Contemporary Management 12th International Edition Jennifer M. George, Gareth R. Jones - Solutions

Discuss the reasons that too much conformity can hurt groups and their organizations. [LO15-4]
Why do some groups have very low levels of cohesiveness? [LO15-4]
Imagine that you are the manager of a hotel. What steps will you take to reduce social loafing by members of the cleaning staff who are responsible for keeping all common areas and guest rooms spotless? [LO15-5]
Interview one or more managers in an organization in your local community to identify the types of groups and teams that the organization uses to achieve its goals. What challenges do these groups and teams face? [LO15-2]
How large was the group, what type of task interdependence existed in the group, and what group roles did members play?
Either individually or in a group, think about the ethical implications of social loafing in a self-managed team.
Do managers have an ethical obligation to step in when they are aware of social loafing in a selfmanaged team? Why or why not? Do other team members have an obligation to try to curtail the social loafing? Why or why not?
Indicate who should be on this important crossfunctional team, and explain why.
Describe the steps you will take to help ensure that the team has a good balance between conformity and deviance and has a moderate level of cohesiveness.
In general, how can group norms help the teams at Adient Lerma achieve continuous improvement?
How does Adient Lerma motivate the members of its highperformance teams? What could the facility’s managers do to discourage social loafing?
Do you think Adient Lerma’s approach of putting all employees on empowered teams could also help the Sunderland facility achieve its goal of using Industry 4.0 technologies? Why or why not?
What is the relationship between ethics and the law? [LO4-1]
Why do the claims and interests of stakeholders sometimes conflict? [LO4-2]
Why should managers use ethical criteria to guide their decision making? [LO4-3]
As an employee of a company, what are some of the most unethical business practices that you have encountered in its dealings with stakeholders? [LO4-4]
What are the main determinants of business ethics? [LO4-5]
Find a manager and ask about the most important ethical rules he or she uses to make the right decisions. [LO4-3]
Find an example of (a) a company that has an obstructionist approach to social responsibility and (b)one that has an accommodative approach. [LO4-6]
You sign a contract to manage a young rock band, and that group agrees to let you produce their next five records, for which they will receive royalties of 5%.Their first record is a smash hit and sells millions. Do you increase their royalty rate on future records? Why or why not?
What makes chewing gum acceptable in the United States but unacceptable in Singapore?
Describe the difference between efficiency and effectiveness, and identify real organizations that you think are, or are not, efficient and effective. [LO1-1]
In what ways can managers at each of the three levels of management contribute to organizational efficiency and effectiveness? [LO1-3]
Identify an organization that you believe is high-performing and one that you believe is low-performing. Give five reasons you think the performance levels of the two organizations differ so much. [LO1-2, 1-4]
What are the building blocks of competitive advantage?Why is obtaining a competitive advantage important to managers? [LO1-5]
In what ways do you think managers’ jobs have changed the most over the last 10 years? Why have these changes occurred? [LO1-6]
Choose an organization such as a school or a bank;visit it; then list the different organizational resources it uses. How do managers use these resources to maintain and improve its performance? [LO1-2, 1-4]
Visit an organization, and talk to first-line, middle, and top managers about their respective management roles in the organization and what they do to help the organization be efficient and effective. [LO1-3, 1-4]
Ask a middle or top manager, perhaps someone you already know, to give examples of how he or she performs the managerial tasks of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. How much time does he or she spend in performing each task? [LO1-3]
Like Mintzberg, try to find a cooperative manager who will allow you to follow him or her around for a day. List the roles the manager plays, and indicate how much time he or she spends performing them. [LO1-3, 1-4]
Think about your direct supervisor. Of what department is he or she a member, and at what level of management is this person?
How do you characterize your supervisor’s approach to management? For example, which particular management tasks and roles does this person perform most often? What kinds of management skills does this manager have?
Are the tasks, roles, and skills of your supervisor appropriate for the particular job he or she performs?How could this manager improve his or her task performance? How can IT affect this?
How does your supervisor’s approach to management affect your attitudes and behavior? For example, how well do you perform as an employee, and how motivated are you?
