UARK Managing People and Organizations Final

What is overall cost leadership?

low cost, broad market, cost leader, minimizing the cost to the organization, low cost provider, not always for the company

What is cost focus and what are some examples?

narrow market but low cost, because you are providing less products you can get them with a lower cost. Aldi (you have very low prices but can only offer certain products)

Claire's (inexpensive jewelry and a narrow market)

What is differentiation focus and what are some examples?

targeted narrow market with high cost, small market and not convincing everyone, very narrow market and expensive, target people with a lot of money.

Ferrari, Louis Vutton, Rolex, Lamborghini, etc.

What is differentiation

distinct and different, pay more for your product. High cost and broad market. Need innovation and research and development and sales and marketing. Must be doing something different that people are willing to pay more money for

What are the components of Porter's Strategy typology?

Overall cost leadership, cost focus, differentiation focus and differentiation

Concept of core capabilities

integrated knowledge sets within an organization that distinguish it from its competitors and deliver value to customers... how a company attempts to achieve dominance

Criteria for core capabilities to become a source of sustained competitive advantage for an organization

Valuable? Rare? Inimitable (can it be imitated)? Organizational processes in place?

Two dimensions along which human capital differs according to the human capital architecture?

-value of human capital: potential to contribute to competitive advantage

-uniqueness of human capital: more unique and more valued, firm specific

Four types of workers described by the human capital architecture model

-strategic knowledge workers: unique skills, make the most money. Staff based on potential, equity based on pay and benefits, self-direction. Focus: commitment. TOP MANAGEMENT

-core employees: skills to perform predefined job that are valuable but can be replaced, market based pay, staff based on current skill, mistakes above water, job specific development. Focus: performance. SALESPEOPLE

-Supporting labor: needed but not very unique, general skills. Focus: compliance. CLERICAL WORKERS

-complementary/alliance: unique skills but not directly related to a company's core strategy. Staff based on past experience, rewarded for ideas. Focus: partnership

CONSULTANTS

Match the four types of workers to their correct location along the human capital architecture

-strategic knowledge workers: internal and high value, high unique and high value

-core employees: internal and unique. Low unique and high value

-Supporting labor: external and unique. Low unique and low value

-Complementary: high and external. High unique and low value

What are the two generic HR strategies

Control vs commitment and high performance work system

What is control and commitment in the HR strategy?

control: can't pitch in ideas, no formal complaint, low skills, limited benefits, little communication, low wages

commitment: broadly defined tasks, high skill, extensive training, high levels of engagement, high compensation and benefits

What is high performance work system in HR strategy?

eliminates power differences, learn on the job, shift toward employee commitment, align employee and organizational goal. Maximize employee knowledge, skill, commitment and flexibility. Many coordinating parts

What are the components of control

-egalitarianism and engagement: little employee influence, no formal employee complaint box, intense supervision

-shared information: little communication, little information

-knowledge development: limited training, low skill, job burnout

-performance reward linkage: limited benefits, low wages, no collaboration, may have incentive based individual rewards

What are the components of commitment?

-egalitarianism and engagement: little employee influence, no formal employee complaint box, intense supervision

-shared information: high levels of engagement/shared knowledge

-knowledge development: highly skilled, extensive training

-performance award linkage: highly compensated, high benefits

What are the components of a High Performance work system and what is it?

It empowers employees that are knowledgeable, skilled and able

-egalitarianism and engagement: eliminate status and power to get collaboration

-shared information: share powers to involve employees which leads to commitment, let employees know what is going on

-knowledge development: knowledge based jobs instead of trade specific, employees learn in real time

-performance reward linkage: align employee and organizational goals

Explain how the components of a high performance work system it with other systems in the organization (internal fit)

Changes in one component affect all other components, horizontal fit: make certain all HR practices, work design, management processes and technologies complement one another

Explain the importance of internal fit of a high performance work system in supporting (or not) the overall business strategy (external fit)

Vertical fit goes through all levels of the organization?

What are the major provisions of the Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964

Cannot discriminate on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Illegal of you to not hire someone or not promote them based on these things. 15 or more employees who work more than 20 weeks in the year and are impacted by interstate commerce

What are the major provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1991?

Clarified the burden of proof issue based on different violations, allowed for a jury trial and allowed for compensatory (emotional pain and suffering) and punitive (punishing company by means of higher pay out, teach them a lesson) damages. Limited based on the number of employees

What are the major provisions of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967?

Prohibits discrimination against anyone over the age of 40 and covers companies with more than 20 employees. Examples: exclusion, withholding/reducing training, professional development, employment opportunity, early retirement or downsizing

What are the major provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act?

prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities who are able to perform the essential function of the job with or without reasonable accommodations. Physical or mental, substantially limits one or more major life activities. Does not have to provide a reasonable accommodation if it is undue hardship.

