Learning Materials:

Nickels, W., McHugh, J., & McHugh, S. (2022). Understanding business (13th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. ISBN: 9781260894851. Read chapters 10, 11, & 12.

Additional Resources:

N/A

Assignment:

1. Sometimes understanding differences in employees’ personalities helps managers understand how to motivate them. Find out about your personality by going to the Human Metrics website and taking the Jung Typology Test (based on Carl Jung’s and Isabel Myers-Briggs approaches to typology). (Disclaimer: The test, like all other personality tests, is only a rough and preliminary indicator of personality.)

a. After you identify your personality type, read the corresponding personality portrait. How well or how poorly does the identified personality type fit?

b. Sometimes a personality test does not accurately identify your personality, but it may give you a place to start looking for a portrait that fits. After you have read the portraits on the website, ask a good friend or relative which one best describes you.

c. The personality type you identified in the instrument above clearly has strengths associated with it that will be useful to you as a business manager and leader. Conversely, discuss some of the ways in which you might “overdo” some of these strengths in a way that might make you less effective. (For example, a very nurturing person might let others take advantage of them or a very directive person might become overly dictatorial).

2. Visit the AFL-CIO website and find information about why workers join unions and what the benefits have been.

a. What percentage of workers in your state are members of a union? If it is higher or lower than the national average, explain why unions do or do not have strength in your state.

b. Explain how union membership has affected minorities, women, older workers, and part-timeworkers.

c. Compare and contrast the positions on labor issues found on the AFL-CIO website with the same key issues on websites such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

3. Imagine you must fire an employee. What effect might the dismissal have on remaining employees? Explain how you would tell the employee and your other subordinates.

4. If a company provides employer-paid childcare services to workers with children, should those who don’t have children or don’t need childcare services be paid extra? Explain your position and provide supporting evidence.