Full Download PDF of Test Bank For Business Communication: Developing Leaders For A Networked World, 3rd Edition, Peter Cardon All Chapter

Test Bank for Business
Communication: Developing Leaders

for a Networked World, 3rd Edition,
Peter Cardon
Go to download the full and correct content document:
https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-business-communication-developing-le
aders-for-a-networked-world-3rd-edition-peter-cardon/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Strategic Management Communication for Leaders 3rd

Edition Walker Solutions Manual
https://testbankmall.com/product/strategic-management-
communication-for-leaders-3rd-edition-walker-solutions-manual/
Test Bank for eBusiness A Canadian Perspective for a

Networked World, 4th Edition : Trites
https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-ebusiness-a-
canadian-perspective-for-a-networked-world-4th-edition-trites/
Test Bank for Mass Communication: Living in a Media

World Seventh Edition
https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-mass-
communication-living-in-a-media-world-seventh-edition/
Business and Professional Communication 3rd Edition

Beebe Mottet Test Bank
https://testbankmall.com/product/business-and-professional-
communication-3rd-edition-beebe-mottet-test-bank/
Test Bank for Business Communication Process &
Product 3rd Edition Guffey Download
https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-business-
communication-process-product-3rd-edition-guffey-download/
Test Bank for iGenetics: A Molecular Approach, 3rd

Edition: Peter J. Russell
https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-igenetics-a-
molecular-approach-3rd-edition-peter-j-russell/
Business Communication Polishing Your Professional

Presence 3rd Edition Shwom Test Bank
https://testbankmall.com/product/business-communication-
polishing-your-professional-presence-3rd-edition-shwom-test-bank/
International Business Opportunities and Challenges in

a Flattening World Version 3 0 3rd Carpenter Test Bank
https://testbankmall.com/product/international-business-
opportunities-and-challenges-in-a-flattening-world-
version-3-0-3rd-carpenter-test-bank/
Test Bank For Close Encounters: Communication in