What are the major provisions of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993?

Covers all eligible employees and makes it so they are allowed up to 12 weeks in a year of unpaid leave. This would cover a birth, adoption, foster care, spouse, child, patient care, veteran care, etc. It is not paid but it protects you from losing your job!

What are major provisions to the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1973?

You have the right to request an inspection, have a representative at an inspection, dangerous substances must be identified, allowed to know what you are working with, must be informed about hazards and employer violations must be posted at the worksite

What is the purpose of the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures?

means the questions in a process for employment selection procedure must be relevant to your future job performance or any task that you may have to perform in the future.

Disparate treatment

treating individuals differently based on a protected class, but there is a similar situation, direct, intentional.

Disparate Impact

policies, practices, rules or other systems that appear to be neutral result in disproportionate impact on a protected group, creates adverse impact

Define the four fifths rule

how you can decide whether a certain qualification or limitation for the employment opportunity causes an adverse impact. If the results are less than 80% then it has an adverse impact. Adverse impacts appear neutral but are discriminatory

What is the formula for selection rate?

hired/applied

What is the formula for impact ratio?

lower selection rate/higher selection rate

Define the concept of business necessity as a legal defense

Work-related practice necessary to safe and efficient operation of an organization

Describe what is meant by a bona fide occupational qualification and how it can be used as a legal defense

Qualifications for performing the job is a protected class. Need someone with blonde hair to play a part in a play, this is not discrimination.

Quid Pro Quo

in exchange for services, sexual favors. If you do not do these favors you are in fear you will lose your job

Hostile Work Environment

One's behavior makes it an uncomfortable work environment based on a protected class. Lots of times making sexual jokes and what not can be hostile.

Define affirmative action and state its purpose

Used to take positive steps towards diversity and equal employment. Helping there by a fair opportunity in the work place.

-Has not improved protected groups employment

-Failed in assimilating protected classes into the workforce, preferences shown toward one protected class may create conflicts between other minority groups, can also feel pre judged when they are hired through affirmative action

List the basic steps an organization should take in developing an affirmative action program

1. written equal employment opportunity policy and affirmative action commitment statement

2. publicize policy and commitment

3. Appoint top official to direct and implement

4. Survey minority and female employees by department and job classification

5. Develop goals and time tables to improve utilization of minorities and women in each area

6. develop and implement specific programs to achieve goals

7. Establish internal audit and reporting system to monitor and evaluate progress

8. Develop supportive in house and community programs

Define the concept of employment at will and what are the exceptions?

At will means the employee can quit at any time or be fired at any time for no reason

Exceptions: contracts, federal and state law (violations of public policy, implied contract and good faith and fair dealing)

Describe the overall goal of an organizational selection system

to minimize erros in employee selection and placement and in doing so, improve your company's competitive advantage

What is person-job fit in selection and placement?

compatibility between individuals and the job or task that they will perform

What is Person-Organization fit in selection and placement?

the degree to which individuals are matched to the culture and values of the organization

Define reliability

degree to which a measure is FREE FROM RANDOM ERROR. Refers to the measuring instrument rather than to the characteristic itself

Define validity

extent to which a performance measure assesses all and only the relevant aspects of the job. A measure must be reliable if it is to have any validity, reliability is necessary but insufficient for validity

Define Generalizability

degree to which the validity of a selection method established in one context extends to other contexts

Define Utility

degree to which information provided by selection methods enhances bottom-line effectiveness of the organization

Define legality

all selection methods must conform to existing laws and legal precedents

Explain the importance of reliability and validity in choosing selection devices

important because of the two determining the overall accuracy of the data provided by the performance measurements. Selection methods are useless with an inconsistent degree of error from testing and even more so if multiple variables are tested at once while only one matters toward performance evaluations

What are interviews and how is the validity and utility of them?

they are a dialogue initiated by one or more persons to gather information and evaluate the qualifications of an applicant for employment, most wide spread selection method. Unreliable, low in validity and biased against a number of different groups, also expensive.

What are references and how is the validity and utility of them?

not good predictors of future successes on the job because evaluations supplied are all for the most part positive because the applicant gets to choose who writes the letters and those that write the letters fear that it could backlash on them in the future

What is biological data and how is the validity and utility of them?

evidence on the utility of biographical information collected directly from job applicants is more positive. The low cost of collecting this information increases utility. Deals with background information

What are application blanks and how is the validity and utility of them?

commonly used selection included in applications that allow applicants to either enter personal information such as address, education and employment information or to select from a list of options to answer preference, availability and related questions

What are physical ability tests and how is the validity and utility of them?

may be relevant to not only predicting performance but predicting occupational injuries and disabilities as well. Likely to have adverse impact and validities are strong. Disadvantage for women and the disabled and men typically score much better than women on these tests

