Leadership, Power, & Myths
Chapter 14 discusses the importance and impact of leadership. Which statement regarding leadership is correct?
a) Effective leadership is compromised if power is shared with followers.
b) Leadership should strongly rely on coercive power.
c) Developing an effective leadership style is easy for experienced, top-level managers.
d) Leadership styles vary with individual, culture, and country.
d) Leadership styles vary with individual, culture, and country.
Chapter 4 discusses ethics, its nature and rules for ethical decision making. Stefan is confronted with a serious ethical dilemma. He responds with a solution that creates the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Which ethical rule best describes his response?
a) practical
b) Utilitarian
c) Justice
d) Moral rights
b) Utilitarian
During the sessions and assignments, you have been practicing with building research models. The textbook states that direct supervision becomes less useful with increased complexity and when managing employees with more complex tasks and less tangible outputs, direct supervision will not influence performance positively. As a manager, you want to see if this is the case for your employees as well. In this example, what would be your independent or predictor variable?
a) performance
b) direct supervision
c) organisational structure
d) job satisfaction
b) direct supervision
Chapter 5 discusses managing diverse employees in a multicultural environment. Misha, a sales manager, can select either Helga or Ryan as his new assistant sales manager. Both are equally qualified. He selects Helga because he believes that women are soft-spoken and polite, making better managers. Misha is influenced by...
a) overt discrimination.
b) the salience effect.
c) stereotypes.
d) social status.
c) stereotypes.
Chapter 15 of the textbook discusses different challenges that arise in groups and teams. Chen has noticed that the members within his team seen to forgo personal opinions quite quickly to come to common solutions. He is concerned that this may be leading to suboptimal solutions. Chen is concerned the team may...
a) be too independent.
b) suffer from synergy.
c) have become too informal.
d) be experiencing groupthink.
d) be experiencing groupthink.
Chapter 14 discusses the topic of leadership and discusses the sources of power that enable managers to be effective leaders. Riju's employees think very highly of his leadership and work ethic, resulting in low attrition and high performance within the group. Riju has cultivated a high level of ______ power.
a) expert
b) referent
c) formal
d) transactional
b) referent
Chapter 7 discusses the nature of managerial decision-making. High Tech Corp. decides to develop a product based on a completely new technology, with no existing information on the possible challenges and outcomes of bringing such a product to market. This decision illustrates...
a) satisficing ambiguity.
b) confirmation bias.
c) uncertainty.
d) systematic error.
c) uncertainty.
During the sessions and assignments, you have been practicing with building research models. At a company, the managers noticed that the employees took current organizational changes in their stride and, despite dealing with uncertainty, have been able to maintain good performance. Upon closer inspection, employees are freely sharing their experiences and feel a sense of psychological safety in their teams, hence they don't hesitate to share, and listen to, feedback. The management team wants to figure out whether they are on to something. Based on the knowledge gathered in this course, which independent-dependent relationship is most likely to be hypothesized if you were researching the issue above?
a) Uncertainty is positively related to job autonomy.
b) Psychological safety is negatively related to performance.
c) Psychological safety is positively related to feedback sharing.
d) There is no relationship between feedback and performance.
c) Psychological safety is positively related to feedback sharing.
Chapter 13 discusses the nature of motivation. Max, a top-rated manager, is intrinsically motivated. He is likely motivated by...
a) the day-to-day reward he feels by performing his role well and achieving organizational goals.
b) regularly having one of his subordinates recognized as manager of the month.
c) the likelihood of being promoted to the next level of management.
d) the yearly bonus checks he receives when his team meets organizational targets.
a) the day-to-day reward he feels by performing his role well and achieving organizational goals.
Chapter 16 describes various communication channels and networks. How does an organizational chart reflect an organization's communication network?
a) It summarizes formal relationships that do not exist in communication networks.
b) It reflects the formal pathways in which communication takes place.
c) It summarizes informal relationships while a communication network is more formal.
d) It reflects the communication networks that are independent of the company's formal reporting relationships.
b) It reflects the formal pathways in which communication takes place.
The tasks of a manager are often different from the expectations about it. Hill (2007) talks about what it means to become a boss and discusses a variety of myths and realities of management. Following Hill, which statement describes such a myth?
a) A new manager will find herself entangled in a web of relations and interdependencies.
b) A new manager needs to harness the power of a team and as such focus more on team building and performance.
c) A new manager is supposed to make changes that will make the team perform better.
d) A new managers' power flows mainly from the formal authority that comes with the new position in the hierarchy.
d) A new managers' power flows mainly from the formal authority that comes with the new position in the hierarchy.