Relationships Paperback Fourth Edition by Laura K.
Guerrero, Peter A. Andersen, Walid A Afifi
https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-close-encounters-
communication-in-relationships-paperback-fourth-edition-by-laura-
k-guerrero-peter-a-andersen-walid-a-afifi/
2.
In the post-trust era, most employees have faith in their leaders and colleagues.
True False
3. Kai, who wants to be a veterinarian, has lined up a summer internship working for a local
veterinary hospital. That kind of experience will help him develop competence.
True False
4. Kelsey pursues business opportunities aggressively because she believes that doing nothing
can be very costly. Kelsey demonstrates a focus on action.
True False
5. A manager who acts out of self-interest is more likely to be viewed as credible than one who
does not.
True False
6. Effective communicators gain trust by connecting with others.
True False
7. Nancy wants to cultivate a sense of community. Her first step should be to explain her needs
to the team.
True False
1-2
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
8. Someone who has an enlarged vision of those affected by his or her business activities has a
sense of accountability.
True False
9. In the phrase stakeholder view, the word stakeholder refers to someone who owns a share of
the business.
True False
10. A company president often states in her written and oral communications that she is
answerable to the people who use the company's products. By repeating this so frequently,
she most likely causes people to mistrust her.
True False
11. Character-based traits are instrumental in establishing trust in the workplace.
True False
12. It is the duty of government employees to act visibly, predictably, and understandably when
dealing with the public.
True False
13. In recent years, transparency has become the dominant business ethic for communications.
True False
14. Employees usually speak up when they observe potentially unethical behavior.
True False
1-3
15. In recent years, employees have increasingly judged their upper managers to be ethical.
True False
16. A person of integrity will have one set of values for his or her personal life and another set of
values for his or her work life.
True False
17. Because business problems are expensive and time-consuming to solve, experts recommend
avoiding open discussion of serious issues.
True False
18. Today, most workplaces are becoming more closed off and independent.
True False
19. The FAIR test is a way to predict how employees will react to a new policy.
True False
20. A study showed that the public speaking ability of business leaders is a key influence on
employee engagement.
True False
Multiple Choice Questions
1-4
21. Which phrase explains what the post-trust era is?
A. a period in which the government no longer allows monopolies or trusts to form
B. a period characterized by the formation of trusts to manage the wealth of businesses
C. a period in which people put more of their trust in big business than in big government
D. a period in which the government allows financial trusts to try to make the economy safer
E. a period in which people have lost the trust they once had in the business community
22. What brought about the state of affairs known as the post-trust era?
A. the disclosure of widespread cheating in school
B. a series of business scandals and economic crises
C. the decrease in human interactions in business
D. the practice of outsourcing jobs
E. a switch to more transparency by businesses
23. In the post-trust era
A. businesses are often thought to operate against the public's best interests.
B. the majority of employees have faith in their leaders and colleagues at work.
C. transparency is no longer important in the workplace.
D. stakeholders do not require businesses to be accountable to them.
E. character-based traits play a very small role in establishing credibility.
1-5
24. Which of the following is true of competence?
A. It has grown less important in the post-trust era.
B. It is often evaluated by one's track record of achievements.
C. It is innate and cannot be gained through experience.
D. It increases when individuals focus on connecting with others.
E. It depends mainly on the ability to build a sense of community.
25.
Edgar's boss has told him that he needs to demonstrate more competence on the job. Which
of the following actions will help him do so?
A. taking on fewer projects at one time
B. asking coworkers what their needs are
C. working independently and not consulting others
D. hiding his mistakes from his team members
E. setting specific work goals and achieving them
1-6
26. The Daily News just hired five young reporters. Which new employee has the most
competence?
A. Kate, who made top grades in journalism at a prestigious university and then traveled for a
year
B. Giorgio, who has a degree in English and has published three stories in literary magazines
C. Helena, who earned a journalism degree and interned at a local newspaper for two
summers
D. Bill, who earned a degree in philosophy and spent a year writing for a school newspaper
E. Becca, who made top grades at a small college and graduated with a degree in English
27. Lena is the general manager of an international clothing manufacturing company. She wants
to give one of her managers an "Employee of the Year" award. Which of the following
managers should she choose if she is looking for the employee with the highest level of
competence?
A. Ted, who is completely trustworthy with confidential information
B. Dahia, who is the first one to explain what she needs in any situation
C. Cora, who develops effective action plans to achieve team goals
D. Juana, who considers company interests above those of customers
E. Dexter, who keeps a low profile and does not draw attention to himself
1-7
28. Which of the following actions will help a manager establish a sense of caring?
A. holding regular meetings to ask about employee concerns
B. setting clear and measurable goals for each employee
C. taking a course in making teams function more efficiently
D. assigning people to projects without their input
E. encouraging people to use the pronouns "I" and "me" in communication
29. Which of the following communication techniques show that someone has a team
orientation?
A. discussing only positives rather than focusing on negatives
B. being open and transparent about the company's confidential matters
C. using the FAIR test to evaluate what other people say
D. using the pronouns "you" and "we" to discuss goals and needs
E. keeping personal motivations hidden in the workplace
30. In what way does caring help establish credibility in the business world?
A. It helps people understand serious business problems.
B. It encourages people to work as individuals instead of as teams.
C. It promotes closed communication structures.
D. It encourages people to demonstrate accountability.
E. It makes individuals less transparent.
1-8
31. Roland and Quan are both on the staff of a car dealership. Roland is always asking
colleagues to cover his shifts, but he never returns the favor. Quan often covers shifts for
colleagues even though he rarely takes time off himself. Which statement best describes the
difference between Roland and Quan?
A. Quan adheres to the company ethics policy, and Roland does not.
B. Quan relies on corporate values, and Roland relies on personal values.
C. Quan is an effective communicator, and Roland is not.
D. Quan is a giver, and Roland is a taker.
E. Quan trusts his colleagues, and Roland does not.
32. The Durable Business Machine Company has been around for almost a century and generally
has a good reputation for accountability. Which of the following actions might harm its
reputation for taking a stakeholder view?
A. The company consistently pays its shareholders high dividends.
B. The company offers its employees good benefits packages.
C. The company develops products that meet customer needs.
D. The company helps its employees develop professional skills.
E. The company keeps profits high by eliminating pollution controls.
1-9
33. Hachiro produces results. He is scrupulously honest. He checks to see that his teammates
have what they need. He always talks about his team's accomplishments, not his own.
However, he fails to consider the impact of his company's actions on the public. Hachiro
needs to improve in developing a sense of
A. caring.
B. community.
C. character.
D. accountability.
E. competence.
34. Performing at the highest standards, not just for oneself, but for the team, for the supervisor,
for the consumer, and for the company's shareholders, indicates a sense of
A. individuality.
B. accountability.
C. opportunity.
D. future-orientation.
E. endurance.
1-10
35. During performance evaluations, Jana is consistently praised for her ability to see how
corporate decisions will affect stakeholders. What does this characteristic of Jana's
demonstrate?
A. accountability
B. competence
C. expertise
D. transparency
E. honesty
36. Aiko is a middle manager at a technology company. Which of the following actions would help
Aiko build a sense of community among her team members?
A. assign all the team roles without explaining why decisions are made
B. emphasize how the quality of the team's work affects her chance at promotion
C. empower each team member to set personal goals for his or her career
D. put more emphasis on immediate results than on developing skills
E. encourage team members to compete to improve productivity
37. Javier is an editorial manager at a publishing company. He wants to give one of his
supervisors an "Employee of the Year" award. Which of the following supervisors should he
choose if he is looking for an employee with a strong sense of caring?
A. Jon, who sets short- and long-term deadlines for every project and meets them promptly
B. Ayesha, who always takes on extra work to help the department meet its deadlines
C. Paul, who is the best copy editor and proofreader in the department
D. Jenny, who helps her employees develop the skills that will allow them to advance
E. Trung, who communicates openly whenever he has doubts or questions
1-11
38. Character refers to
A. the stated and lived values of a company.
B. the knowledge and skills needed to accomplish business tasks.
C. a reputation for adhering to high moral and ethical values.
D. a set of principles that govern behavior in the workplace.
E. the ability to cultivate a sense of community in the workplace.
39. Which of the following is true of character?
A. It is central in establishing trust.
B. It is innate and cannot be cultivated.
C. Its importance has decreased in the post-trust era.
D. It is seldom important in long-term, collaborative relationships.
E. It increases when the level of transparency decreases.
40. Greg is the purchasing manager at a jeans-manufacturing company. He knows he could save
his company money by using cheaper, thinner cotton, but he says, "Our customers count on
us to provide a durable product. I do not want to let them down." What quality does this
demonstrate?
A. competence
B. character
C. fairness
D. expertise
E. community
1-12
41. Ethics means
A. the skills needed to identify and overcome business problems.
B. the practice of sharing all relevant information with stakeholders.
C. a written code of conduct designed to guide the actions of a company.
D. rules of conduct or moral principles that guide individual or group behavior.
E. a set of guidelines for evaluating how much honesty to use in a given situation.
42. Which of the following statements about business ethics is true?
A. They are skills needed to identify and overcome business problems.
B. They are of decreasing significance to businesses in the post-trust era.
C. They are self-formulated values prioritized and adhered to by individuals in business.
D. They measure the extent to which employees care for the needs of the business.
E. They are commonly held principles in the business community for acceptable behavior.
43. Why has transparency become so important in the post-trust era?
A. It creates the feeling among employees that managers care about their interests and
needs.
B. It helps reduce the fear that unethical or dishonest practices are being conducted in
secret.
C. It reduces incompetence by stressing the acquisition of necessary skills and knowledge for
the job.
D. It empowers each individual employee to think primarily about his or her career needs.
E. It focuses on action and results so it helps businesses address their most pressing issues.
1-13
44. What is the recommended thing to do if you observe unethical behavior in the workplace?
A. Assume that the person knows what he or she is doing and ignore it.
B. Accuse the person of acting with bad motives or criminal intent.
C. Ask questions that challenge the rationalization of the behavior.
D. Report the behavior to the media or to law enforcement immediately.
E. Make a joke about the behavior to subtly convey your discomfort with it.
45. Which of the following is true of corporate values?
A. Corporate values are those that are formulated and adhered to by individuals.
B. Publicly traded companies can decline to adopt a code of conduct.
C. The employees of a company are not bound by corporate values.
D. Corporate values are most effective when aligned with personal values.
E. Corporate values are implied and unwritten rules that are open to interpretation.
46. Martin is the general manager of a sports equipment manufacturing company. He wants to
give one of his employees an "Employee of the Year" award. Which of the following
individuals should he choose if he is looking for an employee with a strong sense of ethics?
A. Delia, who shares all relevant information with stakeholders
B. Nathan, who went to night school to acquire more job-related skills
C. Kelly, who shares the company's trade secrets with its competitors
D. Ai, who created a spreadsheet to help track production stages
E. Valeria, who conducts personal business on company time
1-14
47. What type of company is required to have a code of ethics available to all employees?
A. all companies that employ more than 100 people
B. all companies that trade internationally
C. all companies that have more than a single owner
D. all companies that are publicly traded
E. all companies that make more than a million dollars
48. The most successful people are those whose
A. personal values take priority over the corporate values where they work.
B. personal values are subservient to the corporate values where they work.
C. personal values align with the corporate values where they work.
D. lives are ruled entirely by their personal values.
E. lives are ruled entirely by the corporate values where they work.
49. What is the relationship between honesty and competition?
A. Too much honesty destroys competition.
B. Businesses must commit fraud to compete.
C. Truly honest businesses do not need to compete.
D. Honesty and competition have no relationship.
E. Honesty encourages competition on merit.
1-15
50. Chuck is the chief financial officer of his company. At the annual meeting, he gives a
presentation that contains only positive financial news even though the company had a lay-
off in the previous year. What impact is Chuck's presentation likely to have on the
employees?
A. It will create hope that the coming year will be better than the previous year.
B. It will cause employees to forget about the previous year's problems.
C. It will create mistrust because the presentation did not offer the whole truth.
D. It will not have much effect because employees do not listen to such presentations.
E. It will impress the employees with Chuck's team orientation and positive attitude.
51. Mario works for a research firm. He discloses a client's confidential information publicly. This
action is an example of a
A. business ethics violation.
B. low-trust relationship.
C. conflict between personal and corporate values.
D. failure to be transparent.
E. rationalization of unprofessional practices.
52. What does the "F" in the FAIR test of ethical business communication stand for?
A. Fresh
B. Facts
C. First
D. Forthright
E. Fitting
1-16
53. What does the "I" in the FAIR test of ethical business communication stand for?
A. Intent of communicator
B. Interest of audience
C. Impacts on stakeholders
D. Insight into motives
E. Illustration of credibility
54. Which of the following can the FAIR test help you avoid?
A. showing preference to one employee over another
B. revealing confidential or proprietary information
C. receiving low ratings from subordinates
D. rationalizing unethical behaviors
E. showing disrespect to other people
55. Phil is a manager who is preparing to send a memo to members of his team. Which of the
following will best help him evaluate the memo before he sends it?
A. asking questions to challenge rationalizations
B. consulting the Ethics Resource Center
C. surveying team members
D. applying the FAIR test
E. reviewing his company's code of ethics
1-17
56. Rita is the general manager of a software company. She wants to give one of her employees
an "Employee of the Year" award. Which of the following individuals should she choose if she
is looking for an employee who communicates fairly in business?
A. Julio, who always discloses his sources of information
B. Eva, who often draws conclusions from assumptions
C. Deb, who often says that customers never know what they want
D. Lisa, who builds team spirit by reminding people when birthdays are
E. Todd, who seldom checks his programs for bugs
57. Which of the following is characteristic of people in high-trust relationships?
A. a willingness to cooperate
B. high resistance to new ideas
C. complicated and formalized communication styles
D. a tendency to assume the worst of other people
E. a strong disinclination to help other people
58. Uli is an employee of an educational technology firm. She volunteers to stay late when there
is a deadline and always embraces a challenge. Which of the following is likely true about
Uli?
A. She is emotionally connected to her work.
B. She desires a lot of praise from others.
C. She has a high-trust relationship with her boss.
D. She is a strong communicator.
E. She answers directly to stakeholders.
1-18
59. How does having a high level of trust impact communication?
A. It improves communication because people have to rely more on rhetoric.
B. It improves communication because people feel less resistance to ideas.
C. It worsens communication because people take things for granted.
D. It worsens communication because people question each other's motives.
E. It improves communication because people have to be persuaded to cooperate.
60. According to management expert Stephen M.R. Covey, which of the following is foundational
to permanent success?
A. speaking and writing eloquently
B. demanding the respect of subordinates
C. overcoming many struggles
D. inspiring the trust of others
E. having a warm and charming manner
61. Karin supervises five teams. She wants to give an award to the team that has successfully
created a high-trust relationship. Which team should she choose?
A. Team A, whose members communicate well and are easy to motivate
B. Team B, whose members rarely take time off from work
C. Team C, whose members consistently get positive reviews from customers
D. Team D, whose members have many different communication styles
E. Team E, whose members have worked together for the longest time
1-19
62. Simpler communications and decreased miscommunications are associated with
A. high-trust relationships.
B. small team size.
C. strong speaking skills.
D. well-paid employees.
E. highly engaged stakeholders.
63. When employees are engaged, that means they are connected to their work
A. ethically.
B. emotionally.
C. intellectually.
D. physically.
E. professionally.
64. Which of the following behaviors indicates engagement by employees?
A. viewing coworkers' motives with suspicion
B. feeling resistant to new ways of doing things
C. sharing news in the most positive way possible
D. keeping one's motives to oneself
E. putting in extra time to meet the company's goals
1-20
65. According to recent studies, what impact does having highly engaged employees have on a
company?
A. It increases mistrust.
B. It decreases cooperation.
C. It increases profitability.
D. It decreases overtime.
E. It increases resistance.
Essay Questions
66. Why has establishing credibility become so important in the post-trust era?
1-21
67. Discuss the role of competence in establishing credibility. Explain how competence affects
the perceptions of others.
68. What role does understanding the interests of others play in the establishment of credibility?
Give a specific example.
1-22
69. Why should a business take a stakeholder view of groups in society that are not part of the
company and do not use the company's products or services?
70. Discuss the role of character in establishing credibility.
1-23
71. What are business ethics? Use details from the text to explain.
72. Why is transparency especially important in the post-trust era?
73. Why is it important that corporate values be aligned with personal values?
1-24
74. Why is it important for a company to have a business ethics policy?
75. Why is it important to cultivate high-trust relationships in the workplace?
1-25
Chapter 01 Establishing Credibility Answer Key
True / False Questions
1. People who cheat in school are more likely to cheat in the workplace.
TRUE
A strong predictor of cheating in the workplace is cheating in school. Recent research has
found that cheating is so pervasive that it has been labeled as a "global cheating culture."
AACSB: Communication
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Learning Objective: 01-01 Explain the importance of establishing credibility for business communications.
Topic: Ethics and Ethical Behavior in Business Communications
1-26
2.
In the post-trust era, most employees have faith in their leaders and colleagues.
FALSE
In the post-trust era, the public overwhelmingly views businesses as operating against the
public's best interests, and the majority of employees view their leaders and colleagues
skeptically.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Topic: Credibility in Business Communications
3. Kai, who wants to be a veterinarian, has lined up a summer internship working for a local
veterinary hospital. That kind of experience will help him develop competence.
TRUE
People develop competence in many ways: through study, observation, and, most
importantly, practice and real-world business experiences.
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 01-02 Describe how competence, caring, and character affect your credibility as a communicator.
1-27
4. Kelsey pursues business opportunities aggressively because she believes that doing
nothing can be very costly. Kelsey demonstrates a focus on action.
TRUE
A focus on action implies that a person seizes business opportunities. You demonstrate
competence by taking an active role in your business and by getting results.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
5. A manager who acts out of self-interest is more likely to be viewed as credible than one
who does not.
FALSE
Your ability to gain credibility strongly depends on your ability to show that you care for
the needs of others.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
Topic: Using the You-Attitude or Viewpoint
1-28
6. Effective communicators gain trust by connecting with others.
TRUE
Effective communicators gain trust by connecting with others—that is, seeking to
understand others' needs, wants, opinions, feelings, and aspirations.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
7. Nancy wants to cultivate a sense of community. Her first step should be to explain her
needs to the team.
FALSE
Speaking about "our needs" or "your needs" as opposed to "my needs" engenders trust
and helps you come up with solutions that achieve mutual benefit.
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-29
8. Someone who has an enlarged vision of those affected by his or her business activities
has a sense of accountability.
TRUE
A sense of accountability implies an obligation to meeting the needs and wants of others.
It also involves an enlarged vision of those affected by your business activities. It takes a
stakeholder view that includes all groups in society affected by your business.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
9. In the phrase stakeholder view, the word stakeholder refers to someone who owns a share
of the business.
FALSE
A stakeholder is any individual or group in society affected by your business.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-30
10. A company president often states in her written and oral communications that she is
answerable to the people who use the company's products. By repeating this so
frequently, she most likely causes people to mistrust her.
FALSE
By placing a rationale for accountability in your communications, you will generate
substantial trust and goodwill from others.
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
11. Character-based traits are instrumental in establishing trust in the workplace.
TRUE
Character is central in creating trust. Hence, character-based traits are instrumental in
establishing trust in the workplace.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-31
12. It is the duty of government employees to act visibly, predictably, and understandably
when dealing with the public.
TRUE
Transparency involves sharing all relevant information with stakeholders. Those affected
by administrative decisions, business transactions, or charitable work should know not
only basic information but also the mechanisms and processes involved. It is the duty of
civil servants to act visibly, predictably, and understandably.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
Learning Objective: 01-03 Define and explain business ethics, corporate values, and personal values.
13. In recent years, transparency has become the dominant business ethic for
communications.
TRUE
As far as corporate communications, the dominant business ethic in recent years is
transparency.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
Topic: Trends in Business Communication
1-32
14. Employees usually speak up when they observe potentially unethical behavior.
FALSE
Often employees fail to speak up when they observe potentially unethical behavior.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
15. In recent years, employees have increasingly judged their upper managers to be ethical.
TRUE
In recent years, perhaps in large part due to public scandals, employees of companies in
the United States have observed higher ethical behavior within their companies and
generally view their upper managers as ethical.
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-33
16. A person of integrity will have one set of values for his or her personal life and another set
of values for his or her work life.
FALSE
Aligning personal values with corporate values is an important element of character. After
all, if one is living corporate values that do not match one's personal values, then there is a
lack of integrity.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
17. Because business problems are expensive and time-consuming to solve, experts
recommend avoiding open discussion of serious issues.
FALSE
Nothing short of complete honesty is demanded in the business world. By avoiding open
and honest communication of business problems, employees doom a business to poor
financial performance.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-34
18. Today, most workplaces are becoming more closed off and independent.
FALSE
Workplaces today are becoming increasingly open, transparent, connected, and
interdependent.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Topic: Trends in Business Communication
19. The FAIR test is a way to predict how employees will react to a new policy.
FALSE
The FAIR test is a way to evaluate your communications. It helps you examine how well
you have provided the facts; how well you have granted access to your motives, reasoning,
and information; how well you have examined impacts on stakeholders; and how well you
have shown respect.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Learning Objective: 01-04 Explain the FAIR approach to ethical business communications.
Topic: The FAIR approach
1-35
20. A study showed that the public speaking ability of business leaders is a key influence on
employee engagement.
FALSE
The credibility of business leaders is a key influence on employee engagement.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Multiple Choice Questions
1-36
21. Which phrase explains what the post-trust era is?
A. a period in which the government no longer allows monopolies or trusts to form
B. a period characterized by the formation of trusts to manage the wealth of businesses
C. a period in which people put more of their trust in big business than in big government
D. a period in which the government allows financial trusts to try to make the economy
safer
E. a period in which people have lost the trust they once had in the business community
skeptically. In other words, people have lost whatever trust they once had in the business
community.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-37
22. What brought about the state of affairs known as the post-trust era?
A. the disclosure of widespread cheating in school
B. a series of business scandals and economic crises
C. the decrease in human interactions in business
D. the practice of outsourcing jobs
E. a switch to more transparency by businesses

