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150 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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T/F. Human resource management consists of the activities managers perform to plan for, attract, develop, and retain an effective workforce.
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TRUE
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T/F. To predict future employee needs you have to understand the organization's vision and strategic plan.
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TRUE: HR carries out the strategy of an organization through determining what skills people need to meet organizational goals.
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T/F. Planning the human resources needed is an important step in the strategic human resource management process. It comes first.
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FALSE: First establish the mission and vision, second establish the grand strategy, third formulate the strategic plans, and then planning for human resources needed can take place.
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T/F. The purpose of job analysis is to determine, by observation and analysis, the basic elements of a job.
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TRUE: A job analysis is a very detailed description of each job and how the work flows for that job.
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T/F. A job specification summarizes what the holder of the job does and how and why he or she does it.
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FALSE: a job specification describes the minimum qualifications a person must have to perform the job successfully. A job description summarizes what the holder of the job does and how and why he or she does it.
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T/F. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the minimum living standards for workers engaged in interstate commerce, including provision of a federal minimum wage.
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TRUE: State and Federal laws may differ slightly: the law most relevant to the employee is used in a court of law.
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T/F. Collective bargaining consists of negotiations between the employees about how to handle disagreements with management.
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FALSE: Collective bargaining consists of negotiations between management and employees about disputes over compensation, benefits, working conditions, and job security.
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T/F. Anti-discrimination laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender, skin color, or national origin, but not age.
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FALSE: Antidiscrimination laws also prohibit discrimination against age.
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T/F. Affirmative action programs try to anticipate future discrimination in employment.
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FALSE: It tries to make up for past discrimination in employment by actively finding, hiring, and developing the talents of people from groups traditionally discriminated against. The intent is to correct prior instances of discrimination. There is no laws for quotas.
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T/F. Quid pro quo is a type of discrimination.
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FALSE: It is a type of sexual harassment. The person to whom the unwanted sexual attention is directed is put in the position of jeopardizing being hired for a job or obtaining job benefits or opportunities unless he or she implicitly or explicitly acquiesces. Most sexual harassment falls into the hostile work environment.
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T/F. Job posting is a type of internal recruiting.
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TRUE: job postings are part of the bidding process.
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T/F. In general, the most effective source of good candidates is employee referrals.
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TRUE: they know who they are referring and probably won't refer people who may not be able to do the job. Also friends tell friends about their work, so the referred person may already have a good idea of whether they will fit into the culture and like the job.
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T/F. A job description gives a candidate a picture of both positive and negative features of the job and the organization before he or she is hired.
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FALSE: a job description summarizes what the holder of the job does and how and why he or she does it. It shows the job duties.
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T/F. The selection process is an exercise in prediction.
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TRUE: You are trying to predict if the person will be successful in the job.
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T/F. References are an effective way to obtain reliable information about a perspective job candidate.
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FALSE: References may not be effective because many employers don’t give honest assessments of former employees, for two reasons:
(1) They fear that if they say anything negative, they can be sued by the former employee. (2) They fear if they say anything positive, and the job candidate doesn’t pan out, they can be sued by the new employer. |
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T/F. The structured interview involves asking each applicant the same questions and comparing their responses to a standardized set of answers.
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TRUE: A structured interview is conducted for reliability and consistency for comparison between candidates.
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T/F. In the situational interview a typical question may likely be "What would you do if you saw two of your people arguing loudly in the work area?"
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TRUE: Questions such as "What would you do if . . . " are asked and the candidates reactions are documented.
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T/F. In a behavioral-description interview, the interviewer explores what applicants have actually done in the past.
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TRUE: Behavioral questions such as "What did you do when . . ." are asked to gauge future behavior. Future behavior is likely related to past behavior. This type of interview promotes honesty.
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T/F. The primary purpose of an employee orientation is to teach the person job skills.
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FALSE: orientation is helping the newcomer fit smoothly into the job and the organization. It helps them learn about the organization.
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T/F. Performance management is the method used to remove a person from the organization due to poor job performance.
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FALSE: Performance management is the continuous cycle of improving job performance through goal setting, feedback and coaching, and rewards and positive reinforcement.
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T/F. The type of feedback in which employees are appraised by their managerial superiors is also called 180-degree feedback.
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FALSE: It is called a 360 review or 360 feedback. Risks with a 360 review is that it could be used to as a way to get at someone (backstabbing). Confidentiality is key for effectiveness.
