ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEWER

1. One disadvantage of using product departmentalization is that:

- all activities associated with one product or product group cannot be easily
integrated and coordinated.

2. Which of the following is an advantage of job specialization?

- It decreases transfer time between tasks.

3. In _____ technology, raw materials are transformed to a finished product by a series of

machine transformations in such a way that the composition of the materials themselves
is changed.
- continuous-process

4. One of the benefits of job specialization is that:

- it makes employees proficient at a task.

5. _____ attempts to increase both the number of tasks a worker does and the control the
worker has over the job.
- Job enlargement

6. A _____ organization works to facilitate the lifelong personal development of all of its
employees while continually transforming itself to respond to changing demands and
needs.
- Learning

7. Which of the following is a disadvantage of functional departmentalization?

- Decision-making may tend to become slower as the organization grows.

8. _____ is the extent to which an organization is broken down into subunits.

- Differentiation

9. _____ departmentalization groups together those jobs involving the same or similar
activities.
- Functional

10. Janice owns a bakery that has only ten employees, out of which three are bakers, four are
waiters, and the rest belong to the housekeeping staff. Which of the following approaches
to departmentalization would work best for the bakery?
- Functional Departmentalization
11. At Synergy School, Math, English, Science and Social Studies departments operate
separately. Student test scores in each area are gathered to evaluate the effectiveness of
the school. What level of interdependence does this represent?
- Pooled interdependence

12. At Delta Corp. the manufacturing and design department frequently consults with the
research and development department and the marketing and sales department regularly
interacts with the manufacturing and design department. This scenario illustrates _____ at
Delta.
- Coordination

13. Jimmy owns an ice cream parlor. He designs a schedule for the different tasks the
employees have to perform in order to prevent monotony at work. According to the
schedule, if an employee makes waffle cones on a day, he serves ice creams the next day
and clears the tables on the day after that. Jimmy is using the _____ approach at his ice
cream parlor.
- job rotation

14. At Supertech Inc., a technology company, employees are given more authority and are
allowed to make their own decisions. Supertech operates in a business environment that
is not predictable. The middle managers, supervisors, and employees have a degree of
autonomy and are encouraged to make decisions. Which of the following concepts is
illustrated in the scenario?
- Decentralization

15. _____ is a common platform for changing business processes.

- Enterprise resource planning

16. Modifying the benefits system on a yearly basis to maintain employee satisfaction is most
likely to be a _____ change.
- Planned

17. A company has recently undergone a transformation from using a highly centralized
approach to a much more decentralized approach for managing its operations. This
change represents a change in the area of _____.
- organization structure

18. Consumer tastes and preferences are _____ forces that influence an organization's
product line.
- External
19. Which of the following is an effective way of overcoming resistance to change?
- Using facilitation techniques

20. When a company changes its work processes, the change is in the area of _____.
- technology and operations

21. During which phase of the organizational innovation process do most organizations have
access to an innovation and apply it in the same way?
- Innovation maturity

22. A company has built a new manufacturing plant to increase production. This scenario
illustrates which step in the Lewin model of organization change?
- Implementation

23. When a firm decides to decrease the number of first-line managers it has, and thus
increase the span of management of first-line managers, it is making a change in the area
of _____.
- organization structure and design

24. Blue Bells Inc. is a software services firm. Lately, the company’s HR department noticed
that its employees’ performance levels have plummeted, and a survey conducted by the
firm indicated that this was due to low employee satisfaction levels. This prompted the
HR department to introduce a new incentive system in the company. This is an example
of change in the area of _____.
- People

25. The top management at Omega Inc. recently initiated an employee motivation drive to
improve employee morale and in turn decrease turnover rates. It has now commissioned a
statistics firm to check the effect of its initiative on the employees' morale. Which step of
the comprehensive approach to change is illustrated in the scenario?
- Evaluation and follow-up

26. The top management at Phoenix Inc. planned to shift their corporate office to a bigger
and better facility about four streets away from the current location. The top managers
knew that their decision would meet with considerable employee resistance, so they
informed all the employees well in advance of the advantages of moving to the new
office. This minimized the employees' resistance. Which of the following techniques of
overcoming resistance is illustrated in the scenario?
- Education
27. When the top management at Venus Corp. sought to change the organization design, form
more work teams, and decrease the managers' span of management, it met with great
resistance from the managers. This was because the managers feared that their power
within the company would decrease. The managers' reaction to change was brought about
by _____.
- threatened self-interests

28. The top executives at Delta Inc. have decided to reorganize the corporation from product
divisions into geographic sectors. This is a(n) _____ force for change.
- Internal

29. When human resource managers determine how much each worker in a particular wage
grade will be paid, they are making a(n) _____ decision.
- individual wage

30. The _____ lists the skills, abilities, and other credentials needed to do a job.
- job specification

31. Which of the following is an effective individual strategy for managing diversity?
- Fostering tolerance

32. An organization with a diverse workforce:

- is most likely to have a competitive advantage.

33. In human resource management, _____ usually refers to teaching operational or technical
employees how to do the job for which they were hired.
- Training

34. _____ is defined as determining the extent to which a selection device is really predictive
of future job performance.
- Validation

35. A(n) _____ occurs when a manager allows the assessment of an employee on one
dimension to spread to ratings of that employee on other dimensions.
- halo error

36. Jan works as a salesperson. She generally achieves the expected targets but has also failed
several times. For the previous month, she performed better than all her team members
and achieved a huge sales volume. Even though Jan has not achieved her targets on
several occasions during the past one year, her supervisor ranked her as number one. This
is an example of how a(n) _____ can influence a performance appraisal.
- recency error
37. A company has all of its candidates who are qualifiable for promotion attend a five-day
evaluation session during which they take a battery of tests, interviews, and perform in
simulated work scenarios. The _____ method is used for the selection process in this
scenario.
- assessment center

38. The CEO of Redd Inc. needs to know the names of the line managers in the company
who will soon be ready to take up positions in middle management. The CEO can obtain
this information from the _____.
- replacement chart

39. Ken is a newly hired police officer. He has been asked to spend a workday with a more
experienced officer to learn about paperwork, how to handle accident scenes, how to
interact with people, and other duties that he will be expected to perform. Which of the
following concepts is illustrated in the scenario?
- On-the-job training

40. A policy at Synergy Corp. states that the middle managers get a pay that is three times the
pay of supervisors and the top managers get a pay that is six times the pay of first-line
managers. The policy is regarding the _____ of Synergy.
- wage structure