Unit 6 Business Management and Human Resource Management PYQ’s 6th Dec 2019 Shift 2

The following are the explanation for the correct match:

Selection is the process of choosing an appropriate candidate from the obtained application to match the requirements of the job. It is the process of matching the qualifications of applicants with the job requirements, weeding out unsuitable candidates, and finally identification of most suitable candidates. The Business Dictionary defines employee selection as the “process of interviewing and evaluating candidates for a specific job and selecting an individual for employment based on certain criteria.”

Key Points

Following steps are involved in the selection process:

1. Application Blank: Application blank or form is one of the most common methods used to collect information on the various aspects of the applicants’ academic, social, demographic, work-related background, and references. It is a brief history sheet of a candidate’s background.

2. Screening Interviews: A preliminary interview is generally planned by large organizations to cut the cost of selection by allowing only eligible candidates to go through the further stages in selection. A junior executive from the Personnel Department may elicit responses from the applicants on important items determining the suitability of an applicant for a job such as age, education, experience, pay expectations, aptitude, location choice, etc.

3. Tests: Selection test attempts to assess intelligence, abilities, personality trait, and performance through simulation tests including work sampling and the tests administered at assessment centers. A test is a standardized, objective measure of a person’s behavior, performance, or attitude. It tries to measure individual differences in a scientific way giving very little room for individual bias and interpretation. Some of the commonly used employment tests are:

• Intelligence Tests: These are mental ability tests. They measure the incumbent’s learning ability and the ability to understand instructions and make judgments.
• Aptitude Test: Aptitude test measures an individual’s potential to learn certain skills, clerical, mechanical, mathematical, etc.
• Personality Test: It refers to methods of measuring personality factors and the relationship between personality factors and actual job criteria.

4. More Interviews: Interview is the oral examination of candidates for employment. This is the most essential step in the selection process. In this step, the interviewer matches the information obtained about the candidates through various means to the job requirements and to the information obtained through his own observations during the interview. The interview gives the recruiter an opportunity to examine the personality of the candidate. The interview is an art. It demands a positive frame of mind on part of the interviewers. Interviewees must be treated properly so as to leave a good impression of the Company in their minds.

5. Reference Checks: Once the interview of the candidate is over, the personnel department will engage in checking references. Candidates are required to give 2 or 3 names for references in their application forms. These references may be from the individuals who are familiar with the candidate’s academic achievements or from the applicant’s previous employer, who is well versed with the applicant’s job performance, and sometimes from the co-workers. In case the reference check is from the previous employer, information in the areas such as job title, job description, the period of employment, pay and allowances, gross emoluments, benefits provided, rate of absence, candidate’s regularity at work, character, progress, etc. can also be obtained. Reference checks are taken as a matter of routine and treated casually or omitted entirely in many Organizations. But a good reference check, when used sincerely, will fetch useful and reliable information for the Organization.

6. Conditional Offers: A conditional offer of employment is a job offer that is based on the applicant meeting certain requirements before starting the job or to continue the job.

7. Physical Examination: Certain jobs require physical qualities like clear vision, perfect hearing, unusual stamina, tolerance of hard working conditions, clear tone, etc. Medical examination reveals whether or not a candidate possesses these qualities.

8. Hire: The interviewer has to make the final decision – whether to select or reject a candidate after soliciting the required information through different techniques. A careless decision of rejecting a candidate would impair the morale of the people and they may suspect the selection procedure.

Thus, the current sequence is c) → g) → h) → f) → a) → e) → b) → d).

Performance Appraisal Systems:

1. Performance appraisals are one of the most important and often one of the most mishandled aspects of management.
2. Typically, we think of performance appraisals as involving a boss evaluating a subordinate.
3. However, performance appraisals increasingly involve subordinates appraising bosses through a feedback process known as 360 feedback, customers appraising providers, and peers evaluating coworkers.

Key Points

Problems with Performance Appraisals:

1. Horns Effect:

• The horn effect occurs when “individuals believe that negative traits are connected to each other.”
• It is a phenomenon in which an observer’s judgment of a person is adversely affected by the presence of (for the observer) an unfavorable aspect of this person.
• In this effect, there is a tendency of a supervisor to rate a subordinate lower than his performance.

2.Halo Effect:

• The halo effect is a type of cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person influences how we feel and think about their character.
• Essentially, your overall impression of a person (“He is nice!”) impacts your evaluations of that person’s specific traits (“He is also smart!”).

3. Central Tendency:

• Central tendency is the inclination of managers to rate all their subordinates with an “average” score during performance appraisal.
• For instance, if the rating scale was from 1-7, the managers would leave out the extremes i.e. 1,2,6,7, and rate all the employees with a score between 3-5.