Given the major business scandals over the last decade, trust in businesses and business
executives has dropped to all-time lows. Michael Maslansky, a leading corporate
communication expert, has labeled this the post-trust era.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-38
23. In the post-trust era
A. businesses are often thought to operate against the public's best interests.
B. the majority of employees have faith in their leaders and colleagues at work.
C. transparency is no longer important in the workplace.
D. stakeholders do not require businesses to be accountable to them.
E. character-based traits play a very small role in establishing credibility.

skeptically.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-39
24. Which of the following is true of competence?
A. It has grown less important in the post-trust era.
B. It is often evaluated by one's track record of achievements.
C. It is innate and cannot be gained through experience.
D. It increases when individuals focus on connecting with others.
E. It depends mainly on the ability to build a sense of community.

Competence refers to the knowledge and skills needed to accomplish business tasks,
approach business problems, and get a job done. Most people will judge your competence
based on your track record of success and achievement.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-40
25.
Edgar's boss has told him that he needs to demonstrate more competence on the job.
Which of the following actions will help him do so?
A. taking on fewer projects at one time
B. asking coworkers what their needs are
C. working independently and not consulting others
D. hiding his mistakes from his team members
E. setting specific work goals and achieving them

approach business problems, and get a job done. There are two traits associated with
competence: a focus on action and an emphasis on results.
AACSB: Knowledge Application

Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-41
26. The Daily News just hired five young reporters. Which new employee has the most
competence?
A. Kate, who made top grades in journalism at a prestigious university and then traveled
for a year
B. Giorgio, who has a degree in English and has published three stories in literary
magazines
C. Helena, who earned a journalism degree and interned at a local newspaper for two
summers
D. Bill, who earned a degree in philosophy and spent a year writing for a school
newspaper
E. Becca, who made top grades at a small college and graduated with a degree in English
approach business problems, and get a job done. By earning a degree in journalism and
interning at a local newspaper, Helena has gained the most competence of the five newly
hired reporters.
AACSB: Analytical Thinking

Blooms: Analyze
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-42
27. Lena is the general manager of an international clothing manufacturing company. She
wants to give one of her managers an "Employee of the Year" award. Which of the
following managers should she choose if she is looking for the employee with the highest
level of competence?
A. Ted, who is completely trustworthy with confidential information
B. Dahia, who is the first one to explain what she needs in any situation
C. Cora, who develops effective action plans to achieve team goals
D. Juana, who considers company interests above those of customers
E. Dexter, who keeps a low profile and does not draw attention to himself
approach business problems, and get a job done. The two traits associated with
competence are: a focus on action and an emphasis on results. Cora, who develops
effective action plans to achieve team goals, displays competence.

Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-43
28. Which of the following actions will help a manager establish a sense of caring?
A. holding regular meetings to ask about employee concerns
B. setting clear and measurable goals for each employee
C. taking a course in making teams function more efficiently
D. assigning people to projects without their input
E. encouraging people to use the pronouns "I" and "me" in communication

In the business world, caring implies understanding the interests of others, cultivating a
sense of community, and demonstrating accountability. Holding a meeting to ask about
employee concerns demonstrates concern for the interests of others.
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-44
29. Which of the following communication techniques show that someone has a team
orientation?
A. discussing only positives rather than focusing on negatives
B. being open and transparent about the company's confidential matters
C. using the FAIR test to evaluate what other people say
D. using the pronouns "you" and "we" to discuss goals and needs
E. keeping personal motivations hidden in the workplace

A team orientation is helpful for cultivating a sense of community. Speaking about "our
needs" or "your needs" as opposed to "my needs" engenders trust and helps you come up
with solutions that achieve mutual benefit.
AACSB: Teamwork
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-45
30. In what way does caring help establish credibility in the business world?
A. It helps people understand serious business problems.
B. It encourages people to work as individuals instead of as teams.
C. It promotes closed communication structures.
D. It encourages people to demonstrate accountability.
E. It makes individuals less transparent.

Caring for others plays an important role in establishing credibility. In the business world,
caring implies understanding the interests of others, cultivating a sense of community, and
demonstrating accountability.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-46
31. Roland and Quan are both on the staff of a car dealership. Roland is always asking
colleagues to cover his shifts, but he never returns the favor. Quan often covers shifts for
colleagues even though he rarely takes time off himself. Which statement best describes
the difference between Roland and Quan?
A. Quan adheres to the company ethics policy, and Roland does not.
B. Quan relies on corporate values, and Roland relies on personal values.
C. Quan is an effective communicator, and Roland is not.
D. Quan is a giver, and Roland is a taker.
E. Quan trusts his colleagues, and Roland does not.

Quan is a giver, and Roland is a taker. Givers are those professionals who go out of their
way to help colleagues, respond to their requests and needs, and generously support
others in the workplace. Takers are those professionals who frequently ask for favors from
colleagues yet infrequently volunteer to help their peers in return.
Blooms: Analyze
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-47
32. The Durable Business Machine Company has been around for almost a century and
generally has a good reputation for accountability. Which of the following actions might
harm its reputation for taking a stakeholder view?
A. The company consistently pays its shareholders high dividends.
B. The company offers its employees good benefits packages.
C. The company develops products that meet customer needs.
D. The company helps its employees develop professional skills.
E. The company keeps profits high by eliminating pollution controls.

sense of community, and demonstrating accountability. A sense of accountability involves
a feeling of responsibility to stakeholders, which includes all groups in society affected by
the business. Cutting back pollution controls for the sake of profit shows a disregard for
society as a whole.

Blooms: Analyze
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-48
33. Hachiro produces results. He is scrupulously honest. He checks to see that his teammates
have what they need. He always talks about his team's accomplishments, not his own.
However, he fails to consider the impact of his company's actions on the public. Hachiro
needs to improve in developing a sense of
A. caring.
B. community.
C. character.
D. accountability.
E. competence.
sense of community, and demonstrating accountability. A sense of accountability takes a
stakeholder view that includes all groups in society affected by a person's business.

Blooms: Analyze
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-49
34. Performing at the highest standards, not just for oneself, but for the team, for the
supervisor, for the consumer, and for the company's shareholders, indicates a sense of
A. individuality.
B. accountability.
C. opportunity.
D. future-orientation.
E. endurance.
sense of community, and demonstrating accountability. To perform every day at the
highest standards, not just for oneself, but for the team, for the supervisor, for the
consumer, and for the company's shareholders, indicates a sense of accountability.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-50
35. During performance evaluations, Jana is consistently praised for her ability to see how
corporate decisions will affect stakeholders. What does this characteristic of Jana's
demonstrate?
A. accountability
B. competence
C. expertise
D. transparency
E. honesty
Jana's outlook demonstrates accountability. A sense of accountability involves a feeling of
responsibility to stakeholders and a duty to other employees and customers.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-51
36. Aiko is a middle manager at a technology company. Which of the following actions would
help Aiko build a sense of community among her team members?
A. assign all the team roles without explaining why decisions are made
B. emphasize how the quality of the team's work affects her chance at promotion
C. empower each team member to set personal goals for his or her career
D. put more emphasis on immediate results than on developing skills
E. encourage team members to compete to improve productivity

sense of community, and demonstrating accountability. A sense of accountability involves
a feeling of responsibility to stakeholders and a duty to other employees and customers.
AACSB: Teamwork
Blooms: Analyze
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-52
37. Javier is an editorial manager at a publishing company. He wants to give one of his
supervisors an "Employee of the Year" award. Which of the following supervisors should
he choose if he is looking for an employee with a strong sense of caring?
A. Jon, who sets short- and long-term deadlines for every project and meets them
promptly
B. Ayesha, who always takes on extra work to help the department meet its deadlines
C. Paul, who is the best copy editor and proofreader in the department
D. Jenny, who helps her employees develop the skills that will allow them to advance
E. Trung, who communicates openly whenever he has doubts or questions

sense of community, and demonstrating accountability. A supervisor who helps her
employees develop the skills that will allow them to advance demonstrates a sense of
caring.

Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-53
38. Character refers to
A. the stated and lived values of a company.
B. the knowledge and skills needed to accomplish business tasks.
C. a reputation for adhering to high moral and ethical values.
D. a set of principles that govern behavior in the workplace.
E. the ability to cultivate a sense of community in the workplace.

Managers can control their reputation as credible communicators by focusing on three
well-established factors: competence, caring, and character. Character refers to a
reputation for staying true to commitments made to stakeholders and adhering to high
moral and ethical values.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-54
39. Which of the following is true of character?
A. It is central in establishing trust.
B. It is innate and cannot be cultivated.
C. Its importance has decreased in the post-trust era.
D. It is seldom important in long-term, collaborative relationships.
E. It increases when the level of transparency decreases.

Character is central in creating trust. Business executives were asked what the most
important determinants of trust in workplace projects were. Overwhelmingly, character-
based traits—that is, honesty, ethical behavior, and willingness to exchange information—
ranked at the top.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-55
40. Greg is the purchasing manager at a jeans-manufacturing company. He knows he could
save his company money by using cheaper, thinner cotton, but he says, "Our customers
count on us to provide a durable product. I do not want to let them down." What quality
does this demonstrate?
A. competence
B. character
C. fairness
D. expertise
E. community
Managers can control their reputation as credible communicators by focusing on three
well-established factors: competence, caring, and character. Character refers to a
reputation for staying true to commitments made to stakeholders and adhering to high
moral and ethical values. Greg demonstrates character by honoring the company's
commitment to its customers, who are stakeholders.