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T/F. In giving negative feedback to an employee, a manager should be very general and understate the feedback to avoid hurting the employee's feelings.
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FALSE: It is a managers job to inform employees if they are not meeting expectations. The feedback also needs to be said in a way to encourage people to think about it and improve.
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T/F. Compensation includes wages, incentives, and benefits.
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TRUE
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T/F. An employee cannot be dismissed "for cause" for sloppy work habits.
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FALSE: Yes, employees can be dismissed for sloppy work habits. Managers must take care to document incidents to prevent any litigations from the employee.
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predicting future employee needs means you have to become knowledgeable about:
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The staffing the organization might need and the likely sources for that staffing:
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What is Human Resource (HR) Management?
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Human resource (HR) management consists of the activities managers perform to plan for, attract, develop, and retain an effective workforce.
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What is the purpose of the Strategic Human Resource Management Process?
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Purpose: Get optimal work performance to help realize company’s mission & vision
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What are the steps in the Strategic Human Resource Management Process?
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(1) Establish the mission & the vision
(2) Establish the grand strategy (3) Formulate the strategic plans (4) Plan human resources needed (5) Recruit & select people (6) Orient, train, & develop (7) Perform appraisals of people. Purpose: Get optimal work performance to help realize company’s mission & vision |
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What are three tools utilized for placing employees into specific jobs? It what order are they written or evaluated?
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(1) Job analysis
(2) Job Description (3) Job Specification |
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What is a Job Analysis?
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To determine--by observation and analysis--the basic elements of a job.
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What is Strategic Human Resource Planning?
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Developing a systematic, comprehensive strategy for understanding current employee needs and predicting future employee needs.
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What is a Job Description?
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Summarizes what the holder of the job does and how and why he or she does it.
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What is a Human Resource Inventory?
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A report listing your organization’s employees by name, education, training, languages, and other important information.
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Legislation passed in 1935 (the Wagner Act) resulted in the National Labor Relations Board which does:
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Enforces procedures whereby employees may vote to have a union and for collective bargaining. Collective
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What is Collective Bargaining?
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Collective bargaining consists of negotiations between management and employees about disputes over compensation, benefits, working conditions, and job security.
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A 1947 law (the Taft-Hartley Act) allows the President of the United States to:
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Prevent or end a strike that threatens national security.
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The Social Security Act in 1935 established:
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The U.S. retirement system.
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The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established:
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Minimum living standards for workers engaged in interstate commerce, federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 an hour) and a maximum workweek (now 40 hours, after which overtime must be paid), along with banning products from child labor. Salaried executive, administrative, and professional employees are exempt from overtime rules.
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Whatever your organization’s human resource strategy, in the United States (and in U.S. divisions overseas) it has to operate within the environment of American law. Four areas you need to be aware of are:
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Labor Relations, Compensation and Benefits, Health and Safety, and Equal Employment Opportunity.
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What does the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970 require?
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Organizations must provide employees with nonhazardous working conditions. Later laws extended health coverage, including 2010 health care reform legislation, which requires employees with more than 50 employees to provide health insurance.
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The effort to reduce discrimination in employment based on racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry and gender stereotypes began with:
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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which established the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Commission.
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What is the job of the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Commission?
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To enforce antidiscrimination and other employment related laws.
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What are three important concepts covered by EEO laws?
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Discrimination, affirmative action, and sexual harassment.
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Affirmative action focuses on:
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Achieving equality of opportunity within an organization. It tries to make up for past discrimination in employment by actively finding, hiring, and developing the talents of people from groups traditionally discriminated against. It’s important to note that EEO laws do not allow use of hiring quotas.
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What are some steps used in Affirmative Action?
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Active recruitment, elimination of prejudicial questions in interviews, and establishment of minority hiring goals.
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Affirmative action plans are more successful when:
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Employees view them as being fair and equitable and when whites are not prejudiced against people of color.
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Research shows that women and minorities hired on the basis of affirmative action felt:
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Stigmatized as unqualified and incompetent and experienced lower job satisfaction and more stress than employees supposedly selected on the basis of merit.
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What is sexual harassment? What are the two types?
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Sexual harassment consists of unwanted sexual attention that creates an adverse work environment. The two types are Quid pro quo--tangible economic injury and a hostile environment--offense work environment.
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What is Quid pro quo?