Chapter 5 discusses managing diverse employees in a multicultural environment. Smartech employees receive annual pay raises and stock allocations as a motivational mechanism. These rewards are left to managers' discretion and not always based on formal performance evaluations. SmartTech managers consequently risk acting contrary to ______ justice.
a) reparative
b) retributive
c) procedural
d) restorative
c) procedural
Johnson (2014) shows how to use polarity mapping to manage paradoxes. When an organization, like the example of Singapore Airlines, creates a culture that pursues both upsides of Cost Effective AND Service Excellence, then they create?
a) A polarity trap.
b) A so called 'red ocean'
c) A negative reinforcing or vicious cycle.
d) A positive reinforcing or virtuous cycle.
d) A positive reinforcing or virtuous cycle.
The article of Garvin, Edmondson, and Gino (2008) identifies building blocks of the learning organization. Ella is a manager who wants to boost psychological safety in her team. Following the article, psychological safety is part of which building block?
a) Concrete learning processes and practices.
b) Leadership that reinforces learning.
c) Appreciation of differences.
d) Supportive learning environment.
d) Supportive learning environment.
Chapter 16 of the textbook showed how to promote effective communication. What signals the end of an effective communication process?
a) A sender encodes a message and transmits it through a selected medium.
b) A receiver sends a message back to the original sender who confirms understanding has been reached.
c) A sender and receiver cycle through the process of encoding, sending, decoding, and responding at least twice.
d) A receiver encodes and sends a message back to the original sender.
b) A receiver sends a message back to the original sender who confirms understanding has been reached
Leadership is a critical feature in the management of organisations, as we see in Chapter 14. The consequences of leaders' behaviour can be far reaching. Raes et al. (2022) demonstrate this by showing that:
a) The transactional leadership of first line supervisors does not influence turnover intentions.
b) Top management team cohesion is a direct result of the degree of a corrosive climate found in organisations.
c) A corrosive climate is only found at the dyadic level and does not extend beyond specific paired interpersonal relationships.
d) Managers who are not part of the top management can symbolically represent the cohesion of top management through enacting transformational leadership.
d) Managers who are not part of the top management can symbolically represent the cohesion of top management through enacting transformational leadership.
In various sessions, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been discussed. Porter and Kramer (2011) aim at presenting ideas about reinventing capitalism by creating shared value (CSV). How do the authors describe CSR and CSV?
a) CSV is integral to profit maximization, and SR is seen as separate from profit maximization.
b) CSV is about doing good and being a good model citizen, while CSR about creating value for the community.
c) CSV is seen as part of CSR, and as such they are both integral to the organization's agenda.
d) CSV assumes that social improvement imposes a constraint on the firm, whereas CSR does not see this constraint.
a) CSV is integral to profit maximization, and SR is seen as separate from profit maximization.
Andriopolous and Lewis (2009) present three paradoxes of managing innovation. Which of the following is not a nested paradox?
a) Strategic intent
b) Customer orientation
c) Personal drivers
d) Cultural identity
d) Cultural identity
The article by Chrobot-Mason et al. (2019) discussed a variety of ways to promote diversity in an organization. The authors follow an evidence-based management approach when describing ways that aim to manage diversity effectively. Based on the insights from the article, when are people likely to ignore evidence-based management advice?
a) When people are encouraged to put aside conventional wisdom and gather empirical facts before making informed decisions.
b) When there is a strong organizational culture with convincing storytelling wisdom.
c) Basically all the time, as dealing with diversity at the work floor is never evidence based as all people have different perceptions of the world around them.
d) When people are supported and able to gather evidence and then face the facts about what works and what does not work.
b) When there is a strong organizational culture with convincing storytelling wisdom.
Learning and change have been topics in many sessions. For example, the article of Lüscher and Lewis (2008) discusses the role of communication during organizational change and how managerial challenges of change can be viewed through a paradox lens. The authors discuss two main concepts in managing change: sensemaking and sensegiving. Based on the insights of the article, sensegiving...
a) seeks to influence subordinates' interpretations.
b) is a process that happens within the minds of employees.
c) creates confusion and uncertainty for all employees.
d) denotes efforts of a manager to interpret and create an order in change events.
a) seeks to influence subordinates' interpretations.