Two sample exam questions
HRM/OB
Joan Harvey
George Erdos
• We include two examples of longer questions.
In these, we have highlighted in bold the
salient words.
• There follows two examples of shorter
questions.
First example longer question
1 The company that you work for is a multi-national book publisher ABC,
publishing mainly childrens' books. You are currently based in its office in Prague
and are in charge of a small team of 5 people whose task is to find new authors
that are good enough to develop for ABC's increasing list. Your team has to find
novel ways of locating potential authors, assess their capabilities and establish
their development needs once they are contracted to ABC. This is likely to
entail periods of time when your team are not in the office, are traveling or
meeting people; it is also likely to involve developing a communications plan
for reaching potential authors. You have been told that if your team is
successful, there will be promotion for you as well as for team members, but if
the team is unsuccessful, then you will be redeployed elsewhere at ABC in a
junior position.
What are the challenges in this for you as a manager? How will you motivate
your team to develop innovative ways of bringing in new authors? How will
you maintain control of the work situation when your team members are not
usually all together in the office?
Use the theories of motivation, leadership, teamworking, communications and any
others you deem appropriate to answer these questions.
Second example longer question
2 You work as a manager in an accounts department that is going to change
its technology to move away from traditional paper-based systems to
one based entirely on IT. Your department is responsible for all customer
billing, invoices and payments and you are responsible for 20 people
there. It is likely that there will be quite a lot of resistance to the whole
change by staff who have been operating successfully for many years
using the ‘old’ methods. The new systems require retraining of your staff
and some restructuring of jobs to rationalize the work and tasks involved.
You welcome the changes personally as you can see that the future will
require much more use of IT, although you can see that it may be less of
an advantage in the short term; indeed, unless more business is brought
in, then your department will actually be over-staffed once the new
technology is fully operational.
Use the theories of management of change, learning and remembering,
culture and structure, motivation and any others that you consider
appropriate to consider the training and job design issues involved in this
case; how would the change strategy be designed to minimize
resistance?
Third and fourth examples: shorter
questions
3 As a younger graduate manager, employed to
manage a team of 30 experienced workers older
than yourself, what are the main motivation issues
that you expect to face, and how might you resolve
them?
4 What are the main issues to be faced when planning
and implementing a change programme, such as
one where an old production method is to be
closed down and replaced by a new method?