Exam released 10/21 8:00pm
– see Exams folder
*SEE Friday asynchronous class for exam review sheet and recorded lecture with exam review
Chapters covered:
Ch 2: Teams Characteristics & Diversity, Ch 5: Teams Processes & Communication
Ch 6: Learning & Decision-making (pgs.
179-190), Ch 11-The Legal Environment/EEO
Exam Part I: Online 30 Multiple Choice Questions
(45 points)
Brightspace -> Content -> Exams
You have 40 minutes for 30 questions (45 points) and you cannot stop midway. Do not start Part I of
the exam until you can devote up to 40 minutes. The questions are definition-based or require you to
apply the definition in a very short scenario. Below are the potential topics:
Exam Part II: Essays (75 points)
Students must label each essay portion and keep each portion as a
separate, labeled paragraph (e.g. #1A, 1B….3A, 3B).
Essay 1:
Prepare a 1-2 sentence statement confirming that you understand that Exams are individual effort
work, that this work is entirely your own and that you are complying with LMU’s Academic Honesty
Policy and your instructor’s policy, as listed on the syllabus.
Essay 2: Development & Effectiveness of Teams
In this course, we covered teams with a particular eye towards understanding what makes a team
effective, and how team diversity relates to team performance. Answer the following questions.
NOTE:
Week 6 Friday Asynchronous class lecture was also focused on teams, and some of you may have
missed the link. If so, you may want to watch the recording.
A.
The concept of team member roles, mental models and transactive memory are all important
for understanding how teams become effective. Define each of these terms. For team member
roles, be sure to discuss the general categories of roles and provide two examples of each role.
B.
Select one of the models of the stages of team development. Prepare a paragraph describing
what this model says about how teams develop.
C.
Describe in a few sentences how the stages of team development might relate to the concepts
of mental models and transactive memory. What might they tell us about how mental models
and transactive memory develops?
D.
Based on what you’ve learned about the role of diversity in teams, summarize in a paragraph
whether diversity helps, hinders (or both) the performance of a team.
E.
Finally, answer
one
of these two questions based on your career interests:
You are a project manager and your boss has asked you to take the lead for the market
research stage of a new product development project. She has indicated that you can
select up to ten team members from your department. As you think about what you can
do to improve the effectiveness and success of this team, you remember that in your
BCOR 3610 course you learned several useful concepts related to teams. In 1-2
paragraphs, describe which three concepts which you wrote about (in #A-C) that you
believe will be the most helpful in you forming and developing an effective team.
You are a market analyst and one of the senior project managers invited you to join a
new product development team. You have a good working relationship with him and he
confides that he is a little nervous about leading this team. The project manager is
justifiably concerned because while he is a brilliant project manager, his experience in
leading teams is limited. The last time he led a team, that group was not very effective
nor efficient. You remember that in your BCOR 3610 course you learned several useful
concepts related to teams. In 1-2 paragraphs describe three of these concepts (#A-C)
that you could discuss with the project manager, which you believe will be the most
helpful for him to form and develop an effective and productive team.
Essay 3: The Legal Environment (EEO) & Workplace Safety
A.
Arguably, the Equal Pay Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in
Employment Act of 1967 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 are the Federal
employment laws that provide rights to the largest number of individuals. In a few sentences,
describe each law, what rights does it provide and to which categories or groups of
individuals and what does it require the employer to do
?
B.
Based on your first name, discuss the cases assigned to you (initial of your FIRST name). Write
the TITLE of your case. Answer these questions. Case listing: SEE LAST PAGE OF THIS HANDOUT
i.
In a few sentences, summarize the facts of the case.
ii.
List the Federal EEO law that applies (if more than one applies, list them).
iii.
Describe in a short paragraph whether you believe that the employer complied
with the law or whether they treated the employee/s unfairly/discriminated.
Explain and specifically point to the employer’s actions to support your position.
Essay 4: Decision-making and cognitive biases
A.