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The person to whom the unwanted sexual attention is directed is put in the position of jeopardizing being hired for a job or obtaining job benefits or opportunities unless he or she implicitly or explicitly acquiesces.
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What is a Hostile Environment?
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In the hostile environment, the person being sexually harassed doesn’t risk economic harm but experiences an offensive or intimidating work environment.
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What is recruiting and what are the two types?
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Recruiting is the process of locating and attracting qualified applicants for jobs open in the organization. You want to find people whose skills, abilities, and characteristics are best suited to your organization. Recruiting is of two types: internal and external.
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What is internal recruiting?
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Internal recruiting means making people already employed by the organization aware of job openings by using a job posting which places information about job vacancies and qualifications on bulletin boards, in newsletters, and on the organization’s intranet.
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What is external recruiting?
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Outside External recruiting means attracting job applicants from outside the organization.
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Which recruiting method is most effective?
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In general, the most effective sources are employee referrals because, to protect their own reputations, employees are fairly careful about whom they recommend, and they know the qualifications of both the job and the prospective employee.
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What are some advantages of internal recruiting?
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1. Employees tend to be inspired to greater effort and loyalty. Morale is enhanced because they realize that working hard and staying put can result in more opportunities.
2. The whole process of advertising, interviewing, and so on is cheaper. 3. There are fewer risks. Internal candidates are already known and are familiar with the organization. |
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What are some disadvantages of internal recruiting?
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1. Internal recruitment restricts the competition for positions and limits the pool of fresh talent and fresh viewpoints.
2. It may encourage employees to assume that longevity and seniority will automatically result in promotion. 3. Whenever a job is filled, it creates a vacancy elsewhere in the organization. |
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What are some advantages of external recruiting?
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Applicants may have specialized knowledge and experience and may have fresh viewpoints.
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What are some disadvantages of external recruiting?
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The recruitment process is more expensive and takes longer and the risks are higher because the persons hired are less well known.
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What is a realistic job preview?
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It gives a candidate a picture of both positive and negative features of the job and the organization before he or she is hired. People with realistic expectations tend to quit less frequently and be more satisfied than those with unrealistic expectations.
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What is the selection process and what are the three types of selection tools?
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It is the screening of job applicants to hire the best candidate. Essentially this becomes an exercise in prediction: How well will the candidate perform the job and how long will he or she stay? Three types of selection tools are background information, interviewing, and employment tests.
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What is an unstructured Interview?
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Like an ordinary conversation, an unstructured interview involves asking probing questions to find out what the applicant is like. There is no fixed set of questions asked of all applicants and no systematic scoring procedure.
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What are some criticisms of the unstructured interview?
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The unstructured interview has been criticized as being overly subjective and apt to be influenced by the biases of the interviewer. Equally important, nowadays it is susceptible to legal attack, because some questions may infringe on non-job-related matters such as privacy, diversity, or disability.
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What is the Type 1 Structured Interview?
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Structured interview type 1—the situational interview. The structured interview involves asking each applicant the same questions and comparing their responses to a standardized set of answers. In one type of structured interview, the situational interview, the interviewer focuses on hypothetical situations.
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What is the Type 2 Structured Interview?
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Structured interview type 2—the behavioral-description interview. In the second type of structured interview, the behavioral-description interview, the interviewer explores what applicants have actually done in the past.
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How is an unstructured interview more useful than a structured interview?
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Compared with the structured interview method, the unstructured interview has been found to provide a more accurate assessment of an applicant’s job related personality traits.
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What are employment tests? What are the three most common tests?
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Employment tests are legally considered to consist of any procedure used in the employment selection decision process. The three most common tests are ability tests, performance tests, and personality tests.
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What are ability tests?
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Ability tests measure physical abilities, strength and stamina, mechanical ability, mental abilities, and clerical abilities.
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What are performance tests?
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Performance tests or skills tests measure performance on actual job tasks.
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What are personality tests?
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Personality tests measure such personality traits as adjustment, energy, sociability, independence, and need for achievement. Career assessment tests that help workers identify suitable jobs tend to be of this type.
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What is an assessment center used for?
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Management candidates participate in activities for a few days while being assessed by evaluators.
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Why should personality tests be interpreted with caution?
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Because of the difficulty of measuring personality characteristics and of making a legal defense if the results are challenged.
