hrm fainl exam answers
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Final Exam Answers
1. Griggs v. Duke Power Company
Griggs was a laborer at the Duke Power Company in North Carolina,
where for years the workforce was segregated, with African Americans doing
manual labor. In the early 1960s, Duke Power Company acknowledged that it
had discriminated in the past but argued that it had recently instituted
objective testing of applicants for selection and promotion. Griggs sued
because the tests unfairly discriminated against African Americans and were
unrelated to job performance. In a unanimous opinion, the Court established
several points that prevailed until 1989. First, regarding Congress intent, the
Act was interpreted to have remedial as well as prospective intent. That is,
an employer could not simply say," We discriminated in the past, but no
longer do so". Second, the Court said that if an employer‚ personnel practices
resulted in discrimination, lack of intent to discriminate would not constitute
a valid defense. In other words, the consequences of employment practices
were more important than their intent. Third, the Court said that once an
inference of discrimination could be drawn, the burden of proof shifted to the
employer to show that the personnel practices that had the discriminatory
effect were in fact job related. Each of these findings sent a significant
message to employers, and the case is viewed as a landmark employment
discrimination decision. The Court‚ opinion in Griggs emphasized traditional
merit system values of individual rights and efficiency. The Court would
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protect individuals from discrimination and would allow them to compete
based on competencies. It would not sacrifice job qualifications in favor of
minority origins. In fact, writing for a unanimous court in 1971, Chief Justice
Burger observed: Congress has not commanded that the less qualified be
preferred over the better qualified simply because of minority origins. Far
from disparaging job qualifications as such, Congress has made such
qualifications the controlling factor, so that race, religion, nationality and sex
become irrelevant. What Congress has commanded is that any tests used
must measure the person for the job and not the person in the abstract
(Klingner, Nalbandian & Llorens, 2010, P. 163).
2. Rank- in- person
Rank- in- person systems are an alternative to point evaluation
systems and are traditionally found in the military, in paramilitary
organizations such as police and fire departments and the U. S. Public Health
service, in the U. S. Foreign Service, and in university faculties. Rank- in-
person systems differ from traditional job classification and evaluation
(rank- in- job systems) because their focus is not on the duties of a particular
position, but on the competencies of the employee. Under a rank- in- job
system, all employees are classified by type of occupation and level of
responsibility, and these factors are tied to a job analysis, classification, and
evaluation system. In other words, the employee accepts a job and the rank is
in the job, not the person who occupies it. Under this system, employees
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qualify for promotion from one rank to another based on competencies and
education (assuming promotions are available). And the rank is carried with
the employee who moves from one job to another. Since the rank attaches to
the person rather than to the position, employees can be freely assigned or
reassigned within the organization without its affecting their pay or status.
This has the advantage of reducing the immobility and status concerns
generated by traditional job evaluation. It also enables the matching of
employees to work based on the specific skills or abilities required. This
feature offers organizations that use rank- in- person systems tremendous
flexibility, and it is much more effective at utilizing workforce diversity to
match employee talents with agency needs. For example, assume the U. S.
Public Health Service needs to respond to an increased incidence of hepatitis
among hospital workers in Phoenix. Since the agency uses a rank- in- person
system, it can search its employee data banks to come up with a list of
specialists who are experienced in hepatitis- B research and education,
bilingual, and living in or able to relocate to Phoenix. Once identified,
individuals can quickly be put to work without worrying about whether they
are in the “ right” grade level or occupational specialty. There are obviously
major disadvantages to both alternatives. Rank- in- person systems still must
control total budget allocations for personnel by personnel ceilings and
average grade levels. And employees will continue to focus on assignments
perceived as developmental or as required for advancement to the next
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highest rank (“ ticket punching”). The agency must develop relatively
sophisticated human resource management information systems if it is to
effectively match work with employees. A traditional rank- in- job system
requires only a match of the occupational code and grade level of the vacant
position with a roster of employees who meet the minimum qualifications for
that grade level. A rank- in- person system requires cataloging (and
confidentiality) of a range of employee data, detailed analysis of required
competencies, and rapid matching of skills with needs through a user-
friendly information system. Further, it requires a set of standards and
procedures to decide how a person moves from one rank to another. These
systems tend to be very career oriented with employees starting at entry
level and progressing through ranks rather than moving laterally from one
organization to another. One additional variation of rank- in- person pay is
competency- based pay, a system in which individuals are compensated
based upon their competencies, formal educational attainment, or
professional certifications. For instance, employers might compensate
professional employees for attaining advanced graduate degrees or
certifications, even though the competencies acquired may not be directly
applicable to the employee’s current position. According to the IPMA- HR, “
competency- based pay has proved to be more successful when used in a
wide cross section of non- exempt, professional, and managerial positions.”
