Reference no: EM131291338

Assignment 1: Finding the Leader in You Self Assessment Johari Window

The Johari Window emphasizes that we may not be aware of everything that there is to know about ourselves. Others may know things about us that we just cannot see or are unwilling to admit. One way to improve our personal relationships is to increase what we know about ourselves and what others know about us. The following two behaviors are key to improving personal and professional relationships:

Openness to Feedback we have to recognize that others see things in us that we may not be aware of and accept information they provide.

Willingness to Disclose we have to trust others enough to share personal information with them.

Grasping the realities of organizational behavior begins with an understanding ones own personality and behavioral tendencies. Assignment 1 is designed to address issues of personal understanding, planning, and professional development. By analyzing your own assessment, you will understand how intuitiveness, culture, diversity, and leadership style influence decision making. Reference the scores of the assessments that you completed for homework in Week 1 as you complete this assignment.

Write a two to three page paper in which you:

1. Develop a profile of your personality characteristics and assessment results.

2. Summarize the results of the assessments you completed for homework in Week 1.

3. Analyze how attributes / scores speak to your relationships and career choice.

4. Submit the completed Self-Assessment Score Sheet as an appendix in Assignment 1.

5. Use at least three quality academic resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and other

Websites do not qualify as academic resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

- Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the students name, the professors name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

Assignment 2: Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making The CEO and Organizational

Choose one of the following organizations to research: Google, Zappos, Southwest, Hewlett Packard, Xerox, W.L. Gore, DuPont, or Procter & Gamble. Use a variety of resources (company Website, newspaper, company blogs, etc.) to research the culture of the selected organization. Note: Use

Question 6 as your conclusion. An abstract is not necessary for this assignment.

Write a three to four page paper in which you:

1. Provide a brief (one paragraph) description of the organization you chose to research.

2. Examine the culture of the selected organization.

3. Explain how you determined that the selected organization showed the signs of the culture that you have identified.

4. Determine the factors that caused the organization to embody this particular culture.

5. Determine what type of leader would be best suited for this organization. Support your position.

6. Imagine that there is a decline in the demand of product(s) or services supplied by the selected organization. Determine what the change in culture would need to be in response to this situation.

7. Use at least three quality academic resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and other

Websites do not qualify as academic resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the students name, the professors name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length

Exam All Possible Questions & Answers

True/False

1. Organizational behavior is the study of human behavior in organizations.

2. Learning about organizational behavior can help you expand your potential for career success in the dynamic, shifting, and complex workplaces of today.

3. The early focus of the systematic study of management was on physical working conditions, principles of administration, and principles of industrial engineering.

4. Organizational behavior is an interdisciplinary body of knowledge with strong ties to psychology, sociology, criminal justice, and anthropology.

5. Financial capital is the building block of organizational success.

6. Organizational behavior is an academic discipline devoted only to understanding group behavior.

7. Organizational behavior seldom uses scientific methods to develop generalizations about behavior in organizations.

8. Research in organizational behavior is based on scientific thinking, which means the proposed explanations are carefully tested and the explanations that can be scientifically verified are the only ones that are accepted.

9. As job satisfaction increases, absenteeism tends to go down; as job satisfaction decreases, absenteeism often goes up.

10. Scientific methods models in OB are not able to link causes with outcomes due to the human element.

11. Commonly used organizational behavior research methods include case studies, survey studies, meta analyses, field studies, and laboratory studies.

12. When organizational behavior researchers collect data in real-life organizational settings, the research method of case studies is being used.

13. Laboratory studies are being used when organizational behavior researchers collect data in simulated and controlled settings.

14. When organizational behavior researchers collect data by using questionnaires and interviews in sample populations, the research method of meta analysis is being used.

15. Organizational behavior scholars believe that there is one best or universal way to manage people and organizations.

16. An essential responsibility of the science of organizational behavior is to create and test models that offer evidence-based foundations for decision making and action.

17. Evidence-based management uses hard facts and empirical evidence to make decisions.

18. Organizational behavior research is now rich with empirically based insights into cross-cultural issues.

Progressive workplaces today look and act very similar to those of the past.

19. Eagley and colleagues conclude that followers are more accepting of a transformational style of leadership when the leader is male.

20. Important trends in the contemporary business world include the demise of command-and-control of organizational structures and a commitment to ethical behavior.

21. An organization is defined as a collection of people working together in a division of labor to achieve a common purpose.

22. Organizations that obtain resource inputs from the environment and transform them into outputs that are returned to the environment in the form of finished goods or services are viewed as open systems.

23. In organizational cultures that are more authoritarian and hierarchical, people are hesitant to make decisions and take action on their own, so they tend to show little initiative and wait for approval.

