University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley - SOCIOLOGY 1301

CHAPTER 5: Groups, Networks, and Organizations

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1)Which of the following is a social group?

1. 1. members of a sorority
   2. everyone in your sociology class who has blond hair
   3. people waiting at Terminal C for Flight 181
   4. passengers on a cruise ship

2. The rich and varied group life of societies reflects:
   1. how dependent we are on transactional leaders.
   2. our need to congregate and belong.
   3. how we tend to live in social isolation.
   4. our natural tendency to always include everyone.

3. Which of the following is a social aggregate?
   1. your family
   2. middle-class Asian American women
   3. people waiting at Terminal C for Flight 205
   4. Facebook friends

4. People milling around in crowds, waiting for a bus, or strolling on a beach make up a:
   1. social group.                                           c.   social aggregate.
   2. social triad.                                             d. social category.

5. When a group of people shares common characteristics, such as gender or ethnicity, the group is labeled a:
   1. social network.                                        c.   social category.
   2. social group.                                           d. social aggregate.

6. Which of the following would be considered a social category?
   1. African Americans
   2. a group of soldiers who recently returned from war
   3. neighbors who host regular block parties together
   4. two friends who are freshmen at the same college

7. Which of the following is more likely to be an in-group?
   1. a family                                                   c.   the people in line at a supermarket
   2. a sociology class                                     d. a concert audience

8. During rush week when the brothers are recruiting new members, the Alpha Gamma Gamma fraternity always makes fun of its rival fraternity, Alpha Sigma Sigma. This increases the bonding and sense of loyalty among the members of Alpha Gamma Gamma. We could consider them members of:

9. A new group recently emerged, calling itself the Real Americans. This group’s activities reflect disdain and prejudicial attitudes toward recent immigrants to the United States. In relation to this group, recent immigrants could be classified as a(n):
   1. in-group.                                                 c.   dyad.
   2. out-group.                                               d.   triad.

10. A brother and sister enrolled in a large chemistry class would be considered a(n):
    1. triad.                                                       c.   secondary group.
    2. primary group.                                        d. social category.

11. Which of the following is an example of a primary group?
    1. a professor and the president of a university
    2. a bus driver and passenger
    3. a tutor and her student
    4. three best friends in high school

12. Which of the following would be an example of why a person would want to be part of a secondary group?
    1. to form close bonds and ties with everyone in the group
    2. to have a sense of closeness and camaraderie
    3. to associate with people who care about the person and his or her future
    4. to accomplish a specific goal, such as graduating from college

13. Jugal spends most of his time at school and work, which leaves him with little time to socialize with family and friends. Lately, Jugal is feeling socially isolated because he:
    1. is working too hard at school and his job.
    2. has friends and family who do not understand his time commitments.

1. 3. does not like the people at school and work.
   4. is interacting mostly with large and impersonal secondary groups.

14. The group a person uses to measure his or her own social worth is called:
    1. a reference group.                                  c.   a peer group.
    2. a social aggregate.                                 d. a secondary group.

15. One need not belong to a group in order for it to be a reference group. Why?
    1. People with weak ties are more likely to rely on reference groups.
    2. Reference groups must consist of at least ten people.
    3. Modern life is full of alienation and anonymity.
    4. People often identify with groups even if they don’t belong to them.

16. Most advertisements today try to associate a product with a specific reference group. For this marketing strategy to be effective, which of the following must be true?
    1. The product must be important to the person viewing the advertisement.
    2. The product must have a good price.
    3. The person viewing the advertisement must have interacted with the person or people in the advertisement.
    4. The person viewing the advertisement must identify with the person or people in the advertisement.

17. According to sociologists, what is the smallest size that can make up a social group?
    1. a dyad                                                     c.   a triad
    2. an ego and an alter ego                         d. a family

18. Juan and Sally got divorced after three years of marriage, and both moved on to establish new relationships. Their divorce demonstrates that dyads are fragile social groups because:
    1. if one person leaves, the group disappears.
    2. one member can hurt the other.
    3. they do not require individuals to stay in the relationship.
    4. the relationships are too intense.

19. Every Sunday, Janet, Laneitha, and Margaret get together for lunch, and Janet usually decides which restaurant they will eat at. However, one Sunday, Laneitha and Margaret told Janet they wanted to try a new restaurant in town. Laneitha and Margaret formed a:
    1. network.                                                  c.   dyad.
    2. negative relationship.                             d. coalition or alliance.

20. Triads are generally more stable than dyads because:
    1. three is always better than two.
    2. the third person relieves some of the pressures on the other two.
    3. the third person makes the relationship more intense.
    4. the third person can get jealous.