Blooms: Analyze
Chapter 01
1-56
41. Ethics means
A. the skills needed to identify and overcome business problems.
B. the practice of sharing all relevant information with stakeholders.
C. a written code of conduct designed to guide the actions of a company.
D. rules of conduct or moral principles that guide individual or group behavior.
E. a set of guidelines for evaluating how much honesty to use in a given situation.
Ethics are rules of conduct or moral principles that guide individual or group behavior.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-57
42. Which of the following statements about business ethics is true?
A. They are skills needed to identify and overcome business problems.
B. They are of decreasing significance to businesses in the post-trust era.
C. They are self-formulated values prioritized and adhered to by individuals in business.
D. They measure the extent to which employees care for the needs of the business.
E. They are commonly held principles in the business community for acceptable behavior.
Ethics are rules of conduct or moral principles that guide individual or group behavior.
Business ethics are the commonly accepted beliefs and principles in the business
community for acceptable behavior.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-58
43. Why has transparency become so important in the post-trust era?
A. It creates the feeling among employees that managers care about their interests and
needs.
B. It helps reduce the fear that unethical or dishonest practices are being conducted in
secret.
C. It reduces incompetence by stressing the acquisition of necessary skills and knowledge

for the job.
D. It empowers each individual employee to think primarily about his or her career needs.
E. It focuses on action and results so it helps businesses address their most pressing
issues.
The dominant business ethic in recent years is transparency. Transparency involves
sharing all relevant information with stakeholders. As a result, it helps reduce the fear,
created by recent scandals, that unethical or dishonest practices are being conducted in
secret.
AACSB: Reflective Thinking

Blooms: Evaluate
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-59
44. What is the recommended thing to do if you observe unethical behavior in the workplace?
A. Assume that the person knows what he or she is doing and ignore it.
B. Accuse the person of acting with bad motives or criminal intent.
C. Ask questions that challenge the rationalization of the behavior.
D. Report the behavior to the media or to law enforcement immediately.
E. Make a joke about the behavior to subtly convey your discomfort with it.
It is part of the employee's job to speak up constructively when observing unethical
behavior. You can challenge rationalizations with questions.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-60
45. Which of the following is true of corporate values?
A. Corporate values are those that are formulated and adhered to by individuals.
B. Publicly traded companies can decline to adopt a code of conduct.
C. The employees of a company are not bound by corporate values.
D. Corporate values are most effective when aligned with personal values.
E. Corporate values are implied and unwritten rules that are open to interpretation.
Aligning personal values—those values that individuals prioritize and adhere to—with
corporate values is an important element of character. After all, if one is living corporate
values that do not match one's personal values, then there is a lack of integrity.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-61
46. Martin is the general manager of a sports equipment manufacturing company. He wants to
give one of his employees an "Employee of the Year" award. Which of the following
individuals should he choose if he is looking for an employee with a strong sense of
ethics?
A. Delia, who shares all relevant information with stakeholders
B. Nathan, who went to night school to acquire more job-related skills
C. Kelly, who shares the company's trade secrets with its competitors
D. Ai, who created a spreadsheet to help track production stages
E. Valeria, who conducts personal business on company time

The dominant business ethic in recent years is transparency. Transparency involves
sharing all relevant information with stakeholders.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-62
47. What type of company is required to have a code of ethics available to all employees?
A. all companies that employ more than 100 people
B. all companies that trade internationally
C. all companies that have more than a single owner
D. all companies that are publicly traded
E. all companies that make more than a million dollars

Publicly traded companies are required by the Sarbannes-Oxley Act of 2002 to have a
code of ethics available to all employees and to ensure that it is enacted.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-63
48. The most successful people are those whose
A. personal values take priority over the corporate values where they work.
B. personal values are subservient to the corporate values where they work.
C. personal values align with the corporate values where they work.
D. lives are ruled entirely by their personal values.
E. lives are ruled entirely by the corporate values where they work.
Aligning personal values—those values that individuals prioritize and adhere to—with
corporate values is an important element of character. If one is living corporate values that
do not match one's personal values, then there is a lack of character. If personal values
are aligned with a company's values, a person is more likely to be successful.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-64
49. What is the relationship between honesty and competition?
A. Too much honesty destroys competition.
B. Businesses must commit fraud to compete.
C. Truly honest businesses do not need to compete.
D. Honesty and competition have no relationship.
E. Honesty encourages competition on merit.

The goal of honesty is not to reduce competition but to encourage competition on the
merits and prohibit competition by cheating.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-65
50. Chuck is the chief financial officer of his company. At the annual meeting, he gives a
presentation that contains only positive financial news even though the company had a
lay-off in the previous year. What impact is Chuck's presentation likely to have on the
employees?
A. It will create hope that the coming year will be better than the previous year.
B. It will cause employees to forget about the previous year's problems.
C. It will create mistrust because the presentation did not offer the whole truth.
D. It will not have much effect because employees do not listen to such presentations.
E. It will impress the employees with Chuck's team orientation and positive attitude.
It will create mistrust because the employees will know the presentation offered partial
truths. Dishonesty is one of the primary reasons for lower employee morale. Nearly six in
ten employees say they have left an organization because of lack of trust.

Blooms: Analyze
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-66
51. Mario works for a research firm. He discloses a client's confidential information publicly.
This action is an example of a
A. business ethics violation.
B. low-trust relationship.
C. conflict between personal and corporate values.
D. failure to be transparent.
E. rationalization of unprofessional practices.

Mario has violated business ethics. At a minimum, business ethics involve adhering to
laws; safeguarding confidential or proprietary information; avoiding conflicts of interest
and misuse of company assets; and refraining from accepting or providing inappropriate
gifts, gratuities, and entertainment.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-67
52. What does the "F" in the FAIR test of ethical business communication stand for?
A. Fresh
B. Facts
C. First
D. Forthright
E. Fitting
One way to evaluate your communications is to use the FAIR test. The FAIR test helps you
examine how well you have provided the facts; how well you have granted access to your
motives, reasoning, and information; how well you have examined impacts on
stakeholders; and how well you have shown respect.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-68
53. What does the "I" in the FAIR test of ethical business communication stand for?
A. Intent of communicator
B. Interest of audience
C. Impacts on stakeholders
D. Insight into motives
E. Illustration of credibility
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-69
54. Which of the following can the FAIR test help you avoid?
A. showing preference to one employee over another
B. revealing confidential or proprietary information
C. receiving low ratings from subordinates
D. rationalizing unethical behaviors
E. showing disrespect to other people

stakeholders; and how well you have shown respect. Masking her motivations fails the
"access" part of the test.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-70
55. Phil is a manager who is preparing to send a memo to members of his team. Which of the
following will best help him evaluate the memo before he sends it?
A. asking questions to challenge rationalizations
B. consulting the Ethics Resource Center
C. surveying team members
D. applying the FAIR test
E. reviewing his company's code of ethics


Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-71
56. Rita is the general manager of a software company. She wants to give one of her
employees an "Employee of the Year" award. Which of the following individuals should she
choose if she is looking for an employee who communicates fairly in business?
A. Julio, who always discloses his sources of information
B. Eva, who often draws conclusions from assumptions
C. Deb, who often says that customers never know what they want
D. Lisa, who builds team spirit by reminding people when birthdays are
E. Todd, who seldom checks his programs for bugs

stakeholders; and how well you have shown respect. Disclosing one's sources of
information is one aspect of this test.

Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-72
57. Which of the following is characteristic of people in high-trust relationships?
A. a willingness to cooperate
B. high resistance to new ideas
C. complicated and formalized communication styles
D. a tendency to assume the worst of other people
E. a strong disinclination to help other people

Extensive research has shown that high-trust relationships lead to more efficient and
superior work outcomes. In terms of ease of communication, credibility leads to less
resistance from others, increased willingness to cooperate, and less likelihood of
miscommunication.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-73
58. Uli is an employee of an educational technology firm. She volunteers to stay late when
there is a deadline and always embraces a challenge. Which of the following is likely true
about Uli?
A. She is emotionally connected to her work.
B. She desires a lot of praise from others.
C. She has a high-trust relationship with her boss.
D. She is a strong communicator.
E. She answers directly to stakeholders.

Uli demonstrates a high level of engagement. Engagement is a measure of how much
employees are connected emotionally to their work, how willing they are to expend extra
effort to help their organizations meet their goals, and how much energy they have to
reach those goals.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-74
59. How does having a high level of trust impact communication?
A. It improves communication because people have to rely more on rhetoric.
B. It improves communication because people feel less resistance to ideas.
C. It worsens communication because people take things for granted.
D. It worsens communication because people question each other's motives.
E. It improves communication because people have to be persuaded to cooperate.

miscommunication. In low-trust work environments, people tend to assume the negative
regarding others' actions.
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-75
60. According to management expert Stephen M.R. Covey, which of the following is
foundational to permanent success?
A. speaking and writing eloquently
B. demanding the respect of subordinates
C. overcoming many struggles
D. inspiring the trust of others
E. having a warm and charming manner

Covey believes that trust is central to success. He stated that "It simply makes no
difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or
no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success. . . ."
Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-76
61. Karin supervises five teams. She wants to give an award to the team that has successfully
created a high-trust relationship. Which team should she choose?
A. Team A, whose members communicate well and are easy to motivate
B. Team B, whose members rarely take time off from work
C. Team C, whose members consistently get positive reviews from customers
D. Team D, whose members have many different communication styles
E. Team E, whose members have worked together for the longest time
miscommunication.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-77
62. Simpler communications and decreased miscommunications are associated with
A. high-trust relationships.
B. small team size.
C. strong speaking skills.
D. well-paid employees.
E. highly engaged stakeholders.

miscommunication.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-78
63. When employees are engaged, that means they are connected to their work
A. ethically.
B. emotionally.
C. intellectually.
D. physically.
E. professionally.
Engagement is a measure of how much employees are connected emotionally to their
work, how willing they are to expend extra effort to help their organizations meet their
goals, and how much energy they have to meet those goals.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
1-79
64. Which of the following behaviors indicates engagement by employees?
A. viewing coworkers' motives with suspicion
B. feeling resistant to new ways of doing things
C. sharing news in the most positive way possible
D. keeping one's motives to oneself
E. putting in extra time to meet the company's goals

Engagement is a measure of how much employees are connected emotionally to their
work, how willing they are to expend extra effort to help their organizations meet their
goals, and how much energy they have to meet those goals.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-80
65. According to recent studies, what impact does having highly engaged employees have on a
company?
A. It increases mistrust.
B. It decreases cooperation.
C. It increases profitability.
D. It decreases overtime.
E. It increases resistance.
One recent study showed that companies with highly engaged employees were nearly
three times as profitable as companies with low engagement among employees.
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Essay Questions
1-81
66. Why has establishing credibility become so important in the post-trust era?
skeptically. In the business world, you often start from a deficit of trust. As a result, one of
your first goals should be to gain trust or credibility from colleagues, clients, customers,
and other contacts.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-82
67. Discuss the role of competence in establishing credibility. Explain how competence affects
the perceptions of others.
approach business problems, and get a job done. You demonstrate competence by taking
an active role in your business and by getting results. How you communicate your plan of
action and the results of those actions will determine how others perceive your
competence. People have to believe that you have the necessary knowledge and skills to
accomplish a goal before they can trust you to do it.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-83
68. What role does understanding the interests of others play in the establishment of
credibility? Give a specific example.
Your colleagues, clients, and customers will trust you far more if they know you care about
them. Once an individual is perceived as unconcerned about the interests of others or
disinterested in causes above and beyond him- or herself, this individual will be distrusted
by others. In the business world, caring implies understanding the interests of others,
cultivating a sense of community, and demonstrating accountability. Specific examples of
understanding the interests of others include helping a colleague to develop skills and
understanding how a customer will use a new product.

Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-84
69. Why should a business take a stakeholder view of groups in society that are not part of the
company and do not use the company's products or services?
A sense of accountability implies an obligation to meeting the needs and wants of others.
It also involves an enlarged vision of those affected by your business activities. It takes a
stakeholder view that includes all groups in society affected by your business. Many
groups can be affected by a company's policies on issues such as land use, energy use,
and pollution, to name a few. That is why businesses need to consider their impact in the
broadest way possible.

Blooms: Analyze
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-85
70. Discuss the role of character in establishing credibility.
Character refers to a reputation for staying true to commitments made to stakeholders

and adhering to high moral and ethical values. Character has always been important in
business relationships, especially long-term, collaborative relationships. Character is
central in creating trust. Business executives were asked what the most important
determinants of trust in workplace projects were. Overwhelmingly, character-based
traits—that is, honesty, ethical behavior, and willingness to exchange information—ranked
at the top.
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-86
71. What are business ethics? Use details from the text to explain.
Business ethics are the commonly accepted beliefs and principles in the business
community for acceptable behavior. At a minimum, business ethics involve adhering to
laws; safeguarding confidential or proprietary information; avoiding conflicts of interest
and misusing company assets; and refraining from accepting or providing inappropriate
gifts, gratuities, and entertainment.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-87
72. Why is transparency especially important in the post-trust era?
Transparency involves sharing all relevant information with stakeholders. As defined by

Transparency International, transparency "is a principle that allows those affected by
administrative decisions, business transactions or charitable work to know not only the
basic facts and figures but also the mechanisms and processes. It is the duty of civil
servants, managers and trustees to act visibly, predictably and understandably." In the
post-trust era, one in which people have come to see businesses as operating against the
public's best interests, people need to know that they are being treated with honesty and
respect. They need to be given the full picture of what is happening within a company and
how it may affect them personally or professionally.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Remember
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-88
73. Why is it important that corporate values be aligned with personal values?
Corporate values are the stated and lived values of a company. Aligning personal values—
those values that individuals prioritize and adhere to—with corporate values is an
important element of character. If one is living corporate values that do not match one's
personal values, then there is a lack of integrity. In general, people are more successful if
the values of the two parts of their lives match.
AACSB: Ethics
Blooms: Understand
Chapter 01
1-89
74. Why is it important for a company to have a business ethics policy?
Business ethics polices are important because ethical dilemmas arise frequently in
business. Employees need to know what is expected of them. They need guidance in
"making the right choice," especially when the right choice may not be obvious. Decision
making needs to be open, documented, and based on the collective conscience of the
work team and affected stakeholders. Employees also need to know when and how to
report any unethical practices that they observe. They need to know that it is part of their
job to speak up and that they will not be punished for it. Having a clear policy and
communicating it to employees also increases trust, in turn promoting communication and
profitability.

Blooms: Analyze
Chapter 01
Difficulty: 3 Hard
1-90
75. Why is it important to cultivate high-trust relationships in the workplace?
High-trust relationships and the credibility that they bring to all team members have
benefits for both individual workers and organizations. Workers will find that it is easier to
communicate with team members. There is less resistance from others, fewer
miscommunications, and a greater sense of cooperation. People give each other the
benefit of the doubt. The organization benefits because employees have greater levels of
engagement, which in turn leads to increased profitability.

