Exam 3 Ch. 9

Question 1

Though primarily a process improvement technique, promotes PI by looking to other high-performing organizations to find key improvement targets.

Answer 1

Benchmarking

Question 2

This process improvement technique uses disciplined observation of an operation to identify ways of improving a process.

Answer 2

Kokai Watch

Question 3

Especially useful for identifying inefficiencies and other internal problems, suggestion system and other employee involvement mechanisms are powerful vehicles for problem identification.

Answer 3

Employee involvement

Question 4

Surveys, warranty cards, and hotlines enable customers to provide information about product-realted problems.

Answer 4

Customer Relations

Question 5

Widely used for routine performance monitoring, can also be established for special problem identification purposes.

Answer 5

Information Systems

Question 6

A problem that could have been predicted was not foreseen.

Answer 6

Anticipation Failure

Question 7

A problem is identified later than it might have been.

Answer 7

Late Identification

Question 8

An identified issue is thought to be less serious than it actually is. Ex: Global warming

Answer 8

Misprioritization

Question 9

A situation, thought to be problematic, turns out not to deserve attention.

Answer 9

Red Herring

Question 10

Some problems don’t provide much useful evidence.

Answer 10

Inadequate evidence

Question 11

It can be hard to evaluate certain performances.

Answer 11

Assessment limitations

Question 12

Some evidence is positive, others negative.

Answer 12

Mixed information

Question 13

It’s hard to predict the future.

Answer 13

Forecasting difficulties

Question 14

Management already has too much units plate.

Answer 14

Agenda overload

Question 15

Reasonable policies can have dysfunctional side-effects that inhibit problem identification.

Answer 15

Dysfunctional policies

Question 16

One only attends to certain kinds of information.

Answer 16

Biased perception

Question 17

People are reluctant to revise existing beliefs in light of new evidence.

Answer 17

Blief perseverance

Question 18

An inadequate set of cases leads one to conclude that a situation is problematic.

Answer 18

Hasty Generalization

Question 19

A situation is misprioritized because one mistakenly believes it can easily be fixed.

Answer 19

Illusion of control

Question 20

When a known presenting problem is misdiagnosed, its true problematic causes may not be discovered.

Answer 20

Misdiagnosis

Question 21

Lowering aspiration levels makes problems disappear.

Answer 21

Eroding goals

Question 22

By blaming problems on others, one shirks responsibility for improving the situation.

Answer 22

Scapegoating

Question 23

The Bush administration invaded Iraq because they thought they had WMD when there weren’t any.

Answer 23

Red Herring

Question 24

Inadequate communication among U.S. government agencies like the FBI and the CIA allowed the 9/11 terrorist attacks to succeed.

Answer 24

Diffuse information

Question 25

Long recognized risk of hijackers flying commercial airlines into large buildings, that the events of September 11, 2001 resulted from what?

Answer 25

Anticipation failure

Question 26

One spouse admits and tries to ignore pains that the other insists are signs of cancer, heart disease, or another life-threatening condition.

Answer 26

Late Identification

Question 27

Most Americans would admit that the U.S. government didn’t properly prioritize the thereat of terrorism until after 9/11/01.

Answer 27

Misprioritization

Question 28

Chicken little saying the sky is falling.

Answer 28

Red Herring

Question 29

A manager may not recognize that her subordinates do not like or respect her; human attitudes cannot be seen and subordinates may to express theirs through overt behaviors.

Answer 29

Inadequate evidence

Question 30

The threat of Ayatollah Khomeini posed to American interests in Iran during the late 1970s.

Answer 30

Mixed information

Question 31

The manager of a small town grocery store would be hard-pressed to predict that a national grocery chain will build a store nearby.

Answer 31

Forecasting difficulties

Question 32

The reengineering boom of the early 1990s resulted from belated recognition of business process improvement opportunities created by modern information technology.

Answer 32

Unrecognized needs

Question 33

During the late 1970s, when Khomeini began to incite popular discontent against the Shah of Iran, the Carter administration was preoccupied with the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and other issues, a factor that partially explains U.S. inattention to the situation in Iran.

Answer 33

Agenda overload

Question 34

The traditional rule that “a launch should be canceled if there is any doubt of its safety” was, in effect, replaced by the rule that “a scheduled launch should proceed unless there is conclusive evidence that it is unsafe to do so.”

Answer 34

Dysfunctional policies

Question 35

An entrepreneur, working mightily to get his fledging enterprise off the ground, might focus longed news–the company’s first order from a large customer–while overlooking information that points to more problematic concerns.

Answer 35

Biased Perception

Question 36

This phenomenon was illustrated in the case of a consumer durables manufacturer that experienced declining sales of service parts for its products due to competition from generic parts manufacturers who sold their parts at much lower prices though mass retailers.

Answer 36

Belief Perseverance

Question 37

The resignation of a talented employee does not, by itself, establish that a company’s career development practices are inadequate.

Answer 37

Hasty Generalization

Question 38

House fires are often reported too late because homeowners mistakenly assume they can extinguish the blazes themselves.

Answer 38

Illusion of control

Question 39

Camera manufacturer disappointed in sales of a new product concluded that ineffective advertising is the cause. The advertising agency took a closer look and found that the product had an unoriginal “me-too” design and that the company’s distribution system was inadequate. If the company changed advertising agencies, these problems might not have been recognized for months or years.

Answer 39

Misdiagnosis

Question 40

Acceptance of minor deviations led to the acceptance of increasingly serious variances form company specifications. Before long, the firm accepted almost anything the supplier shipped.

Answer 40

Eroding goals

Question 41

Blaming lost luggage and missed passenger connections on supposed mistakes by the commuter lines involved. The commuter lines didn’t much care, since their compensation from the airline was based on volume, not service quality.

Answer 41

Scapegoat