Chapter 7: Culture and Change

1. Casey (1996) suggested that strong corporate cultures aim to create 'designer employees', who:

will appear fashionable and help to attract talent to the organization believe that their fulfilment comes from working for this particular organization will help to redesign their workplaces to make them more employee-friendly believe they are able to design their individual job to suit their skills

2. The layout of a meeting room, the formality of workers' clothes and the ease with which a manager can be contacted are all examples of which level of culture, according to Schein's (2004) model?

assumptions values beliefs artefacts

3. The Organizational Culture Profile Questionnaire measures several dimensions of culture. Which of these is NOT one of them?

norms around risk-taking and innovation how important attention to detail is how competitive or easy-going employees are how many subordinates a manager is responsible for

4. Motivational barriers to organizational change include:

feelings of obligation within established professional networks believing that there is a crisis that needs resolving immediately an unwillingness to lose all the work that has been done so far not seeing the problem that is causing the need for change

5. HR can enhance the effectiveness of organizational change by:

increasing employee engagement and commitment maintaining the status quo focusing on the individual employee's needs helping managers to dismiss anyone who disagrees with the change

6. Which of these HR practices is UNLIKELY to improve employee perceptions of change?

developing a learning environment and providing training using technology to develop connectivity and increase employee participation ensuring that day-to-day activities are unaffected by the change providing clear and open communication

7. Change initiatives often cause employees anxiety, particularly when they worry about job security. The best way to deal with this is to:

keep the details of any job losses confidential at the highest management levels for as long as possible so that people do not worry provide as much clarity and certainty as possible at every stage of the change and finding ways to frame the change positively have private meetings with employees who may lose their jobs but ask them to keep it confidential keep it simple and fair by making everyone reapply for their jobs

8. An organization wishes to change its pay system from one based on length of service to one based on performance. One of the managers has been at the organization for 20 years and knows he has the highest salary of his colleagues. He is likely to resist the change due to:

lack of trust low tolerance for change consolidation parochial self-interest

9. Lewin's model of change may not be appropriate for organizations in turbulent environments because:

it relies on group consensus it requires the organization to reinforce the new behaviours it is primarily used to enhance reputation rather than results it is too rigid for modern organizations

10. Which of the following is NOT one of Kotter's stages of planned change?

establish a sense of urgency generate short-term wins plan and prepare for change empower broad-based action

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