Techniques of Supervision Mid-Term Fall 2005
October 26, 2005
Professor Steven Isler
True/False
Indicate whether the sentence or statement is true or false.
____1.It is legally acceptable for supervisors to do some of the same kind of work as the employees they supervise, but most companies discourage this.
____2.Supervision started out as mainly a technically oriented job at the turn of the century, but it increasingly emphasizes human resources management skills today.
____3.Managers are considered efficient if they achieve their goals with a minimal amount of resources for the amount of outputs produced.
____4.Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, supervisors are required to be paid under the same wage plan and given the same overtime benefits as the people they supervise.
____5.Most people work not only for the money the job provides but for the satisfaction they derive from the work itself.
____6.A majority of U.S. workers, particularly blacks and other minorities, express great dissatisfaction with their work.
____7.Most people have little interest in whether their jobs make full use of their manual or mental skills.
____8.The only reason for people to work is that they need the money.
____9.When using mathematical decision making, the supervisor has only to put the results of the calculations or projections into effect; usually no judgment is required.
Multiple Choice
Identify the letter of the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question.
____10.Under the Taft-Hartley Act, the definition of a supervisor depends on:
a. / Being paid a salary.b. / The proportion of time devoted to production work.
c. / The number of people supervised.
d. / The exercise of authority requiring independent judgment.
____11.In general, a supervisor's success is judged by results and by:
a. / Costs.b. / The amount of management effort exerted.
c. / The satisfaction of employees.
d. / How well resources are managed.
____12.Supervisory responsibilities are becoming:
a. / Less oriented to the human concerns of employees.b. / More narrowly concerned with the technical aspects of work.
c. / More oriented to the human concerns of employees.
d. / Less dependent on the skills demanded by the management process.
____13.Which of the following statements most nearly describes the priorities of managers?
a. / First, employees; then self; finally, organizational goals.b. / First, organizational goals; then, self; finally, employees.
c. / First, organizational goals; then, employees; finally, self.
d. / First, employees; then, organizational goals; finally, self.
____14.Supervisors must respond to the interests of each of the following except:
a. / Staff specialists. / c. / Their employees.b. / Stockholders. / d. / Other supervisors.
____15.An executive is:
a. / The highest-level employee who isn't a manager.b. / An operating-level employee with planning and scheduling duties.
c. / Responsible for establishing broad plans, objectives, and general policies.
d. / Unable to convert resources into outputs.
____16.Typically, the most demanding skills of a supervisor are those related to:
a. / Technical decisions. / c. / Human relations.b. / Administrative duties. / d. / Operational planning.
____17.Bill has an independent income and has no need for extra money, and yet he works 10—and 12-hour days as an investment counselor. This case shows that:
a. / Even the well-to-do always want more money.b. / Money is unimportant in producing job satisfaction.
c. / There are sources of satisfaction in work other than the paycheck it produces.
d. / The motivations for working are so complex that supervisors are unlikely to be able to do anything to increase job satisfaction.
____18.Which of the following is not typical of a bureaucracy?
a. / It uses extensive written records.b. / It places organization interests before personal interests.
c. / It excuses lower-level employees from the chain of authority.
d. / It always requires a certain conformity from employees.
____19.Carlos finds work more satisfying when it holds a challenge; in fact, he says his current job is too easy. Carlos is:
a. / Typical of U.S. workers.b. / Highly unusual in feeling this way.
c. / Very unlikely to have any complaints on the job.
d. / Almost sure to be a supervisory problem, even for an experienced supervisor.
____20.Work becomes boring or dull when it:
a. / Is too hard. / c. / Challenges an employee's skill.b. / Is repetitive "no brain" work. / d. / Challenges an employee's judgment.
____21.Jennie asks her employees for their opinions about improving working conditions. This is likely to produce:
a. / Questioning of her ability as a supervisor.b. / A work force that ignores work rules.
c. / Greater job satisfaction.
d. / Decreases in productivity.
____22.Which of the following statements about the time factor is true?
a. / Middle managers can't afford to worry about what will happen next year.b. / Supervisors have the shortest time horizon.
c. / Executives need to shorten their time horizon.
d. / None of the above.