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With any kind of test, an important legal consideration is the test’s reliability:
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The degree to which a test measures the same thing consistently — so that an individual’s score remains about the same over time, assuming the characteristics being measured also remain the same.
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Another legal consideration of employment tests is the test’s validity:
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The test measures what it purports to measure and is free of bias. If a test is supposed to predict performance, then the individual’s actual performance should reflect his or her score on the test. Using an invalid test to hire people can lead to poor selection decisions. It can also create legal problems if the test is ever challenged in a court of law.
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Three ways newcomers are helped to perform their jobs are:
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Through orientation, to fit them into the job and organization; training, to upgrade the skills of technical and operational employees; and development, to upgrade the skills of professionals and managers.
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What are three things an employee should learn during orientation?
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The job routine, the organization’s mission and operations, and work rules and employee benefits.
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What is training?
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Training—upgrading skills of technical and operational employees. Training refers to educating technical and operational employees in how to better do their current jobs.
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What is development?
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Development—upgrading skills of professionals and managers. Development refers to educating professionals and managers in the skills they need to do their jobs in the future.
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What are some stereotypes of Gen Y?
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If you’re a member of Gen Y (born after 1980), you tend to want “frequent and candid performance feedback,” and having your managers provide “detailed guidance in daily work”.
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What is a performance Appraisal and what are two types?
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Consists of assessing an employee’s performance and providing him or her with feedback. The two types are subjective and objective.
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What is performance management?
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The continuous cycle of improving job performance through goal setting, feedback and coaching, and rewards and positive reinforcement. The purpose of performance management is to focus employees on attaining goals that are tied to the organization’s strategic goals and vision, and to evaluate how successful they were in accomplishing those goals.
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What are objective appraisals and what are two good reasons for them?
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Also called results appraisals, are based on facts and are often numerical. In these kinds of appraisals, you would keep track of such matters as the numbers of products the employee sold in a month, customer complaints filed against an employee, miles of freight hauled, and the like. Two good reasons for them: they measure results and they are harder to challenge legally.
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What is Management by objective?
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MBO is a four-step process in which:
(1) managers and employees jointly set objectives for the employee (2) managers develop action plans (3) managers and employees periodically review the employee’s performance (4) the manager makes a performance appraisal and rewards the employee according to results. For |
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What are subjective appraisals?
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They are based on a manager’s perceptions of an employee’s traits or behaviors.
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What are trait appraisals?
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Trait appraisals are ratings of such subjective attributes as “attitude,” “initiative,” and “leadership.” Trait evaluations may be easy to create and use, but their validity is questionable because the evaluator’s personal bias can affect the ratings.
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What are behavioral appraisals?
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Behavioral appraisals measure specific, observable aspects of performance—being on time for work, for instance—although making the evaluation is still somewhat subjective. An example is the behaviorally anchored rating scale (BARS), which rates employee gradations in performance according to scales of specific behaviors.
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What is a 360 assessment?
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The 360-degree assessment, or 360-degree feedback appraisal, in which employees are appraised not only by their managerial superiors but also by peers, subordinates, and sometimes clients, thus providing several perspectives.
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What is forced ranking performance review?
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In forced ranking performance review systems, all employees within a business unit are ranked against one another and grades are distributed along some sort of bell curve
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What are advantages and disadvantages of the forced ranking performance review?
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Proponents of forced ranking say it encourages managers to identify and remove poor performers and also structures a predetermined compensation curve, which enables them to reward top performers. If, however, the system is imposed on an organization overnight without preparation, by pitting employees against one another, it can produce shocks to morale, productivity, and loyalty. There may also be legal ramifications, as when employees filed class-action lawsuits alleging that the forced ranking methods had a disparate effect on particular groups of employees.
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To help increase employee performance, a manager can use two kinds of appraisals:
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Formal and Informal
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What is a formal appraisal?
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Formal appraisals are conducted at specific times through out the year and are based on performance measures that have been established in advance. As part of the appraisal, the manager should give the employee feedback, describing how he or she is performing well and not so well and giving examples. Managers are sometimes advised to keep diaries about specific incidents so they won’t have to rely on their memories (and so that their evaluations will be more lawsuit-resistant). Facts should always be used rather than impressions.
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What is an informal appraisal?
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Informal appraisals are conducted on an unscheduled basis and consist of less rigorous indications of employee performance. They provide more frequent feedback of performance.
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Compensation has three parts:
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wages or salaries, incentives, and benefits
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What is base pay?