What are cognitive ability tests and how is the validity and utility of them?

tests individuals based on their mental capacities. Verbal comprehension, quantitative ability and reasoning ability

What are personality inventories and how is the validity and utility of them?

categorizes individuals by what they are like. Big five dimensions: extroversion, adjustment, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Validity coefficients associated with personally measures tend to be job specific. The evidence for their validity and generalizability is mixed at best

What are work samples and how is the validity and utility of them?

attempt to stimulate the job in a pre-hiring context to observe how the applicant performs in the stimulated job. Drawbacks are that first the nature of the tests are job specific, so generalizability is low. Second, tests are generally expensive. Finally, these events tend to attract more male applicants than females. Can do things such as a "job tryout" where they come to work for a while to see if it will work out

What are honesty tests and how is the validity and utility of them?

directly emphasize questions dealing with past theft admission or association with people who stole from employees. Validity study suggests that they can predict both theft and other disruptive behaviors. Unfortunately, some people can lie their way through an honesty test

What are drug tests and how is the validity and utility of them?

should be conducted in an environment that is as non intrusive as possible and results should be held in strict confidence. Controversies are not with their reliability and validity but whether they represent an invasion of privacy.

What are the ethical considerations in using different selection devices and what are they?

Bias, legality and possibility of discrimination

-Bias: giving preference toward a certain trait that does not relate to job performance

-legality: selection device does not infringe on individuals rights or otherwise unlawful

-discrimination: devices disregards individuals based on factors like age, sex and race

What are experience based interviews?

**Thinking about a time when... based on past experience!

-motivating employees: "Think about an instance when you had to motivate an employee to perform a task that he or she disliked but that you needed to have done. How did you handle that situation?"

What are future-oriented interviews?

Suppose or imagine that you were put into this situation, how would you handle it?

What is positive reinforcement

addition of reinforcing stimulus following a behavior that makes it more likely that the behavior will occur again in the future. When a favorable outcome, event or reward occurs after an action, that particular response or behavior will be strengthened

What is negative reinforcement?

response or behavior is strengthened by stopping, removing or avoiding a negative outcome or aversive stimulus

What is punishment?

infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense

What is extinction?

reinforcement that is provided for a problem behavior in order to decrease or eliminate occurrences of these types of negative behaviors

What is the performance management process and what are the steps 1-6?

A set of processes and managerial behaviors that involve defining, monitoring, measuring, evaluating, and providing consequences for performance expectations

1. define performance outcomes for company division and department

2. develop employee goals, behavior and actions to achieve outcomes

3. Provide support and ongoing performance discussions

4. evaluate performance

5. Identify needed improvements

6. Provide consequences for performance results

Explain the key purposes of performance appraisal in organizations

-Administrative: make employee related decisions - justify a pay raise, promotion or new assignment

-Strategic: developing measures and feedback systems that push employees to engage in behavior and produce results

-Developmental: assisting in identifying your strengths and weaknesses and highlighting training and developmental needs and send strong messages

What is strategic congruence used to judge performance management system?

extent to which a performance management system elicits job performance that is congruent with the organization's strategy. An example is when an organization emphasizes customers service then its performance management system should assess how well its employees are serving the customers

Describe validity and how it is used to judge performance measures?

producing the desired results - the extent that a performance measure assesses all of the relevant aspects of performance

Describe reliability and how it is used to judge performance measures?

a measure of the accuracy of a test or measuring instrument - getting the same results consistently

Describe acceptability and how it is used to judge performance measures?

refers to whether the people who use the performance measure accept it

Describe specificity and how it is used to judge performance measures?

relevant and appropriate to the job - the extent to which a performance measurer tells employees what is expected of them and how they can meet those expectations

What is comparative in the broad methods of employee performance appraisal and what does it consist of?

it compares performance with others, helps reduce leniency, central tendency and strictness

-Simple ranking: ranks employees from highest to lowest performer within their department

-Alternative ranking: crosses off best and worst employees

-Forced distribution: ranks employees in groups

-Paired comparison: managers compare every employee with every other employee in work group. Every time the employee gets the 1 that means they are the best employee

What is attribute in the broad methods of employee performance appraisal and what does it consist of?

focuses on the extent to which individuals have certain attributes (characteristics/traits like initiative, leadership and competitiveness) considered desirable to the company

-Graphic rating scales: list of traits evaluated by 5 point rating scale and legally questionable

What is behavior in the broad methods of employee performance appraisal and what does it consist of?

attempts to define the behaviors an employee must exhibit to be effective in the job

-Critical incidents approach requires managers to keep record of specific examples of effective and ineffective performance

-Behaviorally anchored rating scales: consists of series of vertical scales, one for each dimension of job performance, typically developed by a committee that includes both subordinates and managers

-Behavioral observation scales: a performance appraisal that measures the frequency of observed behavior, preferred over behaviorally anchored rating scales for maintaining objectivity