Refer back to Week #7 10/11 Decision-making (W7 Decision-making Wrapup). In that week’s
lecture, I presented a “Decision-making Process” model and I made a case for why this model,
which is only on the PPT slides and not in the book, is better than the model in the book. In a
few sentences,
describe what is the strength of this decision-making model? What is the most
important step in the model? Explain. (Will be helpful to go to that lecture)
B.
Briefly explain the difference between identifying a symptom of a problem or a root cause.
C.
Now go back to the United Children’s Fund case below. Identify 3 symptoms of the biggest
problem and then describe what the most important/biggest problem is. What do you think is
the root cause of the problem? Explain and support why this is the MOST important problem.
D.
Finally, refer to this list of cognitive biases. Luisa (the supervisor in the case) could very well
make mistakes in identifying the most important problem, and this could be due to her
cognitive biases getting in the way. Select two of them, define them and briefly explain in a few
sentences how this bias could affect her problem solving process.
EEEO CASE LISTING FOR ESSAYS
1.
FIRST NAME A-G
a.
Disney & Imane Boudlal
https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/muslim-former-
employee-sues-disney-discrimination
b.
Lily Ledbetter Case
2.
FIRST NAME F-L
a.
“Walmart” see
“EEO Cases handout”
pdf under Exam Materials Folder
b.
American Apparel & Cancer/Chemotherapy Patient – See EEO
“EEO Cases handout”
p
3.
FIRST NAME M-R
a.
Amazon:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/
amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-
idUSKCN1MK08G
b.
Abercrombie & Fitch – See EEO
“EEO Cases handout”
under Exam Materials Folder
4.
FIRST NAME S-Z
a.
Amex: https://legalaidatwork.org/releases/workers-sue-workplace-discrimination-
english-policy/
b.
Amazon:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/
amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-
idUSKCN1MK08G
The International Children’s Health Fund is a UNICEF affiliated nonprofit organization 1
ICHF recruits donors to sponsor children with monthly donations to help improve children’s living
conditions in developing countries in Latin America. This monthly donation goes to help education,
health and community development. A key feature of the program is that donors can write monthly
letters to their sponsored child and receive responses back from the child and/or family.
ICHF has a team of staff in Donor Management to run this program. A key responsibility of the staff is
to translate letters between sponsors and children/families. ICHF regards the these translation services
as essential to keeping donors engaged and recruiting new donors.
Luisa is the head of the Donor Management staff and she is overworked and underpaid. She has four
staff translators with varying degrees of English language skills. Maria is the longest-serving staff
member and the most skilled. She has worked at ICHF for over ten years. While Maria started off as an
enthusiastic and efficient translator, over the years she seems to have grown bored with her job. The
quality of her translations are always excellent, but over the years, she seems to produce fewer and
fewer translations. Since Maria has worked there the longest, her hourly salary is about 3% more than
her co-workers, but all staff rarely receive a pay increase. The job is essentially the same as in 2011.
Luisa often needs to be out of the office to attend managers’ meetings at ICHF. She gets the feeling
that on these days, Maria takes unusually long lunches and slacks off on her work. Maria gets along
well with her co-workers. However, she seems to be the most talented and least productive.
All of the translators work from a shared database. Each week, Luisa assigns a set of letters to each
staff member. She looks at how many letters are in the “to-do” que and then divides them up equally
among the staff. She gives each translator her list of letters, usually between 60-70 for the week.
When a translator does not finish her assigned set of letters for the week by Friday, those stay in that
staff member’s personal “to-do” que and then Luisa assigns her more letters the following week. The
problem is that this lends to staff members continually behind on her work. Sometimes Luisa gets so
frustrated that she will translate some of the letters that have been in the queue the longest. It is not
good for a month to go by without some form of communication occurring between sponsors and the
children. This makes it likely that sponsors will end their financial commitment. However, Luisa realizes
that she really shouldn’t be doing her staff’s work, she has enough work as it is.
Luisa wishes that Maria would be more motivated, as she knows she has the right skill set to do good
and efficient work, but she’s not sure what to do. Offering pay increases is out of the question because
this would mean an increase to their operating budget by 20% and she just can’t afford th
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