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BEST OF 2002-2003 Guiding Light lights the hearts of hopeful students Cavalier smashed in Schenley Quad Air Force ROTC simulates POW camp Wait is over for Guiding Light hopefuls! Pitt students pack Destinta Theatre to watch 'The Passion of the Christ.' Controversial movie receives David Limbaugh's commentary! PHOTOGALLERYPhotogallery of the funeral procession ceremony for Reagan to the Capitol HOTPRESSIONSCommandments controversy is so commie and not constitutional SPECIAL FEATURE FEATURE Pitt Dance Team goldens Heinz Field Pitt Dance Team rainbow Heinz Field IMPRESSIONSA patriotic war is just to protect people (1)It is a matter of principle and ethicsPrivacy or perversion in the bedroom Israel, Israel, what have you done for Palestine! Pitt should be proud denying same-sex benefits Keep the Reagan legacy alive by voting for President Bush this November
Homosexuals do not need a special bill!
Wake up media and uncover the terrorists! Mount Rushmore needs to be revisted to include Ronald Reagan Clinton wants Kerry who promotes immoral issues, do you? 9-11 report should not have been bipartisan! SPORTS Women's softball team saw Rockets falling. Hungry Panthers win Pittsburgh Classic EXPRESSIONSConstitution supports God and patriotism One Numb-er Vote for the perfect candidate 24-7! What if Jesus talked football? Pitt Dance Team's colors of black, red, green, and white give significance to the Christmas season! Nativity reminds tourists of Christ's birth Both evolutionism and creationism are based on faith! Gong Show winner recited about 'If cocaine were an alien, what it does not want you to know!' Gospel revealed through semantics and word play Only the right antidote can protect your life God's love is alphabetically revealed in random languages |
Human Resource Management Final Exam Sample Questions II: Answer Key!
Ramesh C. Reddy Editors Note: I do not know if the
real exam will be easier than the one I prepared to help me study or if
it will be harder. I did write 30 multiple choice questions and 15 fill
in the blanks based on the notes and textbook for the 10 chapters. These
questions do not cover all the material in the notes or textbook but are
a good way to study. #1: Ch 9: This phase helps employees to choose a career that is realistically obtainable and a good fit and to determine the weaknesses they need to overcome to achieve their career goals.
#2: Ch 9: The major tools used for self-assessment in the assessment phase are careerworkbooks and career planning workshops.
#3: Ch 9: Self-assessment usually involves doing
#4: Ch 9: Some of the tools used by organizations for career development are
#5: Ch 9: Promotability Forecasts is a career development activity in which managers make decisions regarding the advancement potential of subordinates.
#6: Ch 9: Succession Planning is a career development activity that focuses on preparing people to fill executive positions.
#7: Ch 9: The two major approaches to career direction are individual career counseling and various information services.
#8: Ch 9: During the Direction phase of career development, the most commonly provided information services are
#9: Ch 9 Job-posting system is a system in which an organization announces job openings to all employees on a bulletin board, in a company newsletter, or through a phone recording or computer system.
#10: Ch 9 Skills inventory is a company-maintained record of employees’ abilities, skills, knowledge, and education.
#11: Ch 9 Career Path provides a chart showing the possible directions and career opportunities available in an organization; it presents the steps in a possible career and a plausible timetable for accomplishing them.
#12: Ch 9 Career Resource Center is a collection of career development materials such as workbooks, tapes, and texts.
#13: Ch 9 This phase of career development involves determining the type of career that employees want and the steps they must take to realize their career goals.
#14: Ch 9 The development phase of career development involves taking actions to create and increase skills to prepare for future job opportunities and is meant to foster this growth and self-improvement.
#15: Ch 9 During the development phase of career development, the most common development programs offered by organizations are
#16: Ch 9 Mentoring is a developmentally oriented relationship between senior and junior colleagues or peers that involves advising, role modeling, sharing contacts, and giving general support.
#17: Ch 9 Employee coaching consists of ongoing, sometimes spontaneous, meetings between managers and their employees to discuss the employee’s career goals and development.
#18: Ch 9 Job rotation involves assigning employees to various jobs so that they acquire a wider base of skills.
#19: Ch 9 Tuition Assistance Programs support their employees’ education and development.
#20: Ch 7 Identification means determining what areas of work the manager should be examining when measuring performance.
#21: Ch 7 Measurement, the centerpiece of the appraisal system, entails making managerial judgments of how “good” or “bad” employee performance was.
#22: Ch 7 Management is the overriding goal of any appraisal system where appraisal takes a future-oriented view of what workers can do to achieve the potential in the organization.
#23: Ch 7 Organizations usually conduct appraisals for administrative and developmental purposes.
#24: Ch 7 Appraisal system based on relative judgment ask supervisors to compare an employee’s performance to the performance of other employees doing the same job.
#25: Ch 7 Appraisal system based on absolute judgment formats ask supervisors to make judgments about an employee’s performance based solely on performance standards.
#26: Ch 7 Trait appraisal instrument is an appraisal tool that asks a supervisor to make judgments about worker characteristics that tend to be consistent and enduring.
#27: Ch 7 Behavioral appraisal instrument is an appraisal tool that asks managers to assess a worker’s behaviors.