____23.Rules, a chain of authority, giving organizational goals first place, and using written records are characteristics of what Max Weber called:
a. / Private life. / c. / Bureaucracy.b. / Group interaction. / d. / Informal organization.
____24.Most of the workers in Betty's assembly department complain often to each other that their jobs are boring and meaningless. Of the following, one step that would be most likely to help Betty improve the situation is to:
a. / Give all the workers a 10 percent pay increase.b. / Tell the employees that they had better concentrate on their work and stop complaining.
c. / Explain to each worker how his or her job contributes to the department and to the company.
d. / Increase the pace of the work noticeably.
____25.One thing that the supervisor of the office maintenance crew and the chief executive officer of a market research firm have in common is the need to:
a. / Decide on corporate strategy.b. / Take over actual hands-on work when the need arises.
c. / Learn and use technical quantitative management tools.
d. / Make decisions and solve problems.
____26.Claire is observing the operator of a milling machine to see how he moves materials to and from the machine and to measure the time it takes to process each piece. She is probably applying which approach to management?
a. / Systematic. / c. / Quantitative.b. / Behavioral / d. / Contingency.
____27.Which of the following situations faced by the supervisor of an airline reservations staff would probably be the best candidate for use of the quantitative approach?
a. / The staff is not adequately skilled because employee turnover is too great.b. / The work load varies at different times of the day and it is hard to know how to schedule the clerks' work hours.
c. / Clerks find it hard to use written air schedules while they are working at the supplied computer terminals.
d. / The department equipment is not very reliable and probably needs to be replaced.
____28.An industrial belting manufacturer has set a policy that employees are not supposed to pass certain kinds of information directly between departments without going through their bosses. This policy relates most directly to which of Fayol's principles?
a. / Chain of command. / c. / Unity of direction.b. / Unity of command. / d. / Division of work.
____29.Laura knows her plant superintendent personally. When she has a problem, she often bypasses her own superior and gets an answer directly from the plant superintendent. Which management principle does she directly violate?
a. / Chain of command. / c. / Division of work.b. / Unity of command. / d. / Unity of direction.
____30.What is the purpose of the management process?
a. / To assure the anticipated results of an organization.b. / To identify the style of management used by managers.
c. / To place supervisors in jobs that best match their skills.
d. / To explain salary differences.
____31.Clara is showing Bob the prescribed way to keep the records for the jobs he will run on the computer he operates. She is explaining:
a. / Policies. / c. / Procedures.b. / Objectives. / d. / Programs.
____32.A supervisor must take control action when:
a. / A plan is moving directly toward its goal.b. / Actual results are not meeting planned goals.
c. / Standards are being met.
d. / Each month or quarter ends.
____33.Supervisors are generally responsible for developing:
a. / Long-range plans. / c. / Short-range plans.b. / Strategic plans. / d. / None of the above.
____34.Allen is pretty sure that his company's policy of allowing no unscheduled leave, even in cases of very severe weather or a personal emergency, is damaging morale in his work unit. The best thing Allen can do is to:
a. / Quietly ignore the policy and allow leave when he thinks it is necessary.b. / Post a notice that the policy will not apply in this work unit.
c. / Adhere strictly to the policy no matter what the consequences.
d. / Follow the policy but suggest changes to his boss and to other appropriate managers.
____35.Of the following, the best example of a goal is:
a. / Employees will maintain and sharpen their own hand equipment during regular work hours.b. / Our company will exercise fair and reasonable controls to regulate the conduct of employees.
c. / The department will produce 15,000 units during the next month.
d. / No equipment or material may be set inside the areas in the plant marked with yellow striping.
____36.The basic means of solving operating problems is to:
a. / Reorganize the department.b. / Find some way to motivate employees to greater productivity.
c. / Find and remove the cause of the problem.
d. / Make effective decisions routinely and automatically.
____37.Kelly has great faith in the use of hunches and intuition in management. She might best apply these abilities in:
a. / Problem solving. / c. / Controlling.b. / Decision making. / d. / Scheduling and routing.