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Base pay consists of the basic wage or salary paid employees in exchange for doing their jobs. The basic compensation is determined by all kinds of economic factors: the prevailing pay levels in a particular industry and location, what competitors are paying, whether the jobs are unionized, if the jobs are hazardous, what the individual’s level is in the organization, and how much experience he or she has.
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What is the purpose of an incentive? What are some examples?
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To induce employees to be more productive or to attract and retain top performers. Examples: commissions, bonuses, profit-sharing plans, and stock options.
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What are benefits?
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Benefits, or fringe benefits, are additional nonmonetary forms of compensation designed to enrich the lives of all employees in the organization, which are paid all or in part by the organization.
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When is a good time to review a job description?
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Any time you need to deal with replacing an employee in a job, that’s a time to reconsider the job description to see how it might be made more effective for the next person to occupy it.
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What is a promotion and what are three concerns?
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Promotion is moving an employee to a higher-level position. It is the most obvious way to recognize a person’s superior performance (apart from giving raises and bonuses). Three concerns are: It’s important that promotion be fair, the promotion must be deserved; The promotion cannot discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, age, or physical ability; If someone is promoted, someone else may be resentful about being passed over. As a manager, you may need to counsel the people left behind about their performance and their opportunities in the future.
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What is a transfer and what are four reasons?
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Transfer is movement of an employee to a different job with similar responsibility. It may or may not mean a change in geographical location (which might be part of a promotion as well). Employees might be transferred for four principal reasons:
(1) to solve organizational problems by using their skills at another location; (2) to broaden their experience in being assigned to a different position; (3) to retain their interest and motivation by being presented with a new challenge (4) to solve some employee problems, such as personal differences with their bosses. |
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What is a demotion?
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Alternatively, an employee may be demoted—that is, have his or her current responsibilities, pay, and perquisites taken away,
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What are three types of dismissals?
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layoffs, downsizing, and firings
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From a risk perspective what is the most important topic for human resources?
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Staffing
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What are the four exceptions for overtime?
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Executives - supervise 20 or more people and make high level decisions; Sales people; Professional - higher degree such as a Dr. or Lawyer; Administrator - has some discretion in how they perform their work.
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What industry is exempted from child labor laws and overtime rules?
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The entertainment industry, however there are restrictions for those who are under the age of 18
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What is the yearly salary cut off for exempt (not paid for overtime)?
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They have to make more than 24,000 a year
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What is TIPS and what does it refer to?
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TIPS are basic rules for managers with unionized employees, or employees planning to unionize.
T - Management cannot threaten employees if they join a union. I - Do not interrogate employees about unions to prevent retaliation. P - no promises related to union affiliation. S - Managers cannot be part of union meetings or have a spy in union meetings. |
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What is a qualified immunity statute?
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If a reference statement is in writing, the information correct, and the employee has access to the report, then the company is protected from lawsuits regarding any information in the report.
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What are the four outside forces that drive change in organizations?
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1. Demographic characteristics: Age, Education, Skill level, Gender.
2. Immigration Market changes: Mergers & acquisitions, Domestic & international competition, Recession. 3. Technological advancements: Manufacturing automation, Office automation 4. Social & political pressures: Leadership, Values |
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What are the two inside forces that drive change in organizations?
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1. Employee problems: Unmet needs, Job dissatisfaction, Absenteeism & turnover, Productivity, Participation/suggestions.
2. Managers’ behavior: Conflict, Leadership, Reward systems, Structural reorganization |
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What is organizational development (OD)?
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It is a set of techniques for implementing planned change to make people and organizations more effective. OD focuses specifically on people in the change process.
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What are some factors encouraging innovation?
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the right organizational culture, provide appropriate resources, and the correct reward system.
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What does it take to have an innovative culture?
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An organization must have a risk taking culture to be have an innovative culture.
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Describe the three stages of the Lewins Change model.
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1. Unfreezing - create the motivation for change.
2. Changing - learning new ways of doing things. Encourage risk taking and problem solving. 3. Refreezing - making the new ways normal. Reinforces the change. |
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What is the Organizational Development (OD) Process?
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"1. Diagnosis What is the problem? To carry out the diagnosis, OD consultants or managers use some combination of questionnaires, surveys, interviews, meetings, records, and direct observation to ascertain people’s attitudes and to identify problem areas.