Think about the organization and its resources. Do its managers use organizational resources effectively?Which resources contribute most to the organization’s performance?
Describe how the organization treats its human resources. How does this treatment affect the attitudes and behaviors of the workforce?
How attuned are the managers in the organization to the need to increase efficiency, quality, innovation, or responsiveness to customers? How well do you think the organization performs its prime goals of providing the goods or services that customers want or need the most?
Either by yourself or in a group, give three reasons you think the behavior was unethical. For example, what rules or norms were broken? Who benefited or was harmed by what took place? What was the outcome for the people involved?
What steps might you take to prevent such unethical behavior and encourage people to behave in an ethical way?
Decide what each partner’s managerial role in the restaurant will be. For example, who will be responsible for the necessary departments and specific activities?Describe your managerial hierarchy.
Discuss the most important decisions that must be made about (a) planning, (b) organizing, (c) leading, and (d) controlling to allow you and your partners to use organizational resources effectively and build a competitive advantage.
For each managerial task, list the issues to solve, and decide which roles will contribute the most to your restaurant’s success.
What kind of organizing and controlling problems is Achieva suffering from?
What kinds of management changes need to be made to solve these problems?
Choose a fast-food restaurant, a fitness club, or some other organization with which you are familiar, and describe the division of labor and job specialization it uses to produce goods and services. How might this division of labor be improved? [LO2-1, 2-2]
Apply Taylor’s principles of scientific management to improve the performance of the organization you chose in question 1.[LO2-2]
In what ways are Weber’s and Fayol’s ideas about bureaucracy and administration similar? How do they differ? [LO2-3]
Which of Weber’s and Fayol’s principles seem most relevant to the creation of an ethical organization? [LO2-4, 2-6]
How are companies using management science theory to improve their processes? Is this theory equally applicable for manufacturing and service companies?If so, how? [LO2-4, 2-5]
What is contingency theory? What kinds of organizations familiar to you have been successful or unsuccessful in dealing with contingencies from the external environment? [LO2-6]
Why are mechanistic and organic structures suited to different organizational environments? [LO2-4, 2-6]
Question a manager about his or her views of the relative importance of Fayol’s 14 principles of management. [LO2-3, 2-4]
Visit at least two organizations in your community, and identify those that seem to operate with a Theory X or a Theory Y approach to management. [LO2-4]
Search the Internet for changes occurring in the meat-packing industry.
Discuss why managers who have different types of personalities can be equally effective and successful. [LO3-1]
Can managers be too satisfied with their jobs? Can they be too committed to their organizations? Why or why not? [LO3-2]
Assume that you are a manager of a restaurant.Describe what it is like to work for you when you are in a negative mood. [LO3-3]
Why might managers be disadvantaged by low levels of emotional intelligence? [LO3-4]
Interview a manager in a local organization. Ask the manager to describe situations in which he or she is especially likely to act in accordance with his or her values. Ask the manager to describe situations in which he or she is less likely to act in accordance with his or her values. [LO3-2]
Watch a popular television show, and as you watch it, try to determine the emotional intelligence levels of the characters the actors in the show portray. Rank the characters from highest to lowest in terms of emotional intelligence. As you watched the show, what factors influenced your assessments
Go to an upscale store in your neighborhood, and go to a store that is definitely not upscale. Observe the behavior of employees in each store as well as the store’s environment. In what ways are the organizational cultures in each store similar? In what ways are they different? [LO3-5]
Either individually or in a group, think about the ethical implications of using personality and interest inventories to screen potential employees. How might this practice be unfair to potential applicants? How might organizational members who are in charge of hiring misuse it?
Because of measurement error and validity problems, some relatively trustworthy people may “fail” an honesty test given by an employer. What are the ethical implications of trustworthy people “failing” honesty tests, and what obligations do you think employers should have when relying on
Review the personality traits described in this chapter and identify which ones you think would make it easiest for a person to succeed at Google.Explain your choices.
What are some values that Google tries to encourage?What challenges have arisen with putting these values into practice?
Do you think you would thrive in Google’s organizational culture?Why or why not? If you could change its culture, what changes would you make?
