Organizational Behaviour And Work A Critical Introduction 3rd Edition Fiona Wilson - Solutions

Discover comprehensive resources for "Organizational Behaviour and Work: A Critical Introduction, 3rd Edition" by Fiona Wilson. Access an extensive collection of online answers key, solutions manual, and solved problems. Whether you're looking for chapter solutions, test bank questions, or step-by-step answers, our platform provides thorough insights tailored for your textbook needs. Enhance your understanding with our instructor manual and explore questions and answers that will aid your studies. Download solutions in PDF format for free and ensure you're well-prepared for any academic challenge.

By looking at unemployment, we can understand more about what employment might mean to people. What can be learned about what work means by looking at research on unemployment? And what are the personal and social consequences of unemployment? Are the consequences different for different groups of
‘Some 700,000 people phone in sick on a Monday morning. One in three are faking it’(Channel 5, 2002, UK Undercover, ‘Throwing a sickie’). These bare facts raise more questions:for example, what kinds of people ‘throw a sickie’? Is it mainly those who are in stressful, repetitive,
‘Customer abuse is perpetuated by a range of cost-rational and profit-centred policies’ (Boyd, 2002). Discuss.
According to some, women cope better with stress in demanding jobs than men. What evidence can you find to support or refute this statement?
If an employee is stressed, does the source of the problem lie with the individual or the organization?
Is it really attempting to reduce stress, or just get more out of its employees?
Is this a company for which you would want to work?
Credit unions help to provide financial support to people in their local communities and are regulated by the Financial Services Authority in England and Wales. What advantages and disadvantages (apart from the obvious financial ones) do they offer to their members?
There are examples from all over the world of people taking control of their own economic destiny. The Rochdale pioneers are one such example; another is the Antigonish Movement in Nova Scotia (Coady, 1967; Gherardi et al., 1989). What were the advantages for these people of being involved in
The impetus and motivation for cooperatives comes from a number of different sources, according to the research. What motivation for the establishment of alternative organizations can you find in your reading?
How would you make an evaluation of costs and benefits?
How big are the benefits to the communities compared to the benefits that the companies reap in profits? Is that fair in your view?
A cynic might argue that the benefits to the companies—in terms of good publicity, and employee and public relations—are greater than the costs. Would this be fair?
‘Sabotage is bound up with the private ownership of the means of production and will disappear only when that does’ (Dubois, 1979: 213). Discuss.
Even when people are trained, paid, and told to be nice, it is hard for them to do so all of the time. Why? (See, for example, Van Maanen, 1991.)
Compare and contrast two of the cases of organizational misdemeanour described by Punch(1996).
What other examples of cheating at work have you witnessed, and how have management and workers tried to deal with it?
Do individuals try to cheat the system?
What other examples have you seen of shared tipping?
‘Many concepts used in organizational analysis, such as power, domination, control, and authority can be used as euphemisms for violence, most obviously in the police, military, and prisons’ (Hearn, 1994). Discuss.
What research might help you to argue that the panopticon is as diverse in its use as the contexts in which it occurs? (See Ball and Wilson, 1997.)
Sewell (1998) says that discipline can be maintained through teamwork and peer group scrutiny. Surveillance and teamwork are an unexpected combination. How are surveillance and teamwork combined?
Does it represent ways in which the operator copes with the difficult demands of the job—especially difficult customers?
Should it be regarded as misbehaviour?
Is this behaviour a sign of resistance to managerial control, demonstrating how ride operators are in control of their job and how it is managed?
What methods have you witnessed for trying to bring about change in an organization or group in which you have been involved? Was group participation used? If not, why not?
To its advocates, total quality management is unequivocally good; to some management researchers, it produces some bad outcomes. What are the realities? (See Wilkinson et al., 1997; 1998; Knights and McCabe, 1998.)
What evidence can you find that robotics increase or decrease the number of jobs available?
What questions does this research on organizational transformation raise for you?
Was the transformational change successfully brought about by Jack Welch or his staff?
How do we know that the change conversations had an effect on shareholder support? Might there be other factors at play: for example, media reports?
What would happen if one, two, or more of these kinds of conversations had not taken place?
