Business Communication
Midterm Exam
Course Introduction
Business Communication is a course that examines the principles and practices necessary for effective communication in professional environments. It covers topics such as writing clear and concise business documents, delivering impactful oral presentations, practicing active listening, using digital communication tools responsibly, and understanding intercultural and organizational communication dynamics. Students will develop skills to facilitate teamwork, resolve conflicts, negotiate successfully, and convey information persuasively to both internal and external stakeholders, preparing them to succeed in diverse business settings.
Recommended Textbook
Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior 6th Edition by Jennifer M. George
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18 Chapters
3054 Verified Questions
3054 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: Introduction to Organizational Behavior
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160 Verified Questions
160 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) At the ________, the organization releases finished goods and services into its external environment where customers purchase them.
A) input stage
B) output stage
C) conversion stage
D) market stage
Answer: B
Q2) According to Mintzberg, a manager is acting as a ________ when she launches a new organizational advertising campaign to promote a new product.
A) figurehead
B) disseminator
C) spokesperson
D) negotiator
Answer: C
Q3) Global learning does not impact organizational effectiveness.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 2: Individual Differences: Personality and Ability
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149 Verified Questions
149 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Individuals with high self-esteem are more likely than individuals with low self-esteem to choose challenging careers and jobs.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) Which one of the following is NOT one of the Big Five personality traits?
A) neuroticism
B) extraversion
C) interlocution
D) conscientiousness
Answer: C
Q3) Verbal ability is BEST described as ________.
A) the ability to speak poignantly and quickly
B) the ability to create words and sentences easily
C) the ability to continually increase one's vocabulary
D) the ability to understand and use written and spoken language
Answer: D
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Work Values Attitudes and Moods and Emotions
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176 Verified Questions
176 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is FALSE?
A) Trust is an expression of confidence in another person or group that you will not be put at risk, harmed, or injured by their actions.
B) Trust can enhance co-operation and the sharing of information necessary for creativity.
C) A lack of trust between employees and managers is often symptomatic of more widespread problems.
D) Positive attitudes and positive work moods have no affect on the level of trust one experiences.
Answer: D
Q2) ________ pertain to the protection of the fundamental rights and privileges of people affected by a decision.
A) Utilitarian values
B) Moral rights values
C) Justice values
D) Equal rights values
Answer: B
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Chapter 4: Perception Attribution and the Management of Diversity
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186 Verified Questions
186 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) People who are high on self-monitoring are more likely to engage in impression management than individuals who are low on self-monitoring.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which one of the following statements is FALSE?
A) A stereotype threat can affect the performance of individuals who are salient for a variety of reasons.
B) When people who are salient think about stereotypes that are relevant to task performance, their performance might become impaired.
C) Salience always heightens one's ability to focus on the task at hand.
D) Salience due to race has particularly powerful effects on perception.
Q3) Requesting or forcing a worker to perform sexual favors in order to receive some opportunity or avoid a negative consequence is referred to as ________.
A) hostile work environment sexual harassment
B) quid pro quo sexual harassment
C) offensive work environment sexual harassment
D) supervisory sexual harassment
Q4) Briefly define the similar-to-me effect. What is the impact on diversity?
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Learning and Creativity
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175 Verified Questions
175 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) An external locus of control hinders creativity because employees believe that their own efforts are unimportant.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The first step in the use of reinforcement is to identify desired behaviors that the organization wants to encourage or reinforce.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is reinforcement and what is its significance for managers?
Q4) To use positive reinforcement to facilitate the learning of desired behaviors, managers need to determine what consequences are ________.
A) considered discriminatory and preferential treatment
B) considered positive by a given worker
C) the least expensive
D) unusual or extraordinary
Q5) Briefly define operant conditioning and social learning theory and explain how they differ from each other.
Q6) Define the concept of learning.
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Chapter 6: The Nature of Work Motivation
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151 Verified Questions
151 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Mick Box was recognized as Salesperson of the Year because of his outstanding sales record. Maslow would assert that Mick's ________ were met by this award.
A) ego needs
B) psychosocial needs
C) esteem needs
D) psychological needs
Q2) Expectancy is a worker's perception about the relationship between ________.
A) effort and rewards received
B) effort and performance
C) workers' needs and available rewards
D) performance and needs
Q3) Jan is upset that she makes more sales than Brett and yet they make the same amount of money. What is NOT a way for equity to be restored for Jan?
