Chap 1: Gaining Competitive Advantage

Question 1

Competitiveness

Answer 1

a company’s ability to maintain and gain market share in its industry

Question 2

Human Resource Management (HRM)

Answer 2

the policies, practices, and systems that influence employees’ behavior, attitudes, and performance

Question 3

Shared service model

Answer 3

a way to organize the HR function that includes centers of expertise or excellence, service centers, and business partners.

Question 4

Self-service

Answer 4

giving employees online access to, or apps that provide, information about HR issues such as training, benefits, compensation, and contracts; enrolling online in programs
and services; and completing online attitude surveys.

Question 5

Outsourcing

Answer 5

the practice of having another company (a vendor, third party, or consultant) provide services.

Question 6

Evidence-Based HR

Answer 6

the demonstration that HR practices have a positive influence on the company’s bottom line or key stakeholders (employees, customers, community, shareholders).

Question 7

HR/Workforce Analytics

Answer 7

the practice of using quantitative methods and scientific
methods to analyze data (often big data) to understand the role of talent in executing the business strategy and achieving business goals

Question 8

Big Data

Answer 8

information merged from HR databases, corporate financial statements, employee surveys, and other data sources to make evidence-based HR decisions and show that
HR practices influence the organization’s bottom line, including profits and costs.

Question 9

Sustainability

Answer 9

the company’s ability to meet its needs without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Question 10

Stakeholders

Answer 10

shareholders, the community, customers, employees, and all of the other parties that have an interest in seeing that the company succeeds.

Question 11

Intangible Assets

Answer 11

human capital, customer capital, social capital, and intellectual capital. Intangible assets are equally or even more valuable than financial and physical assets, but they
are difficult to duplicate or imitate

Question 12

Empowering

Answer 12

giving employees responsibility and authority Page 24 to make decisions regarding all aspects of product development or customer service.

Question 13

Learning Organization

Answer 13

embraces a culture of lifelong learning, enabling all employees to continually acquire and share knowledge. Improvements in product or service quality do not
stop when formal training is completed

Question 14

Agility

Answer 14

anticipating and causing, adapting, and taking specific actions to support change.

Question 15

Employee Engagement

Answer 15

the degree to which employees are fully involved in their work and the strength of their commitment to their job and the company.

Question 16

Employee Experience

Answer 16

everything that influences employees daily life both inside and outside of the workplace.

Question 17

Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Answer 17

a strategic statement that communicates the company values, how they affect employees, and how the employee experience reflects the values.

Question 18

Talent Management

Answer 18

the systematic planned strategic effort by a company to use bundles of HRM practices—including acquiring and assessing employees, learning and development, performance management, and compensation—to attract, retain, develop, and motivate highly skilled employees and managers

Question 19

Nontraditional Employement

Answer 19

the use of independent contractors, freelancers, on-call

workers, temporary workers, and contract company workers.

Question 20

Balanced Scorecard

Answer 20

gives managers an indication of the performance of a company based on the degree to which stakeholder needs are satisfied; it depicts the company from the
perspective of internal and external customers, employees, and shareholders.

Question 21

Total Quality Management (TQM)

Answer 21

a companywide effort to continuously improve the way people, machines, and systems accomplish work.

Question 22

Six Sigma Process

Answer 22

process of measuring, analyzing, improving, and then

controlling processes once they have been brought within the narrow Six Sigma quality tolerances or standards.

Question 23

Lean Thinkning

Answer 23

a way to do more with less effort, time, equipment, and space, but still provide customers what they need and want.

Question 24

Labor Force

Answer 24

the internal labor force . Employers identify and select new employees from the external labor market through recruiting and selection. The external labor market includes persons actively seeking employment.

Question 25

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

Answer 25

strict rules for corporate behavior and sets heavy fines and
prison terms for noncompliance: Organizations are spending millions of dollars each year to comply with regulations under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which imposes criminal penalties for corporate governing and accounting lapses, including retaliation against whistle-blowers who
report violations of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules

Question 26

High-Performance Work Systems

Answer 26

maximize the fit between the company’s social system

(employees) and its technical system

Question 27

HR Information System (HRIS)

Answer 27

a computer system used to acquire, store, retrieve, and distribute information related to a company’s human resources.

Question 28

Cloud Computing

Answer 28

a computing system that provides information technology infrastructure over a network in a self-service, modifiable, and on-demand model

Question 29

HR Dashboard

Answer 29

series of indicators or metrics that managers and employees have access to on the company intranet or HRIS.