Confusion Points

In Performance Appraisal, there is no error termed as Pointing Tendency.

The informal communications are based on personal or informal relations such as friends, peers, family, club members, etc. and thus is free from the organizational conventional rules and other formalities.

Key Points

In the business context, informal communication is called a “grapevine” as it is difficult to define the beginning and end of the communication.

There are four types of Informal Communication (Grapevine) networks that show how communication is facilitated. These are:

1. Single Strand Chain
2. Gossip Chain
3. Probability Chain
4. Cluster Chain

Additional Information

1. Group Dynamics: Group dynamics is a set of behavioral and psychological processes that occur within a social group or between groups. It refers to the “nature of groups, the laws of their development, and their interrelations with individuals, other groups, and larger institutions.

2. Exchange: Communication is conveying messages by exchanging thoughts or information via speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior. Business communication is the transmission and exchange of information between people in an organization to facilitate business activities.

3. Interaction: Interaction can be defined as, ‘communication or direct involvement with someone or something.’

Management by Objectives (MBO):

Management by Objectives (MBO) is a strategic approach to enhance the performance of an organization. It is a process where the goals of the organization are defined and conveyed by the management to the members of the organization with the intention to achieve each objective.

Important Points

Reasons why MBO Fail: In spite of many advantages, MBO may not be considered as a panacea for all the evils of the organisation. The success of the program depends on several factors. If the program fails, it is largely due to the following reasons:

1. Lack of top management involvement and support. For an MBO program to succeed, it must have the complete support of top management.

2. Lack of understanding of the philosophy behind MBO. MBO programs in some organizations meets the resistance of employees because it is imposed on them as a ‘control device’ to curb their freedom.
3. Difficultly in setting realistic and meaningful objectives. Some jobs and areas of performance cannot be quantified and hence are not amenable for objective evaluation.
4. Increased time pressure. To use the MBO program, managers must learn to establish priorities and use time effectively.
5. Lack of relevant skills. Managers may not have the requisite skills for identifying objectives, communication, and interpersonal interaction such as counseling and receiving feedback.
6. Lack of individual motivation. The rewards and incentives for superior performance have to be specified clearly. Ambiguity or uncertainty regarding the outcome of the efforts is one of the reasons for the non-performance.
7. Poor integration with other systems. Objective setting and review phases must be performed in conjunction with other activities such as budgeting, forecasting, and the like. Often managers are neither taught how to set the objectives nor familiarized with the various plans and policies of the organization. In such cases, each department ends up going its own way, and the results are counterproductive to the overall organization.

Key Points

Altering goals to meet changes in circumstances is mandatory. Changing management goals are meant to provide an approach towards helping those that are affected by the change. This will enable them to receive the required support, deal with any resistance to change, and get the required knowledge and skills that are needed in the implementation of the change.

Therefore, altering goals to meet changes in circumstances is NOT a factor contributing to MBO program failure.

Quality Circles:

1. Conceptually Quality Circles can be described as a small group of employees of the same work area, doing similar work that meets voluntarily and regularly to identify, analyze, and resolve work-related problems.
2. This small group with every member of the circle participating to the full carries on the activities, utilizing problem-solving techniques to achieve control or improvement in the work area and also help self and mutual development in the process.

Therefore, from the above explanation Quality circle is a type of Problem – solving team.

Additional Information

1. Cross-functional Team: A cross-functional team is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal. It may include people from finance, marketing, operations, and human resources departments. Typically, it includes employees from all levels of an organization.

2. Self – directed team: A self-directed work team (SDWT) is a group of people, usual employees in a company, who combine different skills and talents to work without the usual managerial supervision toward a common purpose or goal. Typically, an SDWT has somewhere between two and 25 members.

3. Project team: A project team is a team whose members usually belong to different groups, have different functions and are assigned by the project manager to activities for the same project. A team can be divided into sub-teams according to need. Usually, project teams are only used for a defined period of time.

Authority:

1. Authority is the right to perform or command.

2. It allows its holder to act in certain designated ways and to directly influence the actions of others through orders.
3. It also allows its holder to allocate the organization’s resources to achieve organizational objectives.

Barnard defines authority as the character of communication by which an order is accepted by an individual as governing the actions that an individual takes within the system.

Key Points

TYPES OF AUTHORITY:

3 main types of authority can exist within an organization:

1. Line Authority
2. Staff Authority
3. Functional Authority

Each type exists only to enable individuals to carry out the different types of responsibilities with which they have been charged.

