Free WGU Organizational-Behavior Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

When a team struggles with procedural issues—the "how" of their work—the most effective leadership approach is often facilitative rather than directive. Instead of imposing a solution (Option A), which can lead to resistance or a lack of "buy-in," the leader shouldask questions and help team members talk through the problem. This technique is rooted in the concept ofteam coachingand process consultation.

By facilitating a dialogue, the leader encourages the team to take ownership of their own processes. This collaborative problem-solving approach helps identify the root cause of the procedural friction, whether it be ambiguous roles, inefficient workflows, or conflicting expectations. Furthermore, helping the team talk through the issue strengthens their internal communication and conflict-resolution skills, making them more resilient in the future. A leader who acts as a facilitator helps the team move from the "storming" phase of development—where procedural conflicts are common—into the "norming" phase, where clear, agreed-upon standards of behavior and performance are established by the group itself.

Organizational Culture

Research suggests that seven (often grouped into six or seven in various texts) primary characteristics capture the essence of an organization's culture. One of these key characteristics isAggressiveness, which describes the degree to which people are aggressive and competitive rather than easygoing.

Other characteristics include:

Innovation and Risk Taking:The degree to which employees are encouraged to be innovative and take risks.

Attention to Detail:The degree to which employees are expected to exhibit precision and analysis.

Outcome Orientation:The degree to which management focuses on results rather than techniques and processes.

People Orientation:The degree to which management decisions take into account the effect of outcomes on people within the organization.

Team Orientation:The degree to which work activities are organized around teams rather than individuals.

Stability:The degree to which organizational activities emphasize maintaining the status quo in contrast to growth.

By assessing an organization on these dimensions, a complete picture of its culture emerges, providing a basis for shared understanding among members.

Designing an effective reward system for teams requires a delicate balance between individual and collective incentives. If the reward system focuses solely on individual achievement, it can foster internal competition and discourage the very collaboration the team is lacking. Conversely, if it focuses only on the group, "social loafing" may occur where some members coast on the efforts of others.

To improve effectiveness and collaboration, the organization should implementa system that emphasizes rewards for individual contributions as well as for selfless contributions. This means that while members are recognized for their technical proficiency, they are also evaluated and rewarded for being "good team players"—sharing information, helping colleagues, and resolving conflicts. Rewarding "selfless contributions" directly addresses the concern that members need to be more collaborative. This dual-focus approach ensures that individuals are motivated to perform their specific tasks at a high level while simultaneously being incentivized to support the team’s overall synergy.

Culture is transmitted to employees in several ways, most notably through stories, rituals, material symbols, and language.Ritualsare repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the key values of the organization—what goals are most important, which people are important, and which are expendable. For example, a company might hold an annual awards ceremony that celebrates "risk-taking," thereby reinforcing a culture of innovation more effectively than a written document could.

These ritualistic activities serve as a physical manifestation of the organization's underlying values. While mission statements (Option A) provide a formal overview, they often fail to capture the "lived experience" of the culture. Similarly, while the selection process influences who enters the organization, the transmission of culture happens after hiring through consistent, repeated social practices. By engaging in these rituals, employees internalize the organization's norms and expectations, transforming them from "outsiders" to "insiders" who understand the shared organizational meaning.

Conflict within an organization can be functional (supporting goals) or dysfunctional (hindering performance). When conflict becomes dysfunctional, managers must use conflict-resolution techniques to bring it back to a manageable or productive level. Two such techniques areCompromiseandSuperordinate goals.

Compromiseinvolves each party giving up something of value to reach a solution where no one is a clear winner or loser. It is often used when goals are important but not worth the potential disruption of more assertive methods.Superordinate goalsinvolve creating a shared goal that cannot be attained without the cooperation of each of the conflicting parties. By focusing on a higher-level objective, the competing groups or individuals are forced to set aside their differences to achieve a common success. Other techniques include problem-solving (face-to-face meetings), smoothing (playing down differences), and avoidance. Choosing the right technique depends on the nature of the conflict and the desired long-term relationship between the parties. In many organizational settings, shifting the focus to superordinate goals is particularly effective because it aligns individual interests with organizational outcomes.