#28: Ch 7 Outcome appraisal instruments is an appraisal tool that asks managers to assess the results achieved by workers.
#29: Ch 7 Management by Objectives is a goal-directed approach to performance appraisal in which workers and their supervisors set goals together for the upcoming evaluation period.
#30: Ch 7 One of the most prominent rater errors occur when the tendency is to rate similarly across dimensions is called halo error.
#31: Ch 7 Restriction of range error occurs when a manager restricts all of his or her ratings to a small portion of the rating scale.
#32: Ch 7 Restricting ratings to the high portion of the scale are called leniency errors.
#33: Ch 7 Restricting ratings to the middle points of the scale are called central tendency errors.
#34: Ch 7 Using only the low portion of the rating scale is called severity errors.
#35: Ch 7 Negative bias can affect effective performance measurement. In the case Segar v. Civiletti , it was established that African American agents were systematically rated lower than white agents and thus, were less likely to receive promotions and choice job assignments.
#36: Ch 7 Comparability refers to the degree to which the performance ratings given by supervisors in an organization are similar.
#37: Ch 7 Frame of Reference Training is a type of training that presents supervisors with fictitious examples of worker performance , asks the supervisors to evaluate the workers in the examples, and then tells them what their ratings should have been.
#38: Ch 7 The goal of appraisal from a rational perspective is accuracy.
#39: Ch 7 The goal of appraisal from a political perspective is utility.
#40: Ch 7 Adverse Impact may occur in performance evaluation when members of one group are promoted at a higher rate than members of another group based on their appraisals.
#41: Ch 7 The most significant court test of discrimination in performance appraisal is Brito v. Zia Company where the U.S. Supreme Court determined that appraisal is legally a test and must therefore meet all the legal requirements regarding tests in organizations.
#42: Ch 7 Peer Review is a performance appraisal system is which workers at the same level of the organization rate one another.
#43: Ch 7 Self-review is a performance appraisal system in which workers rate themselves.
#44: Ch 7 Subordinate Review is a performance appraisal system in which workers review their supervisors.
#45: Ch 7 The combination of peer, subordinate, and self-review is called 360 degree feedback.
#46: Ch 7 Performance appraisals are used administratively whenever they are the basis for a decision about the employee’s work conditions, including promotions, termination, and rewards.
#47: Ch 7 Developmental uses of performance appraisals are geared toward improving employees’ performance and strengthening their job skills which include counseling employees on effective work behaviors and sending them for training.
#48: Ch 7 What was accomplished by the employee in the job…results, outputs, contribution, etc deal with goals and objective of the performance dimension.
#49: Ch 7 How did the employee achieve the results…what behaviors did the employee demonstrate and how were key knowledge and skills used deal with competencies of the performance dimension.
#50: Ch 7 Four traits that are typically found on trait-based rating scales are decisiveness, reliability, energy, and loyalty.
#51: Ch 7 Assessment of traits focuses on the person rather than the performance which can make employees defensive.
#52: Ch 7 The best known behavioral appraisal instrument is the Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale developed with the critical incident technique.
#53: Ch 7 Effectively managing performance takes four stages: Communicate, Evaluate, Develop, and Implement & Monitor.
#1: Ch 10 The first and largest element of total compensation is the base compensation, the fixed pay an employee receives on a regular basis, either in the form of a salary or an hourly wage.
#2: Ch 10 The perceived fairness of the pay structure within a firm is called internal equity.
#3: Ch 10 The perceived fairness in pay relative to what other employers are paying for the same type of labor is called external equity.
#4: Ch 10 The distributive justice model of pay equity holds that employees exchange their contributions or input to the firm (skills, effort, and time) for a set of outcomes and pay is one of the most important of these outcomes. Employees will think they are fairly paid when the ratio of their inputs and outputs is equivalent to that of other employees whose job demands are similar to their own.
#5: Ch 10 According to the labor market model of pay equity, the wage rate for any given occupation is set at the point where the supply of labor equals the demand for labor in the marketplace. The less employers are willing to pay (low demand for labor) and the lower the pay workers are willing to accept for a given job (high supply of labor), the lower the wage rate for the job.
#6: Ch 10 Compensation paid monthly, weekly, or through wages consistently is a fixed base of pay.
#7: Ch 10 Compensation paid depending on such preestablished criteria as performance and company profits is called variable base of pay.
#8: Ch 10 Fixed pay is the rule in the majority of U.S organizations largely because it reduces the risk to both employer and employee.
#9: Ch 10 The most extreme forms of performance-contingent compensation are traditional piece-rate plans (pay based on units produced) and sales commission.
#10: Ch 10 Membership-contingent compensation provide the same or similar wage to every employee in a given job, as long as the employee achieves at least satisfactory performance for logging in a prescribed number of hours of work per week. Salary increases by moving up in the organization.
#11: Ch 10 Under the job system, the job becomes the unit of analysis for determining base compensation, not the individuals performing that job.
#12: Ch 10 Knowledge-based pay or skill-based pay is a pay system in which employees are paid on the basis of the jobs they can do or talents they have that can be successfully applied to a variety of tasks and situations.
