SIOP Organizational Behavior & Performance 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A company observes that high-performing teams have emerged in remote work conditions despite lower social cohesion. This BEST supports which concept?
- Cohesion is necessary for performance in all team contexts
- Task cohesion can sustain performance even when social cohesion is low (Correct answer)
- Geographic dispersion is unrelated to team effectiveness
- Virtual teams outperform collocated teams on all tasks
Correct answer: Task cohesion can sustain performance even when social cohesion is low
Task cohesion (shared commitment to the team's goals) can maintain high performance even when social bonds are weaker, as research on virtual teams demonstrates.
Question 2: When an employee avoids speaking up about a problem because no one else seems concerned, this phenomenon is BEST explained by:
- Conformity pressure and normative social influence
- Diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance (Correct answer)
- Cognitive dissonance reducing perceived urgency
- Attribution error misidentifying the cause of silence
Correct answer: Diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance
Pluralistic ignorance occurs when individuals privately doubt but assume others' silence indicates everything is fine, leading to collective inaction despite shared private concern.
Question 3: Goal-setting theory predicts that performance is HIGHEST when goals are:
- Easy and frequently reinforced with positive feedback
- Specific and difficult, with commitment from the employee (Correct answer)
- Set by supervisors without employee input to ensure rigor
- Flexible and revisable based on daily performance fluctuations
Correct answer: Specific and difficult, with commitment from the employee
Locke and Latham's goal-setting theory shows that specific, challenging goals (with employee commitment) produce the highest levels of performance.
Question 4: An I-O psychologist conducts an organizational diagnosis and finds high voluntary turnover concentrated in one department. The MOST appropriate first analytic step is:
- Implement exit interview protocols for departing employees
- Conduct a benchmark comparison of that department's compensation
- Analyze whether turnover is random or patterned by tenure, role, or demographics (Correct answer)
- Survey remaining employees about their job satisfaction
Correct answer: Analyze whether turnover is random or patterned by tenure, role, or demographics
Identifying patterns in who is leaving (by tenure, role, demographic) helps pinpoint root causes before intervening, ensuring diagnosis precedes prescription.
Question 5: The concept of 'psychological contract breach' refers to:
- Violation of a formal employment contract's legal terms
- An employee's perception that the organization failed to fulfill its implicit obligations (Correct answer)
- A disciplinary action triggered by performance below expectations
- Reduction in benefits or pay below industry standard rates
Correct answer: An employee's perception that the organization failed to fulfill its implicit obligations
Psychological contract breach occurs when an employee perceives that the organization has failed to fulfill the unwritten, implied mutual obligations of the employment relationship.
Question 6: In Kotter's 8-step change model, which step IMMEDIATELY follows 'creating a guiding coalition'?
- Generating short-term wins
- Developing a vision and strategy (Correct answer)
- Communicating the change vision
- Consolidating gains and producing more change
Correct answer: Developing a vision and strategy
In Kotter's model, after forming a powerful coalition (step 2), the next step (step 3) is developing a clear vision and strategy to direct the change effort.
Question 7: Which research design allows an I-O psychologist to make the STRONGEST causal inferences about the effect of a training program on employee performance?
- Cross-sectional survey comparing trained and untrained employees at one time point
- Longitudinal study tracking participants before and after training without a control group
- Randomized controlled experiment with random assignment to training and control conditions (Correct answer)
- Retrospective case study of departments that adopted the training voluntarily
Correct answer: Randomized controlled experiment with random assignment to training and control conditions
Random assignment to conditions controls for selection bias and confounding variables, allowing the strongest causal inference about the training program's effect.
SIOP Organizational Behavior & Performance 5
A company observes that high-performing teams have emerged in remote work conditions despite lower social cohesion.
This BEST supports which concept?