Strategic Human Resource Management Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The disadvantage of using expatriates to staff overseas subsidiaries is that they may try to establish a foreign culture, the parent company's, in the host unit, which can create friction with local employees. Bringing cultural similarities with the parent company, giving employees a multinational orientation and providing a broader global perspective are all advantages of using expatriates. So the third option is the only disadvantage.

Answer: C

Whistle blowing is the situation in which an employee discloses the employer's illegal, immoral or illegitimate activities, usually to the authorities, the press or the public. It is not the same as causing indiscipline, and it concerns the employer's practice and not the wrongdoing of fellow employees. Option B, disclosing other employees' wrongdoing, is closer to reporting a colleague. Since only C is correct, the all-of-the-above option also fails.

Answer: B

Distributive bargaining is bargaining that focuses on convincing the other party that the cost of disagreeing with the proposed terms would be very high. It is a win-lose process in which each side tries to gain at the other's expense, using threats of strike or lockout. Option A describes integrative or conciliatory bargaining, in which both parties are willing to negotiate. Option C, convincing the other that the benefits of agreeing would be very high, describes a persuasion-based approach not typical of distributive bargaining.

Answer: D

Internal equity is the perceived fairness of the pay structure within a firm (1), and external equity is the perceived fairness of pay relative to what other employers pay for the same labour (2). Only code D gives both of these pairs. In that code the remaining two statements go to balancing equity (4) and individual equity (3), as in the key. Code A pairs internal equity with the individual-pay statement, code B is just the numerical order, and code C pairs external equity with the statement on internal and external equity, so all three misplace internal or external equity.

Answer: B

The correct matching is a-ii, b-iii, c-iv, d-i. Career development is the ongoing, formalised effort to develop enriched and more capable workers. A promotability forecast is the activity in which managers decide on the advancement potential of subordinates. Succession planning prepares people to fill executive positions. The direction phase is the step of determining the career the employees want and the steps they must take to reach their goals. That is ii iii iv i. Other codes mix these up, for instance by calling succession planning the direction phase.

Answer: C

A formal statement of the knowledge, skills, abilities, traits and other characteristics needed for effective performance is a job specification. A job description lists the duties, tasks and responsibilities of the job, and job analysis is the process of collecting information on both. Job enrichment is the redesign of a job to make it more meaningful. Only job specification describes the qualities a person must have. Job analysis is the wider process from which both a description and a specification are drawn, so it is the source, not the statement of qualities.

Answer: B

Job evaluation aims to reduce reliance on arbitrary methods of pay determination. It rates jobs systematically, with methods such as ranking, grading and point rating, so that pay differentials rest on the relative worth of jobs and not on whim. Performance appraisal assesses the people who do the jobs and job enrichment redesigns the job. Attrition is the loss of employees, so none of these compares jobs to set pay.

Answer: D

The correct matching is a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i. Work flow analysis examines how work adds value to the ongoing processes of a business. Business process reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of processes for dramatic gains in cost, quality, service and speed. Job design organises work into the tasks needed for a specific job. Job enrichment puts specialised tasks back together so that one person is responsible for a whole product or service. That is code iii iv ii i, and the codes that give job enrichment to the first description are wrong.

Answer: A

Reorganising a company's employees to improve efficiency is right sizing. It means adjusting the workforce to the size the organisation actually needs, which can involve redeployment, retraining or reduction. Downsizing, retrenchment and lay-offs are all reductions of the workforce, with lay-offs usually temporary, so they describe only one way of right sizing, not the process of reorganising for efficiency. The distinction matters because right sizing is a continuing adjustment of the work force, while the other three terms are only the ways of cutting numbers.

Answer: B

The method described is the job ranking method.

In ranking, a sample of jobs is selected, descriptions are prepared, and the jobs are compared and placed in order of their perceived importance to the organisation.

Job grading puts jobs into pre-defined grades, the points rating method gives numerical points to factors, and the guide chart method is a development of point rating. None of them simply orders the jobs by importance.