21. Which of the following is true regarding large groups?
    1. Relationships in the group are more intense.
    2. They tend to be informal.
    3. They are unstable.
    4. They tend to be more exclusive.

22. According to Georg Simmel, an important aspect of groups is:
    1. as group size decreases, their intensity and exclusivity decrease.
    2. as group size increases, their stability and intensity increase.
    3. as group size increases, their intensity decreases, but their stability and exclusivity increase.
    4. group size has little impact on stability over time; what matters is the common goal of the group.

23. The members of the drama club at Suzie’s high school had a disagreement about who should play the lead in the upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet. Therefore, five of the twenty-five drama club members decided to leave the group, but this had little impact on the stability of the drama club. The rest of the club was able to go forward with the production, according to the textbook, because:
    1. the drama club had a good leader who was able to address the instability in the group.
    2. larger groups are less exclusive, and it was easy to get new members.
    3. the five members who left were troublemakers.
    4. the withdrawal of members from larger groups has little impact on the survival of the group.

24. Which of the following is the best example of a transformational leader?
    1. a student government president who motivated the students at her college to turn their campus into a green campus
    2. a student government president who made sure the treasurer accounted for all the money spent by the student government at her college
    3. a student government president who single-handedly expanded the campus recycling program to include paper as well as metal
    4. a student government president whom most students really liked

25. Tanya is the CEO of a corporation that specializes in computer software. The corporation has made a substantial profit since Tanya became CEO and has hired new software designers. What type of leader is Tanya?
    1. bureaucratic                                           c.   transformational
    2. transactional                                           d. network

26. 
    The Asch task illustrated that:
    1. even if it makes them feel uncomfortable, many people are willing to discount their own perceptions rather than go against group consensus.
    2. people stammered and fidgeted before speaking out against group conformity.
    3. people can easily be bullied into changing their minds.
    4. the last person to answer did not feel the need to conform or bow to group pressure.

27. The experiments by Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram illustrate that:
    1. conformity and authority have little influence on people when they are under pressure.
    2. people get nervous around authority figures and large groups.
    3. conformity and authority are powerful factors affecting people’s actions.
    4. it is easy to persuade people to inflict pain on others.

28. The Stanley Milgram study demonstrated that people are willing to obey authority:
    1. regardless of the pain they might inflict on others.
    2. only when they feel that the authority figure is part of their primary group.
    3. when the authority figure is part of their reference group.
    4. if the orders do not have negative consequences for other people.

29. How can Stanley Milgram’s experiment help us better understand modern atrocities such as the Holocaust?
    1. Bureaucracy makes it difficult for people to dissent.
    2. Transformative leaders encourage atrocities to occur.
    3. People who commit atrocious acts view themselves as “just following orders.”

1. 4. Everyday people are regularly subject to groupthink.

30. Groupthink takes place when:
    1. group members discuss strategies to increase group harmony.
    2. group members work together to carefully weigh all the options presented to them.
    3. group members ignore the actions, plans, or ideas that go against group consensus.
    4. group members are all in agreement.

31. The football team at Three Rivers High School wanted to steal the mascot of the opposing team before the big homecoming game. Even though the captain of the football team knew the players would likely be caught and suspended by the principal, he agreed to steal the mascot. Why did the captain of the team agree to steal the mascot?
    1. The football captain was a transformational leader and convinced the players it would work even when common sense told them it would not.
    2. The groupthink of the football team made him ignore the consequences of their actions in order to go along with the group consensus.
    3. The team captain feared that he would no longer be accepted in his social group for breaking expectations.
    4. The team captain and the players were part of the same primary group and therefore always think and play as a “we.”

32. In general, nonwhites tend to have           social and professional networks than whites.
    1. less advantageous                                   c.   less familial
    2. more familial                                          d. more advantageous

33. Jacob and Amara both graduated from college with a high GPA and a good résumé in the field of accounting. A year after graduation, Jacob was working as a waiter, and Amara was working at an accounting firm that her father’s best friend headed. Amara most likely got this job because:
    1. she had an advantage due to her father’s social networks.
    2. she had a better résumé than Jacob.
    3. her father’s best friend thought she was pretty.
    4. Jacob did not put enough effort into looking for a job at an accounting firm.

34. In the absence of the physical and social cues involved in traditional face-to-face interactions, the Internet fosters the creation of relationships that:
    1. are usually misleading and lead to hurt feelings.
    2. are built on common interests rather than social characteristics such as race and gender.
    3. are lasting and enduring.
    4. are based on being members of the same social category.