-organization behavior modification is a format system of behavioral feedback and reinforcement

-assessment centers are multiple rates who evaluate employees' performance on a number of exercises

What are results in the broad methods of employee performance appraisal and what does it consist of?

focuses on managing the objective, measurable results of a job or working group

-management by objectives

-top management passed down company's strategic goals to managers to define goals

-productivity measurement and evaluation system, goal is to motivate employees for more productivity

-results based methods: productivity measures appraisals based on quantitative measures. management by objectives

What is quality in the broad methods of employee performance appraisal and what does it consist of?

customer orientation. Prevention approach to errors and continuous improvement = improving customer satisfaction is the primary goal

SUSTAINABILITY IS THE KEY

What is the similar to me effect involving rating errors?

an error in which an appraiser inflates the evaluation of an employee because of a mutual personal connection

What is strictness/leniency involving rating errors?

the appraiser tends to give all employees either unusually high or low ratings

What is central tendency involving rating errors?

all employees are rated above average

What is contrast effects involving rating errors?

an employees evaluation is biased either upward or downward because of comparison with another employee just previously evaluated

What is halo/horns effect involving rating errors?

an appraiser's evaluation of an employee's performance is biased/skewed because of the appraiser's overall impression of the employee as good (halo) or as bad (horns)

Summarize the methods raters can use to improve subjective performance appraisals

Observe other managers making errors, actively participate in discovering their own errors, practice job related tasks to reduce the errors they tend to make

Outline recommendations for providing effective performance feedback to employees

Give feedback frequently, more than once a year, create right context for discussion, ask employees to rate performance before the session, encourage employee to participate, recognize effective performance through praise, focus on solving problems, focus feedback on behavior or results not on the person, minimize criticism, agree to specific goals and set progress review date

What are the internal factors with regard to compensation?

compensation strategy of organization (establishes the internal wage relationship among jobs and skill levels), worth of job (establishing the internal wage relationship among jobs and skill levels), employee's relative worth (rewarding individual employee performance), employer's ability to pay (having the resources and profits to pay the employees)

What are the external factors with regard to compensation?

-conditions of labor market (availability and quality of potential employees is affected by economic conditions, government regulations and policies and the presence of unions)

-area pay rates (a firms formal wage structure of rates is influenced by those being paid by other area employers for comparable jobs)

-cost of living (can vary, inflation, and CPI)

-collective bargaining (bargain for increase in standard of living, CPI and inflation)

-legal requirements

Market pay surveys

benchmarking, procedure by which an organization compares its own practices against the competition

Key jobs in the process of collecting market wage data

benchmark jobs that have relatively stable content and are common to many organizations so that market-pay survey data can be obtained

Non-key jobs

unique to organizations and cannot be directly valued or compared through the use of market surveys

Define the concept of job evaluation

administrative procedure used to measure internal job worth, composed of compensable factors

Describe the point system of a job evaluation and how an organization would conduct a job evaluation using the point method

A quantitative procedure that determines the relative value of a job by the total points assigned to it. Permits jobs to be evaluated on the basis of factors or elements-compensable factors-that constitute the job. There is also a point manual in which there are descriptions of the compensable factors and the degrees to which these factors may exist within jobs

What is the market survey approach on job evaluation?

emphasizes external comparison. It bases pay on market surveys that cover as many key jobs as possible

What is the pay policy line in job evaluation?

mathematical expression that describes the relationship between a job's pay and its job evaluation points

What is pay grade in job evaluation?

grouping jobs of similar worth or content together for pay administration purposes

What is the range spread in job evaluation?

distance between minimum and maximum amounts in a pay grade

What is the concept of broad banding and how does it relate to compensation?

it collapses many traditional salary grades into a few wide salary bands and reduces the emphasis on status or hierarchy and focuses on the later movement within the company

List and describe the major components of executive compensation packages

-salary/bonuses

-stock options: the right to buy the stock at a discounted price

-Stock grant: stock given to an employee as part of compensation

Explain how stock options work as a component of executive compensation

it is an opportunity to receive a price advantage on a company's offerings that would otherwise be unavailable to individuals outside the company or non-vested employees. Considered a benefit for spending time working with the company

Outline the major provisions of the Equal Pay Act of 1963

comparable worth or pay equity is a public policy that advocates remedies for any undervaluation of women's jobs. Based on the idea that individuals should obtain equal pay, not just for jobs of equal content, but for jobs of equal value or worth

Outline the major provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act

established a minimum wage and overtime pay rate

What is the equity theory?

social comparisons influence how employees compare their pay

Differentiate between exempt and non exempt workers

Exempt is those that are not covered by FLSA and not eligible for overtime pay (executives, professional, administrative and outside sales) whereas non exempt is those that are covered under the FLSA