Blooms: Apply
Chapter 01
1-91
Case List
1-92
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
most amazing judgments pronounced on them by critics whose
judgment on other subjects is excellent.[19] The reason of this tardy
recognition of Dostoievsky in his own country is that he was one of
those men whose innate sense of fairness and hatred of cant
prevent them from whole-heartedly joining a political party and
swallowing its tenets indiscriminately, even when some of these
tenets are nonsensical and iniquitous. He was one of those men who
put truth and love higher than any political cause, and can fight for
such a cause only when the leaders of it, in practice as well as in
theory, never deviate from the one or the other. He was between two
fires: the Government considered him a revolutionary, and the
revolutionaries thought him a retrograde; because he refused to be
blind to the merits of the Government, such as they were, and
equally refused to be blind to the defects of the enemies of the
Government. He therefore attacked not only the Government, but the
Government’s enemies; and when he attacked, it was with
thunderbolts. The Liberals never forgave him this. Dostoievsky was
unjustly condemned to spend four years in penal servitude for a
political crime; for having taken part in a revolutionary propaganda.
He returned from Siberia a Slavophil, and, I will not say a
Conservative, as the word is misleading; but a man convinced not
only of the futility of revolution, but also of the worthlessness of a
great part of the revolutionaries. Nor did the Liberals ever forgive him
this. They are only just beginning to do so now. Moreover, in one of
his most powerful books, The Possessed, he draws a scathing
picture of all the flotsam and jetsam of revolution, and not only of the
worthless hangers-on who are the parasites of any such movement,
but he reveals the decadence and worthlessness of some of the
men, who by their dominating character played leading parts and
were popular heroes. Still less did the Liberals forgive him this book;
and even now, few Liberal writers are fair towards it. Again,
Dostoievsky was, as I shall show later, by nature an antagonist of
Socialism and a hater of materialism; and since all the leading men
among the Liberals of his time were either one or the other, if not
both, Dostoievsky aroused the enmity of the whole Liberal camp, by
attacking not only its parasites but its leaders, men of high principle
such as Bielinsky, who were obviously sincere and deserving of the
highest consideration and respect. One can imagine a similar
situation in England if at the present time there were an autocratic
government, a backward and ignorant peasantry, and a small and
Liberal movement carried on by a minority of extremely intellectual
men, headed, let us say, by Mr. Bernard Shaw, Lord Morley,
Professor Raleigh, and Sir J. J. Thomson. I purposely take men of
widely different opinions, because in a country where there is a fight
going on for a definite thing, such as a Constitution, there is a
moment when men, who under another régime would be split up into
Liberals and Conservatives, are necessarily grouped together in one
big Liberal camp. Now, let us suppose that the men who were
carrying on this propaganda for reform were undergoing great
sacrifices; let us likewise suppose them to be Socialists and
materialists to the core. Then suppose there should appear a
novelist of conspicuous power, such as George Meredith or Mr.
Thomas Hardy or Mr. H. G. Wells, who by some error was sent to
Botany Bay for having been supposed to be mixed up with a
revolutionary propaganda, and on his return announced that he was
an Anti-Revolutionary, violently attacked Mr. Shaw, wrote a book in
which he caricatured him, and drew a scathing portrait of all his
disciples,—especially of the less intelligent among them. One can
imagine how unpopular such an author would be in Liberal circles.
This was the case of Dostoievsky in Russia. It is only fair to add that
his genius has now obtained full recognition, even at the hands of
Liberals, though they still may not be able to tolerate his book, The
Possessed. But considering the magnitude of his genius, this
recognition has been, on the whole, a tardy one. For instance, even
in so valuable a book as Prince Kropotkin’s Ideals and Realities in
Russian Literature, Dostoievsky receives inadequate treatment and
scanty appreciation. On the other hand, in Merejkowsky’s Tolstoy
and Dostoievsky, Merejkowsky, who is also a Liberal, praises
Dostoievsky with complete comprehension and with brilliance of
thought and expression.
II
Dostoievsky’s Life
Dostoievsky was the son of a staff-surgeon and a tradesman’s
daughter. He was born in a charity hospital, the “Maison de Dieu,” at
Moscow, in 1821. He was, as he said, a member of a stray family.
His father and five children lived in a flat consisting of two rooms and
a kitchen. The nursery of the two boys, Michael and Fedor, consisted
of a small part of the entrance hall, which was partitioned off. His
family belonged to the lowest ranks of the nobility, to that stratum of
society which supplied the bureaucracy with its minor public
servants. The poverty surrounding his earliest years was to last until
the day of his death.
Some people are, as far as money is concerned, like a negative
pole—money seems to fly away from them, or rather, when it comes
to them, to be unable to find any substance it can cleave to.
Dostoievsky was one of these people; he never knew how much
money he had, and when he had any, however little, he gave it away.
He was what the French call a panier percé: money went through
him as through a sieve. And however much money he had, it was
never he but his friends who benefited by it.
He received his earliest education at a small school in Moscow,
where a schoolmaster who taught Russian inspired him and his
brother with a love of literature, of Pushkin’s poetry and other writers,
introduced him also to the works of Walter Scott, and took him to see
a performance of Schiller’s Robbers. When his preliminary studies
were ended, he was sent with his brother to a school of military
engineers at St. Petersburg. Here his interest in literature, which had
been first aroused by coming into contact with Walter Scott’s works,
was further developed by his discovery of Balzac, George Sand, and
Homer. Dostoievsky developed a passionate love of literature and
poetry. His favourite author was Gogol. He left this school in 1843 at
the age of twenty-three, with the rank of sub-lieutenant.
His first success in literature was his novel, Poor Folk (published in
1846), which he possibly began to write while he was still at school.
He sent this work to a review and awaited the result, utterly hopeless
of its being accepted. One day, at four o’clock in the morning, just
when Dostoievsky was despairing of success and thinking of suicide,
Nekrasov the poet, and Grigorovitch the critic, came to him and said:
“Do you understand yourself what you have written? To have written
such a book you must have possessed the direct inspiration of an
artist.”
This, said Dostoievsky, was the happiest moment of his life. The
book was published in Nekrasov’s newspaper, and was highly
praised on all sides. He thus at once made a name in literature. But
as though Fate wished to lose no time in proving to him that his life
would be a series of unending struggles, his second story, The
Double, was a failure, and his friends turned from him, feeling that
they had made a mistake. From that time onward, his literary career
was a desperate battle, not only with poverty but also with public
opinion, and with political as well as with literary critics.
Dostoievsky suffered all his life from epilepsy. It has been said that
this disease was brought on by his imprisonment. This is not true:
the complaint began in his childhood, and one of his biographers
gives a hint of its origin: “It dates back,” he writes, “to his earliest
youth, and is connected with a tragic event in their family life.” This
sentence affords us an ominous glimpse into the early years of
Dostoievsky, for it must indeed have been a tragic event which
caused him to suffer from epileptic fits throughout his life.
In 1849 came the most important event in Dostoievsky’s life. From
1840 to 1847 there was in St. Petersburg a group of young men who
met together to read and discuss the Liberal writers such as Fourier,
Louis Blanc and Prudhon. Towards 1847 these circles widened, and
included officers and journalists: they formed a club under the
leadership of Petrachevsky, a former student, the author of a
Dictionary of Foreign Terms. The club consisted, on the one hand, of
certain men, followers of the Decembrists of 1825, who aimed at the
emancipation of the serfs and the establishment of a Liberal
Constitution; and, on the other hand, of men who were predecessors
of the Nihilists, and who looked forward to a social revolution. The
special function of Dostoievsky in this club was to preach the
Slavophil doctrine, according to which Russia, sociologically
speaking, needed no Western models, because in her workmen’s
guilds and her system of mutual reciprocity for the payment of taxes,
she already possessed the means of realising a superior form of
social organisation.
The meetings of this club took place shortly after the revolutionary
movement which convulsed Western Europe in 1848. The Emperor
Nicholas, who was a strong-minded and a just although a hard man,
imbued with a religious conviction that he was appointed by God to
save the crumbling world, was dreaming of the emancipation of the
serfs, and by a fatal misunderstanding was led to strike at men
whose only crime was that they shared his own aims and ideals.
One evening at a meeting of this club, Dostoievsky had declaimed
Pushkin’s Ode on the Abolition of Serfdom, when some one present
expressed a doubt of the possibility of obtaining this reform except
by insurrectionary means. Dostoievsky is said to have replied: “Then
insurrection let it be!” On the 23rd of April 1849, at five o’clock in the
morning, thirty-four suspected men were arrested. The two brothers
Dostoievsky were among them. They were imprisoned in a citadel,
where they remained for eight months. On the 22nd of December,
Dostoievsky was conducted, with twenty-one others, to the public
square, where a scaffold had been erected. The other prisoners had
been released. While they were taking their places on the scaffold,
Dostoievsky communicated the idea of a book which he wished to
write to Prince Monbelli, one of his fellow-prisoners, who related the
incident later. There were, that day, 21 degrees of frost (Réaumur);
the prisoners were stripped to their shirts, and had to listen to their
sentence; the reading lasted over twenty minutes: the sentence was
that they were to be shot. Dostoievsky could not believe in the reality
of the event. He said to one of his comrades: “Is it possible that we
are going to be executed?” The friend of whom he asked the
question pointed to a cart laden with objects which, under the
tarpaulin that covered them, looked like coffins. The Registrar
walked down from the scaffold; the Priest mounted it, taking the
cross with him, and bade the condemned men make their last
confession. Only one man, of the shopkeeper class, did so: the
others contented themselves with kissing the cross. Dostoievsky
thus relates the close of the scene in a letter to his brother:
“They snapped swords above our heads, they made us put on the
long white shirts worn by persons condemned to death. We were
bound in parties of three to stakes to suffer execution. Being third in
the row, I concluded that I had only a few minutes to live. I thought of
you and your dear ones, and I managed to kiss Pleshtcheev and
Dourov, who were next to me, and to bid them farewell.”
The officer in charge had already commanded his firing party to
load; the soldiers were already preparing to take aim, when a white
handkerchief was waved in front of them. They lowered their guns,
and Dostoievsky and the other twenty-one learned that the Emperor
had cancelled the sentence of the military tribunal, and commuted
the sentence of death to one of hard labour for four years. The carts
really contained convict uniforms, which the prisoners had to put on
at once, and they started then and there for Siberia. When the
prisoners were unbound, one of them, Grigoriev, had lost his reason.
Dostoievsky, on the other hand, afterwards affirmed that this episode
was his salvation; and never, either on account of this or of his
subsequent imprisonment, did he ever feel or express anything save
gratitude. “If this catastrophe had not occurred,” said Dostoievsky,
alluding to his sentence, his reprieve and his subsequent
imprisonment, “I should have gone mad.” The moments passed by
him in the expectation of immediate death had an ineffaceable effect
upon his entire after-life. They shifted his angle of vision with regard
to the whole world. He knew something that no man could know who
had not been through such moments. He constantly alludes to the
episode in his novels, and in The Idiot he describes it thus, through
the mouth of the principal character:
“I will tell you of my meeting last year with a certain man; this man
was connected with a strange circumstance, strange because it is a
very unusual one. He was once led, together with others, on to the
scaffold, and a sentence was read out which told him that he was to
be shot for a political crime. He spent the interval between the
sentence and the reprieve, which lasted twenty minutes, or at least a
quarter of an hour, with the certain conviction that in a few minutes
he should die. I was very anxious to hear how he would recall his
impressions. He remembered everything with extraordinary
clearness, and said that he would never forget a single one of those
minutes. Twenty paces from the scaffold round which the crowd and
the soldiers stood, three stakes were driven into the ground, there
being several prisoners. The first three were led to the stakes and
bound, and the white dress of the condemned was put on them. This
consisted of a long white shirt, and over their eyes white bandages
were bound so that they should not see the guns. Then in front of
each stake a firing party was drawn up. My friend was No. 8, so he
went to the stake in the third batch. A priest carried the cross to each
of them. My friend calculated that he had five minutes more to live,
not more. He said that these five minutes seemed to him an endless
period, infinitely precious. In these five minutes it seemed to him that
he would have so many lives to live that he need not yet begin to
think about his last moment, and in his mind he made certain
arrangements. He calculated the time it would take him to say good-
bye to his comrades; for this he allotted two minutes. He assigned
two more minutes to think one last time of himself, and to look round
for the last time. He remembered distinctly that he made these three
plans, and that he divided his time in this way. He was to die, aged
twenty-seven, healthy and strong, after having said good-bye to his
companions. He remembered that he asked one of them a
somewhat irrelevant question, and was much interested in the
answer. Then, after he had said good-bye to his comrades, came the
two minutes which he had set aside for thinking of himself. He knew
beforehand of what he would think: he wished to represent to himself
as quickly and as clearly as possible how this could be: that now he
was breathing and living, and that in three minutes he would already
be something else, some one or something, but what? and where?
All this he felt he could decide in those two minutes. Not far away
was the church, and the cathedral with its gilded dome was glittering
in the sunshine. He remembered that he looked at the dome with
terrible persistence, and on its glittering rays. He could not tear his
gaze away from the rays. It seemed to him somehow that these rays
were his new nature, and that in three minutes he would be made
one with them. The uncertainty and the horror of the unknown, which
was so near, were terrible. But he said that during this time there
was nothing worse than the unceasing thought: ‘What if I do not die?
What if life were restored to me now? What an eternity! And all this
would be mine. I would in that case make every minute into a
century, lose nothing, calculate every moment, and not spend any
atom of the time fruitlessly.’ He said that this thought at last made
him so angry that he wished that they would shoot him at once.”
Dostoievsky’s sentence consisted of four years’ hard labour in the
convict settlement in Siberia, and this ordeal was doubtless the most
precious boon which Providence could have bestowed on him. When
he started for prison he said to A. Milioukov, as he wished him good-
bye: “The convicts are not wild beasts, but men probably better, and
perhaps much worthier, than myself. During these last months (the
months of his confinement in prison) I have gone through a great
deal, but I shall be able to write about what I shall see and
experience in the future.” It was during the time he spent in prison
that Dostoievsky really found himself. To share the hard labour of the
prisoners, to break up old ships, to carry loads of bricks, to sweep up
heaps of snow, strengthened him in body and calmed his nerves,
while the contact with murderers and criminals and prisoners of all
kinds, whose inmost nature he was able to reach, gave him a
priceless opportunity of developing the qualities which were
especially his own both as a writer and as a man.
With the criminals he was not in the position of a teacher, but of a
disciple; he learnt from them, and in his life with them he grew
physically stronger, and found faith, certitude and peace.
At the end of the four years (in 1853) he was set free and returned
to ordinary life, strengthened in body and better balanced in mind.
He had still three years to serve in a regiment as a private soldier,
and after this period of service three years more to spend in Siberia.
In 1859 he crossed the frontier and came back to Russia, and was
allowed to live first at Tver and then at St. Petersburg. He brought a
wife with him, the widow of one of his former colleagues in the
Petrachevsky conspiracy, whom he had loved and married in
Siberia. Until 1865 he worked at journalism.
Dostoievsky’s nature was alien to Socialism, and he loathed the
moral materialism of his Socialistic contemporaries. Petrachevsky
repelled him because he was an atheist and laughed at all belief;
and the attitude of Bielinsky towards religion, which was one of
flippant contempt, awoke in Dostoievsky a passion of hatred which
blazed up whenever he thought of the man. Dostoievsky thus
became a martyr, and was within an ace of losing his life for the
revolutionary cause; a movement in which he had never taken part,
and in which he disbelieved all his life.
Dostoievsky returned from prison just at the time of the
emancipation of the serfs, and the trials which awaited him on his
release were severer than those which he endured during his
captivity. In January 1861 he started a newspaper called the
Vremya. The venture was a success. But just as he thought that
Fortune was smiling upon him, and that freedom from want was
drawing near, the newspaper, by an extraordinary misunderstanding,
was prohibited by the censorship for an article on Polish affairs. This
blow, like his condemnation to death, was due to a casual blunder in
the official machinery. After considerable efforts, in 1864 he started
another newspaper called the Epocha. This newspaper incurred the
wrath, not of the Government censorship, but of the Liberals; and it
was now that his peculiar situation, namely, that of a man between
two fires, became evident. The Liberals abused him in every kind of
manner, went so far as to hint that the Epocha and its staff were
Government spies, and declared that Dostoievsky was a scribbler
with whom the police should deal. At this same time his brother
Michael, his best friend Grigoriev, who was on the staff of his
newspaper, and his first wife, Marie, died one after another.
Dostoievsky was now left all alone; he felt that his whole life was
broken, and that he had nothing to live for. His brother’s family was
left without resources of any kind. He tried to support them by
carrying on the publication of the Epocha, and worked day and night
at this, being the sole editor, reading all the proofs, dealing with the
authors and the censorship, revising articles, procuring money,
sitting up till six in the morning, and sleeping only five out of the
twenty-four hours. But this second paper came to grief in 1865, and
Dostoievsky was forced to own himself temporarily insolvent. He had
incurred heavy liabilities, not only to the subscribers of the
newspaper, but in addition a sum of £1400 in bills and £700 in debts
of honour. He writes to a friend at this period: “I would gladly go back
to prison if only to pay off my debts and to feel myself free once
more.”
A publishing bookseller, Stellovsky, a notorious rascal, threatened
to have him taken up for debt. He had to choose between the
debtors’ prison and flight: he chose the latter, and escaped abroad,
where he spent four years of inexpressible misery, in the last
extremity of want.
His Crime and Punishment was published in 1866, and this book
brought him fame and popularity; yet in spite of this, on an occasion
in 1869, he was obliged to pawn his overcoat and his last shirt in
order with difficulty to obtain two thalers.
During all this time his attacks of epilepsy continued. He was
constantly in trouble with his publishers, and bound and hampered
by all sorts of contracts. He writes at this epoch: “In spite of all this I
feel as if I were only just beginning to live. It is curious, isn’t it? I have
the vitality of a cat.” And on another occasion he talks of his stubborn
and inexhaustible vitality. He also says through the mouth of one of
his characters, Dimitri Karamazov, “I can bear anything, any
suffering, if I can only keep on saying to myself: ‘I live; I am in a
thousand torments, but I live! I am on the pillory, but I exist! I see the
sun, or I do not see the sun, but I know that it is there. And to know
that there is a sun is enough.’”
It was during these four years, overwhelmed by domestic calamity,
perpetually harassed by creditors, attacked by the authorities on the
one hand and the Liberals on the other, misunderstood by his
readers, poor, almost starving, and never well, that he composed his
three great masterpieces: Crime and Punishment in 1866, The Idiot
in 1868, and The Possessed in 1871-2; besides planning The
Brothers Karamazov. He had married a second time, in 1867. He
returned to Russia in July 1871: his second exile was over. His