2. Intervention What shall we do about it? “Treatment” or intervention is the attempt to correct the diagnosed problems. Some OD activities for implementing planned change are communicating survey results to employees to engage them in constructive problem solving, observing employee communication patterns and teaching them skills to improve them, helping group members learn to function as a team, stimulating better cohesiveness among several work groups, and improving work technology or organizational design. 3. Evaluation How well has the intervention worked? An OD program needs objective evaluation to see if it has done any good. Answers may lie in hard data about absenteeism, turnover, grievances, and profitability, which should be compared with earlier statistics. The change agent can use questionnaires, surveys, interviews, and the like to assess changes in employee attitudes. |
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In what circumstances is Organizational Development (OD) most successful?
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Multiple interventions, management support, long term and short term goals, OD is affected by culture.
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What are two myths about innovation?
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Innovation Happens in a “Eureka!” Moment and Innovation Can Be Systematized
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How can the right organizational culture encourage innovation?
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An organizational culture that doesn’t just allow but celebrates failure is vital toward fostering innovation. Most new ideas will fail. Only a few will be successful. But if an organization doesn’t encourage this kind of risk taking—if people tend to view experimentation as a boondoggle—that organization won’t become a superstar in innovation. Says Procter & Gamble’s A. G.
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How can the right resources encourage innovation?
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Innovation doesn’t come cheap. Its costs can be measured in all kinds of ways: dollars, time, energy, and focus. For instance, an organization’s research and development (R&D) department may need to hire top scientists, whose salaries may be high. Of course, because there is always competition within an organization for resources, innovation may simply be given short shrift because other concerns seem so urgent—even within a company with a culture encouraging experimentation.
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How can the correct reward system encourage innovation?
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People should not be punished when their attempts to innovate don’t work out, or else they won’t attempt new things in the future. By the nature of experimentation, the end result can’t be foreseen.
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What are the four steps for fostering innovation?
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1. Recognize problems & opportunities & devise solutions.
2. Gain allies by communicating your vision. 3. Overcome employee resistance, & empower & reward them to achieve progress. 4. Execute well by effectively managing people, groups, and organizational processes and systems in the pursuit of innovation. |
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What is Lewin's Unfreezing Stage?
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In the unfreezing stage, managers try to instill in employees the motivation to change, encouraging them to let go of attitudes and behaviors that are resistant to innovation. For this “unfreezing” to take place, employees need to become dissatisfied with the old way of doing things. Managers also need to reduce the barriers to change during this stage.
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What is Lewin's Changing Stage?
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In the changing stage, employees need to be given the tools for change: new information, new perspectives, new models of behavior. Managers can help here by providing benchmarking results, role models, mentors, experts, and training. It’s advisable, experts say, to convey the idea that change is a continuous learning process, not just a onetime event.
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What is Lewin's Refreezing Stage?
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In the refreezing stage, employees need to be helped to integrate the changed attitudes and behavior into their normal ways of doing things. Managers can assist by encouraging employees to exhibit the new change and then, through additional coaching and modeling, by reinforcing the employees in the desired change.
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adaptive change
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A reintroduction of a familiar practice—the implementation of a kind of change that has already been experienced within the same organization. This form of change is lowest in complexity, cost, and uncertainty. Because it is familiar, it is the least threatening to employees and thus will create the least resistance.
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benchmarking
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One technique used in Stage 1 of Lewin's model to help unfreeze organizations, is benchmarking, a process by which a company compares its performance with that of high-performing organizations.
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change agent
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A consultant with a background in behavioral sciences who can be a catalyst in helping organizations deal with old problems in new ways.
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creativity
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The process of developing something new or unique.
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incremental innovations
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The creation of products, services, or technologies that modify existing ones.
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innovative change
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The introduction of a practice that is new to the organization. This form of change involves moderate complexity, cost, and uncertainty. It is therefore apt to trigger some fear and resistance among employees.
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intervention
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The attempt to correct the diagnosed problems.
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proactive change
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Proactive change, or planned change, involves making carefully thought-out changes in anticipation of possible or expected problems or opportunities.
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process innovation
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A change in the way a product or service is conceived, manufactured, or disseminated. Innova- tion is about much more than new products. It is about reinventing business processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer needs.
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product innovation
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A change in the appearance or the performance of a product or a service or the creation of a new one. A process innovation is
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radical innovations
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The creation of products, services, or technologies that replace existing ones.