#13: Ch 10 Egalitarian pay system is a pay plan in which most employees are part of the same compensation system.
#14: Ch 10 Elitist pay system is a pay plan in which different compensation systems are established for employees or groups at different organizational levels.
#15: Ch 10 A Wage and Salary Program is one of the fundamental tools in the management of total compensation.
#16: Ch 10 Job-based approaches include the most traditional and widely used types of compensation programs.
#17: Ch 10 Pay grades are groups of jobs that are paid within the same pay range established for the grade at which their job is classified.
#18: Ch 10 The three key components of developing job based compensation plans are achieving internal equity, achieving external equity, and achieving individual equity.
#19: Ch 10 Job analysis is the gathering and organization of information concerning the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of specific jobs.
#20: Ch 10 The ultimate goal of job evaluation is to achieve internal equity in the pay structure.
#21: Ch 10 The second step in the job evaluation process is having a written document that identifies, defines, and describes each job in terms of its duties, responsibilities, working conditions, and specifications called a job description.
#22: Ch 10 The third step in the job evaluation process is determining job specifications which consist of the worker characteristics that an employee must have to perform the job successfully.
#23: Ch 10 The fourth step in the job evaluation process is to rate worth of all jobs using a predetermined system.
#24: Ch 10 The point scale system uses compensable factors which are work, or job-related factors that an organization considers important in assessing the relative value of jobs…and also can be shown to correlate with other job value measures (e.g., market pay levels, etc.) These factors typically derive from the following areas skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions
#25: Ch 10 Two point factor systems that are almost universally accepted in job evaluation for internal equity are the Hay Guide Chart Profile Method and Management Association of America National Position Evaluation Plan.
#26: Ch 10 The Hay Method uses three compensable factors to evaluate jobs: know-how, problem solving, and accountability.
#27: Ch 10 The MAA plan uses factors divided into four broad categories based on skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.
#28: Ch 10 The fifth step in the job evaluation process for internal equity is to create a job hierarchy, a listing of jobs in order of their importance to the organization, from highest to lowest.
#29: Ch 10 The sixth step in the job evaluation process for internal equity is to classify jobs by pay grade levels.
#30: Ch 10 In a ranking system, a hierarchy of job descriptions are put from highest to lowest based on an overall judgment of value.
#31: Ch 10 In a classification system, job descriptions are sorted into grades without using a point system as in the federal civil service job classification system.
#32: Ch 10 Factor comparison is a job evaluation system that is a complex and seldom-used variation of the point and ranking systems.
#33: Ch 10 Policy capturing is a job evaluation system in which mathematical analysis is used to estimate the relative value of each job based on the firm’s existing practices.
#34: Ch 10 Achieving External Equity for pay is through market surveys.
#35: Ch 10 Using market surveys to link job-evaluation results to external wage/salary data generally involves two steps which are benchmarking and establishing a pay policy.
#36: Ch 10 Benchmark or key jobs, a job that is similar or comparable in content across firms.
#37: Ch 10 Pay policy is a firm’s decision to pay above, below, or at the market rate for its jobs.
#38: Ch 10 Companies frequently use previous experience, seniority, and performance appraisal ratings to determine how much an employee is to be paid within the stipulated range for his or her job. The objective of this last step is to achieve individual equity, the perceived fairness of individual pay decisions.
#39: Ch 10 The practice of replacing narrowly defined job descriptions with broader categories (bands) of related jobs is known as job banding.
#40: Ch 10 Skill-based pay technique establishes employee pay levels based upon the skills acquired, certified and demonstrated by an employee and
#41: Ch 10 The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 defines two categories of employees: exempt and non-exempt employees.
#42: Ch 10 Non-exempt employees are those that have to be paid overtime under the FLSA.
#43: Ch 10 Exempt employees are those that do not have to be paid overtime and are not covered under the FLSA.
#44: Ch 10 The Equal Pay Act of 1963 includes four exceptions that allow employers to pay one sex more than the other for more seniority, better job performance, greater quantity or quality of production, and working night shift.
#1: Ch 11 “Pay for Performance” also called incentive systems derives from a philosophy that organizational and employee performance is a unifying focal point for management decision making and action, and from a compensation strategy that seeks to correlate pay/rewards directly with key performance outcomes:
#2: Ch 11 Individual-based pay plans are the most widely used pay-for-performance plans in industry.
#3: Ch 11 Of the individual-based plans commonly used, merit pay is by far the most popular and its use is almost universal and consists of an increase in base pay normally given once a year.
#4: Ch 11 A financial incentive known as bonus program or lump-sum payment is given on a one-time basis and does not raise the employee’s base pay permanently.
#5: Ch 11 Awards are a one-time reward usually given in the form of a tangible prize and occur at the micro level of pay-for-performance.
#6: Ch 11 Piece-rate system is a compensation system in which employees are paid per unit produced.
#7: Ch 11 A theory of behavior holding that people tend to do those things that are rewarded is called expectancy theory.
#8: Ch 11 Team-based pay plans reward all team members equally based on group outcomes.
#9: Ch 11 Plantwide pay-for performance plans reward all workers in a plant or business unit based on the performance of the entire plant or unit.