popularity had increased, and the success of his books enabled him
to free himself from debt. He became a journalist once more, and in
1873 edited Prince Meschtcherki’s newspaper, The Grazjdanin. In
1876 he started a monthly review called The Diary of a Writer, which
sometimes appeared once a month and sometimes less often. The
appearance of the last number coincided with his death. This review
was a kind of encyclopædia, in which Dostoievsky wrote all his
social, literary and political ideas, related any stray anecdotes,
recollections and experiences which occurred to him, and
commented on the political and literary topics of the day. He never
ceased fighting his adversaries in this review; and during this time he
began his last book, The Brothers Karamazov, which was never
finished. In all his articles he preached his Slavophil creed, and on
one occasion he made the whole of Russia listen to him and applaud
him as one man. This was on June 8, 1880, when he made a speech
at Moscow in memory of Pushkin, and aroused to frenzy the
enthusiasm even of those men whose political ideals were the exact
opposite of his own. He made people forget they were “Slavophils”
or “Westernisers,” and remember only one thing—that they were
Russians.
In the latter half of 1880, when he was working on The Brothers
Karamazov, Strakhov records: “He was unusually thin and
exhausted; his body had become so frail that the first slight blow
might destroy it. His mental activity was untiring, although work had
grown very difficult for him. In the beginning of 1881 he fell ill with a
severe attack of emphysema, the result of catarrh in the lung. On
January 28 he had hæmorrhage from the throat. Feeling the
approach of death, he wished to confess and to receive the Blessed
Sacrament. He gave the New Testament used by him in prison to his
wife to read aloud. The first passage chanced to be Matthew iii. 14:
“But John held Him back and said, ‘It is I that should be baptized by
Thee, and dost Thou come to me?’ And Jesus answered and said
unto him, ‘Detain Me not; for thus it behoves us to fulfil a great
truth.’”
When his wife had read this, Dostoievsky said: “You hear: Do not
detain me. That means that I am to die.” And he closed the book. A
few hours later he did actually die, instantaneously, from the rupture
of an artery in the lungs.
This was on the 28th of January 1881; on the 30th he was buried
in St. Petersburg. His death and his funeral had about them an
almost mythical greatness, and his funeral is the most striking
comment on the nature of the feeling which the Russian public had
for him both as a writer and as a man. On the day after his death, St.
Petersburg witnessed a most extraordinary sight: the little house in
which he had lived suddenly became for the moment the moral
centre of Russia. Russia understood that with the death of this
struggling and disease-stricken novelist, she had lost something
inestimably precious, rare and irreplaceable. Spontaneously, and
without any organised preparation, the most imposing and
triumphant funeral ceremony was given to Dostoievsky’s remains;
and this funeral was not only the greatest and most inspiring which
had ever taken place in Russia, but as far as its inward significance
was concerned there can hardly ever have been a greater one in the
world. Other great writers and other great men have been buried
with more gorgeous pomp and with a braver show of outward
display, but never, when such a man has been followed to the grave
by a mourning multitude, have the trophies and tributes of grief been
so real; for striking as they were by their quantity and their nature,
they seemed but a feeble and slender evidence of the sorrow and
the love to which they bore witness. There were deputations bearing
countless wreaths, there were numerous choirs singing religious
chants, there were thousands of people following in a slow stream
along the streets of St. Petersburg, there were men and women of
every class, but mostly poor people, shabbily dressed, of the lower
middle or the lower classes. The dream of Dostoievsky, that the
whole of Russia should be united by a bond of fraternity and
brotherly love, seemed to be realised when this crowd of men,
composed of such various and widely differing elements, met
together in common grief by his grave. Dostoievsky had lived the life
of a pauper, and of a man who had to fight with all his strength in
order to win his daily bread. He had been assailed by disease and
hunted by misfortune; his whole life seemed to have rushed by
before he had had time to sit down quietly and write the great ideas
which were seething in his mind. Everything he had written seemed
to have been written by chance, haphazardly, to have been jotted
down against time, between wind and water. But in spite of this, in
his work, however incomplete, however fragmentary and full of faults
it may have been, there was a voice speaking, a particular message
being delivered, which was different from that of other writers, and at
times more precious. While it was there, the public took it for
granted, like the sun; and it was only when Dostoievsky died that the
hugeness of the gap made by his death, caused them to feel how
great was the place he had occupied both in their hearts and in their
minds. It was only when he died that they recognised how great a
man he was, and how warmly they admired and loved him.
Everybody felt this from the highest to the lowest. Tolstoy, in writing
of Dostoievsky’s death, says: “I never saw the man, and never had
any direct relations with him, yet suddenly when he died I
understood that he was the nearest and dearest and most necessary
of men to me. Everything that he did was of the kind that the more
he did of it the better I felt it was for men. And all at once I read that
he is dead, and a prop has fallen from me.” This is what the whole of
Russia felt, that a support had fallen from them; and this is what they
expressed when they gave to Dostoievsky a funeral such as no king
nor Captain has ever had, a funeral whose very shabbiness was
greater than any splendour, and whose trophies and emblems were
the grief of a nation and the tears of thousands of hearts united
together in the admiration and love of a man whom each one of them
regarded as his brother.
III
Dostoievsky’s Character
Such, briefly, are the main facts of Dostoievsky’s crowded life.
Unlike Tolstoy, who has himself told us in every conceivable way
everything down to the most intimate detail which is to be known
about himself, Dostoievsky told us little of himself, and all that we
know about him is gathered from other people or from his letters;
and even now we know comparatively little about his life. He disliked
talking about himself; he could not bear to be pitied. He was modest,
and shielded his feelings with a lofty shame. Strakhov writes about
him thus:
“In Dostoievsky you could never detect the slightest bitterness or
hardness resulting from the sufferings he had undergone, and there
was never in him a hint of posing as a martyr. He behaved as if there
had been nothing extraordinary in his past. He never represented
himself as disillusioned, or as not having an equable mind; but, on
the contrary, he appeared cheerful and alert, when his health
allowed him to do so. I remember that a lady coming for the first time
to Michael Dostoievsky’s (his brother’s) evenings at the newspaper
office, looked long at Dostoievsky, and finally said: ‘As I look at you it
seems to me that I see in your face the sufferings which you have
endured.’ These words visibly annoyed Dostoievsky. ‘What
sufferings?’ he said, and began to joke on indifferent matters.”
Long after his imprisonment and exile, when some friends of his
tried to prove to him that his exile had been a brutal act of injustice,
he said: “The Socialists are the result of the followers of
Petrachevsky. Petrachevsky’s disciples sowed many seeds.” And
when he was asked whether such men deserved to be exiled, he
answered: “Our exile was just; the people would have condemned
us.”
The main characteristics of his nature were generosity, catholicity,
vehement passion, and a “sweet reasonableness.” Once when he
was living with Riesenkampf, a German doctor, he was found living
on bread and milk; and even for that he was in debt at a little milk
shop. This same doctor says that Dostoievsky was “one of those
men to live with whom is good for every one, but who are
themselves in perpetual want.” He was mercilessly robbed, but he
would never blame any one who took advantage of his kindness and
his trustfulness. One of his biographers tells us that his life with
Riesenkampf proved expensive to him, because no poor man who
came to see the doctor went away without having received
something from Dostoievsky. One cannot read a page of his books
without being aware of the “sweet reasonableness” of his nature.
This pervaded his writings with fragrance like some precious balm,
and is made manifest to us in the touching simplicity of some of his
characters, such as the Idiot and Alexis Karamazov, to read of whom
is like being with some warm and comforting influence, something
sweet and sensible and infinitely human. His catholicity consists in
an almost boundless power of appreciation, an appreciation of
things, persons and books widely removed from himself by accidents
of time, space, class, nationality and character. Dostoievsky is
equally able to appreciate the very essence of a performance got up
by convicts in his prison, and the innermost beauty of the plays of
Racine. This last point is singular and remarkable. He was universal
and cosmopolitan in his admiration of the literature of foreign
countries; and he was cosmopolitan, not because he wished to cut
himself away from Russian traditions and to become European and
Westernised, but because he was profoundly Russian, and had the
peculiarly Russian plastic and receptive power of understanding and
assimilating things widely different from himself.
When he was a young man, Shakespeare and Schiller were well
known, and it was the fashion to admire them. It was equally the
fashion to despise the French writers of the seventeenth century. But
Dostoievsky was just as enthusiastic in his admiration of Racine and
Corneille and all the great classics of the seventeenth century. Thus
he writes: “But Phèdre, brother! You will be the Lord knows what if
you say this is not the highest and purest nature and poetry; the
outline of it is Shakespearian, but the statue is in plaster, not in
marble.” And again of Corneille: “Have you read The Cid? Read it,
you wretch, read it, and go down in the dust before Corneille!”
Dostoievsky was constantly “going down in the dust” before the
great masterpieces, not only of his own, but of other countries, which
bears out the saying that “La valeur morale de l’homme est en
proportion de sa faculté d’admirer.”
Dostoievsky never theorised as to how alms should be given, or
as to how charity should be organised. He gave what he had, simply
and naturally, to those who he saw had need of it; and he had a right
to this knowledge, for he himself had received alms in prison. Neither
did he ever theorise as to whether a man should leave the work
which he was fitted by Providence to do (such as writing books), in
order to plough fields and to cut down trees. He had practised hard
labour, not as a theoretic amateur, but as a constrained professional.
He had carried heavy loads of bricks and broken up ships and swept
up heaps of snow, not out of philosophy or theory, but because he
had been obliged to do so; because if he had not done so he would
have been severely punished. All that Tolstoy dreamed of and aimed
at, which was serious in theory but not serious in practice, that is to
say, giving up his property, becoming one with the people, ploughing
the fields, was a reality to Dostoievsky when he was in prison. He
knew that hard labour is only real when it is a necessity, when you
cannot leave off doing it when you want to; he had experienced this
kind of hard labour for four years, and during his whole life he had to
work for his daily bread. The result of this is that he made no
theories about what work a man should do, but simply did as well as
he could the work he had to do. In the words of a ballade written by
Mr. Chesterton, he might have said:
“We eat the cheese,—you scraped about the rind,
You lopped the tree—we eat the fruit instead.
You were benevolent, but we were kind,
You know the laws of food, but we were fed.”
And this is the great difference between Dostoievsky and Tolstoy.
Tolstoy was benevolent, but Dostoievsky was kind. Tolstoy theorised
on the distribution of food, but Dostoievsky was fed and received
alms like a beggar. Dostoievsky, so far from despising the calling of
an author, or thinking that it was an occupation “thin sown with aught
of profit or delight” for the human race, loved literature passionately.
He was proud of his profession: he was a great man of letters as well
as a great author. “I have never sold,” he wrote, “one of my books
without getting the price down beforehand. I am a literary proletarian.
If anybody wants my work he must ensure me by prepayment.”
There is something which resembles Dr. Johnson in the way he
talks of his profession and his attitude towards it. But there is,
nevertheless, in the phrase just quoted, something bitterly ironical
when one reflects that he was a poor man all his life and incessantly
harassed by creditors, and that he derived almost nothing from the
great popularity and sale of his books.
“Dostoievsky,” writes Strakov, “loved literature; he took her as she
was, with all her conditions; he never stood apart from literature, and
he never looked down upon her. This absence of the least hint of
literary snobbishness is in him a beautiful and touching
characteristic. Russian literature was the one lodestar of
Dostoievsky’s life, and he cherished for it a passionate love and
devotion. He knew very well that when he entered the lists he would
have to go into the public market-place, and he was never ashamed
of his trade nor of his fellow-workers. On the contrary, he was proud
of his profession, and considered it a great and sacred one.”
He speaks of himself as a literary hack: he writes at so much a
line, three and a half printed pages of a newspaper in two days and
two nights. “Often,” he says, “it happened in my literary career that
the beginning of the chapter of a novel or story was already set up,
and the end was still in my mind and had to be written by the next
day.” Again: “Work from want and for money has crushed and
devoured me. Will my poverty ever cease? Ah, if I had money, then I
should be free!”
I have said that one of the main elements of Dostoievsky’s
character was vehement passion. There was more than a vehement
element of passion in Dostoievsky; he was not only passionate in his
loves and passionate in his hates, but his passion was unbridled. In
this he resembles the people of the Renaissance. There were
perilous depths in his personality; black pools of passion; a seething
whirlpool that sent up every now and then great eddies of boiling
surge; yet this passion has nothing about it which is undefinably evil;
it never smells of the pit. The reason of this is that although
Dostoievsky’s soul descended into hell, it was purged by the flames,
and no poisonous fumes ever came from it. There was something of
St. Francis in him, and something of Velasquez. Dostoievsky was a
violent hater. I have already told how he hated Bielinsky, the
Socialists and the materialists whom he attacked all his life, but
against Tourgeniev he nourished a blind and causeless hatred. This
manifests itself as soon as he leaves prison, in the following
outburst: “I know very well,” he writes, “that I write worse than
Tourgeniev, but not so very much worse, and after all I hope one day
to write quite as well as he does. Why, with my crying wants, do I
receive only 100 roubles a sheet, and Tourgeniev, who possesses
two thousand serfs, receives 400 roubles? Owing to my poverty I am
obliged to hurry, to write for money, and consequently to spoil my
work.” In a postscript he says that he sends Katkov, the great
Moscow editor, fifteen sheets at 100 roubles a sheet, that is, 1500
roubles in all. “I have had 500 roubles from him, and besides, when I
had sent three-quarters of the novel, I asked him for 200 to help me
along, or 700 altogether. I shall reach Tver without a farthing. But, on
the other hand, I shall shortly receive from Katkov seven or eight
hundred roubles.”
It must not be forgotten that the whole nature of Dostoievsky, both
as man and artist, was profoundly modified by the disease from
which he suffered all his life, his epilepsy. He had therefore two
handicaps against him: disease and poverty. But it is his epilepsy
which was probably the cause of his dislikes, his hatreds and his
outbreaks of violent passion. The attacks of epilepsy came upon him
about once a month, and sometimes, though not often, they were
more frequent. He once had two in a week. His friend Strakov
describes one of them thus: “I once saw one of his ordinary attacks:
it was, I fancy, in 1863, just before Easter. Late in the evening, about
eleven o’clock, he came to see me, and we had a very animated
conversation. I cannot remember the subject, but I know that it was
important and abstruse. He became excited, and walked about the
room while I sat at the table. He said something fine and jubilant. I
confirmed his opinion by some remark, and he turned to me a face
which positively glowed with the most transcendent inspiration. He
paused for a moment, as if searching for words, and had already
opened his lips to speak. I looked at him all expectant for fresh
revelation. Suddenly from his open mouth issued a strange,
prolonged, and inarticulate moan. He sank senseless on the floor in
the middle of the room.”
The ancients called this “the sacred sickness.” Just before the
attacks, Dostoievsky felt a kind of rapture, something like what
people say they feel when they hear very great music, a perfect
harmony between himself and the world, a sensation as if he had
reached the edge of a planet, and were falling off it into infinite
space. And this feeling was such that for some seconds of the
rapture, he said, you might give ten years of your life, or even the
whole of it. But after the attack his condition was dreadful, and he
could hardly sustain the state of low-spirited dreariness and
sensitiveness into which he was plunged. He felt like a criminal, and
fancied there hung over him an invisible guilt, a great transgression.
He compares both sensations, suddenly combined and blended in a
flash, to the famous falling pitcher of Mahomet, which had not time to
empty itself while the Prophet on Allah’s steed was girdling heaven
and hell. It is no doubt the presence of this disease and the
frequency of the attacks, which were responsible for the want of
balance in his nature and in his artistic conceptions, just as his
grinding poverty and the merciless conditions of his existence are
responsible for the want of finish in his style. But Dostoievsky had
the qualities of his defects, and it is perhaps owing to his very illness,
and to its extraordinary nature, that he was able so deeply to
penetrate into the human soul. It is as if the veil of flesh and blood
dividing the soul from that which is behind all things, was finer and
more transparent in Dostoievsky than in other men: by his very
illness he may have been able to discern what is invisible to others.
It is certainly owing to the combined poverty and disease which
made up his life, that he had such an unexampled insight into the
lives and hearts of the humble, the rejected, the despised, the
afflicted, and the oppressed. He sounded the utmost depths of
human misery, he lived face to face with the lowest representatives
of human misfortune and disgrace, and he was neither dispirited nor
dismayed. He came to the conclusion that it was all for the best, and
like Job in dust and ashes consented to the eternal scheme. And
though all his life he was one of the conquered, he never ceased
fighting, and never for one moment believed that life was not worth
living. On the contrary, he blessed life and made others bless it.
His life was “a long disease,” rendered harder to bear and more
difficult by exceptionally cruel circumstances. In spite of this,
Dostoievsky was a happy man: he was happy and he was cheerful;
and he was happy not because he was a saint, but because, in spite
of all his faults, he radiated goodness; because his immense heart
overflowed in kindness, and having suffered much himself, he
understood the sufferings of others; thus although his books are
terrible, and deal with the darkest clouds which can overshadow the
human spirit, the descent into hell of the human soul, yet the main
impression left by them is not one of gloom but one of comfort.
Dostoievsky is, above all things, a healer and a comforter, and this is
because the whole of his teaching, his morality, his art, his character,
are based on the simple foundation of what the Russians call
“dolgoterpjenie,” that is, forbearance, and “smirenie,” that is to say,
resignation. In the whole history of the world’s literature there is no
literary man’s life which was so arduous and so hard; but
Dostoievsky never complained, nor, we can be sure, would he have
wished his life to have been otherwise. His life was a martyrdom, but
he enjoyed it. Although no one more nearly than he bears witness to
Heine’s saying that “where a great spirit is, there is Golgotha,” yet we
can say without hesitation that Dostoievsky was a happy man, and
he was happy because he never thought about himself, and
because, consciously or unconsciously, he relieved and comforted
the sufferings of others. And his books continued to do so long after
he ceased to live.
All this can be summed up in one word: the value of Dostoievsky’s
life. And the whole reason that his books, although they deal with the
tragedies of mankind, bring comfort to the reader instead of gloom,
hope instead of despair, is, firstly, that Dostoievsky was an altruist,
and that he fulfilled the most difficult precept of Christianity—to love
others better than oneself; and, secondly, that in leading us down in
the lowest depths of tragedy, he shows us that where man ends,
God takes up the tale.
IV
Poor Folk and the Letters from a Dead House
In his first book, Poor Folk, which was published in 1846, we have
the germ of all Dostoievsky’s talent and genius. It is true that he
accomplished far greater things, but never anything more
characteristic. It is the story of a poor official, a minor clerk in a
Government office, already aged and worn with cares, who battles
against material want. In his sombre and monotonous life there is a

