow for better analysis, planning, and control of complex projects.

Question 47

Argyris asserts that psychological success occurs when people define their own goals.

Question 48

Simulation is used to create models to determine how best to allocate scarce resources.

Question 49

People and technology are outputs in an open system.

Question 50

The quantitative management approach uses mathematical techniques to improve managerial decision making and problem solving.

Question 51

Contingency thinking involves matching responses to the unique problems and opportunities posed by different situations and by individual and environmental differences.

Question 52

An open system interacts with its environment in the continual process of transforming resource inputs into outputs.

Question 53

A tight bureaucracy works best when the environment is relatively stable and operations are predictable and uncomplicated.

Question 54

Argyris believes that employee absenteeism, turnover, apathy, and low morale are caused by lack of adequate supervision and poorly defined tasks.

Question 55

A real estate developer wants to control costs and finish building a new apartment complex on time. This problem can be solved by inventory analysis.

Question 56

Managers who hold Theory Y assumptions cannot create self-fulfilling prophecies.

Question 57

Argyris's theory of adult personality counters Fayol's concept of unity of direction.

Question 58

Inventory modelling is used to help allocate service personnel or workstations to minimize customer waiting time and service cost.

Question 59

A grocery store receives complaints from customers that the waiting time is too long for checkouts during certain times of the day. This problem can be solved by the queuing theory.

Question 60

In contract to Weber, Argyris believes that people work more efficiently in a clear hierarchy of authority, with those at higher levels controlling people at lower levels in the organization.

Question 61

Which of the following statements accurately describes the role of management history relative to contemporary management thought?

A) Since the world of work and business continues to change, managers have little to gain from studying the history of management thought.
B) Many modern management concepts have parallels in some of the historical management writings.
C) Contemporary managers are trying to reinvent management practices.
D) There are no useful lessons to be learned from historical management principles.
E) c and d

Question 62

Pizza Bliss, a pizza delivery chain, assures delivery of pizza within half an hour of the placement of order. It employs various methods like specialization of work, motion study, and analysis of routes to make sure that an order reaches a customer in half an hour. Which of the following management techniques is Pizza Bliss most likely using?

A) Maslow's theory of human needs
B) bureaucratic organization
C) scientific management
D) Hawthorne studies
E) Theory X and Theory Y

Question 63

The practical lessons of scientific management include all of the following except

A) make results-based compensation a performance incentive.
B) select workers with the right abilities to do the job.
C) allow workers to have input into the determination of work methods and performance standards.
D) carefully design jobs with efficient work methods.
E) train supervisors to support workers by carefully planning their work.

Question 64

The primary goal of scientific management is to

A) make decisions based on hard facts about what really works.
B) use large databases and mathematics to solve problems.
C) satisfy the physiological and psychological deficiencies of a person.
D) improve the productivity of people by careful selection and training.
E) make every employee an owner of a business organization.

Question 65

Leon has been watching some of the workers on his shift sort and put inventory in storage bins. It appears to him that much time and effort are being wasted. Leon decides to analyze the workers' overall task and then select and train workers for specific parts of the job so as to increase workers' productivity. Leon is applying the principles of ___.

A) scientific management
B) seq NL_1_ \r 0 \h organizational behaviour
C) management science
D) contingency theory
E) administrative management

Question 66

According to Frederick Taylor, the principal object of management should be ___.

A) profitability
B) efficiency
C) achieving the greatest good for society
D) the good of the community
E) securing maximum prosperity for employer and employee

Question 67

Which of the following assumes that people at work rationally consider opportunities made available to them and do whatever is necessary to achieve the greatest personal and monetary gain?

A) classical management approach
B) Theory X
C) theory of human needs
D) behavioural management approach
E) modern management approach

Question 68

ISO certification requires companies to adopt quality benchmarks and then maintain them with strict conformity to quality that strongly discourages change or refinement.

Question 69

Total quality management focuses primarily on specific quality issues within a particular segment within the larger organization.

Question 70

The three branches of the classical approach to management are ___.

A) behaviourism, rationalism, and self?actualization
B) scientific management, administrative principles, and bureaucratic organization
C) authoritarian, permissive, and homeostatic
D) economic, modern, and self?actualizing
E) open, closed, and entropic

Question 71

Which of the following is a classical management approach?

A) Theory X
B) Theory Y
C) human needs theory
D) Hawthorne studies
E) administrative principles

Question 72

A group of friends wanted to start their own car detailing business. It was decided that to differentiate their cleaning services from others they would break down the various jobs associated with cleaning the inside and outside of a car, and each would specialize. With which of the following management approaches do their actions most agree?

A) administrative principles
B) scientific management
C) contingency theory
D) self?actualization
E) Fayol's principles of management

Question 73

Knowledge management involves making decisions based on hard facts about what really works.

Question 74

Some of the portfolio assets that the CKO is responsible for maintaining include patents, trade secrets, and the accumulated knowledge and understanding of the entire workforce.

Question 75

___ emphasizes careful selection and training of workers and supervisory support.

A) Bureaucratic organization
B) Theory X
C) Theory Y
D) Scientific management
E) Administrative principles

Question 76

Who is known as the father of scientific management?

A) Henri Fayol
B) Frederick Taylor
C) Max Weber
D) Douglas McGregor
E) Abraham Maslow

Question 77

A follower of Frederick Taylor would be least likely to try to ___.

A) make results-based compensation a performance incentive
B) select workers with the right abilities to do the job
C) offer workers proper training
D) motivate workers by encouraging them to work in small groups
E) train supervisors to support workers by carefully planning their work

Question 78

The view that people will rationally consider available opportunities and do whatever is necessary to achieve the greatest personal economic gain is the underlying assumption of which approach to management thought?

A) quantitative approach
B) socio-economic approach
C) modern approach
D) classical approach
E) behavioural approach

Question 79

___ refer(s) to a job science that includes careful selection and training of workers along with proper supervisory support.

A) Administrative principles
B) Scientific management
C) Contingency theory
D) Self?actualization
E) Fayol's principles of management

Question 80

Contingency theory is consistent with Weber's concept of bureaucracy which is an ideal form of organizing.