Business Management Flashcards
Which of the following in not one of the four elements of the acronym VUCA?
A. Visionary
B. Unemployed
C. Clarity
D. All of the above
D. There are four basic elements to the acronym VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. VUCA describes the environment in which competent HR professionals must perform.
Which option is the correct term describing the near-term activities involved in transferring the product or service from the business to the customer?
A. Sales
B. Marketing
C. Placement
D. Both A and B
A. The sales and marketing organizational functions, while closely related, have distinct roles in the transfer of company products or services to the customer. The sales function serves the near-term needs of the customer. The marketing function serves the longer term goals of placement, product, price, and promotion.
Managing payroll and recruiting for open positions are examples of which human resource role?
A. Strategic
B. Operational
C. Administration
D. Employee Relations
B. The operational role of a human resource professional refer to work related to running the core business. This would include tasks such as processing payroll, hiring, disciplining employees, and other tasks related to day-to-day operations. These tasks are typical for a PHR-level professional.
A conduct statement is most likely to be found in which corporate document?
A. Employee handbook
B. Ethics policy
C. Injury and Illness Prevention Plann
D. All of the above
D. A code or statement of conduct can serve many purposes. It may serve to define proper behavior when there is a conflict of interest in an ethics policy. It may also describe expected standards of behavior in both the employee handbook and the IIPP.
Which of the following tools would HR most likely recommend to an employer who wants to tailor an employee wellness program to the needs of the workforce?
A. Workers’ comp aggregate report
B. Utilization reports
C. Employment trends
D. Workforce analytics
D. Workforce analytics is growing in popularity as a tool that employers use to gather data on a macro level about the workforce. Analytics are future-focused in that employers use the data gathered to both predict behaviors and makes decisions about effective HR programs.
Re-engineering, corporate restructuring, and workforce expansions are all examples of what type of management strategy?
A, Change
B. Authoritarian
C. Risk
D. Transformational
A. Change management is a critical process used to effectively manage the change required to implement strategic initiatives. Authoritarian and transformation are management/leadership styles, not strategies. Risk management is the practice of forecasting and responding to risks facing an organization.
The employer you work for is looking to open a large paint facility in a neighboring state. It will be the second location, with corporate headquarters continuing to be home base. Which change management structural intervention will HR most likely need to address?
A. Reengineering
B. Corporate restructuring
C. Workforce reduction
D. Workforce expansion
D. Workforce expansion as a structural change is often the result of business growth or decline. In this case, HR will need to address communication methods between corporate and the new facility, help build a cohesive team identity, and formalize a cohesive management approach to the challenges inherent in multi-establishment businesses.
Which metric should you use to communicate to an executive team the expenses associated with recruiting and selection?
A. Cost per hire
B. Time to hire
C. Replacement cost
D. Accession rate
A. A cost per hire metric is useful hen needing to calculate the true costs associated with recruiting and selection. Factors to include are advertising, labor rates to screen resume and interview candidates, costs for pre-employment testing, and administrative costs associated with hiring.
A supervisor complained to HR that one of his employees is often tardy. When asked about it, the employee said that he thought being on time wasn’t really that important, as his supervisor seemed to come and go as he pleased. The supervisor himself is a nonexempt employee with a regular schedule. What should HR recommend as a first step?
A. Discipline the employee for violating the attendance policy?
B. Discipline both the employee and the supervisor for violating the attendance policy?
C. Coach the supervisor on modeling appropriate workplace behaviors and communicating proper standards.
D. Provide the employee and supervisor with the company’s standards of conduct
C. An important role of human resource practitioners is to reinforce a company’s standards to supervisors. In this case, reminding the supervisor that he is responsible for modeling appropriate behavior may be a good first step toward changing behaviors.
How do employee handbooks contribute to an organization’s risk management plan?
A. They are required by law
B. They help protect the organization from potential risk.
C. They act as an insurance policy by identifying procedures and checklists.
D. Employee handbooks are the only way to defend against unlawful employment litigation claims.
B. Employee handbooks help to protect the organization from predictable risks based on litigation statistics and recommend best practices in compliance with various labor laws. They are not specifically required by law an are only one step toward defending against claims of discrimination. While handbooks certainly help to mitigate and offset risks, similar to an insurance policy, they typically do not go into as much detail as standard operating procedures, compliance checklists, or full HR audits.
