Question: What cautions would you advise in interpreting

> Talk, talk, talk. As Ken Hartman, an African American midlevel manager at Blahna Inc. recalls, that’s all he got from the white men above him in top management—despite the fact that Blahna had long enjoyed a reputation as a socially responsible company.

> ONO Inc. is an auto-supply company with 11 employees. In addition, there are two supervisors and Fred Donofrio, the owner and general manager. Last year, ONO did $7 million in business and earned $355,000 in profits ($525,000 before taxes). The auto-supp

> The robots are coming! The robots are coming! Well, not so fast. According to a 2017 study from the McKinsey Global Institute, only 5 percent of all occupations are at risk of being entirely automated by 2025. Even when the technical potential exists, th

> When appointed CEO of PepsiCo in 2006, Ms. Indra Nooyi was only the 11th woman to run a Fortune 500 company. Since then, Ms. Nooyi has been ranked in the top 10 of Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most powerful women. In 2016, she ranked #2 on F

> Skyline Machine Shop is a medium-sized firm located in San Jose, California. It employs almost 1,000 workers when business is good. Skyline specializes in doing precision machining on a subcontract basis for several large aerospace companies. Skilled mac

> Your company wants to encourage more employees to participate in work site wellness programs. Would you recommend rewards for participating or punishments for not participating?

> Identify three preventive steps that an employer might take to avoid incidents of workplace violence.

> How can effective HRM contribute to improvements in productivity and quality of work life?

> Should organizations be willing to invest more money in employee wellness? Why or why not?

> You observe a coworker threatening another employee. What should you do?

> If the benefits of EAPs cannot be demonstrated to exceed their costs, should EAPs be discontinued?

> Explain how a disease-management program might be used to address substance-abuse problems.

> Discuss the relative effectiveness of engineering versus management controls to improve job safety and health.

> What can firms do to encourage all employees to behave safely on the job?

> Should OSHA’s enforcement activities be expanded? Why, or why not?

> How does the imposition of employee discipline for poor performance (or conversely, the failure to discipline) serve as a signal to other employees?

> What might explain the finding that across cultures, employee-voice systems are associated with judgments of fairness?

> Discuss the similarities and differences among employee voice, interactional justice, and informational justice. Can you give an example of each one?

> What difficulties do you see in shifting from a hierarchical, departmentalized organization to a leaner, flatter one in which power is shared between workers and managers?

> In the course of your job, you learn that someone is “cooking the books.” Discuss the steps you would take to resolve the issue.

> What are some guidelines to follow in determining a reasonable compromise between a company’s need to run its business and employee rights to privacy?

> How can a firm avoid lawsuits for employment at will?

> Is it ethical to record a conversation with your boss without his or her knowledge? If yes, under what circumstances?

> What advice would you give to an executive who is about to negotiate an employment contract?

> Discuss the similarities and differences in these concepts: procedural justice, workplace due process, and ethical decisions about behavior.

> In performance reviews, why is it more important to focus on the future than to dwell on the past?

> Google’s Project Oxygen found that technical skill is the least important characteristic of a good boss. What kinds of other skills are more important?

> Why is it so difficult to compare industrial relations systems in different countries?

> Your company has just learned that it is the target of a union-organizing campaign. How will you advise managers about what they can and cannot say to employees?

> Considering everything we have discussed in this chapter, describe management styles and practices that will be effective for your country’s businesses in the next decade.

> Why is it in the best interests of management and labor to work together? Or is it?

> Compare and contrast mediation, interest arbitration, and grievance arbitration.

> What are the key features of the U.S. industrial relations system?

> Why is it so difficult to be effective at both distributive and integrative bargaining in the course of the same negotiations?

> Discuss the rights and obligations of unions and management during a union-organizing drive.

> Are the roles of labor and management inherently adversarial?

> What might be some advantages and some disadvantages of cafeteria-style benefits?

> How do voluntary benefits programs allow smaller companies to offer a wider array of benefits than they otherwise would be able to?