#10: Ch 11 Gainsharing is a plantwide pay-for-performance plan in which a portion of the company’s cost savings is returned to workers, usually in the form of a lump-sum bonus.
#11: Ch 11 The Scanlon Plan, is a type of gainsharing that relies on committees of employees, union leaders, and top managers to generate and evaluate cost-savings ideas. If actual labor costs are lower than expected labor costs over an agreed-on period the difference is shared between the workers who usually receive 75 percent of the savings and the firm usually receives 25 percent of the savings.
#12: Ch 11 The Rucker Plan uses worker-management committees to solicit and screen ideas.
#13: Ch 11 Improshare also known as Improved Productivity through Sharing is a type of gainsharing that identifies the expected number of hours required to produce an acceptable level of output. Any savings arising from production of this agreed-on output in fewer than the expected hours are shared between the firm and the workers.
#14: Ch 11 The most macro type of incentive programs, corporate wide pay-for-performance plans, reward employees based on the entire corporation’s performance.
#15: Ch 11 Profit sharing is a corporatewide pay-for-performance plan that uses a formula to allocate a portion of declared profits to employees. Typically, profit distributions under a profit-sharing plan are used to fund employees’ retirement plans.
#16: Ch 11 In a profit sharing plan
#17: Ch 11 ESOP is a corporatewide pay-for-performance plan that rewards employees with company stocks, either as an outright grant or at a favorable price that may be below market value.
#18: Ch 11 Employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is
#19: Ch 11 Individual employees or work teams differ in how much they contribute to the firm—not only in what they do but also in how well they do it is an assumption of the pay-for-performance system.
#20: Ch 11 The firm’s overall performance depends to a large degree on the performance of individuals and groups within the firm is an assumption of the pay-for-performance system.
#21: Ch 11 To attract, retain, and motivate high performers and to be fair to all employees, a company needs to reward employees on the basis of their relative performance is an assumption of the pay-for-performance system.
#22: Ch 11 Employees often do not believe that pay-for-performance programs are fair or that they truly reward performance, a phenomenon called the credibility gap.
#23: Ch 11 A psychological contract is a set of expectations based on prior experience, and it is very resistant to change as it deals with equity and expectancy.
#24: Ch 11 All of the following are challenges to pay-for-performance systems: “You get what you pay for” syndrome, negative impacts on cooperation and teamwork, lack of control – positive and negative impacts, difficulty in measuring performance, psychological contracts – equity and expectancy perceptions, credibility gap, job stress and dissatisfaction, and reduction of intrinsic drives and motivations
#24: Ch 11 “Pay for Performance” derives from a philosophy that organizational and employee performance is a unifying focal point for management decision making and action, and from a compensation strategy that seeks to correlate pay/rewards directly with key performance outcomes.
#1: Ch 12 Benefits that are required by law to provide to all employees are called
#2: Ch 12 All of the following are statutory benefits except
#3: Ch 12 Established by this Act, these benefits known as retirement income, disability income, health benefits, and survivor benefits are the economic “safety net” for American workers:
#4: Ch 12 For companies with this many or more, employees, the Family and Medical Leave Act requires that qualified employees (one yr. of service and not highly compensated) be given up to12 weeks of unpaid leave for birth or adoption of a child, care of a sick spouse, child, or parent, and extended care for the health of an employee whose illness may interfere with job performance
#5: Ch 12 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) protects an employee’s to transfer between medical plans without a gap in coverage due to a pre-existing condition provided he/she has been covered by the previous plan for one month, or more…at 12 months there is guaranteed full coverage.
#6: Ch 12 Employee benefits used to be referred to as “fringe”…they are now a highly valued component of a total compensation program.
#7: Ch 12 Employee benefits or indirect compensation are group membership rewards that provide security for employees and their family members.
#8: Ch 12 The mix of individual compensation and benefit plans can vary significantly for different employee groups within the same organization.
#9: Ch 12 Employee benefits can be organized into six categories! They are statutory benefits, welfare benefits, paid time off, health benefits, retirement benefits, and employee services.
#10: Ch 12 Within the organization’s total compensation strategy, its approach to planning for and designing an employee benefits approach must meet certain key requirements.
#11: Ch 12 To design an effective benefits package, a company needs to align its benefits strategy with its overall compensation strategy.
#12: Ch 12 The benefits strategy requires making choices in three areas: benefits mix, benefits amount, and flexibility of benefits.
#13: Ch 12 Benefits objectives deal with competitiveness, content, and cost.
#14: Ch 12 Benefits mix is the complete package of benefits that a company offers its employees.
#15: Ch 12 There are at least three issues that should be considered when making decisions about the benefits mix: the total compensation strategy, organizational objectives, and the characteristics of the workforce.
#16: Ch 12 The benefits amount choice governs the percentage of the total compensation package that will be allocated to benefits compared to the other components of the package such as base salary and pay incentives.
#17: Ch 12 The flexibility of benefits choice concerns the degree of freedom employees have to tailor the benefits package to their needs.
#18: Ch 12 Social Security provides
#19: Ch 12 Social Security provides
#20: Ch 12 Social Security provides
#21: Ch 12 Social Security provides
#22: Ch 12 Workers’ Compensation Benefits provide medical care, income continuation, and rehabilitation coverage for employees who are injured at work or who sustain a work-related illness. Benefits are also provided to survivors of work-related death.