24. Customers, owners, employees, suppliers, regulators, and local communities are among the key stakeholders of most business organizations.

25. Fortunately, organizational stakeholders typically have the same business interests and objectives.

26. Some organizational climates are relaxed and informal, while others are more structured.

27. The value chain begins when customers and clients are well served.

28. Workforce diversity involves differences based on gender, race and ethnicity, age, able-bodiedness, and sexual orientation.

29. Todays labor force is composed of fewer women than in prior years.

30. The proportion of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians in the labor force is increasing.

31. Demographic trends indicate that, in the future, people of color will constitute the majority of the U.S. population.

32. A key element in any organization that embraces multiculturalism is inclusion.

33. An effective manager is one whose organizational unit, group, or team consistently achieves its goals despite the fact that its members are uncommitted and unenthusiastic.

34. Task performance is defined as the quality and quantity of the work produced or the services provided by a work unit as a whole.

35. Organizational behavior clearly indicates that managers should be held accountable for task performance results, but not job satisfaction results.

36. In the new workplace, management is most effectively accomplished through directing and controlling rather than supporting.

37. The word manager is increasingly being replaced in conversations by such terms as coordinator, coach, or team leader.

38. The four basic functions of management are delegating, leading, controlling, and decision making.

39. Controlling is the process of creating work structures and systems, and arranging resources to accomplish goals and objectives.

40. When managers are instilling enthusiasm by communicating with others, motivating them to work hard, and maintaining good interpersonal skills, they are engaged in the managerial function of leading.

41. Henry Mintzberg identified a set of roles that managers perform. These roles are: interpersonal, informational, and decisional.

42. Henry Mintzberg identified the set of roles that managers perform as technical, human, and conceptual.

43. According to Henry Mintzberg, managerial roles that involve working directly with other people are called human roles.

44. A managers informational roles include being a figurehead, leader, and liaison.

Assignment 3: Teamwork and Motivation

Imagine that you are the owner of a small manufacturing company. Your company manufactures a commodity, widgets. Your widget is a clone of a nationally known widget. Your companys widget, WooWoo, is less expensive and more readily available than the nationally known brand. Presently, the sales are high; however, there are many defects, which increase your costs and delays delivery. Your company has fifty employees in the following departments: sales, assembly, technology, and administration.

Write a five to six page paper in which you:

1. Design an organization motivation plan that encourages:

a. high job satisfaction

b. low turnover

c. high productivity

d. high-quality work

2. Propose two methods to motivate all of the employees in the organization. Rate these methods in order of importance.

3. Propose three ways to motivate the minimum wage service worker. Support your suggestions with a motivation theory.

4. Analyze the relevance of the individual worker in todays organizational context.

5. Re-create and complete the following Individual Work to Teamwork chart using Microsoft Office or an equivalent such as OpenOffice.

The left-hand column is filled with terms that describe an individual worker. Fill in the right-hand column with descriptive terms that suggest the desired change in behavior from individual work to teamwork. Use Chapter 8 as a reference. Note: The graphically depicted solution is not included in the required page length.

Assignment 4: Leadership Style Action While Leading

Choose one of the following CEOs for this assignment: Larry Page (Google), Tony Hsieh (Zappos), Gary Kelly (Southwest Airlines), Meg Whitman (Hewlett Packard), Ursula Burns (Xerox), Terri Kelly (W.L. Gore), Ellen Kullman (DuPont), or Bob McDonald (Procter & Gamble). Use the Internet to investigate the leadership style and effectiveness of the selected CEO.

Write a five to six page paper in which you:

1. Provide a brief (one [1] paragraph) background of the CEO.

2. Analyze the CEOs leadership style and philosophy, and how the CEOs leadership style aligns with the culture.

3. Examine the CEOs personal and organizational values.

4. Evaluate how the values of the CEO are likely to influence ethical behavior within the organization.

5. Determine the CEOs three greatest strengths and three greatest weaknesses.

6. Select the quality that you believe contributes most to this leaders success. Support your reasoning.

7. Assess how communication and collaboration, and power and politics influence group (i.e., the organizations) dynamics.

8. Use at least five quality academic resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and other Websites do not qualify as academic resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the students name, the professors name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

Exam All Possible Questions and Answers

True/False

1. Scholars note that the same heart surgeons have lower death rates for similar procedures when performed in hospitals where they do more operations.

2. The catchwords for an effective team are empowerment, participation, and diversity.

3. A team is a small group of people with complementary skills, who work actively together to achieve a common purpose for which they hold themselves collectively accountable.