(Klingner, Nalbandian & Llorens, 2010, P. 133-134).
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3. At Will Public Employment
In addition to public– private partnerships (PPP), another initiative
that is being taken especially at the state level is to create at- will
employment. This is done legislatively by removing positions from the
permanent civil service and reallocating them to an unclassified or at- will
position. According to Hays and Sowa’s 2005 survey of state human
resources directors, this action is commonly occurring. Driven by the same
kind of dissatisfaction with the way that employee protections have hindered
management prerogatives and in the name of efficiency coupled with
market- based solutions, at- will employment strips employees of many of
their rights, including job security. At the same time, even if positions have
not been reclassified to at- will status, statutory action is being taken
throughout state personnel systems to restrict employee ability to grieve
supervisory decisions and to streamline appeal procedures. This is very
similar to private sector practice. It is easy to dramatize the effect of this kind
of change, but the fact of the matter is that no complex organization— public
or private— can survive without some measure of employee rights if
employee commitment and retention are valued. Who would remain working
for an organization where a supervisor could fire an employee because the
super-visor did not like the color of the employee’s hair, or for some other
ridiculous claim? In effect, the organization would be conveying a message to
its employees: “ Do not rock the boat; do not take risks; figure out your
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supervisor, and say and do what he/ she likes.” This, of course, is exactly the
fear that public administration scholars voice, especially if it sends the
message that politics— message, loyalty, and agenda— is more important
than competence, experience, and professional/ technical analysis. The
question is not whether employees will have rights, it is the extent of their
applicability, their effect on managerial prerogatives, and the behavioral cues
that employees receive when those prerogatives are exercised. Hays and
Sowa’s research also shows that activist governors pushing an
antibureaucratic agenda are behind this movement to restrict employee
rights and replace them with supervisory and managerial prerogatives.
These initiatives, coupled with legislative term limits, can negatively affect
long- standing relationships between legislative and executive branches,
which can lead to relationships of respect and trust (Klingner, Nalbandian &
Llorens, 2010, P. 309-310).
4. Scientific management
In the United States, the period between 1883 and 1937 is important
in the development of public personnel administration based on merit
principles. With increased pressures for rational and transparent
government and increased demands for more effective delivery of public
services to meet the needs of an industrializing economy came increased
dissatisfaction with patronage- based personnel systems. First, in
progressive state governments like New York and then in the federal
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government, voters and reform organizations such as the National Civic
League demanded merit- based HRM. The assassination of newly
inaugurated President Garfield by an unsuccessful office- seeker in 1881 was
a defining event that led Congress to approve the Pendleton Act ( 1883),
marking a fundamental shift from patronage to merit systems. ideal— the
belief that a competent, committed workforce of career civil servants is
essen-tial to the professional conduct of the public’s business. While the
Pendleton Act affirmed that merit principles were the basis for making public
personnel decisions, the tools to achieve these in reality did not emerge until
the application of scientific management principles to administration during
the 1920s. The cornerstone of public personnel management was position
classification— grouping jobs by occupational type and skill level and paying
them equitably based on the competencies needed to perform the job. It
translates labor costs ( for pay and benefits) into impersonal grades that can
be added, subtracted, averaged, and moved about to create organizational
charts. The legislature or the chief executive can limit personnel expenses to
the total pay and benefits for all positions. They can set personnel ceilings to
limit or preclude hiring. They may assign units an average allowable position
grade, thus ensuring that they will not become top heavy. It clarifies career
ladders and aids in the recruitment, selection, training, and assessment
processes by specifying duties and qualifications for each position. More than
any other personnel function, it epitomizes the connection between
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efficiency and the elimination of politics from administration, and suggests
that public personnel management can be conducted in a routine and
politically neutral fashion. At the same time, it can minimize political or
administrative abuse and protect individual rights. Each employee’s job
duties are specified in his or her job description. Pay rates are tied to
positions so individual favorites cannot be paid more than others can. Thus,
hiring people at a high salary and asking them to assume few if any
responsibilities something that occurs frequently in political patronage
systems is minimized (Klingner, Nalbandian & Llorens, 2010, P. 5-7).
6. Interview as Selection Method
Interviews are a popular selection or promotion method. Most
organizations will not hire an employee without one because they
believe the interview gives them the opportunity to observe an
applicant’s appearance and interpersonal skills and to ask questions
about subjects not adequately covered on the application form.