In the study of Organizational Behavior, the "nature vs. nurture" debate examines how much of an individual's personality is inherited (heredity) versus influenced by their surroundings (environment). While heredity sets the outer parameters or "potential" of an individual's personality, environmental factors—such as culture, family, and social groups—dictate how that potential is realized or constrained. This specific individual exhibits traits like competitiveness and independence, which are often reinforced by a business environment that rewards such behaviors.

However, personality is not a static result of environment alone (refuting option A and D), nor is the environment irrelevant to personality development (refuting option C). Instead, the interactionist perspective suggests that behavior is a function of the person and their environment. The "potential" of a person's personality traits is often activated or suppressed by environmental demands. For example, a person with a natural inclination for leadership may only see that trait flourish if the environment provides opportunities and requirements for leadership. Consequently, the individual’s success is a result of how effectively they adjust their internal traits to meet external environmental requirements. This adjustment process is a key component of "person-environment fit," where high levels of fit lead to better performance and job satisfaction.

In Organizational Behavior, values are often classified using the Rokeach Value Survey, which distinguishes betweenTerminal ValuesandInstrumental Values. Terminal values represent the ultimate goals or "end-states" an individual hopes to achieve, such as prosperity (economic success), well-being, and world peace. These are the destinations toward which a person works. In contrast, instrumental values are the "modes of conduct" or the means by which one achieves those terminal goals.

In this specific scenario, "autonomy and self-reliance" are categorized as instrumental values because they describe the behavioral methods an employee uses to navigate the workplace and eventually reach their terminal goals, such as economic success or personal well-being. For example, an employee might use autonomy (an instrumental value) as a tool to gain the efficiency required to achieve prosperity (a terminal value). Understanding this distinction is vital for managers because while terminal values tell us what the employee wants to achieve, instrumental values tell us how they prefer to behave in order to get there. Autonomy and self-reliance are practical approaches to work life rather than the final life-goals themselves, thus fitting the definition of instrumental values perfectly.

Once a culture is in place, certain practices within the organization act to maintain it by exposing employees to a set of similar experiences. Three forces play a particularly important role in sustaining a culture: selection practices, theactions of top management, and thesocialization process.

Theactions of top managementare crucial because through what they say and how they behave, senior executives establish norms that filter down through the organization. For example, their reactions to crises or how they reward performance send clear signals about what is truly valued. Thesocialization processis the method by which the organization helps new employees adapt to its culture. Even if an organization hires the "right" people during selection, they must still be taught the specific values and customs of the firm. Socialization ensures that the culture is transmitted consistently from one generation of employees to the next, maintaining the organization's unique identity over time.

Social loafingis a phenomenon in group dynamics defined as the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working individually. This concept challenges the common assumption that the "spirit of the group" always increases individual motivation. It was famously illustrated by the Ringelmann effect, where research showed that individuals pulled less hard on a rope when they were part of a group than when they were alone.

Social loafing typically occurs because of a dispersion of responsibility; when individuals believe their contribution cannot be measured separately from the group's total output, they may feel less "accountable" and decrease their effort. It can also stem from a "sucker effect," where individuals reduce their effort because they perceive others in the group are not doing their fair share. To counter social loafing, managers are encouraged to use individual performance evaluations, provide group rewards based on individual contributions, and keep group sizes small enough that individual efforts are visible.

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In Organizational Behavior, a critical distinction is made between a "work group" and a "work team". A work group is a collection of individuals who interact primarily to share information and make decisions to help each member perform within his or her area of responsibility. In a work group, there is no particular need or opportunity for collective work that requires joint effort; therefore, their performance is merely the summation of each group member’s individual contribution.

A work team, however, is a group whose individual efforts result in performance that is greater than the sum of those individual inputs. The fundamental goal of a work team iscollective performance. While work groups focus on individual accountability and sharing information to assist individual tasks, work teams focus on mutual accountability and synergy. This synergy allows the team to achieve a level of output that exceeds what the members could accomplish alone. For a team to be effective, it requires a mix of complementary skills—technical, problem-solving, and interpersonal—directed toward a common purpose and specific performance goals. Managers transition from groups to teams when the task at hand is complex enough that it requires the coordinated, collective effort of multiple people rather than just a series of independent tasks. Therefore, the shift from "sharing information" (group) to "collective performance" (team) represents a significant increase in the interdependence of the members.