A) The manager increases everyone's work load and gives them a 3% raise.
B) Jan notices that although she makes more sales, Brett always works longer.
C) Jan starts to do less work.
D) Brett receives a decrease in pay.
Q4) Define work motivation.
Q5) Discuss the ways in which equity can be restored.
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Chapter 7: Creating a Motivating Work Setting
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164 Verified Questions
164 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The necessary elements of a successful MBO program include all of the following EXCEPT ________.
A) specific goals
B) difficult goals
C) penalties
D) rapport and trust between the manager and the subordinate
Q2) According to Hackman and Oldham, what three critical psychological states determine how employees react to the design of their jobs?
Q3) The social environment provides employees with information about how they should evaluate their jobs and work outcomes.
A)True
B)False
Q4) ________ involves increasing the number of tasks a worker performs, while maintaining the same level of difficulty and responsibility.
A) Job enlargement
B) Job enrichment
C) Job rotation
D) Job expansion
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Chapter 8: Pay Careers and Changing Employment
Relationships
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177 Verified Questions
177 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) When a performance appraisal is formal, the performance dimensions and the way employees are evaluated on them are determined in advance.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The primacy effect occurs when a subordinate who made a good first impression on his supervisor receives a better performance appraisal than he deserves.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Career goals do NOT help employees ________.
A) attain useful new knowledge and skills
B) decide on the types of skills that they want to develop
C) determine the kinds of jobs that they want to accept
D) recognize the kind of knowledge that they want to acquire
Q4) Organizations and their employees seldom seek to abide by psychological contracts.
A)True B)False
Q5) What is a psychological contract? What are the determinants of a psychological contract?
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Chapter 9: Managing Stress and Work Life Balance
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139 Verified Questions
139 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) If an organization wanted to minimize the danger of workplace violence it would be LEAST LIKELY to ________.
A) ensure that employees are aware of the workplace violence policy
B) provide employees with cell phones
C) install security systems in the workplace
D) offer a harsh warning for the first offense of violence
Q2) Major life events such as the death of a loved one, divorce, serious illness, or getting arrested, involve emotional or physical "threats" and are negative.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What BEST describes the relationship between life responsibilities and job performance?
A) There is no relationship between one's personal life and one's job.
B) If things are going well in one's personal life, things will go poorly in one's job.
C) If things are going poorly in one's personal life, job performance will be high.
D) If there is stress in one's personal life, one's job performance may be affected.
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Chapter 10: The Nature of Work Groups and Teams
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188 Verified Questions
188 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The owner of a salon believes that employees should have a timeline of when they will be performing certain tasks. She gives each new employee a calendar telling them when they will be focusing on cuts, dying, and customer services. This demonstrates her company's use of ________ tactics.
A) fixed
B) collective
C) serial
D) sequential
Q2) Effective groups influence and regulate the behavior of their members.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Define the three mechanisms groups use to control their members' behaviors.
Q4) Individual, informal, random, variable, disjunctive, and investiture tactics MOST OFTEN lead newcomers to develop an ________.
A) itemized role orientation
B) iconographic role orientation
C) individualized role orientation
D) institutionalized role orientation
Q5) Explain the difference between formal and informal work groups.
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Chapter 11: Effective Work Groups and Teams
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166 Verified Questions
166 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) An organization that is risk averse will prefer that its groups' tasks involve ________.
A) sequential task interdependence
B) creative task interdependence
C) reciprocal task interdependence
D) pooled task interdependence
Q2) In a group with a(n) ________ level of cohesiveness, group members socialize excessively on the job, there is very high level of conformity, and the group achieves its goals at the expense of the organization as a whole.
A) moderate
B) very low
C) average
D) very high
Q3) The potential for social loafing is highest when ________.
A) individual group members are not jointly responsible for accomplishing a task
B) individual group members' contributions are not readily observable
C) it is easy to identify the performance of individual group members
D) work is assigned to individuals instead of to groups
Q4) Define social loafing. Why does it occur? How can it be reduced?
Q5) What is the relationship between effective work groups and organizational goals?
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Chapter 12: Leaders and Leadership
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192 Verified Questions
192 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) According to Fiedler, leaders cannot be taught to be relationship-oriented or task-oriented; moreover, a leader cannot alter his or her style according to the situation.
