Maggie Becker, age 24, is a marketing manager for a small chain of shops in Halifax. Recently, Maggie’s wealthy uncle passed away and left her, his only niece, $100 000. Maggie considers her current salary adequate to meet her current living expenses, so she would like to invest the money so that when she buys a house she will have a nice nest egg on which to draw. One of Maggie’s neighbours, Brian, is a financial adviser. Brian told Maggie that the array of investment options is virtually endless. She asked him to present her with two of the best options, and this is what he offered her: 1. A very low-risk AAA bond fund. With this option, based on the information Brian provided, Maggie estimates that after five years she stands virtually zero chance of losing money, with an expected gain of approximately $7000. 2. A moderate-risk mutual fund. Based on the information Brian provided her, Maggie estimates that with this option she stands a 50 percent chance of making $40 000 but also a 50 percent chance of losing $20 000. Maggie prides herself on being rational and objective in her thinking. However, she is unsure of what to do in this case. Brian refuses to help her, telling her that she has already limited herself by asking for only two options. While driving to her parents’ house for the weekend, Maggie finds herself vacillating between the two options. Her older brother is also visiting the folks this weekend, so Maggie decides to gather her family around the table after dinner, lay out the two options, and go with their decision. “You know the old saying—two heads are better than one,” she says to herself, “so four heads should be even better.” 1. Has Maggie made a good decision about the way she is going to make the decision? 2. Which investment would you choose? Why? 3. Which investment do you think most people would choose? 4. Based on what you have learned about groupshift, which investment do you think Maggie’s family will choose?
> In the shelter that you built, you notice a spider. You heard from a fellow hiker that black widow spiders populate the area. How do you identify a black widow spider?
> Next, you decide to build a shelter for the evening. In selecting a site, what do you not have to consider?
> You are also very hungry, so you decide to eat what appear to be edible berries. When performing the Universal Edibility Test what should you do?
> You are very thirsty. You go to a nearby stream and collect some water in the small metal cup you have in your backpack. How long should you boil the water?
> It occurs to you that you can also use the fire as a distress signal. When signaling with fire, how do you form the international distress signal?
> The first thing you decide to do is to build a fire. However, you have no matches, so you use the bow-and-drill method. What is the bow-and-drill method?
> After walking for about an hour, you feel several spiders in your pants. You don’t feel any pain, but you realize some spider bites are painless. Which of these spider bites is painless?
> What is authentic leadership?
> What is the connection between sexual harassment and the abuse of power?
> What leadership roles are available to nonmanagers?
> What forces act as sources of resistance to change?
> How do charismatic and transformational leadership compare and contrast? Are they valid?
> What is Fiedler’s contingency model? Has it been supported in research?
> What are the central tenets and main limitations of behavioural theories of leadership?
> What are the conclusions of trait theories of leadership?
> What are the requirements of ethical leadership?
> What is servant leadership? How does it make a difference in organizations?
> How are leadership and management different from one another?
> Would you support a government program that gave companies incentives to send leaders undercover?
> What does it mean to be empowered? What factors lead to empowerment?
> Do you think leaders who work undercover are really changed as a result of their experiences?
> Do you think it is ethical for a leader to go undercover in his or her organization? Why or why not?
> How can managers create a culture for change?
> What is organizational culture, and what its common characteristics?
> What is a positive organizational culture?
> How can an ethical organizational culture be created?
> What are the liabilities of organizational culture?
> How is culture transmitted to employees?
> What factors create and sustain an organization’s culture?
> What are the functional effects of organizational culture on people and the organization?
> What are the nine most often identified power or influence tactics and their contingencies?
> What does this story tell you about the effect of top management on organizational culture?
> How can you determine when a line has been crossed between a fun and informal culture, and one that is offensive and inappropriate?
> Jay Scovie looked at his workspace. 95 He took pride in how nice and tidy he had made it look. As it turns out, his pride was misplaced. Sweeping visible clutter from your workspace by packing it into boxes hidden in a closet was not acceptable to his em
> What are the four main approaches to managing organizational change?
> What is corporate social responsibility?
> You are probably so used to seeing Starbucks coffee shops everywhere that you might not realize the company went from just 11 stores in the United States in 1987 to 18 000 locations in 60 countries and earning more than $3.6 billion in quarterly revenue
> One of the major functions of an organizational hierarchy is to increase standardization and control for top managers. 63 Using the chain of command, managers can direct the activities of subordinates toward a common purpose. If the right person with a c
> What are the four criteria used in making ethical decisions, and how do they differ?
> What is creativity, and what is the three stage model of creativity?
