Study Questions for chapters for

#1. Industrial safety is a great concern for auto assembly plants. Identify a method of improving safety from each of the three areas of I-O psychology.
     Personnel Psychology:
    Organizational Psychology:
    Human Factors Psychology:

#2. A friend who received his undergraduate degree in political science last year is visiting you. He asks you what he has to do to become an I-O psychologist. What steps will you recommend?

#3. Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc., the Vermont-based manufacturer of ice cream, frozen yogurt, and sorbet, is known for having a rule that the compensation for the highest paid employee (i.e., the CEO) could not be more than seven times the pay of the lowest paid employee. Applying Hofstede’s model of cultural influence, which of the five dimensions was most closely related to this rule? Justify your answer.

#4. Hofstede used five distinct dimensions to describe culture. For each of the following statements, agree or disagree and identify which of Hofstede’s dimensions supports your answer.
‑Greek workers will be more threatened by the possibility of downsizing than workers in Singapore.
‑A kibbutz is just as likely to work in India as in Israel.
‑American citizens are more likely than Swedish citizens to argue against applying an estate tax to the assets of someone who dies.

#5. We have proposed that I-O psychology must be unified and holistic in approach. Suppose it were not. How would the value of I-O psychology be diminished if it were not unified? If it were not holistic?

#1. What specific question involving organizational behavior most interests you? How could you study it with using (1) an experimental design, (2) a correlational design?

#2. Why is experimental more likely to be conducted in a lab setting and correlational research in a field setting?

#3. How could job satisfaction operate as either an independent or dependent variable?

#4. Identify two reasons why subjective (self-report) data can be inaccurate?

#5. What is the difference between correlation and regression?

#6. Is an organizational psychologist more likely to use experimental methods or correlational? Why?

#7. is a personnel psychologist more likely to use experimental methods or correlational? Why?

#1. Define motivation in the context of organizational behavior and explain why it is considered a hypothetical construct.

#2. How well has the Job Characteristics Model (Hackman & Oldham) stood up under empirical investigation?

#3. What are the three components of Deci's Self-determination (intrinsic motivation theory) and how do they relate to JCM characteristics?

#4. Which of the cognitive theories do you think is most useful in explaining organizational behavior?

#5. Give specific examples of how three operant conditioning principles (e.g. fixed ratio, variable ratio, extinction, punishment) have been used in an organization.

#6. What are the two most important functions for pay / salary? (according to Dr. Mitchell)

#7. What problem results from paying workers well above the going rate?

#8. Discuss the effect that money (tangible) compensation has on professional athletes' performance

#9. Explain how key elements of the JCM (Hackman & Oldham) relate to intrinsic motivational concepts.

#10. How would you compensate CEOs to motivate them to improve organizational functioning?

#1. What are the three components of an attitude and give an example using job satisfaction?

#5. How would you use what is known about the dispositional and situational (job characteristics) approaches to design an effective employee selection process?

#6. Why has job satisfaction not been shown to be highly related to absenteeism and turnover?

#1. How did Cropanzano get interested in studying “justice”?

#2. Give an example of a situation where justice was a problem at work

#3. Is it better to ‘distance’ oneself from the negative outcome? Or not?

#4. Equity, need, equality; what’s the difference?

#5. How does a defined comp package (e.g. for Dick Grasso), differ from traditional retirement and what are implications for the effects of each on the employer/employee “contract”?

Chapter 12 Leadership

#1. What is leadership? How does it differ from management?

#2. How has trait theory evolved over the past half century and where does it stand now?

#3. What duties (dimensions) distinguish leadership duties from those of a manager (Borman & Brush, '93)?

#4. In what way does House/Mitchell's Path-Goal Theory rely on Expectancy theory notions?

#5. How are LMX (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, '75) and Path -Goal (House, '71) similar and dissimilar?

#6. What is the difference between transactional and transformational leadership style?

#7. What are the relationships between the transformational characteristics and French and Raven's Bases of Power?

#8. How are transformational leadership characteristics related to intrinsic motivation constructs?

#2. What are some reasons why it is so difficult to conduct good experimental research with teams? (creative thought question)

#3. Describe, in terms of autonomy, how self-managed teams differs from a self-directed team.

#4. what are the primary distinctions between quality circles, project teams and product teams?

#5. What are the most important KSAs and personality attributes for successful team composition? (Guzzo & Dickson, '96; Barrick et al., '98)

#7. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using individual reward systems for team performance?

#8. Most experts believe that for groups to be effective they must be rewarded. But how would you reward them?