Practice question · Multiple choice
The rival firm’s team is a reference group, not an out-group. Why is that distinction worth keeping?
Hints
- Ask what each concept is used to explain.
- Can you benchmark against a group you also define yourself against?
Show the answer
D. Because a reference group is a standard, not a membership
Why
Belonging and benchmarking are separate axes. A rival can be both, and collapsing the terms loses the mechanism, comparison drives behaviour even without hostility.
Practise Groups and Organizations
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Business I is free to start.
More questions on Groups and Organizations
- A dyad is generally more stable than a triad, because two people have fewer relationships to manage.
- Weberian feature or bureaucratic pathology? Sort each observation.
- Match each concept to its definition.
- An executive committee of long-time colleagues approves a doomed acquisition unanimously; afterwards, several…
- A cohesive board unanimously approves a bad acquisition, and afterwards several members admit they had…
- Which are characteristics of Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy?
- Order the stages by which a cohesive committee slides into groupthink.
- Complete Cooley’s distinction.