> A major problem with benefits is that many employees don’t know much about them—until they need to use them. What can organizations do to deal with that problem?

> Your company has just developed a new, company-sponsored savings plan for employees. Develop a strategy to publicize the program and to encourage employees to participate in it.

> How will demographic changes and increasing diversity in the workplace affect the ways that organizations manage their people?

> What can large firms do to control health-care costs? What about small firms?

> In terms of the “attract-retain-motivate” philosophy, how do benefits affect employee behavior?

> The new world of employee benefits is best described as “sharing costs, sharing risks.” Discuss the impact of that philosophy on the broad areas of health care and pensions.

> What should a company do over the short and long term to maximize the use and value of its benefits choices to employees?

> How do tight versus loose labor market conditions affect wage rates?

> If you were implementing an employee stock-ownership plan, what key factors would you consider?

> Distinguish profit-sharing from gain-sharing.

> In your opinion, why are more firms tying executive incentives to long-term (3 years or more) company performance?

> Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of competency- or skill-based pay systems.

> What are some advantages of having a common set of leadership attributes for all managers to strive for? Are there any downsides to this approach?

> What can companies do to ensure internal, external, and individual equity for all employees?

> What steps can a company take to align its compensation system with its general business strategy?

> Should discussions of employee job performance be separated from salary considerations?

> How can we overcome employee defensiveness in performance-feedback interviews?

> How is performance appraisal for teams different from performance appraisal for individuals?

> The chief counsel for a large corporation comes to you for advice. She wants to know what makes a firm’s review system legally vulnerable. What would you tell her?

> Working in small groups, develop a performance-management system for a cashier in a neighborhood grocery with little technology but lots of personal touch.

> You have been asked to design a rater-training program. What types of elements would you build into the process that are specific to managers, specific to employees, and common to both?

> What is the difference between performance management and performance appraisal?

> What would an effective performance-management system look like?

> Develop a policy to inform employees of your organization’s BYOD approach to electronic devices.

> What advice would you give to a prospective expatriate regarding questions to ask before accepting the assignment?

> Many people travel to the south rim of the Grand Canyon on vacation each year. The National Parks Service keeps records of the number of vehicles entering the park. According to their website, the following table lists the total vehicles that entered the

> Use the table in Example 2 to answer these questions. a. Add a relative frequency column. Calculate the relative frequencies. Round each to the nearest thousandth. b. Which price range(s) has a relative frequency greater than 0.18 and less than 0.27? c.

> Winnie needs to travel to Los Angeles. She has decided to go by bus. She researched three different bus companies and compiled the following frequency table for all of the ticket prices available leaving on January 29.

> Kate is a professional musician. She wants to make an essential purchase of an upgraded used bass guitar for her work. She found the following prices for the same make and model bass guitar from various sellers: $699, $599, $699, $680, $590, $720, $650,

> For most people, health club membership expenses are considered discretionary. Alli lives in a big city and wants to join a health club. She researched monthly membership costs and found the following for health clubs within a 5-mile radius of her apartm

> Medications are essential expenses. DeWitt has composed a price list of antibiotics available at different pharmacies in his neighborhood. In reviewing his list, he can’t find the number of pharmacies selling the antibiotics for $8. Exa

> There are many cell phone case options on the market. This discretionary item comes in a variety of colors, materials, thicknesses, protection levels, and more. Amit runs a small business that sells computer and phone accessories. He has kept the followi

> Airline flights can be either discretionary or essential. For most people, the price you pay for where you sit in the plane is a discretionary expense. The seat map for a particular flight is shown here. There are a total of 149 seats on this flight. A

> Write the sigma notation mean formula for the 4 consecutive days that would have the lowest mean of the week.

> Round the following value / to the nearest minute. Interpret the answer in the context of the problem.

> Create a distribution of five numbers that has range 10, maximum score 20, and mean 12.

> Round the following value / to the nearest minute. Interpret the answer in the context of the problem.