Why is it important for managers to understand the forces in the global environment that are acting on them and their organizations? [LO6-1]
Which organization is likely to face the most complex task environment—a biotechnology company trying to develop a cure for cancer or a large retailer such as The Gap or Macy’s? Why? [LO6-2, 6-3]
The population is aging because of declining birth rates, declining death rates, and the aging of the Baby Boomer generation. What might some of the implications of this demographic trend be for(a) a pharmaceutical company and (b) the home construction industry? [LO6-1, 6-2, 6-3]
How do political, legal, and economic forces shape national culture? What characteristics of national culture do you think have the most important effect on how successful a country is in doing business abroad? [LO6-3, 6-5]
Choose an organization, and ask a manager in that organization to list the number and strengths of forces in the organization’s task environment. Ask the manager to pay particular attention to identifying opportunities and threats that result from pressures and changes in customers, competitors,
Explain how environmental forces affect the job of an individual manager within this organization. How do they determine the opportunities and threats that its managers must confront?
What could Home Depot have done to avoid its mistake?
Based on this analysis, list some steps you would take to help your new copying business succeed.
Analyze the major forces in the task environment of a retail clothing store.
Devise a program that will help other managers and employees to better understand and respond to their store’s task environment.
Briefly summarize the threats and opportunities you see for Huawei in its task environment. Consider suppliers, distributors, customers, and competitors, if applicable.
Briefly summarize the threats and opportunities you see for Huawei in its general environment.Consider economic, technological, sociocultural, demographic, and political/legal forces, if applicable.
In Hofstede’s model of national culture, China has been found to score relatively high on collectivism and very high on long-term orientation. In light of what this chapter says about those dimensions, how would you predict that Huawei’s Chinese managers and employees will deal with their
What are the main differences between programmed decision making and nonprogrammed decision making? [LO7-1]
In what ways do the classical and administrative models of decision making help managers appreciate the complexities of real-world decision making? [LO7-1]
Why do capable managers sometimes make bad decisions? What can individual managers do to improve their decision-making skills? [LO7-1, 7-2]
In what kinds of groups is groupthink most likely to be a problem? When is it least likely to be a problem?What steps can group members take to ward off groupthink? [LO7-3]
What is organizational learning, and how can managers promote it? [LO7-4]
What is the difference between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship? [LO7-5]
Ask a manager to recall the best and the worst decisions he or she ever made. Try to determine why these decisions were so good or so bad. [LO7-1, 7-2, 7-3]
Think about an organization in your local community or your university, or an organization that you are familiar with, that is doing poorly. Now think of questions managers in the organization should ask stakeholders to elicit creative ideas for turning around the organization’s fortunes. [LO7-4]
Try to remember how you reached the decision.Did you sit down and consciously think through the implications of each alternative, or did you make the decision on the basis of intuition? Did you use any rules of thumb to help you make the decision?
In retrospect, do you think your choice of alternative was shaped by any of the cognitive biases discussed in this chapter?
Either alone or in a group, think about the ethical implications of extreme decision making by groups.
When group decision making takes place, should each member of a group feel fully accountable for the outcomes of the decision? Why or why not?
Which type of decision making are Marines being taught in the Marine Maker training:programmed or nonprogrammed decisions? Explain.
Does the classical model or the administrative model of decision making better fit the decision process of the Marine Maker program? Why?
Which of the chapter’s ideas for creating a learning organization and promoting individual creativity support creative thinking by the Marines?
Why is it important for managers to pay close attention to value chain management if they wish to be responsive to their customers? [LO9-1, 9-2]
What is CRM, and how can it help improve responsiveness to customers? [LO9-2]
What are the main challenges in implementing a successful total quality management program? [LO9-3]
What is efficiency, and what are some strategies managers can use to increase it? [LO9-4]
What is innovation, and what are some strategies managers can use to develop successful new products? [LO9-5]
Ask a manager how responsiveness to customers, quality, efficiency, and innovation are defined and measured in his or her organization. [LO9-1, 9-2]

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Contemporary Management 12th International Edition Jennifer M. George, Gareth R. Jones - Solutions

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