1) To be effective, an organization’s culture must_________ the external environment.
a. rebel against
b. overcome
c. match
2) Which of the following statements are true about organizational culture?
a. Employees may be unaware of the underlying assumptions that guide an organization’s culture.
b. Culture can create a competitive advantage for a company.
c. A company’s culture cannot be taught-managers must hire people that have the right culture.
d. The actions managers take can change a company’s culture.
Match the following examples to the element of culture (Hero. Symbol, Slogan, Ceremony, or Story) that they represent
a. Every Friday afternoon around 4:00pm, Nerf darts start flying around the office at Aplia, where both work and play are highly valued.
b.. At Virginia Tech, students and professors remember the courage of professor Liviu Librescu, who died protecting his students from a gunman in 2007.
c. At IBM, people talk about the meeting where people were told to turn off he projector and “just talk”. This de-emphasized the importance of slides in organizational communications.
3) A manager who allows employees to make the decisions necessary to face a rapidly changing environment _______ culture emphasizes an internal focus on the participation of employees to adapt rapidly to changing needs from the environment.
a. Achievement
b. Adaptability
c. Involvement
4) Identify the corporate culture type (Consistency, Adaptability, Involvement, or Achievement ) illustrated in each organization description presented in the following exercise.
a. The organization is stable and structured, with clarity and established procedures.
b. The organization is accomplishment oriented, with the focus on competition and getting jobs done.
5) You are trying to get a group of students interested in forming an organization to help fight fee increases at your college. Unfortunately, things don’t seem to be going very well – nobody in your group volunteered to go a meeting with your college president next week. You want to create a culture that is active and involved. What should you do? Check all that aply.
a. Make sure that anyone on your team who volunteers to take action gets a reward-publicly recognize their effort.
b. Paint a verbal picture for your team of what life would be like if fees were reduced.
c. Make sure that you do what you want your team to do. If you want them to volunteer, you need to volunteer, too.
d. Don’t talk about taking action. Instead, get to know your team members better.
Read the following summary and answer the questions.
A recent study conducted by peter doeringer and his colleagues pointed out a key difference between American companies and Japanese companies. While American companies tend to locate factories in areas where costs are low, Japanese companies locate their factories in areas that have a culture that is smilar to the culture promoted in Japanese organizations. In the United States, Japanese companies put their factories in rural areas that have large numbers of high school graduates. Japanese managers believe that people living in those areas are more likely to be good fit for their culture, which emphasizes cooperation and commitment to the goals of the firm. When choosing locations, both Japanese and American companies pay attention to factors that are more traditionally associated with production costs. Companies from both countries prefer locations that already have a manufacturing presence. When other manufacturers are located in a given area, it produces an “agglomeration economy”, which can lead to economies of scale and other factors that facilitate production.
6) Doeringer’s research suggests that Japanese managers pay___1____ attention to values and __2_____ attention to business performance.
1. a lot of or little
2. a lot of or little
7) Based on previous research regarding the impact of values on business performance, you would expect that _________ managers would have higher-performing companies.
a. Japanese
b. American