1. Line Authority:

• The most fundamental authority within an organization reflects existing superior-subordinate relationships.
• It consists of the right to make decisions and to give orders concerning the production, sales, or finance-related behavior of subordinates.
• In general, line authority pertains to matters directly involving management system production, sales, finance, etc., and as a result with the attainment of objectives.

2. Staff Authority:

• Staff authority consists of the right to advise or assist those who possess line authority as well as other staff personnel.
• Staff authority enables those responsible for improving the effectiveness of line personnel to perform their required tasks.

3. Functional Authority:

• Functional authority is the right that is delegated to an individual or a department to control specified processes, practices, policies, or other matters about activities undertaken by persons in other departments.
• It is delegated by their common superior to a staff specialist or a manager in another department.

Formation of the group simply means two or more persons came together for working toward the achievement of the same goals and objectives. Group creation enables the performance of difficult tasks easy and efficient. It enables the sharing of a wide range of knowledge and experiences of numerous people working in a group which will helps in the formulation of better plans.

Key Points

The four important theories of group formation are (1) Propinquity Theory, (2) Homan’s Theory, (3) Balance Theory, and (4) Exchange Theory.

1. Propinquity theory:

• The propinquity theory of group formation states that individuals form groups due to spatial and geographical nearness.
• The word propinquity means “Nearness’’.
• According to this theory, people who work within the same business area or at nearby places are more likely to affiliate with each other and form a group than those who work in distant places.
• The proximity of people is the only factor considered by the propinquity theory for group formation of people.
• Therefore, propinquity theory is not analytical as it focuses on only the proximity of peoples for creating a team but ignored several practical and theoretical reasons.

2. Homan’s Theory:

• According to George C. Homans, “The more activities persons share, the more numerous will be their interactions and the stronger will be their shared activities and sentiments, and the more sentiments people have for one another, the more will be their shared activities and interactions.”
• The key element is interaction because of which people develop common sentiments for one another.
• These sentiments gradually get expressed through the formation of informal groups.
• If any disturbance is caused to any of the three-activities, interactions, and sentiments, it is likely to disturb all the others.

3. Balance Theory:

• Similarity/Balance theory states that people having similar attitudes and values are attracted to each other and form a group.
• The similarity of attitudes is the main factor for developing a group among people as per this theory.
• After forming a group and creating a relationship, it is ensured that there is a symmetrical balance between attraction and common attitudes.

4. Exchange theory

• It is based on reward-cost outcomes of interactions.
• To be attracted to a group, a person thinks in terms of what he will get in exchange for interaction with group members.

Frontline managers:

• The underdogs of the corporate world, frontline managers are essential to connecting executives with frontline employees.
• Frontline managers motivate employees to perform critical duties within the business, handle project oversight, and generate quality and productivity in the ground levels of the organization.
• Frontline supervisors are the leaders responsible for an organization’s relationship with customers and the majority of its employees.
• When it comes to translating an organization’s strategy into results, frontline supervisors are the linchpin of organizational success.

Key Points

Functions of a first-level or front line supervisors are:

1. Supervise day-to-day operations of assigned projects.
2. Plan and assign daily workload to team members.
3. Develop a positive and safe working environment for staff by attending to grievances and resolving conflicts of members.
4. Handle emergency situations and resolve project issues promptly.
5. Develop process improvements to enhance quality and productivity.
6. Ensure staff follows organization policies and regulations.
7. Work with the team to develop project plans and schedules.
8. Monitor project progress and ensure timely delivery.
9. Maintain project documentation for references.
10. Provide technical knowledge and guidance to workers.
11. Evaluate the performance of the project team and determine training needs.
12. Maintain security and confidentiality of project information.
13. Timely dissemination of information to the management.
14. Manage staff schedules and shifts to meet deadlines.

15. To attend to grievances and resolve conflicts

16. Ensure that the workplace is maintained clean and organized

Thus, Option D is the correct answer.

Michael Porter’s Generic Strategies:

1. Porter’s generic strategies describe how a company pursues a competitive advantage across its chosen market scope.
2. The generic strategies are either lower cost, differentiation, or focus.
3. A company chooses to pursue one of two types of competitive advantage, either via lower costs than its competition or by differentiating itself along dimensions valued by customers to command a higher price.
4. A company also chooses one of two types of scope, either focus (offering its products to selected segments of the market) or industry-wide, offering its product across many market segments.
5. The generic strategy reflects the choices made regarding both the type of competitive advantage and the scope. The concept was described by Michael Porter in 1980.

Therefore, option 2 is the correct answer.