#23: Ch 12 Programs are administered by state governments and funded by payroll taxes – going into a state fund or to an insurance carrier based upon: risk assessment, organization’s experience rating, and state prescribed benefit levels
#24: Ch 12 Unemployment benefits clearly help the unemployed through a transition process, but are also intended to help stabilize the economy by supporting sustained consumption.
#25: Ch 12 Originally authorized by the Social Security Act of 1935, the unemployment insurance program of federal and state benefits typically covers only 50% or less of earnings prior to unemployment.
#26: Ch 12 To qualify for unemployment benefits three criteria must be met; employee must have lost job involuntarily; be available for and seeking work, and must have worked for four quarters out of the last five prior to displacement.
#27: Ch 12 An employee is disqualified for unemployment insurance if they quit voluntarily, they are discharged for gross misconduct, refuses an offer of suitable work, participates in a strike, or is self-employed.
#28: Ch 12 Unemployment benefits last for 26 weeks although in states with persistently high unemployment rates, extensions of benefits in 13-weeks may be given.
#29: Ch 12 Supplemental Unemployment Benefits are given by a company to laid-off employees over and above state unemployment benefits.
#30: Ch 12 After retiring, people have three main sources of income: Social Security, personal savings, and retirement benefits known as the three-legged stool of income.
#31: Ch 12 Qualified retirement benefit plans must meet strict rules regarding eligibility, non-discrimination, vesting and funding in order to preserve favorable tax treatment.
#32: Ch 12 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) is the federal legislation passed in 1974 to protect employees’ retirement benefits from the potential mismanagement by retirement plan administrators.
#33: Ch 12 ERISA has strict rules for retirement plans such as
#34: Ch 12 Portable benefits are employee benefits, usually retirement funds, that stay with the employee as he or she moves from one company to another.
#35: Ch 12 Pension Benefit Corporation (PBGC) is the government agency that provides plan termination insurance to employers with defined retirement programs.
#36: Ch 12 Pension plans are the traditional retirement benefit program design and were the preferred model for most large corporations in the U.S.
#37: Ch 12 Defined Benefit Plan is commitment to pay a fixed (defined) benefit amount of retirement income based on a formula that considers the employee’s years of service and compensation
#38: Ch 12 Defined Benefit Plan is favored by large company, benefits long employee service (30-35 yrs), actuarially determined contributions (funding), and sponsor bears investment/funding risk.
#39: Ch 12 In Defined Contribution Plans employer has commitment to make contributions to individual employee accounts that will be invested to fund future retirement benefits. The plan may also accept employee contributions on a pre-tax basis.
#40: Ch 12 In a Defined Contribution Plan,
#41: Ch 12 Pay-for-time-not-worked is a very expensive benefit for all organizations…both in real terms since it is paid at the employee’s current pay rate and in the opportunity costs associated with not having the employee productively working and producing results.
#42: Ch 12 Pay-for-time not worked can be holiday pay, sick pay, and vacation pay.
#43: Ch 12 Many organizations today are allocating a Paid Time Off bank to employees that accumulates personal days, sick leave and vacation into one pool and gives employees the ability to use the time flexibly (with notification), as needed.
#44: Ch 12 The three most popular flexible benefit plans are modular plans, core-plus options plans, and flexible spending accounts.
#45: Ch 12 Modular plans consist of a series of different bundles of benefits or different levels of benefits coverage designed for different employee groups.
#46: Ch 12 Core-plus options plan consist of a core of essential benefits and a wide array of other benefits options that employees can add to the core.
#47: Ch 12 Flexible spending accounts are individual employee accounts funded by the employer, the employee (pretax dollars), or both.
#1: Ch 13 Unlike many other HRM functional areas (e.g., recruiting, training, compensation etc.), employee relations is the result from an ongoing relationship between management and employees across the full range of HRM process areas.
#2: Ch 13 In employee relations, fairness, equity, rights, dignity and respect are very important.
#3: Ch 13 Effective, two-way communications is critical to establishing and sustaining a healthy employee relations environment. This ongoing communications process includes both facts and feelings as the content of the communications.
#4: Ch 13 Facts are pieces of information that can be objectively measured or described.
#5: Ch 13 Feelings are employees’ emotional responses to the decisions made or actions taken by managers or other employees.
#6: Ch 13 A successful employee relations effort requires both upward and downward communications – letting management and employees be heard.
#7: Ch 13 Downward communication is communication that allows managers to implement their decisions and to influence employees lower in the organizational hierarchy.
#8: Ch 13 Upward communication is communication that allows employees at lower levels to communicate their ideas and feelings to higher-level-decision makers.
#9: Ch 13 Information Dissemination is getting critical information into the hands of stakeholders and decision-makers throughout the organization.
#10: Ch13 Employee Feedback is giving all employees an opportunity and a forum(s) for having a voice in decision-making, conveying their feelings, and expressing the need for due process.
#11: Ch 13 Employee Assistance Programs is a company sponsored program that helps individual employees deal with problems that may interfere with performance on the job
#12: Ch 13 Nepotism is the practice of favoring relatives over others in the workplace.