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radically innovative change
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Radically innovative change involves introducing a practice that is new to the industry. Because it is the most complex, costly, and uncertain, it will be felt as extremely threatening to managers’ confidence and employees’ job security and may well tear at the fabric of the organization.
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reactive change
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When managers talk about “putting out fires,” they are talking about reactive change, making changes in response to problems or opportunities as they arise. When you have to respond to surprises, there is usually less time to get all the information and resources you need to adequately manage the change, and serious mistakes may be made.
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resistance to change
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An emotional/behavioral response to real or imagined threats to an established work routine. Resistance can be as subtle as passive resignation and as overt as deliberate sabotage. Resistance can be considered to be the interaction of three causes:
(1) employee characteristics (2) change agent characteristics (3) the change agent–employee relationship. |
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seeds of innovation
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The starting point for organizational innovation. They consist of Hard Work in a Specific Direction, Hard Work with Direction Change, Curiosity, Wealth & Money, Necessity, Combination of Seeds.
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technology
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Technology is not just computer technology; it is any machine or process that enables an organization to gain a competitive advantage in changing materials used to produce a finished product.
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Green washing
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Making unsubstantiated or misleading claims about the environmental benefits of such products.
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Kurt Lewin
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Lewin developed a model with three stages—unfreezing , changing, and refreezing—to explain how to initiate, manage, and stabilize planned change.
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John Kotter's eight steps
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John Kotter believes that, to be successful, organizational change needs to follow eight steps to avoid the eight common errors senior management usually commits. These correspond with Lewin’s unfreezing-changing-refreezing steps.
Steps 1–4 represent unfreezing: establish a sense of urgency, create the guiding coalition, develop a vision and strategy, and communicate the change vision. Steps 5–7 represent the changing stage: empower broad-based action, generate short-term wins, and consolidate gains and produce more change. Step 8, corresponding to refreezing, is to anchor new approaches in the organization’s culture. The value of Kotter’s steps is that they provide specific recommendations about behaviors that managers need to exhibit to successfully lead organizational change. It is important to remember that Kotter’s research reveals that it is ineffective to skip steps and that successful organizational change is 70%–90% leadership and only 10%–30% management. Senior managers are thus advised to focus on leading rather than on managing change. |
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Among supertrends shaping the future of business:
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(1) The marketplace is becoming more segmented and moving toward more niche products.
(2) There are more competitors offering targeted products, requiring faster speed-to-market. (3) Some traditional companies may not survive radically innovative change. (4) China, India, and other offshore suppliers are changing the way we work. (5) Knowledge, not information, is becoming the new competitive advantage. |
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Two types of change are
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reactive and proactive. Reactive change is making changes in response to problems or opportunities as they arise. Proactive change involves making carefully thought- out changes in anticipation of possible or expected problems or opportunities.
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Forces for change may consist of forces outside the organization or inside it.
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(1) External forces consist of four types: demographic characteristics, market changes, technological advancements, and social and political pressures.
(2) Internal forces may be of two types: employee problems and managers’ behavior. |
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Four areas in which change is most apt to be needed are
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people, technology, structure, and strategy
(1) People changes may require changes in perceptions, attitudes, performance, or skills (2) Technology is any machine or process that enables an organization to gain a competitive advantage in changing materials used to produce a finished product (3) Changing structure may happen when one organization acquires another (4) Changing strategy may occur because of changes in the marketplace. |
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Organizational development (OD) is
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a set of techniques for implementing planned change to make people and organizations more effective. Often OD is put into practice by a change agent, a consultant with a background in behavioral sciences who can be a catalyst in helping organizations deal with old problems in new ways. OD can be used to manage conflict, revitalize organizations, and adapt to mergers.
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The OD process follows a three-step process:
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(1) Diagnosis attempts to ascertain the problem.
(2) Intervention is the attempt to correct the diagnosed problems. (3) Evaluation attempts to find out how well the intervention worked. |
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Four factors that make OD work successfully are
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(1) multiple interventions are used
(2) top managers give the OD program their support (3) goals are geared to both short and long-term results (4) OD is affected by culture. |
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Innovation is different from invention, which entails the creation of something new. It is also different from creativity, which is the process of developing something new or unique.
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Innovation is different from invention, which entails the creation of something new. It is also different from creativity, which is the process of developing something new or unique.
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Two myths about innovation are
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innovation happens in a “Eureka!” moment and innovation can be systematized.
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