> How effective are interacting, brainstorming, and the nominal group technique?
> What is the role of dependence in power relationships?
> What are the strengths and weaknesses of group (versus individual) decision making?
> What are some common decision biases or errors people make?
> What is the rational model of decision making? How is it different from bounded rationality and intuition?
> You are negotiating a contract with a potentially very large customer whose representative has hinted that you could almost certainly be assured of getting his business if you gave him and his wife an all-expenses-paid cruise to the Caribbean. You know t
> Assume that you are the manager at a gaming company, and you are responsible for hiring a group to outsource the production of a highly anticipated new game. Because your company is a giant in the industry, numerous companies are trying to get the bid. O
> Your company policy on reimbursement for meals while travelling on company business is that you will be repaid for your out-of-pocket costs, which are not to exceed $50 a day. You don’t need receipts for these expenses—the company will take your word. Wh
> You have discovered that one of your closest friends at work has stolen a large sum of money from the company. Would you do nothing? Go directly to an executive to report the incident before talking about it with the offender? Confront the individual bef
> Apply the rational decision-making model to deciding where your group might eat dinner this evening. How closely were you able to follow the rational model in making this decision?
> The Triniton TV, transistor radio, Walkman, and VCR are the stuff of time capsules nowadays, but not long ago they were cutting-edge technology. 63 Japan was at the pinnacle of the home consumer electronics industry from the 1970s to the 1990s, introduci
> What are the five bases of power?
> What are the differences between distributive and integrative bargaining?
> How do individual differences influence negotiations?
> What are the conditions that lead to conflict?
> What are the three types of conflict and the three loci of conflict?
> What is conflict?
> What are the roles and functions of third-party negotiations?
> If the candidate were hired at the reduced rate she proposed, how might the situation play out over the next year when she gets to know the organization and pay standards better?
> Why is systematic study of value to OB?
> What are the major behavioural science disciplines that contribute to OB?
> What is the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace?
> What are the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model?
> If the human resources manager were to coach the applicant to request a higher salary, would the coaching work against the interest of the organization? Is it the responsibility of the human resources manager to put the organization’s financial interests
> What impact does emotional labor have on employees?
> What are the key traits in the Big Five personality model?
> What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and what does it measure?
> What is the evidence for and against the existence of emotional intelligence?
> What is the difference between emotions and moods? What are the basic motions and moods?
> How do the Big Five traits predict behavior at work?
> Why would managers create a boundaryless organization?
> What is personality? How do we typically measure it? What factors determine personality?
> What is attribution theory? What are the three determinants of attribution? What are the implications of attribution theory for explaining organizational behavior?
> What is perception, and what factors influence our perception?
> What is power?
> What are some strategies for emotion regulation and their likely effects?
> One of the members of your team continually arrives late for meetings and does not turn drafts of assignments in on time. Choose one of the available theories and indicate how the theory explains the member’s current behaviour and how the theory could be
> These scenarios are based on studies of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices that show consumers generally charge a kind of rent to companies that do not practice CSR. In other words, they generally expect a substantial discount in order to bu
> Agreeable people tend to be kinder and more accommodating in social situations, which you might think could add to their success in life. 184 However, one downside of agreeableness is potentially lower earnings. Recent research has shown the answer to th
> It was not long ago that products from Apple, perhaps the most recognizable name in electronics manufacturing around the world, were made entirely in the United States. 50 This is not so anymore. Now, almost all of the approximately 70 million iPhones, 3
> If you were either a board member or a parent, how would you know that the employees taking care of your children were unhappy with their jobs?
> In what ways does this case illustrate that knowledge of OB can be applied beyond your own workplace?
> What are the characteristics of a virtual organization?
> What might Rogers have done differently as president of the board?
> What might you do if you learned about their unhappiness?
> What standards can you use to determine whether a political action is ethical?
> What potential problems underlie cross-cultural communication? How can they be overcome?
> What are the differences between formal small-group networks and the grapevine?
> What are the differences among downward, upward, and lateral communication?
> Do you think either party behaved unethically in this case?
> What are some common barriers to effective communication?
> How does channel richness underlie the choice of communication?
> What are the key parts of the communication process, and how do you distinguish formal from informal communication?
> What are the three key elements of motivation?
> What is the essence of what we know about motivating employees?
> What are some of the ethical issues with motivation theories?
> How do the predictions of self-determination theory apply to intrinsic and extrinsic rewards?
> How is organizational justice a refinement of equity theory?
> Why do equity and fairness matter in the workplace?
> What are the key principles of goal-setting theory, self-efficacy theory, and reinforcement theory?