#13: Ch 13 Information Dissemination can be augmented by informal communications that encourages timely feedback and dialogue.
#14: Ch 13 Informal communications also called “the grapevine” has to do with information exchanges without a planned agenda that occur informally among employees.
#15: Ch 13 Employee Feedback Program is a program designed to improve management-employee relations by giving employees a voice in decision making and policy formulation and making sure employees receive due process on any complaints they lodge against managers.
#16: Ch 13 Employee Attitude Surveys sometimes referred to as “opinion surveys” provide a structured platform for large groups of employees to provide targeted input on a variety of topics relevant to them. Provides the basis for responsive management action.
#17: Ch 13 Appeals Procedures are structured processes that allow an employee to voice disagreement over a management decision or action and to work with management toward resolution
#18: Ch 13 The most informal appeals procedure is the open-door program where all employees have direct access to any manager or executive in the organization.
#19: Ch 13 A informal appeals procedure that prescribes specific steps for the employee to take in bringing a work problem to managements attention is a speak-up program.
#20: Ch 13 A formal appeals procedure used in nonunion firms called the grievance panels is composed of the complaining employee’s peers and managers other than the employee’s direct manager. The grievance panel conducts an investigation into the grievance brought before it.
#21: Ch 13 Union grievance procedure is a formal appeals procedure used by all employees working under a union contract that entails multiple steps leading to a final and binding decision made by a neutral decision maker called an arbitrator.
#1: Ch 14 Underpinning the employee relations challenge are the fundamental rights of employees…the ability to engage in protected conduct that is intended to be free from interference.
#2: Ch 14 Statutory rights are protection provided by laws (e.g., Civil Rights Act, OSHA, etc.)
#3: Ch 14 Contractual rights protections and privileges negotiated for, and provided by, a legal and binding contract (e.g., union contract, employment contract, etc.)
Right to ethical treatment the psychological contract between employers and employees
Limited right of privacy protects against unreasonable and unwarranted intrusion into personal affairs
Limited right to free speech protects reasonable self-expressions
#7: Ch 14
#8: Ch 14 Wrongful discharge is termination of an employee for reasons that are either illegal or inappropriate.
#9: Ch 14 Property laws, common laws and the values of a capitalistic society are the framework for corporate shareholders’ decisions regarding how to run a company. They delegate these residual rights to management in order to manage the workforce, hire, promote and assign, fire, discipline, and discharge.
#10: Ch 14 Management rights are often termed residual rights because they pertain to the remaining rights that are not affected by contracts or laws that represent the interests of employees or other parties.
#11: Ch 14 One of the most important residual rights of management is employment at will.
#12: Ch 14 Public policy exceptions are a legal defense for being discharged by employers who use employment at will as recourse! Examples are filing a legitimate workers’ compensation claim, exercising a legal duty such as jury duty, refusing to violate a professional code of ethics, and refusing to lobby for a political candidate favored by the employer.
#13: Ch 14 An implied contract may exist when an employer makes oral or written promises of job security.
#14: Ch 14 The primary objective of employee discipline is to change employee behavior to a desired state.
#15: Ch 14 Five steps for effective employee disciplinary actions:
Make it quick (“hot stove”) and be consistent…
#16: Ch 14 Hot-stove rule is a model of disciplinary action that states discipline should be immediate, provide ample warning, and be consistently applied to all.
#17: Ch 14 Progressive Discipline is a series of management interventions that give employees multiple opportunities to correct undesirable behavior.
#18: Ch 14 In progressive discipline, management interventions start with verbal warning and proceed to the next steps with increasing severity of discipline: written warning, suspension, and discharge.
#19: Ch 14 Positive discipline is a discipline procedure that encourages employees to monitor their own behaviors and assume responsibility for their actions.
#20: Ch 14 In positive discipline, discipline procedure starts with an initial counseling session, follow-up session, final warning, and discharge.
#21: Ch 14 Being able to establish that an employee was discharged for “just cause” as a defense against a wrongful discharge claim requires affirmative answers to seven key questions.
#1: Ch 15 The presence of union representation adds a level of complexity to the fundamental relationship between management and employees across the full range of HRM process areas…but it doesn’t change the underlying objective.
#2: Ch 15 Traditionally, employees have sought union representation to secure and protect their rights when they didn’t believe they could do it themselves. That perception has been changing…
#3: Ch 15 Typically, unions negotiate terms and conditions for represented employees in the areas of wages, hours, and employment conditions.
#4: Ch 15 The three key factors that characterize labor relations in the United States are business unionism, unions structured by type of job, and a focus on collective bargaining.
#5: Ch 15 U.S unions put a high priority on improving the economic welfare of their members.
#6: Ch 15 Business unionism is unionism that focuses on “bread-and-butter” issues such as wages, benefits, and job security so that workers economic well-being is improved.
#7: Ch 15 The key concerns of U.S unions are shop-floor issues that relate directly to workers.
#8: Ch 15 Labor relations in the U.S focus on collective bargaining where unions and management have established working relationships through negotiation
#9: Ch 15 Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act) passed in 1935 to protect employees’ rights to form and join unions and to engage in collective bargaining, picketing and strikes.