4. Teams that recommend things consist of people with formal responsibility for leading other groups.

5. Teams that recommend things typically work with a target completion date and disband once their purpose has been fulfilled.

6. Teams that run things may exist at all levels of responsibility, from the individual work unit composed of a team leader and team members to the top management team composed of a CEO and other senior executives.

7. Teams that make or do things are functional groups and work units that perform ongoing tasks such as marketing departments.

8. The head of a formal group serves a linchpin role that ties the group horizontally and vertically with the rest of the organization.

9. Temporary work groups often appear on organizational charts as departments, divisions, and teams.

10. Cross-functional teams, or task forces, are created for special problem-solving efforts.

11. Informal teams have the potential to speed up the workflow by enabling people to assist each other in ways that formal lines of authority fail to provide.

12. The informal structures and their embedded social relationships that are active in an organization are identified by social network analysis.

13. Cross-functional teams bring together persons from different organizations and industries to work on a common task.

14. The functional silos problem occurs when members of functional units focus on external issues and do not focus to a sufficient degree on their own areas of responsibility.

15. Virtual teams have members who convene and work together electronically via computers.

16. Employee involvement teams describe a wide variety of teams whose members meet regularly to collectively examine important workplace issues.

17. Employee involvement teams discuss ways to enhance product or service quality, better satisfy customers, improve productivity, and enhance the quality of work life.

18. A quality circle is a small group of persons who meet periodically to discuss problems relating to quality, productivity, or cost, and to develop solutions for them.

19. Virtual teams are ones whose members meet at least part of the time electronically and with computer support.

20. A potential advantage of virtual teams is that members have very little, if any, direct personal contact.

21. A potential advantage of virtual teams is that computer mediation focuses interaction and decision making on facts and objective information rather than on emotional considerations.

22. Self-managing teams are small groups that are empowered to make the decisions needed to manage themselves on a day-to-day basis.

23. Self-managing teams are also known as self-directed teams.

24. Members of a true self-managing work team make decisions on establishing strategy and providing resources to achieve it.

25. Members of a true self-managing work team make decisions on selecting new team members, training them for job skills, and evaluating performance.

26. Self-managing teams differ from the more traditional work group in that team members assume duties otherwise performed by a manager or first-line supervisor.

27. Multiskilling occurs when team members are trained in performing more than one job on the team.

28. The potential benefits of self-managing teams include productivity and quality improvements, production flexibility, and faster response to technological change, but not reduced absenteeism and turnover or improved work attitudes and quality of work life.

29. Self-managing teams have structural and management implications for organizations because they largely eliminate the first-line supervisors.

30. An effective group is one that achieves high levels of task performance, member satisfaction, and team viability.

31. The member satisfaction criterion of group effectiveness means that members are sufficiently satisfied to continue working well together on an ongoing basis and/or to look forward to working together again in the future.

32. The team viability criterion of group effectiveness refers to groups with members who believe that their participation and experiences are positive and meet important personal needs.

33. Synergy is the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

34. Social loafing, also known as the Ringlemann effect, occurs when people work less hard in a group than they would individually.

35. The performance advantages of teams over individuals are most evident in three situations: 1) when there is no clear expert for a particular task, 2) when the problems are complex and require a division of labor, and 3) when a riskier decision need be made.

36. Research shows that teams tend to make less risky decisions than individuals.

37. Ringlemann identified two reasons why people may not work as hard in groups as they would individually: (a) their individual contributions are less noticeable in the context of a group; and (b) group goals are often less well defined than individual goals.

38. In general, social facilitation theory indicates that working in the presence of others creates an emotional arousal or excitement that stimulates behavior and therefore affects performance.

39. A team member might withdraw or tend toward social loafing when asked to do something he/she isnt very good at.

40. Formal work units, but not temporary task forces or virtual teams, pass through a series of life cycle stages.

41. The five stages of team development are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.

42. In the storming stage of team development, members are interested in getting to know each other and discovering what is considered acceptable behavior, in determining the real task of the team, and in defining team rules.

43. The storming stage of team development is a period of high emotionality and tension among the team members.

44. During the norming stage of team development, coalitions or cliques may form as individuals compete to impose their preferences on the team and to achieve a desired status position.

45. In the norming stage of team development, the group really begins to come together as a coordinated unit.

46. In the norming stage of team development, holding the team together may become more important to some members than working on the teams tasks.

47. The norming stage of the team development process is sometimes called total integration.

48. The willingness of a team to disband when the job is done and to work well together in future responsibilities is an important long-run test of team success.

49. A study reported byRutgersUniversityprofessor Donald McCabe found that 86 percent of MBA students reported cheating by plagiarizing, downloading essays from the Web, and more.