Skip to ContentGo to accessibility pageKeyboard shortcuts menu
OpenStax Logo
Organizational Behavior

Managerial Decision Exercises

Organizational BehaviorManagerial Decision Exercises

  1. You manage the human resources department for a mid-sized retailer. Part of the operations consists of a call center with 100 employees spread over three shifts operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is a main group with 20 people reporting to a shift supervisor on the main daytime shift from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. There are regularly scheduled times for breaks and lunch. Recently senior management reported to you that they were concerned regarding tardiness of some employees. While the customer relationship management reports signal that there are no service issues, senior managers are concerned that they are overstaffed. You feel that the daytime shift is the most experienced group, and you do not want to lose some of the best employees through termination. You also do not have any budget money to use for incentive payments aimed at reducing tardiness. What ideas from operant conditioning, behavior modification, and social learning theory would you use to reduce the problems of tardiness?
  2. Organizations are facing changes in their business environment because of globalization of markets and competition, growth of immediate digital information and communications, growth of the service-based economy, and changes in rules affecting corporate governance and trade relationships. Assume the role of a CEO who needs to change their corporate culture and their standards of operation. The organizational structures in your industry have trended from tall, hierarchical bureaucracies to flat, decentralized operations that encourage innovation. Changes like this do not happen automatically. What theories and techniques would you use to change your organization’s culture?
Citation/Attribution

This book may not be used in the training of large language models or otherwise be ingested into large language models or generative AI offerings without OpenStax's permission.

Want to cite, share, or modify this book? This book uses the Creative Commons Attribution License and you must attribute OpenStax.

Attribution information
  • If you are redistributing all or part of this book in a print format, then you must include on every physical page the following attribution:
    Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/organizational-behavior/pages/1-introduction
  • If you are redistributing all or part of this book in a digital format, then you must include on every digital page view the following attribution:
    Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/organizational-behavior/pages/1-introduction
Citation information

© Jan 9, 2024 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License . The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo are not subject to the Creative Commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University.