Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales

School of Economics and Business

Industrial and Business Sociology

TEST 2

November 26th, 2018

 Test 2: content
2

• Part 1

• The 4IR ⇾ Slides 54-61

• Evolution of industrial capitalism: towards a liquid modernity? ⇾ Slides 64-67

• Part 2

• Work Organizations ⇾ Slides 5-15

• The bureaucratic governance ⇾ Slides 17-24

• Contingency, power and organizational design ⇾ Slides 26-32

• Changing organization and management of work ⇾ Slides 34-55

• Slides 47, 48, 52 are key… as well as all concepts highlighted in bold letters

• Seminar 2: complexity approach to organization

• Watch videos and remember main concepts advanced during in-class discussions

• If you need help to understand —or illustrate— the concepts explained in class and reflected
in the slides, you can refer to the textbook (Chapters 4 & 5 in Watson)
 Instructions
• Please choose a seat with no one around you (360º)
• Take a piece of paper and write on the upper right corner
• Quizz 2

• Your name

• Then, please answer each question as instructed

• Please write the question number together with the answer: e.g.,

• 1) a, b, d [for multiple-choice]

• 2) c [for multiple-choice]

• 3) US president is Donald Trump.. [for non-multiple-choice]

• Note: in multiple-choice questions there may be several answers right…

and a statement that is right must be 100% right!!!
 Grading

• QUESTIONS
• 8 multiple-choice

• 0.7 points each for a total of 5.6 points

• 2 free response to choose from 3 questions

• 2.2 points each for a total of 4.4 points

 Q1
• In the post-industrial and increasingly liquid society we
face today…
(a) the solidity and hard certainties of the industrial society
are increasingly replaced by an information society
where flexibility and individuality become key values
(b) we see the emergence of a post-Fordist regime of
accumulation focused on mass-production of
standardized products for price-competitive markets
(c) service work (white collar) has largely replaced
manufacturing employment (blue collar)
(d) the challenge to capitalism mainly stems from the effort
of working classes to resist their exploitation and defend
their material interests
 Q2
• The following is true about organizations
(a) Organizations represent an alternative mode of
articulating cooperation (hierarchies) to markets
(b) An organization can be seen as a “set of contracts”
generating a cascade of principal-agent problems
(c) Compared to other institutional structures, organizations
are specifically purposive and characteristically rational
constructs with a high degree of formality
(d) The pervasiveness of organizations in modern history is
to be understood as part of the wider trend of increasing
rationalization which underlies the development of
industrial capitalism
 Q3
• When we talk about the organizational structure of a
company, we are referring specifically to
(a) the set of shared meanings and values that defines the
appropriate ways for employees to think and behave
(b) the persisting patterns of action that shape and confer
a degree of predictability to an organization
(c) that part of the organization that is unrelated to the
organizational culture
(d) the external and observable manifestation (etic) in an
organization of the external-internal duality common to
all social phenomena
 Q4
• If we look at organizations from the paradigm of
complexity, we could conclude the following…
(a) Analysis must be replaced by synthesis, as only this
methodology can be fruitful to achieve concrete objectives
(b) We must accept that unintended consequences are
unavoidable in dealing with a VUCA environment
(c) Although a reductionist approach has prevailed since the
Industrial Revolution, complexity helps to shed light on
managerial decisions that heretofore were deemed as
irrational (e.g., based on intuition, values)
(d) The notion of emergence sets limits to what an
organization can be reasonably expected to achieve and
to the conventional notion of control
 Q5
• The following is true regarding world class
manufacturing
(a) Although it fosters empowerment and mutual long-term
employer-employee commitment, it usually leads to a
deskilling of jobs
(b) Empirically, it has been shown to be successful when the
“importing” of Japanese managerial techniques and
procedures force workers to change their behavior
(c) Typically inspired by a number of “Japanese” techniques
and approaches to management, it entails a systemic
break with conventional mass Fordist production
(d) It is associated to expectations that every employee
contributes to innovation so as to enhance the
company’s productivity and competitiveness
 Q6
• The efforts of managers to develop the capabilities of
organizations to achieve both flexibility for adaptability
and predictability
(a) Gives rise to a new model of “variable geometry” in
employment relationships based on several levels
(b) It is incompatible with neo-bureaucracies or, in general,
with the public sector
(c) It relies on permanently employed core elements that
provide flexibility for predictability and expendable
peripheral elements that provide flexibility for
adaptability
(d) Tend to emphasize indirect controls and to minimize
direct controls throughout the company
 Q7
• The labor process tradition develops a subtle dialectical
logic to analyzing capitalist labour processes that
emphasizes…
(a) Fostering an autonomy strategy that affords employees
both discretion and a sense of responsibility
(b) Managerial activity can not be understood as imposition
but rather as competition for control between managers
and workers
(c) The co-operative aspect of employment relations should
lead to mutual trust rather than rules and supervision
(d) The exchanges or “trades” in which the organization has
to engage with its key stakeholder
 Q8
• The contingency approach to organizational design
(a) Basically assumes that organizational design is the
outcome of internal micropolitics
(b) Considers that the available technology and the
stability of the environment are the most relevant
contingent factors affecting organizational design
(c) Marks a clear departure from the universal
prescriptions of classic administrative writers
(d) States that all parts (divisions, units) of the
organization respond to the contingent factors —
taken as external constraints— in a similar way
 Q9
• Differentiate (in 4 points) a high
commitment human resourcing
strategy from a low commitment
strategy?
 Q10
• Explain how informal norms emerge
in organizations as reaction to formal
rules (according to their enforceability
and incentives-alignment)
 Q11
• Explain the concepts of flexibility for
short-term predictability and
flexibility for long-term adaptability.
How do they relate to HR commitment
and control strategy, and to
organizational culture and structure?