Assignment

CHAPTER 8: Recruitment, Selection, and Promotion

Discussion Questions

1. How does one's value perspective influence the objectives of the recruitment and selection process?

2. What does it mean to say that fairness is a social judgment rather than a scientific calculation? What are the implications for the tension between efficiency and diversity?

3. Describe how workforce demographics and the nature of contemporary work influence the acquisition of public employees.

4. What kind of flexible personnel policies are needed to accommodate the caregiving needs of the modern family where both mother and father work? Or where the family consists of children with a single parent?

5. What is meant by contextual factors that influence how well a person performs as an organizational member? How easy do you think it is to recruit and select for these factors? Does an emphasis on contextual factors conflict with an emphasis on recruiting for diversity?

6. Identify eleven steps in the recruitment and selection process. In an organization you are familiar with, which steps are the most difficult to perform? Why?

7. Identify six timely hiring practices and describe how several might be employed to recruit and select for a job category you are familiar with where demand exceeds supply of applicants and service is suffering from staffing shortages.

8. Compare and contrast centralized, decentralized, and Web-based recruitment techniques.

9. Outsourcing or privatization of government services displaces value issues governments deal with in recruitment and selection processes. Which values do you think will be emphasized by private employment agencies? Can the benefits of outsourcing be realized if vendors are required to incorporate the values of responsiveness, efficiency, social equity, and individual rights into their practices?

10. Review the recruitment and selection processes in Table 8-2 and identify the values emphasized in each model. How would you improve these processes?

11. Describe the concept and importance of test validation and three validation strategies. How have affirmative action and advocates of social equity and individual rights advanced the importance of test validation, and therefore the value of efficiency?

Case Study: Information Technology Recruitment

Discussion Questions

1. What factors make recruiting of IT professionals a challenge?

2. If your organization recruits for IT professionals, what steps has it had to take to get the best-qualified candidates?

3. Are merit principles compromised with hiring practices that short-circuit traditional merit systems administrative routine?

4. While the acquisition function clearly is affected by the shortage of IT professionals, what other functions are affected? How?

CHAPTER 9: Leadership and Employee Performance

Discussion Questions

1. Identify the differences between political and administrative logic and give examples of each. How important do you think these differences are when it comes to understanding the ways that elected and appointed officials act? What do you think is the most significant difference between market-based logic and political and administrative logic?

2. Describe the concept of the psychological contract and identify a situation you are familiar with where it might be employed to help clarify and resolve differences.

3. Describe the basic components of equity and expectancy theory. How do they help to explain employee performance? Identify an example from your own life where equity theory or expectancy theory helps you understand why you did what you did.

4. Describe the ways that elected officials, managers, and personnel specialists affect an employee's motivation to perform.

5. Describe the ways that elected officials, managers, and personnel specialists affect an employee's ability to perform.

6. How do you think a public employer should regard the issue of spirituality in the workplace? Is it an asset to be explored? Or is it a topic best left undiscussed?

7. Describe four approaches to productivity: total quality management, job enrichment, work/life balance, and teamwork. Select an organization you are familiar with. If you were responsible for charting a strategy for productivity improvement, which would you focus on and why?

8. Select one or more jobs you are familiar with. Pick from those that you think are very satisfying and rewarding to perform and those that are not. Use Figure 9-2 to help analyze these different jobs. What lessons do you take from this exercise?

Case Study #1: Requiem for a Good Soldier

Questions

1. Using equity theory, analyze how and why Rachel's behavior has changed during the case.

2. What are the important inputs and outcomes from Rachel's point of view? Who is the focus of her social comparison?

3. What factor(s) has Harold Nash given input credit for that Rachel may have overlooked?

4. Utilizing expectancy theory, analyze how Rachel's behavior has changed during the case.

5. How has Rachel's estimation of her ability to perform as assistant director changed? Has the value she places on different outcomes associated with being assistant director changed? Has her expectation changed that good performance in her current job will lead to a promotion?

6. How would you define "old spark" in terms of a performance goal or job standard? How would you feel as an employee if someone failed to promote you justifying it, in part, by your loss of the "old spark"?

7. How do you think Rachel feels at this point in her job? How do you think you might feel? How common do you think the case of Rachel is in modern organizations?

8. Who is responsible for the changes in Rachel's behavior in this case? Who is accountable for them? What is the difference?

9. If you were Harold Nash, would you promote Rachel, given the deterioration of her morale and her apparent competent but lackluster performance?

10. This case study was developed over thirty-five years ago to support affirmative action by illustrating how managerial behavior and organizational culture can affect employee performance. Is this type of discrimination against women as prevalent now as then? If not, what general changes in employment law, organizational policy, and management practice have made it less prevalent? If so, why does the "glass ceiling" still exist in spite of these changes?

11. If you were Rachel, and if you confronted this situation today, what would you do?

Case Study #2: Recruiting a Water Plant Technician

Questions

1. Could the personnel director have approached this situation differently?

2. If the city wanted to "get where it should be in this area," what should it do?

3. How might each of the following productivity improvement strategies ease this dilemma (flex-time, job sharing, telecommuting, and teamwork and collaboration)?

4. What possible problems might this organization encounter in implementing any of the strategies you think might be usefully applied here? How might it overcome them?

5. Are work/life issues predominantly issues that female employees must deal with? Are there different issues for women and men?