If these are the core conversations that are found in an organization in which transformational change was considered successful, would different conversations be found in one that was unsuccessful?
Filby (1992) described the everyday life in a betting shop. The management tried to use, and partly succeeded in using, women’s bodies and personalities to promote the product—but the female employees ‘turned the tables’ (Thompson and McHugh, 2002: 144). How did they do this?
George Ritzer argues that McDonaldization constrains or eliminates people’s creativity.Discuss.
Why should management, thinking about rationalization, be seen as a kaleidoscope and not in a linear fashion?
Which structure do you prefer and why?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the different organizational structures for:(a) the laity?(b) the management?
How much research evidence is there to support a very positive view? Should we be wary of the ‘tyranny’ of teams (Sinclair, 1992; Barker, 1993)? How much support is there for this rather negative view?
Why would there be resistance to the introduction of teamworking? Whose interests does teamworking serve?
‘Teamworking helps to obscure domination’ (Sennett, 1998). Discuss.
Katzenbach and Smith (1993) talk about the wisdom of teams. How wise are they? What needs and whose needs do they serve?
What advice is there in the literature on teams on how individuals should consider cultural differences?
What challenges would you anticipate if you worked in a virtual cross-cultural team?
There is an abundance of contradictions to be found in the culture of organizations. How does Aktouf (1996) describe the contradictions that he found, and what examples have you seen in your own experience?
What evidence is there to suggest that the culture within police forces is discriminatory? (See Fielding, 1994; Brown, 1998; Sharpe, 1998; you may also want to look at newspaper and BBC sources.)
Hopfl (1995) draws an analogy between acting and customer service. Read her paper and critically assess the similarities.
Goffman (1961) gives us a detailed account of life in asylums. What insight can we gain from this work to help us to understand the working and culture of organizations such as universities?
Is this an attractive idea? What might be its disadvantages?
If not, what is more usual in your experience?
Is it your experience of organizations that ideas are only implemented if everyone is convinced of the validity of the idea?
Our culture and socialization dictates that ‘boys don’t cry’, but that it is acceptable for girls to weep. Research has found that, before the age of 12, boys and girls cry as frequently as each other, but that after they reach that age, boys cry four times less than girls. Boys are
How do managers learn about management? (See Fulop and Rifkin, 2004.)
‘Learning organization initiatives are essentially technologies of regulation aimed at facilitating change processes’ (Thompson and McHugh, 2002: 240). Discuss.
Sambrook and Stewart (2000) have looked at 28 European case studies and a further 20 organizations to understand the factors that affect the level of organizational learning and strategies to support it. What are their main findings? In the light of what you have learned here, how would you
Do you agree?
What does the author suggest should have been done?
If you had been in control of this organization, what would you have done?
Review the evidence for and against emotional intelligence, and draw your own conclusions.(See, in particular, Cartwright and Pappas, 2008.)
What personality traits are being tested for by organizations? Are they screening for authoritarianism, narcissism, or petty tyranny?
Given what you now know about personality testing, what best advice would you offer to someone recruiting a new manager?
There appears to be no research that investigates how narcissists react to negative feedback( Judge et al., 2006). How difficult might it be to research this?
How do you think a narcissistic employee might respond to appraisal? (See Bushman and Baumeister, 1998.)
Given that narcissism is socially undesirable, and that few people would wish to be described as vain, self-absorbed, egotistical, selfish, conceited and grandiose, lacking in empathy, or poor team players, would you expect organizations to screen these people out at hiring stage?
Sir Patrick Moore, ex-presenter of the TV programme The Sky at Night, perceived that the BBC is worse than it used to be because it is ‘run by women’ (Sky News, 18 May 2007). What evidence can you find to support or refute his perception?
Does how you see yourself impact on how you subsequently perform? For example, if you see yourself as a capable, knowledgeable student, does this impact on exam or essay performance? (Research on student self-efficacy and self-esteem will help you here.)
Companies test for competencies (that is, attributes that they perceive are valuable in employees) in both the recruitment and appraisal processes. What are these competencies?Do organizations differ in the competencies that they perceive as valuable? What place does moral competency appear to have?
Would this impact on how adult women and adolescent girls see themselves?
Should they be banned?
What do you think about the widespread use of size zero models by the fashion industry?
