1. The manager of an IT department is responsible for the resources used by an organization to manage the information that it needs in order to carry out its mission. As for MG+BW, you can check out its mission at www.mgbwhome.com. Given this information, try to identify and describe some of the activities that Kim Clay performs in her current job.
2. Here's how Clay describes her former job in Customer Care:
I dealt directly with our customers at the retail level, answering questions about orders that they [had] placed with us and that sort of thing. I had a large variety of our customers that I was directly responsible for.
Rank the importance of positive "big five" personality traits in the performance of a job like Clay's Customer Care job. Now do the same thing for her job as IT manager. Do you see any interesting differences-positive traits, for example, that are clearly more important in one job than in the other? Can you identify which positive traits probably contribute to Clay's adaptability in performing both jobs successfully?
3. Assess Clay's personality in terms of each of the following traits-emotional intelligence, locus of control, and self-efficacy. Be specific in explaining each of your assessments. Now compare yourself to Clay: Being as honest as you can, assess yourself-at this stage of your life and/or career-in terms of the same traits.
4. Describe the approach of MG+BW managers in dealing with the following work-related attitudes-job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and affectivity.
5. Clay picked up her computer skills while on the job. What about you? How do you learn best? If you want to jumpstart your thinking about this question, go to blog.nextdayflyers.com, where you'll find a brief survey of the three different ways in which, according to many experts, most people learn in the workplace.* (Scroll down to March 5, 2009).