Title: The Individual and the Organization
Course: Question Banks

Q: ________ is the unique, relatively stable set of thoughts, behavioral patterns, and feelings of a person.
- Perception
- A values system
- Personality
A: Personality

Q: Potential problems organizations might run into when relying on personality testing for employee selection include:
- a test may adjust for age, sex, disabilities, race, or other legally protected characteristics.
- the certainty of the relationship between personality and job performance.
- job candidates might fill out a personality test based on what type of person they think the company is looking for, thus faking the test.
A: job candidates might fill out a personality test based on what type of person they think the company is looking for, thus faking the test.

Q: The Myers-Briggs Type indicator is popular with corporate Human Resource departments as a learning tool
- for personality analysis and job placement.
- for type analysis and advancement planning.
- for self-analysis and insight into how to best grow and improve.
A: for self-analysis and insight into how to best grow and improve.

Q: The tendency of an employee to analyze herself and the world realistically is associated with which of the Big Five personality traits?
- Extraversion.
- Conscientiousness.
- Neuroticism.
A: Neuroticism.

Q: Sam works for a company creating marketing campaigns that raise awareness of environmental issues. He travels frequently to present these campaigns, and he has the freedom to work from anywhere with his laptop. Based on this description, Sam values:
- power, security, tradition
- hedonism, conformity, achievement
- universalism, self-direction, stimulation
A: universalism, self-direction, stimulation

Q: When a company practices the values a person cares about, the person is
- less likely to accept a job offer at the company.
- more likely to leave the company.
- more likely to accept a job offer at the company.
A: more likely to accept a job offer at the company.

Q: What role do stereotypes play in the workplace?
- Except for prohibited by law, stereotypes make for good hiring and firing practices.
- Aside from the rare exception, stereotypes play a useful role in employee profiling.
- Aside from the rare exception where they may open the door to a learning experience, stereotypes have no place in the workplace.
A: Aside from the rare exception where they may open the door to a learning experience, stereotypes have no place in the workplace.

Q: Bill is a Brazilian immigrant. Bill’s work before joining the group was terrific, a breakthrough in combining position data and financial modeling. He joined a new group to clean up a financial database. His work relied on cooperation from the IT department, and they claimed to be too busy to help. He made no substantive progress for months. Peter, the executive for the division, did not like Bill from the start. When he heard of the delays, he blamed Bill. This is an example of
- ingroup bias.
- similarity bias.
- confirmation bias.
A: confirmation bias.

Q: An employee attitude that is significant to company outcomes is
- organizational flexibility.
- organizational guarantee.
- job satisfaction.
A: job satisfaction.

Q: Vanessa joined colleagues after work for drinks. The conversation naturally turned toward complaining about work. But Vanessa disagreed with her colleagues, saying, “We are growing and improving our services, and clients are excited about the changes. I love it.” Vanessa shows
- leadership traits.
- organizational justice.
- organizational commitment.
A: organizational commitment.

Q: Companies can accurately assess employee work attitudes by
- sharing individual responses to attitude surveys with management.
- monitoring employees’ online social media accounts.
- conducting confidential attitude surveys and exit interviews.
A: conducting confidential attitude surveys and exit interviews.

Q: Companies have found that surveys can easily introduce biases that make objective measurement of attitudes difficult. A solution is to
- work with in-house agencies who specialize in such surveys.
- ask open-ended questions so that employees can state their concerns in their own words.
- use professionally designed surveys.
A: use professionally designed surveys.

Q: In forming an opinion about organizational justice, employees tend to focus especially on
- written policy and whether management follows policy.
- the distribution of outcomes. For example, they might ask if women getting a proportional share of promotions.
- pay equality and advancement opportunity.
A: pay equality and advancement opportunity.

Q: In February 2017, Susan Fowler published an open letter describing her experience at Uber. She described clear incidents of sexual harassment. In response, Uber said this was an isolated case and published an aspirational report on diversity at Uber. The majority of the leadership positions at Uber are held by men (78%) and whites (77%). If Uber has a problem with organizational justice, management will see
- employees work harder to overcome the obstacles.
- employees leave without explanation.
- employee dissatisfaction and disgruntlement.
A: employee dissatisfaction and disgruntlement.

Q: ________ is defined as the degree to which a person’s values, personality, and other characteristics match those aspects of an organization.
- Person-job fit
- Person-situation fit
- Person-environment fit
A: Person-environment fit

Q: An organization that values the personal touch, involvement in the local community, and where employees work from the office is a good person-organization fit for:
- someone who thrives on frequent travel, interaction with clients, and international matters.
- someone who is efficient with systems and values working mainly with numbers.
- someone who values empathy, enjoys an office job, and regularly volunteers with the local Lion’s Club.
A: someone who values empathy, enjoys an office job, and regularly volunteers with the local Lion’s Club.

Q: One approach to dealing with stress in the workplace is to train employees to manage their stress. But if stress levels are unreasonably high, organizations may need to
- hire better people who can handle the challenge.
- hire more people to deal with the stressful work.
- focus on changing the basic systems and forces in their organization.
A: focus on changing the basic systems and forces in their organization.

Q: Management at the SAS Institute, which sells packaged database and analysis software, says, “The investments we make in employee health, well-being, and ________ can be seen in a dedicated workforce, committed to moving up the ranks rather than out the door. SAS’ turnover rate of about 4 percent is far below the industry average of 15 percent, which translates into consistent, long-term relationships for our SAS customers.”
- their work ethic
- interpersonal relationships
- work-life balance
A: work-life balance