1. A friend suggests that organizational behaviour courses are useful only to people in management careers. Discuss the accuracy of your friend's statement.

2. Problem solving, teamwork, communication, and leadership are four of the top skills identified by employers as most important when hiring (see Exhibit 1.1). How have these skills been important (or unimportant) for you in jobs that you have held or as a student? Identify one other skill that you would place at or near the top of the list for working effectively in organizations.

3. A young college or university student from Canada is interested in doing international business across China, India, Brazil, and Russia. Discuss how the knowledge of OB can be useful to the student.

4. A common refrain among executives is "People are our most important asset." Relate this statement to how organizational behaviour theories and practices improve organizational effectiveness through human capital.

5. Corporate social responsibility is one of the hottest issues in corporate boardrooms these days, partly because it is becoming increasingly important to employees and other stakeholders. In your opinion, why have stakeholders given CSR more attention recently? Does abiding by CSR standards potentially cause companies to have conflicting objectives with some stakeholders in some situations?

6. What does evidence-based management mean? Describe situations you have heard about in which companies have practised evidence-based management, as well as situations in which companies have relied on fads that lacked sufficient evidence of their worth.

7. Work-life integration is one of the most important issues that job applicants consider when choosing where to work. Think about the variety of specific benefits, working conditions, or resources that employers offer to support work-life integration. Which of these is most valuable to you personally at this stage in your life and career? Why? In what ways have you personally been able to minimize conflict between your work (including school) and nonwork roles?

8. Emsisoft and Automattic are completely remote (distributed) companies. Everyone who works for these firms performs their jobs from home or cafs. In your opinion, will distributed companies become more common in the future? Why or why not? Would you prefer working in a remote companyone that has no physical location, just (maybe) an occasional gathering of staff at a conference setting or resort? Or do you prefer working face-to-face with co-workers most days at a company work site? Why?

9. A federal government department has high levels of absenteeism among the office staff. The head of office administration argues that employees are misusing the company's sick leave benefits. However, some of the mostly female staff members have explained that family responsibilities interfere with work. Using the MARS model, as well as your knowledge of absenteeism behaviour, discuss some of the possible reasons for absenteeism here and how it might be reduced.

10. Why might employees display presenteeism? What can organizations do to reduce presenteeism and how ethical are these strategies?