#10: Ch 15 It also empowered the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to remedy five illegal labor practices: - interfering with the right to form a union and to bargain - interfering with the administration and financing of a union - discriminating against employees who belong to unions - discriminating against employees who have filed charges - refusing to bargain collectively in good faith
#11: Ch 15 Taft-Hartley Act passed in 1947 to re-balance the power between labor and management and to ensure a healthy, sustainable labor-management environment. The Act empowered the NLRB to remedy six unfair union labor practices: - coercion of represented employees - attempting to cause an employer to discriminate against an unrepresented employee - refusing to bargain in good faith - requiring members to boycott against another company called secondary boycott. - charging excessive union member dues under a union shop clause - featherbedding against an employer. - #12: Ch 15 A union shop clause is a union arrangement that requires new employees to join the union 30 to 60 days after their date of hire.
#13: Ch 15 Featherbedding is causing an employer to pay for services that are not performed.
#14: Ch 15 Right-to-work law is a state law that makes it illegal within that state for a union to include a union shop clause in its contract.
#15: Ch 15 A less restrictive arrangement called the agency shop clause requires employees to pay a union service fee but does not require them to join the union.
#16: Ch 15 Currently, 21 states have right-to-work laws, which make it more difficult to organize and sustain unions in those states. Most of these states are located in the southern or western United States.
#17: Ch 15 The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 made closed shops, which require an employee to be a union member as a condition of being hired, illegal.
#18: Ch 15 The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 allowed employees to get rid of a union they no longer want through a decertification election.
#19: Ch 15 The Taft-Hartley Act created a new agency, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to help mediate labor disputes so that economic disruptions due to strikes and other labor disturbances would be fewer and shorter.
#20: Ch 15 Landrum-Griffin Act passed in 1959 to protect union members from corrupt union leadership and mismanagement. - unions must have a members’ bill of rights - unions must have a constitution - unions must supply financial reports to the DOL - union elections will be regulated - union leaders are fiduciaries and are accountable
#21: Ch 15 German law requires that all corporations involve workers in decisions at both the plant and the corporate level. This system is sometimes called industrial democracy.
#22: Ch 15 At the plant level, workers are represented in work councils, a committee composed of both worker representatives and managers who have responsibility for governing the workplace.
#23: Ch 15 At the corporate level, workers are represented by codetermination being on a corporation’s board of directors.
#24: Ch 15 The country of Japan employs a high degree of cooperation between labor and management and the use of enterprise unions that represent the employees of only one large corporation.
#25: Ch 15 A labor relations strategy of union acceptance occurs when
#26: Ch 15 Types of Labor-Management relations are open conflict, armed truce, working harmony, and labor-management cooperation.
#27: Ch 15 A labor relations strategy of union avoidance occurs when
- Union Substitution - Union Suppression
#28: Ch 15 Union substitution is a union avoidance strategy in which management becomes so responsive to employees’ needs that it removes the incentives for unionization.
#29: Ch 15 Some of the policies followed by those taking the union avoidance approach are job security policies (protect jobs of full-time workers), promoting from within, profit-sharing and employee stock ownership plans, employee input, open-door policies and grievance procedures.
#30: Ch 15 Union suppression is a union avoidance strategy in which management uses hardball tactics to prevent a union from organizing its workers or to get rid of a union.
#31: Ch 15 The three phases of labor relations process are union organizing, collective bargaining, and contract administration.
#32: Ch 15 The key issues that managers confront in a union organizing campaign are union solicitation, preelection conduct, and the certification election.
#33: Ch 15 For union solicitation to be successful, at least 30% of the employees must sign an authorization card indicating they want to be represented by a union.
#34: Ch 15 Four of the most important issues related to collective bargaining are bargaining behavior, bargaining power, bargaining topics, and impasses in bargaining.
#35: Ch 15 Bargaining behavior must be in good-faith. The parties are showing good faith in collective bargaining when: Both parties willing to meet and confer at reasonable time and place. Both parties willing to negotiate over mandatory bargaining topics. Both parties sign a written contract that binds them to it. Both parties give the other a 60-day notice of termination or modification of labor agreement.
#36: Ch 15 Refusing to bargain in good faith can result in an NLRB cease-and-desist order that is enforced in the courts.
#37: Ch 15 Bargaining power is one party’s ability to get the other party to agree to its terms.
#38: Ch 15 Bargaining power can be either distributive bargaining or integrative bargaining.
#39: Ch 15 Distributive bargaining is bargaining that focuses on convincing the other party that the cost of disagreeing with the proposed terms would be very high.
#40: Ch 15 Integrative bargaining is bargaining that focuses on convincing the other party that the benefits of agreeing with the proposed terms would be very high.
#41: Ch 15 Bargaining topics can be broken down into three categories which are mandatory, permissive, and illegal.
#42: Ch 15 Mandatory bargaining topics are wages, hours, and employment conditions.
#43: Ch 15 Permissive bargaining topics may be discussed during collective bargaining if both parties agree to do so, but neither party is obligated to bargain on these topics such as provisions for union members to serve on company’s board of directors or collect benefits for retired union members.