Is it time to stop talking about gender differences between men and women in leadership?(See Epstein, 1991; Eagly and Carli, 2007.)
‘A frightening irony is that those who actively seek leadership are perceived as narcissistic and grandiose, wanting it too badly, and those who are emotionally healthy and could be exceptional leaders shrink from publicly exerting their leadership abilities’ (Herman, 2007).Discuss.
Tourish and Pinnington (2002) draw on the similarities between the components of transformational leadership and the characteristics of leadership found in cults. How do they do this? To what effect?
What are the connections with other lessons from the leadership literature?
What are the main lessons from Ranieri’s case?
‘The pathway to company profit is also the pathway to self-actualisation’ (Rose, 1996). Discuss.
Martina Horner (1972) concluded that there was a high, and perhaps increasing, incidence of the motive to avoid success found in women. The predominant message was that highly competent women, when faced with conflict between their feminine image and expressing their competencies, adjust their
It can be argued that people have greater needs than self-actualization and greater management problems, including providing for those without food or clean water. What would be on your hierarchy of needs?
How would you know if the team was more highly motivated?
How would you research the impact of this type of training on a sales team?
What could be the potential benefits of SAS training for sales staff?
‘The qualities of emotionality and rationality are dependent upon each other’ (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1995). Discuss
What are the personal consequences of work? (See Sennett, 1998.)
In what ways can performing emotional labour be a stressful experience? (See Hochschild, 1983; Handy, 1995; Taylor and Tyler, 2000.)
Have a look at the Playboy websites. What do you think? What evidence would you draw on to support your arguments?
Can you think of other jobs in which behaviour and appearance is tightly prescribed and enforced?Does this only happen in jobs that women do?
What power do workers have to challenge these work conditions? What power do managers have?
Is a plentiful supply of cheap labour a reasonable rationale explaining why managers should be indifferent to workers’ views of the workplace?
‘Representing management as a predominantly technical activity creates an illusion of neutrality’ (Alvesson and Wilmott, 1996: 12). Discuss.
What are the differences between the findings of Stewart, Kotter, and Mintzberg on what managers do? How far do they help us to understand why managers do what they do?
How, then, should empowerment be managed? What are the boundaries for empowerment for the manager and for the worker? (See also Chapter 15 on empowerment.)
Reeves (2001) argues that work gets a bad press because it is constantly portrayed as an endurance task rather than one of enjoyment—but work has changed. Read Reeves (2001)and Toynbee (2003): is Reeves right?
How would you explain how working-class kids continue to get working-class jobs (see Willis, 1977; Bates, 1991; Mirza, 1992)? Why is it so inevitable? Can you find any research that demonstrates that this process is not inevitable?
Hakim (1991) argues that women—particularly homeworkers—who willingly marry and accept the authority of husbands who have traditional views of women should take the blame for their poor situation in the labour market. According to Hakim, some women gratefully accept slave status. Phizacklea and
Do you have doubts about the claims that these companies make? If yes, why? Can they avoid all staff being alienated regardless of the job that they do? Do you suspect that some staff—maybe those with less autonomy and scope in their jobs, for example, the cleaners or other support staff—might
There are other companies that are ranked as ‘best places to work’. Airbnb, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google were ranked as some of the best in 2016 (see https://www.glassdoor.com/Award/Best-Places-to-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm). What can you find out about these organizations that make them some of the
Are these employees, in your view, best defined as ‘willing slaves’ (see Chapter 1 for a definition)?
It is clear from the research evidence presented in this chapter that the world of work is a very unequal one for many groups, e.g. the disabled and the poor. As a manager, would you be motivated to ‘make a difference’, to do something to help make the workplace fairer and more equal? What
Should chief executives and managers of charities be paid wages that match those found in other organizations? Would those who give to charity be ‘put off’ doing so if they were to know how much goes towards manager’s salaries?
How accessible and affordable is childcare for working parents? The Daycare Trust, a charity, found that in 2017 the cost of full-time childcare in Britain was, on average, £124.23 per week.This was a 4 per cent rise from 2016 (Daycare Trust, 2017). Childcare costs have risen steadily in recent

Showing 1 - 100 of 1856

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Last

Organizational Behaviour And Work A Critical Introduction 3rd Edition Fiona Wilson - Solutions

Step by Step Answers