35. The Internet often increases the diversity of one’s social networks beyond face-to-face interactions, which tend to limit social networks. However, the Internet can also limit the diversity of social networks for some people because:
    1. it is easy to find out someone’s gender, race, or social status on the Internet.
    2. there is a “digital divide” in which low-income and ethnic minorities are less likely to have access to the Internet.
    3. there are many racist and sexist groups that use the Internet to organize.
    4. studies show that people tend to form networks on the Internet based on race, gender, and class instead of shared interests.

36. A large grouping of people that engages in concerted collective actions to achieve specific objectives is called:
    1. an oligarchy.                                           c.   a primary group.
    2. an organization.                                      d. a peer group.

37. People in modern societies depend on organizations to:
    1. tell them how to act and behave.
    2. make then feel connected to others.
    3. take care of nearly all aspects of social life.
    4. educate and employ them, but little else.

38. Max Weber was the first to develop a systematic interpretation of:
    1. conformity.                                             c.   modern organizations.
    2. primary groups.                                      d. secondary groups.

39. One criticism of formal organizations is that they:
    1. are organized in ways that allow power to be evenly distributed within them.
    2. are often flexible in the application of their rules, regulations, and procedures due to their size.
    3. have risen to prominence in modern societies largely because we do not spend much time with our families anymore.
    4. are usually hierarchical and thus concentrate power at the top.

40. Max Weber argued that            is necessary in modern societies.
    1. tradition                                                  c.   surveillance
    2. bureaucracy                                            d. emotion

41. The New York Times recently profiled a number of contemporary organizations such as Google that are shucking traditional bureaucratic organizations for ones that are looser and less hierarchical. According to Max Weber, compared to more traditional forms of organization, what is one outcome that a looser, less hierarchical organization is more likely to achieve?
    1. efficiency                                                c.   compliance
    2. rationality                                               d. innovation

42. Max Weber believed the more an organization approaches the ideal type of bureaucracy, the more effective it will be in pursuing the objectives for which it was established. However, he also recognized that bureaucracies can create some negatives, such as:
    1. numerous unofficial ways of doing things because of the lack of flexibility in completing tasks in a bureaucracy.
    2. inefficiency because of the strict adherence to rules and regulations that makes it difficult to respond to new issues.
    3. organizational tension between authority figures and subordinates dissolving the organization.
    4. increasing employee salary costs.

43. According to Max Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy:
    1. a set of rules governs the conduct of officials at all levels.
    2. there is a lot of room for innovation.
    3. each job has a salary that is negotiable.
    4. ownership is in the hands of the workers.

44. John Meyer and Brian Rowan’s (1977) findings about rules and procedures in organizations offer an important challenge to Max Weber’s characteristics of ideal bureaucracy because:
    1. they demonstrate the power of informal networks to all levels of organization.
    2. they show that formal rules are not always followed by organizational members and thus are often a myth used to justify decision-making.
    3. they demonstrate that formal rules are identical to the practices that members of the organization adopt.
    4. they show that informal networks are more important than formal rules adopted by organizational leaders.

45. At Digi-Corp, each employee receives a manual outlining the rules about how employees and managers should work together and interact. These rules are referred to as the between employee and manager.
    1. formal relations                                      c.   primary groups
    2. informal relations                                   d. surveillance

46. At the Symantec Corporation, the CEO, the president, and the vice president made a majority of the decisions, with little decision-making power given to upper-level managers or other employees. This type of concentration of power among a few people in an organization is called:
    1. oligarchy.                                                c.   capitalism.
    2. corporate concentration.                        d. anarchy.

47. Robert Michels’s concept of the “iron law of oligarchy” demonstrates:
    1. that societies dominated by large-scale organizations will turn us all into machines.
    2. that in large-scale organizations, power is inevitably concentrated at the top.
    3. that power is concentrated at the bottom in large-scale organizations.
    4. that large-scale organizations will become more concentrated until there are only a few organizations.

48. Which of the following best characterizes the typical place of women in bureaucratic organizations such as corporations?
    1. Women are encouraged to climb the corporate ladder.
    2. Due to strict rules and regulations, women and men are in equal positions.
    3. Women are seen as playing supporting roles and performing routine tasks.
    4. Most women are in key decision-making roles.

49. Until the late twentieth century, organizational studies largely ignored:
    1. organizational size.                                 c.   the physical setting of organizations.
    2. dysfunctions of bureaucracy.                  d. gender relations.