However, interviews are not recommended as a primary selection
method. Not only do they take a good deal of the supervisor’s time,
but they also require interviewing skills on the part of the supervisor
or interviewing panel. Since interviews are a prime method of
rejecting candidates who look good on paper but might not fit into an
organization, they are subject to scrutiny as potentially invalid
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selection criteria. What, then, are some good guidelines to follow
concerning interviews? Behavioral interviewing is a method that has
become popular in achieving the desire to understand an applicant’s
competencies including personal attributes. Interview questions are
open- ended and the applicant is requested to provide actual
occurrences of past employment that address the topic of the
question. As an example, “ provide a time when you found yourself
confronted with an angry customer and explain how you handled this
situation.” These types of questions allow the reviewer to see how the
applicant views a situation, what priorities were held, and what they
consider effective actions. Behavioral interviewing relies on
predefined questions but is less structured in that questions may be
expanded upon based on the response given by the applicant. Panel
interviews (those involving more than one interviewer) are more
reliable than individual interviews, and can use either style,
structured or less structured, though they also increase the cost of this
already expensive selection method (Klingner, Nalbandian & Llorens,
2010, P. 187-188).
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10.The equal employment opportunity, affirmative action, and workforce
diversity in terms of the major cases, laws, philosophies and values.
Given that EEO and AA are often referred to in the same breath and
are almost invariably enforced by the same agencies, it is
understandable that people confuse them. It may help to remember
that both are designed to promote social equity, though through
different methods. Equal employment opportunity refers to the policy
of treating all individuals in the employ-ment process fair and
equitably, regardless of race or gender. In many instances, employers
communicate their commitment to EEO to prospective applicants in
the form of an EEO policy statement. For example, the State of Kansas
posts the following statement on all appli-cable employment
literature, “ The State of Kansas is an Equal Opportunity Employer.”
The key point to take from this statement is that the employer does
not discriminate against applicants and employees. Affirmative action,
on the other hand, is distinct from EEO in that it refers to proactive
efforts on the part of an employer to address the effects of past
discrimi-nation when EEO efforts alone will not suffice. As expected,
these efforts have received the most attention in the debate over
social equity because they force employers to temporarily abandon
race/ gender- neutral policies and to think in terms of group
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characteristics rather than individual attributes. Diversity
Management, the most recent development in the challenge to achieve
social equity, is distinct from EEO and AA in that its primary goal is to
ensure that individuals of all backgrounds work harmoniously in the
workplace and to take advantage of diverse points of view. It expands
the concept of equity to include issues like religion, ethnicity, socio-
economic background and is enabled in large measure by immigra-
tion, which has increased the likelihood that applicant pools have
become more diverse over the years, especially in larger regional
areas. In addition, it has moved the discussion in this broad area from
the value of equity to one that incorporates the value of efficiency.
Although there are a myriad of laws and policies concerning social
equity in the United States, the most important law is the Civil Rights
Act of 1964.3 Title VII of the Act prohibits employers and employment
agencies from making employee or appli-cant personnel decisions
based on race, color, religion, gender, or national origin and tasks the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ( EEOC) with enforcing
the provisions of the Act. Originally, the Act did not apply to the public
sector, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 mandated
that state, local, and federal agencies adhere to the Act. Additionally,
federal agencies and state and local governments are required to
provide the EEOC with data on the employment of women and
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minorities within their organizations to ensure that they are meeting
the spirit of the Act. As previously stated, AA policies are those that
take proactive steps to reduce under-representation through the
preparation and implementation of affirmative action plans ( AAPs).
Underrepresentation is generally said to exist when a particular
group’s employment levels within an organization are not on par with
that group’s presence in the relevant labor force. For example,
Hispanics represented approximately 7.8 percent of the federal labor
force in 2007 while representing 13.3 percent of the civilian labor
force. 5 Given this disparity, the federal government has recognized
that it needs to take “ affirmative action” to recruit Hispanics into the
federal labor force. The first government AA efforts were authorized
by President John F. Kennedy, when he directed federal agencies to
target their recruitment efforts in minority communities to address
their low representation rates within the federal workforce. Among
the efforts advocated by this approach to increasing diversity were
visits by federal recruiters to colleges and universities with
substantial minority student populations and advertisements in
mainstream minority press outlets. However, it is important to note
that these original efforts did not include any numerical goals or
hiring quotas for women and minorities. In 1965, President Lyndon
Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, which gave the Department of
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Labor the authority to enforce antidiscrimination policies among
federal contractors under the Department’s Office of Federal Contract
Compliance Programs ( OFCCP). The Executive Order specifically
prohibited discrimination by most employers providing goods or
services to the federal government. Furthermore, it required those
with fifty or more employees and government contracts of $ 10,000 or
more annually to prepare a written plan identifying any
underutilization ( underrepresentation) of women and minorities and
establishing goals and timetables to correct it. The OFCCP’s use of
numerical goals and timetables expanded during the Nixon
administration, and in 1971, the federal government decided to apply
the same strategy to federal agencies. (Klingner, Nalbandian &
Llorens, 2010, P. 160-161).
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References
Klingner, D. E., Nalbandian, J., & Llorens, J. (2010). Public Personnel Management.
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