A)True
B)False
Q2) A ________ is something that acts in the place of a formal leader and makes leadership unnecessary.
A) leadership substitute
B) leadership surrogate
C) leadership proxy
D) leadership puppet
Q3) Task-oriented leaders have high LPC scores.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The trait and behavior approaches to leadership both focus on what effective leaders are like.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Identify the three path-goal theory guidelines that effective leaders can use to motivate their followers.
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Chapter 13: Power, Politics, Conflict, and Negotiation
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166 Verified Questions
166 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Conflict will MOST LIKELY occur between ________.
A) the manufacturing and sales divisions when each recognizes the importance of the other
B) the city library and the parks department when there is an ample amount of funding
C) the employees when they have their salary determined by self-evaluations
D) the local police and the FBI agents when they are working on the same case
Q2) Reciprocal interdependence is more likely to lead to conflict than is sequential interdependence.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is power? What are politics? Are power and politics always bad for the organization? Why or why not?
Q4) According to researchers, conflict in an organization is always dysfunctional because it leads to lower performance, overall.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What are the sources of functional and divisional power?
Q6) List the stages in Pondy's model of organizational conflict.
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Chapter 14: Communicating Effectively in Organizations
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169 Verified Questions
169 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Noise is anything that interferes with the communication process.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Research and development teams, top management teams, and emergency room personnel, all which require individuals to communicate with one another in non-set sequences, use chain networks.
A)True
B)False
Q3) ________ is an attempt by one person or group to share information with other persons or groups in order to get them to accept, follow, or otherwise achieve the objectives the communicator desires.
A) Message filtering
B) Persuasive communication
C) Organizational messaging
D) Business communication
Q4) Once the sender has decided what the message is, the next step in the communication process is decoding.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 15: Decision Making and Organizational Learning
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175 Verified Questions
175 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) ________ is the loss of productivity in brainstorming groups due to various distractions and limitations inherent in brainstorming.
A) Groupthink
B) Beta blocking
C) Nominalization
D) Production blocking
Q2) When the ________ of decision making is used, group members are not required to meet face to face.
A) Delphi technique
B) TQM technique
C) operative technique
D) behind-the-scenes technique
Q3) What is decision making?
Q4) Define escalation of commitment. Why does it occur?
Q5) Production blocking inhibits high quality brainstorming from occurring.
A)True
B)False
Q6) Education and experience are at the heart of a shared vision.
A)True
B)False
Page 17
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Chapter 16: Organizational Design and Structure
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179 Verified Questions
179 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) An organizational structure composed of all the job specializations that an organization requires to produce its goods or services is the ________.
A) functional structure
B) divisional structure
C) geographic structure
D) network structure
Q2) Organizational design is the formal system of task and reporting relationships that controls, coordinates, and motivates employees so that they cooperate and work together to achieve an organization's goals.
A)True
B)False
Q3) A ________ is a group of functions created to specialize in making and selling a particular kind of good or service.
A) matrix
B) division
C) network
D) hierarchy
Q4) What is standardization?
Q5) Explain the three types of divisional structure.
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Chapter 17: Organizational Culture and Ethical Behavior
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164 Verified Questions
164 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The values and assumptions in an organization's culture have little effect on organizational effectiveness.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What is organizational culture?
Q3) Which of the following is LEAST LIKELY a terminal value of innovativeness?
A) maintaining high standards
B) working hard
C) being creative
D) playing it safe
Q4) ________ are the moral values formalized in a society's legal system, in its customs and practices, and in the unwritten norms that its people follow in their daily lives.
A) Societal ethics
B) Professional ethics
C) Individual ethics
D) Organizational ethics
Q5) Discuss the three sources of organizational ethics.
Q6) Describe the ways in which an organization's culture is transmitted to its members.
Page 19
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Chapter 18: Organization Change and Development
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178 Verified Questions
178 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Managing a diverse work force is one of the biggest challenges to confront organizations in the 2000s.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Action research is a strategy for generating and acquiring the knowledge needed to define an organization's desired future state and to plan a change program that will help it reach that state.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which of the following would LEAST LIKELY happen in an organization that uses restructuring to simplify its structure?
A) hiring from within the organization
B) downsizing the work force
C) eliminating levels in the hierarchy
D) outsourcing functional activities
Q4) Organizations are realizing that the ultimate source of competitive advantage and organizational effectiveness lies in fully utilizing technology.
A)True
B)False
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