#44: Ch 15 Illegal bargaining topics may not be discussed in collective bargaining such as closed shop agreements, featherbedding, and discriminatory practices.
#45: Ch 15 Economic strike is a strike that takes place when an agreement is not reached during collective bargaining.
#46: Ch 15 Wildcat strike is a spontaneous work stoppage that happens under a valid contract and is usually not supported by union leadership; occurs when workers are angry about a disciplinary action.
#47: Ch 15 Lockout occurs when an employer shuts down its operations before or during a labor dispute.
#48: Ch 15 A grievance procedure is a systematic, step-by-step procedure designed to settle disputes regarding the interpretation of a labor contract.
#49: Ch 15 Union steward is an advocate dedicated to representing an employee’s case to management in a grievance procedure.
#50: Ch 15 Arbitration is the last step in a grievance procedure. The decision of the arbitrator, who is a neutral individual selected from outside the firm, is binding on both parties.
#1: Ch 16 Establishing and sustaining a safe and healthy workplace is a fundamental responsibility of management and a basic expectation for most employees.
#2: Ch 16 Injured or sick workers had little recourse against their employers in the 19th century and into the early 20th, since proving negligence was difficult under common legal doctrines.
#3: Ch 16 Injured or sick workers had little recourse against their employers in the 19th century and into the early 20th century, because employers presumed that employee accepted usual job risks for pay.
#4: Ch 16 From the early 1900’s through 1948, most states passed workers’ compensation laws to protect employees who were injured or became sick on the job. Today, 47 states have such laws that are designed to: Provide a “no fault” recourse for affected employees
#5: Ch 16 Potential benefits for victims include medical and rehabilitation, disability income (total or partial), and survivor death benefits due to the passage of workers’ compensation laws.
#6: Ch 16 Scheduled injuries are those in which a body part is lost; there is a specific schedule of payment for these injuries.
#7: Ch 16 Passed in 1970, the Occupational Health and Safety Act extended the protection of employees in the workplace by imposing three major requirements on employers:
#8: Ch 16 OSHA requires organizations with eight or more employees to keep records of any occupational injury or illness resulting in death, lost work time, or medical treatment and retain these records for five years.
#9: Ch 16 The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is the primary enforcement agency for OSHA. It has four major responsibilities:
#1: Ch 17 Typically, organizations seeking to expand internationally will go through an evolutionary process that may include up to five stages starting with domestic operations, export operations, subsidiaries or joint ventures, multinational operations, and transnational operations.
#2: Ch 17 The higher the stage that firms progress through as they internationalize their operations, the more HR practices must be adapted to diverse cultural, economic, political, and legal environments.
#3: Ch 17 In stage 1 of internationalism called domestic operations, the firm’s market is exclusively domestic.
#4: Ch 17 In stage 2 of internationalism called export operations, the firm expands its market to include other countries, but retains production facilities within domestic borders.
#5: Ch 17 In stage 3 of internationalism called subsidiaries and joint ventures, the firm physically moves some of its operations out of the home country.
#6: Ch 17 An expatriate is a citizen of one country living and working in another country.
#7: Ch 17 In stage 4 of internationalism called multinational operations, the firm becomes a full-fledged multinational corporation with assembly and production facilities in several countries and regions of the world. Some decentralization of decision making is common, but many personnel decisions are still made at corporate headquarters.
#8: Ch 17 In stage 5 of internationalism called transnational operations, firms that reach this advanced stage are often called transnational because they owe little allegiance to their country of origin. Operations are highly decentralized, with each business unit free to make personnel decisions with very loose control from corporate headquarters.
#9: Ch 17 Wholly owned subsidiary in international business is a foreign branch owned fully by the home office.
#10: Ch 17 Joint Venture in international business is a foreign branch owned partly by the home office and partly by an entity in the host country.
#11: Ch 17 Not surprisingly, organizations must align their HRM practices with the business, cultural and workforce realities of each stage of internationalization.
Domestic – U.S focused HRM and
strategies programs. Export - Limited need for impact on local HRM practices – communications, incentives, product training.
Subsidiaries - Selection and support for expatriate leaders and local HRM practices for foreign national staff.
Transnational - Decentralized organizations with local autonomy for HRM policies, strategies and tactics – may operate “boundaryless”
#12: Ch 17 Research indicates that there are five cultural dimensions that affect the success of HRM practices in most countries:
#13: Ch 17 Determining how to staff the management roles in a non-U.S. operation is a key decision that may rely on one of three approaches ethnocentric, polycentric, and geocentric.
#14: Ch 17 Ethnocentric approach is an approach to managing international operations in which top management and other key positions are filled by people from the home country.
#15: Ch 17 Polycentric approach is an approach to managing international operations in which subsidiaries are managed and staffed by personnel from host country.
#16: Ch 17 Geocentric approach is an approach to managing international operations in which nationality is downplayed and the firm actively searches on a worldwide or regional basis for the best people to fill key positions.
#17: Ch 17 Nearly 40% of U.S.-based expatriate assignments end in some level of “failure”.
#18: Ch 17 Expatriate assignments may fail due to:
By carefully applying key HRM practices designed to meet the unique needs and challenges of the expatriate employee, organizations can help to make the experience more successful:
#20: Ch 17
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