____38.Each of the following factors must be present before you engage a group in decision making except:
a. / You are ready to respect the group opinion and prepared to act on their suggestions.b. / Their participation is not needed to generate commitment from the group to implement the decision.
c. / The group can contribute information you need but don't have.
d. / You have plenty of time.
____39.Effective supervisors should do all of the following except:
a. / Recognize the existence of a problem or the need for a decision.b. / Never make decisions based on "intuition."
c. / Anticipate potential trouble spots.
d. / Identify opportunities for improvement.
____40.In her supervisory capacity, Sylvia is responsible for the activities of six groups of employees. This could be defined as:
a. / Her informal organization. / c. / A centralized organization.b. / A decentralized organization. / d. / Her span of control.
____41.Each of the following statements about organizational charts is true except:
a. / They help you understand organizational relationships.b. / Boxes on the same horizontal level tend to have the same degree of authority.
c. / Once a chart is done, organizations shouldn't change their structure for at least three years.
d. / Staff departments tend to branch out from either side of the main flow of activity.
____42.Which of the following statements is true?
a. / Authority and accountability are the same thing.b. / You must delegate accountability if you have delegated responsibility.
c. / Authority should not be reinforced by personal influence or charm.
d. / If you delegate responsibility, you should also delegate authority.
____43.Staff departments with functional authority:
a. / May specify policies and procedures to be followed in matters within their specialties.b. / Will have reduced ability to advise line departments.
c. / Have exceeded the proper role of staff departments.
d. / Get that authority from the informal organization.
____44.The poorest reason stated below for a supervisor to delegate work is:
a. / You can't keep up with everything you feel you should do.b. / You want to free yourself from the boring, trivial, dirty work.
c. / You want to provide job satisfaction for your employees.
d. / You will be absent from work.
____45.Balancing the work force refers to:
a. / Making sure that the number of employees on hand just matches the work load.b. / Making sure that there are an adequate number of females and minorities in an organization.
c. / Having a similar number of workers on each shift.
d. / None of the above.
____46.Which of the following is not an acceptable question to ask a job candidate?
a. / Can you describe your last job?b. / What kind of an attendance record have you had in the last year?
c. / Have you ever been arrested?
d. / Do you have the legal right to work in the United States?
____47.The best single measure of morale is generally considered to be:
a. / Absenteeism. / c. / Production levels.b. / Employee turnover. / d. / Promotion rates.
____48.Work loads, work schedules, vacations, and anticipated absences are among the factors to be taken into consideration when determining:
a. / The timing of performance tests. / c. / The employment interview.b. / The size of the work force. / d. / Effective staffing.
____49.Employment tests help the selection process, but only when they meet the legal requirements of:
a. / Validity. / c. / Reliability.b. / Equal opportunity. / d. / All of the above.
____50.Extra Credit- The best football team in all the land is
a. / the San Francisco 49ers / c. / the Dallas Cowboysb. / the Oakland Raiders / d. / the New York Giants
Techniques of Supervision Mid-Term Fall 2005
Answer Section
TRUE/FALSE
1.ANS:T
2.ANS:T
3.ANS:T
4.ANS:F
5.ANS:T
6.ANS:F
7.ANS:F
8.ANS:F
9.ANS:F
MULTIPLE CHOICE
10.ANS:D
11.ANS:D
12.ANS:C
13.ANS:C
14.ANS:B
15.ANS:C
16.ANS:C
17.ANS:C
18.ANS:C
19.ANS:A
20.ANS:B
21.ANS:C
22.ANS:B
23.ANS:C
24.ANS:C
25.ANS:D
26.ANS:A
27.ANS:B
28.ANS:A
29.ANS:A
30.ANS:A
31.ANS:C
32.ANS:B
33.ANS:C
34.ANS:D
35.ANS:C
36.ANS:C
37.ANS:B
38.ANS:B
39.ANS:B
40.ANS:D
41.ANS:C
42.ANS:D
43.ANS:A
44.ANS:B
45.ANS:A
46.ANS:C
47.ANS:B
48.ANS:B
49.ANS:D
50.ANS:C
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