Full Download PDF of Test Bank For Business Communication: Developing Leaders For A Networked World, 3rd Edition, Peter Cardon All Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Full Download PDF of Test Bank For Business Communication: Developing Leaders For A Networked World, 3rd Edition, Peter Cardon All Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Test Bank for Business

Communication: Developing Leaders

Strategic Management Communication for Leaders 3rd

Test Bank for eBusiness A Canadian Perspective for a

Test Bank for Mass Communication: Living in a Media

Business and Professional Communication 3rd Edition

Test Bank for iGenetics: A Molecular Approach, 3rd

Business Communication Polishing Your Professional

International Business Opportunities and Challenges in

Test Bank For Close Encounters: Communication in

6. Effective communicators gain trust by connecting with others.

11. Character-based traits are instrumental in establishing trust in the workplace.

Multiple Choice Questions

A. a period in which the government no longer allows monopolies or trusts to form

B. a period characterized by the formation of trusts to manage the wealth of businesses

A. the disclosure of widespread cheating in school

B. a series of business scandals and economic crises

C. the decrease in human interactions in business

D. the practice of outsourcing jobs

E. a switch to more transparency by businesses

23. In the post-trust era

C. transparency is no longer important in the workplace.

D. stakeholders do not require businesses to be accountable to them.

E. character-based traits play a very small role in establishing credibility.

A. It has grown less important in the post-trust era.

B. It is often evaluated by one's track record of achievements.

C. It is innate and cannot be gained through experience.

D. It increases when individuals focus on connecting with others.

E. It depends mainly on the ability to build a sense of community.

A. taking on fewer projects at one time

B. asking coworkers what their needs are

C. working independently and not consulting others

D. hiding his mistakes from his team members

E. setting specific work goals and achieving them

A. Ted, who is completely trustworthy with confidential information

C. Cora, who develops effective action plans to achieve team goals

D. Juana, who considers company interests above those of customers

A. holding regular meetings to ask about employee concerns

B. setting clear and measurable goals for each employee

C. taking a course in making teams function more efficiently

D. assigning people to projects without their input

E. encouraging people to use the pronouns "I" and "me" in communication

A. discussing only positives rather than focusing on negatives

B. being open and transparent about the company's confidential matters

C. using the FAIR test to evaluate what other people say

E. keeping personal motivations hidden in the workplace

A. It helps people understand serious business problems.

B. It encourages people to work as individuals instead of as teams.

C. It promotes closed communication structures.

D. It encourages people to demonstrate accountability.

E. It makes individuals less transparent.

B. Quan relies on corporate values, and Roland relies on personal values.

C. Quan is an effective communicator, and Roland is not.

D. Quan is a giver, and Roland is a taker.

E. Quan trusts his colleagues, and Roland does not.

A. The company consistently pays its shareholders high dividends.

B. The company offers its employees good benefits packages.

C. The company develops products that meet customer needs.

D. The company helps its employees develop professional skills.

E. The company keeps profits high by eliminating pollution controls.

D. put more emphasis on immediate results than on developing skills

E. encourage team members to compete to improve productivity

E. Trung, who communicates openly whenever he has doubts or questions