EngManagement Flashcards
The act of choosing one (the best) alternative
from among a set of alternatives.
Decision Making
–A decision that is relatively structured
or recurs with some frequency (or both).
–Example: Starting your car in the morning
Programmed Decision
–A decision that is relatively unstructured
and occurs much less often than a
programmed decision.
–Example: Choosing a vacation destination.
Nonprogrammed Decision
–The decision maker knows with reasonable certainty
what the alternatives are and what conditions are
associated with each alternative.
Decision Making Under Certainty
–The availability of each alternative and its potential
payoffs and costs are all associated with risks.
Decision Making Under Risk
–The decision maker does not know all the alternatives,
the risks associated with each, or the consequences
of each alternative.
Decision Making Under Uncertainty
selecting the alternative that offers the
best combination (balance) of feasibility, satisfactoriness,
and affordability suited to the situation.
Optimization
–A positive or negative political force in decision
making which consists of an informal alliance of
individuals or groups formed to achieve a goal.
Coalition
–The concept that decision makers are limited by their
values and unconscious reflexes, skills, and habits
Bounded Rationality
–The tendency to search for alternatives only until one
is found that meets some minimum standard of
sufficiency to resolve the problem.
* Personal motives and biases
* Expediency (degree of impact alternative choice will have)
* Cost of continuing to search for alternatives
Satisficing
–An innate belief about something
without conscious consideration.
Intuition
A decision maker’s staying with
a decision even when it appears
to be wrong.
Escalation of Commitment
–The extent to which a decision maker is
willing to gamble when making a decision.
Risk Propensity
–Individual ethics (personal beliefs about right and
wrong behavior) combine with the organization’s
ethics to create _________ ______.
Managerial Ethics
Consists of an existing group or newly formed team
interacting and then making a decision.
Interacting groups or teams
Developing a consensus of expert opinion from a panel of
experts who individually contribute through a moderator.
Delphi groups
Generating ideas through the individual contributions of alternatives that are winnowed down to reach a decision.
Nominal groups
–The overall set of structural elements that can
be used to configure the total organization.
–A means to implement strategies and plans to
achieve organizational goals.
Organization Structure and Design
The degree to which the overall task of the
organization is broken down and divided into
smaller component parts.
Job Specialization (Division of Labor)
The perceived importance of the task by the worker
Task Significance
The number of tasks a person does in a job
Skill Variety
The extent to which the worker does a complete or
identifiable portion of the total job
Task Identity
The desire for people to grow, develop, and expand their capabilities that is their response to the core dimensions
Growth Need Strength
The degree of control the worker has over how the work is performed
Autonomy
The extent to which the worker knows how well the job
is being performed
Feedback
The process of grouping jobs according
to some logical arrangement
Departmentalization
– Lead to higher levels of
employee morale and
productivity.
– Create more administrative
responsibility for the
relatively few managers.
– Create more supervisory
responsibility for managers
due to wider spans of
control.
Flat Organizations
–Are more expensive
because of the number of
managers involved.
– Foster more communication
problems because of the
number of people through
whom information must
pass.
Tall Organizations
Power that has been legitimized by the organization.
Authority
The process by which managers assign a portion of
their total workload to others.
Delegation
The process of linking the activities of the various
departments of the organization
Coordination
A logical, rational, and efficient organization design
based on a legitimate and formal system of authority.
- Bureaucratic Model (Max Weber)
–Defined as the total number of full-time or full-time
equivalent employees.
Organizational Size
The progression of organizations as they grow and
mature—birth, youth, midlife, and maturity.
Organizational Life Cycle
Organizational members and units are grouped into
functional departments.
Functional or U-form (Unitary) Design
–Organization consists of a set of unrelated
businesses with a general manager for each business.
–Holding-company design is similar to product
departmentalization.
–Coordination is based on the allocation of resources
across companies in the portfolio.
–Design has produced only average to weak financial
performance; has been abandoned for other
approaches
Conglomerate or H-form (Holding) Design
–Is based on multiple businesses in related areas
operating within a larger organizational framework;
following a strategy of related diversification.
–Activities are decentralized down to the divisional
level; others are centralized at the corporate level.
–The largest advantages of the M-form design are the
opportunities for coordination and sharing of
resources.
Divisional or M-form (Multidivisional) Design
–An organizational arrangement based on two
overlapping bases of departmentalization.
Matrix Design
–Is based on two or more organization design
forms such as a mixture of related divisions
and a single unrelated division.
–Most organizations use a modified form of
organization design that permits them to have
the flexibility to make strategic adjustments.
Hybrid Design
–Any substantive modification to some part of the
organization (e.g., work schedules, machinery,
employees).
Organization Change
in the organization’s general and task environments force the organization to alter the way in which it competes.
External forces
inside the organization cause it to change its structure and strategy; some internal forces are responses to external pressures.
Internal forces
Change that is designed and implemented in an orderly
and timely fashion in anticipation of future events.
Planned Change
Change that is a piecemeal response to events and circumstances as they develop.
Reactive Change
The radical redesign of all aspects of a business to
achieve major improvements in cost, service, or time
Business Process Change (Reengineering)
A planned, organization-wide effort managed from the
top, intended to increase organizational effectiveness
and health through interventions in the organization’s
processes, using behavioral science knowledge.
Organization Development
The managed effort of an organization to develop new
products or services or new uses for existing products
or services.
Innovation
–A new product, service, or technology developed by
an organization that replaces an existing one.
Radical Innovation
–A new product, service, or technology that modifies an
existing one
Incremental Innovation
A change in the appearance or performance of a
product or service, or the physical processes through
which a product or service is manufactured.
Technical Innovation
A change in the management process by which
products and services are conceived, built, and
delivered to customers.
Managerial Innovation
A change in the way a product or service is
manufactured, created, or distributed.
Process Innovation
A change in the physical characteristics or
performance of an existing product or service or the
creation of a new product or service.
Product Innovation
