Question 1: Personality at Work Joaquin is the HR manager at a digital communications firm. He needs to recruit and select a new social media consultant. The role requires strong social skills, innovation and creativity and will involve a considerable amount of teamwork in a fairly unstructured work environment where the new recruit will have considerable decision-making autonomy. Should Joaquin try to hire an applicant who scores high on extroversion and openness to experience? Use relevant theory and empirical evidence to justify your answer.
Question 2: Work Motivation Your company provides a diversity training programme to ensure that employees are capable of addressing the challenges of working in a diverse, multicultural workforce. Participation is mandatory, and employees are required to take the training as many times as needed until they pass. The training is usually conducted in a boutique hotel in central London; it lasts one day and employees are paid for the training time. You realize that during the training, employees tend to put in the minimum level of effort, and most participants fail the exam at the end of the day and then have to retake the programme. Drawing upon expectancy and reinforcement theories as well as the assigned readings, 1) explain why employees may not be motivated to perform well in the training programme, then 2) suggest improvements to the training so that employees are motivated to pass the exam and apply the material in the workplace.
Question 3: The Psychological Contract Katja has been working for Redbridge Publishing for three years as an editorial assistant. She enjoys her job and routinely puts in long hours to get more experience and to raise her profile in the organisation. Her colleagues appreciate how willing Katja is to assist them with whatever needs doing, and she routinely goes out of her way to show new staff members around and help them settle in. Katja was supposed to go up for promotion this year. However, her employer temporarily suspended promotion processes in 2021 due to the financial uncertainties generated by the pandemic and last week the announcement came through that they are suspended again for 2022. Drawing upon your knowledge of psychological contract theory and empirical evidence, explain the impact this news is likely to have upon Katja's employment relationship and what her potential response(s) might be.
Question 4: Emotions at Work Shireen has just started work as a flight attendant for British Airways. Based on your knowledge of relevant theory and empirical evidence from the lecture and assigned readings, identify some of the outcomes of performing emotional labour that she may encounter and explain why (and under what circumstances) these outcomes are likely to occur.
Question 5: The Work-Home Interface Use the theoretical and empirical knowledge you have acquired from the assigned readings and lecture content to analyse your own work-life interface. (If you are not currently in work, think about a previous job or think about the interface between your university studies and personal life instead.) Do you perceive conflict and/or enrichment? In what ways? What are your boundary management preferences and strategies, what are these influenced by, and how effective are they?
Question 6: Work Groups and Teams A new online teaching project at a university brought together members of staff from two separate functions: information technology services and academics. The team members began to get to know one another during online meetings and through emails. As the project ramped up, the information technology officers, who were mostly men in their forties and fifties, collaborated closely on their assigned tasks, consolidated their existing knowledge and grew to know one another well. Without exposure to feedback from the academic staff, the information technology officers focused exclusively on their own area of expertise relevant to the project and made decisions based on what was most efficient from a technological perspective. Meanwhile, the academic staff members, who were predominantly women in their thirties, also collaborated closely with one another, consolidated their existing knowledge and grew to know one another well. They designed a 'wish list' of functions based on their experience of teaching and on feedback collected from students, but did not incorporate any input from the information technology officers. Drawing on social categorisation theory and empirical evidence from the lecture and assigned readings, explain what is happening in this situation. How is the project team's performance likely to be impacted, and what can help to change this situation?
Question 7: Discrimination and Exclusion in the Workplace According to an article in Accountancy magazine from 2018, only 6% of partners (the highest position in the organizational hierarchy) in the top 10 UK accounting firms come from a Black, Asian or other ethnic minority background. Below partner level, 25% of professional staff and 17% of support staff at the top 10 firms are Black, Asian or ethnic minority. The author of the article suggests that while top-tier firms do not have an issue recruiting ethnic minority staff, they do have problems retaining and promoting them to senior level. Drawing on relevant theory and empirical evidence from the lecture and assigned readings, give some potential explanations for the under-representation of ethnic minority partners in top-tier accounting firms and the problems these firms may be facing with regard to retaining their ethnic minority staff.
Question 8: Leadership What are the unique challenges women face when pursuing, or occupying, leadership roles? Use role congruity theory and stereotype threat to explain your answer