Question 1

Briefly describe some of the important strategies for improving reward effectiveness.

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Question 2

Busy Bee Ltd. has a large secretarial pool on the third floor of company headquarters where professional and lower-level managers have their reports and other documents word-processed. The tasks are received by the secretarial pool coordinator and assigned randomly (on an availability basis) to secretaries in the pool. The secretaries often do not know the managers or professionals for whom the word-processing assignment is being completed. They rarely find out about the quality of their work because revisions are often sent to other secretaries in the pool due to the rotating work assignment system. Some assignments involve simple word-processing while others require complex formatting using more sophisticated word-processing software. Some secretaries don't mind working in the pool, but most are there because it represents the entry-level secretarial position. They resent the lack of control over work assignments and look forward to being transferred to other secretarial jobs in the firm where there is more freedom to schedule their own work activities. Turnover in the pool is much higher than for other support staff at Busy Bee Ltd. Would job enlargement (combining tasks) be an effective job design strategy for employees in Busy Bee's secretarial pool?

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Question 3

Discuss the benefits of job rotation in a manufacturing plant.

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Question 4

The chief executive of a mid-sized manufacturing company has hired you to design the work site and any other conditions necessary for employees to feel more empowered. Describe three important conditions you would ensure existed in this plant to improve empowerment among production employees. Your answer should also briefly define empowerment.

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Question 5

Compare and contrast gainsharing with employee share ownership plans.

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Question 6

Self-leadership provides a different way of thinking about motivating employees. Briefly explain how self-leadership differs from other applied motivation practices. Then, fully describe any three elements of the self-leadership model.

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Question 7

Your supervisor has been reading about self-leadership and is intrigued by the concept. Discuss how she can encourage self-leadership and which conditions would make self-leadership more likely to occur.

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Question 8

How does specialization allow for improved work efficiency?

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Question 9

The head of operations at NanoTech Systems announced that the company "empowers its employees to perform their jobs at peak performance." Discuss the operations manager's statement in the context of the meaning of empowerment.

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Question 10

A rubber recycling plant employed 150 unskilled and relatively low-paid production employees. Although employees were unhappy about their pay levels as well as noise and heat in the plant, most had high seniority because there were many other employment opportunities in the community. To motivate the workforce, the new plant manager decided to enrich the production jobs by giving
them a wider variety of tasks to perform and giving them more autonomy regarding when they performed those tasks. However, rather than increase job performance, the changes resulted in more complaints from employees, higher absenteeism due to stress and a slight increase in turnover.
Based on your knowledge of job design, explain why these results may have occurred.

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Question 11

Self-leadership has become increasingly important in contemporary organizations. Identify and describe any three components of self-leadership. Then explain how each of those three

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Question 12

XYZ Ltd. has just introduced a performance-based reward system for all production employees. The plan pays employees a team-based bonus based on the reduction of labour costs per unit in the production department. Describe three strategies to ensure that this and other performance-based reward systems are effective. Your answer should also briefly state the type of reward system used by XYZ Ltd.

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Question 13

How might job specialization adversely affect employee attitudes and motivation?

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Question 14

ABC Ltd. has a large secretarial pool on the third floor of company headquarters where professional and lower-level managers have their reports and other documents word-processed. The tasks are received by the secretarial pool coordinator and assigned randomly (on an availability basis) to secretaries in the pool. The secretaries often do not know the managers or professionals for whom the word-processing assignment is being completed. They rarely find out about the quality of their work because revisions are often sent to other secretaries in the pool due to the rotating work assignment system. Some assignments involve simple word-processing while others require complex formatting using more sophisticated word-processing software. Some secretaries don't mind working in the pool, but most are there because it represents the entry-level secretarial position. They resent the lack of control over work assignments and look forward to being transferred to other secretarial jobs in the firm where there is more freedom to schedule their own work activities. Turnover in the pool is much higher than for other support staff at ABC Ltd. What job design strategy would you recommend to improve employee effectiveness in ABC's secretarial pool?

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Question 15

Describe two social characteristics that the job characteristics model may overlook.

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Question 16

Describe the two information processing demands known as task variability and task analyzability.

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Quiz 6: Applied Performance Practices