> Write the sigma notation mean formula for the consecutive 3-month period that would have the highest mean of the year.

> Write the formula for the mean water bill from April through November using sigma notation and determine that mean. Round your answer to the nearest cent.

> Write the formula for the mean water bill for the first 6 months of the year using sigma notation and determine that mean. Round your answer to the nearest cent.

> Write the formula for the mean water bill for the entire year using sigma notation and determine that mean. Round your answer to the nearest cent.

> Before the last school year began, it was estimated that the average discretionary personal expenses each school year for a student attending a 4-year public college were $2,110. This past summer Ashley decided to poll seven of her friends attending a 4-

> The Super Bowl is a big money-making and money-spending event. The discretionary spending amounts on Super Bowl weekends are in the billions of dollars. Examine the chart below that lists TV viewer numbers and Super Bowl weekend-related expenses by year.

> In Application 6 for section 1-5 in the textbook, you were given the following table about discretionary personal back-to-school personal expenses. a. Determine the linear regression equation that best fits the data presented in the table. Let x represen

> The table below lists the percentage of households with an income of $100,000 or more that spent money on fitness-related activities over the course of one year as reported by statista.com. a. Without making a scatter plot, what trend do you see in the

> MoviePlay is an online movie rental service. They have a sliding price list based upon the popularity of the movies. The table below shows the rentals by price category for the month of September. Let x represent the price and y represent the number of m

> A distribution consists of 30 scores of 10 and 30 scores of 20. Find the ratio of the range to the standard deviation.

> Determine if the scatter plot below depicts a positive correlation or a negative correlation.

> During a recent summer month, airfares from Miami, FL, to Seattle, WA, were normally distributed with mean $760 and standard deviation $136. a. Sketch a normal curve and shade in the interval below $500. b. Find the z-score for a fare of $500. c. What p

> The following is a distribution of the number of individual song downloads made by students in Arlington High School’s Acoustic Café Club last year. 12, 11, 21, 43, 23, 51, 19, 22, 88, 60 a. Find the mean number of downloads per club member. b. If each c

> The table below lists all train fares quoted from Washington, DC, to Philadelphia, PA, on a given day. a. Write an algebraic expression for the percentile rank of $42. b. Write an algebraic expression for the percentile rank of $48. c. Write an algebr

> Many people travel to Florida to visit the popular theme parks there. The table below lists yearly attendance at one of those parks for 6 consecutive years. a. Add a “Relative Frequency” column to the table and deter

> A certain rail company uses a method called demand pricing for setting the prices of their seats. The price per seat starts at a fixed amount. As the train starts to fill up, the prices gradually increase. A consumer watchdog agency selected a random coa

> Write the formula for the mean cell phone bill from March to September using sigma notation and determine that mean. Round your answer to the nearest cent.

> Write the formula for the mean cell phone bill for the last six months of the year using sigma notation and determine that mean. Round your answer to the nearest cent.

> Write the formula for the mean cell phone bill for the entire year using sigma notation and determine that mean. Round your answer to the nearest cent.

> Although companies would like consumers to believe that identity theft protection is an essential expense, in reality it is discretionary. A consumer organization compared the monthly costs of similar identity theft protection plans on the market and pub

> Following are the prices of 12 tickets listed on the Ticket Racket ticket broker site for a Bruce Springsteen concert. $75, 120, 120, 145, 150, 150, 150, 175, 175, 200, 225, 275 Round your answers to the nearest hundredth. a. What is the mean ticket pric

> The New York Premier Theater is hosting a concert at which all proceeds will go to the charity. The seating chart is shown here: a. Construct a frequency distribution with column headings “Seat Type”, â€&#

> Write the sigma notation mean formula for the second semester beginning in February and determine that semester average rounded to the nearest dollar.

> Round the following value / to the nearest dollar. Interpret the answer in the context of the problem.

> Write the sigma notation mean formula for the 3 consecutive month period that would have the highest mean of the year.