Why is it important for HR professionals to keep up to date on employment litigation statistics?
A. It is the first step toward compliance with labor laws.
B. These statistics provide insight into updated labor laws in response to cultural or technological trends.
C. Doing so helps to predict unemployment trends.
D. These statistics help to predict areas of vulnerability and recommend risk management strategies.
D. Trending and forecasting are critical activities in enterprise risk management. They help to predict the areas of greatest vulnerability based on the legal climate. Updates based on trends cannot necessarily be gleaned from litigation statistics alone, and unemployment statistics are a different set of compiled numbers than litigation information.
Which of the following usually present the most risk of a discrimination charge being filed with the EEOC?
A. Retaliation, race, disability
B. Race, age, disability
C. Sex, race, age
D. Race, ethnicity, national origin
A. Retaliation continues to account for the largest number of discrimination charges filed with the EEOC, followed by Race and Disability. This information is critical when developing risk management strategies such as policies prohibiting retaliation from supervisors and prompt investigation of discrimination claims under any of the statues enforced by the EEOC.
What is the purpose of a legislative committee?
A. To unify members of congress either for or agianst a specific bill
B. To sponsor a bill, agreeing to seek support for its passage.
C. To study a bill and determine the likelihood that the bill will be able to pass a vote in the full body of Congress
D. To make changes to a bill prior to its forwarding to the full body for a vote.
C. Once a member of Congress agrees to sponsor a bill, it is assigned to a committee to determine whether it is viable. If a bill is deemed viable, it is then sent to a subcommittee, which makes any changes to the bill and either sends it back to the full committee or allows it to die without taking further action. Unifying or influencing members of congress for or against a bill is known as lobbying.
An activity in which anybody can participate to influence laws and regulations is known as which of the following? A. Lobbying B. Administrative law C. Corporate governance D. Social responsibility
A. Lobbying can be an activity as simple as writing to a congressperson, or as elaborate as the hiring of a professional firm or industry group.
A code of conduct is to _________ as an ethical statement is to organizational standards of behavior.
A. Employee professionalism
B. Policies
C. Work rules
D. Employee standards of behavior
D. A code of conduct seeks to communicate the company expectations of employees. These may include standards for professionalism, specific policies, and general work rules. An ethics or values statement strives to communicate the standards a company seeks to uphold in its business practices.
An assembly-line configuration and standard operating procedures for taking a sals call are examples of which of the following organizational functions?
A. Scheduling
B. Production layout
C. Capacity
D. Facility location
B. The way in which goods or services are produced are included under the production layout function of an organization. Consider that all work is production–even services such as sales and marketing. Scheduling involves the availability of goods or services during peak demands. Capacity is determining how much of a good or service can be provided based on inputs, and the facility location is where these goods and services will be produced.
Considering inputs such as available material and labor is an activity of which organizational function? A. Capacity B. Production layout C. Scheduling D. Facility location
A. Capacity is the process of determining how much of a good or service can be provided based on inputs, such as the availability of material, labor, and equipment, when considering the needs of the customer. The ways in which goods or services are produced are included under the production layout function of an organization. Scheduling involves the availability of goods or services during peak demands, and the facility location is where these goods and services will be produced.
The evolution from pages to cellular phones is an example of which of the following forces in the external business environment?
A. Availability of skilled workers in the labor force
B. Legal and regulatory activity
C. The economic environment
D. Technology developments driving industry change
D. Long-term successful companies are able to identify changes in technology that influence their industry-specific demands. Other external scanning factors include the labor pool, legal and regulatory activity, and the economic environment.
In which of the following ways does the finance department contribute to the achievement of HR outcomes?
A. A financial analyst can provide information related to incentives for customers to buy.
B. A financial analyst can provide models to predict the number of employees needed at different production levels
C. A financial analyst can aid in tracking real-time inventory related to sales
D. The finance department can process employee payroll
B. While both B and D are correct, it is important to consider interdepartmental support from a strategic perspective. Processing payroll is an operational task that can be done internally or externally. Formulating models that help to predict labor needs is a better example of the application of information from other departments in the achievement of organizational outcomes.