50. The imbalance of gender roles in organizations demonstrates that modern organizations have:
    1. encouraged women to stay home.
    2. found men to be better at following written rules and procedures.
    3. developed in a gendered way.
    4. supported family leave.

51.

The proportion of women CEOs in corporate America has been increasing. What is one possible explanation for this change?

1. 5. As more women move up into higher-level occupational positions, the resulting networks can foster further advancement.
   6. Studies have shown that women are more likely to be transformational leaders than men.
   7. Affirmative action has created more opportunities for women and other minorities.
   8. Women have more social capital than men, making it easier for them to enter positions of leadership.

52. One advantage that modern large organizations have over traditional formal bureaucracies is that:
    1. their incorporation of information technology allows them to hire more workers.
    2. due to increasing use of technology, modern organizations are more hierarchical.
    3. increased technology allows workers in modern organizations to work fewer hours.
    4. modern organizations today are more flexible and decentralized.

53. Human resource management regards a company’s workforce as:
    1. vital to its economic competitiveness.
    2. naturally unmotivated without company rewards and events.
    3. easily replaced by cheaper labor abroad.
    4. expensive compared to machines.

54. Every Friday, Google, Inc., encourages all of its employees to attend a speaker series in which authors, athletes, and other famous and inspiring people speak. This weekly corporate event is an example of a management trend known as:
    1. employee perks.                              c.   corporate culture.
    2. human resources management.     d. socialism.

55. From the perspective of workers, what may be one advantage of telecommuting?
    1. Less time is spent wasted on the kind of casual interaction that occurs around water

coolers.

1. 2. It eliminates the time spent commuting to and from work.
   3. Workers can cheat more easily on their time cards and say they worked more hours than they really did.
   4. It creates a two-strata employment system of technology experts and less autonomous clerical workers.

56. According to the textbook, the use of information and communications technology in corporations has reduced the rigid hierarchical structure of corporations, but at the same time it has created:
    1. a two-strata employment system of technology experts and less autonomous clerical workers.
    2. telecommuters who are totally disconnected from the corporate culture.
    3. a three-strata employment system of powerful managers, autonomous technology experts, and less autonomous clerical workers.
    4. unhappiness and incompetence among employees who are telecommuters.

57. 
    The McDonaldization of society refers to:
    1. the obesity epidemic in American society.
    2. the taking over of key authority positions by baby boomers.
    3. the increased uniformity and rationality of society.
    4. the phenomenal success of cooperative restaurants as models for other companies.

58. A latte from Starbucks will taste the same whether one purchases it in New York City or Albuquerque, New Mexico. Which aspect of George Ritzer’s theory of McDonaldization does this demonstrate?
    1. efficiency                                         c.   control
    2. calculability                                      d. uniformity

59. The widespread participation of people from various backgrounds in the Black Lives Matter movement might challenge which idea of Robert Putnam?

1. 1. violence is increasing
   2. voter turnout is increasing
   3. civic participation is declining
   4. attention span among young people is declining

60. Every day after school Maria goes to the local teen center. She is part of a group that is organizing a multicultural festival for the community. This activity is likely to produce:
    1. bonding social capital.                     c.   community banks.
    2. bridging social capital.                    d. reference groups.

SHORT ANSWER

1. Today more of our social relationships are dominated by secondary groups instead of primary groups. Charles Horton Cooley worried about the loss of intimacy as secondary groups became more prominent and pervasive. Émile Durkheim and Georg Simmel saw some benefits of the development of more secondary groups. In three to five sentences, please explain what you think about the trend toward more secondary-group relationships in modern society.

2. Give an example of a dyad, a triad, and a larger group. In which groups are the relationships more intense? In which are they more stable? Please explain your examples and reasoning in three to five sentences.

3. In three to five sentences, compare transformational leadership and transactional leadership. Give an example of each from your own experience or from your knowledge of history.

4. Choose the Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram, or Irving Janis study. In three to five sentences, explain how the study helps us understand conformity. In one sentence, explain how you think you would have responded as a subject in the study.

5. Please answer the following questions in three to five sentences. According to Irving Janis, what is groupthink? Why can groupthink lead to bad decisions by otherwise smart and strong-willed individuals?

6. In a couple of sentences, explain how social networks facilitate the reproduction of existing inequalities for women, lower socioeconomic classes, and minorities. Give an example.

7. In three to five sentences, please explain how the Internet affects social relationships and social networks, as well as how it can have both a positive and a negative impact.

8. In a couple of sentences, please list and explain the characteristics of the “ideal type of bureaucracy” that Max Weber described and how they are evident or not evident in your college or university.