Managers, Leadership and Decision making Flashcards
What is Capacity Utilisation?
Maximising the amount of people that can use something.
What is the formula for Capacity Utilisation?
Current capacity/Maximum capacity x100
What is the formula for Average revenue per customer?
Revenue/Amount of customers
What is Leadership?
Deciding on a direction for a company in relation to its objectives and inspiring staff to achieve those objectives.
What is Management?
Getting things done by organising other people to do it.
What are the factors that affect leadership styles?
-The task
-Tradition of the organisation -culture
-Type of labour force - skilled or unskilled
-The group size
-The leaders personality
-The group’s personality
-Time available to complete a task
-Company structure
-Particular situation
What is the Autocratic leadership style?
-Leader makes decision without reference to anyone else.
-High degree of dependency on leader.
-Can create de-motivation and alienation of staff.
What is the Democratic leadership style?
-Encourages decision making from different perspectives.
-Helps motivation.
-Improves sharing of ideas.
What is the Laissez-Faire leadership style?
-‘Let it be’ - the responsibilities are shared by all.
-Can be motivational.
-Relies on good teamwork.
-Could be time consuming.
What is the Paternalistic leadership style?
-Employees are consulted but the leader makes all the decisions.
-Leader acts as a father figure.
-Close supervision but attempts are made to gain respect of staff.
-Workers recognise that the manager is trying to support their needs.
What is the formula for Market Share?
Revenue/Total revenue in market x100
What is an Opportunity Cost?
The cost of one decision in terms of the next best alternative foregone.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Scientific decision making?
+Supported by quantifiable evidence.
+Encourages logical thought process.
-May require expensive data.
-Time consuming.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Intuition decision making?
+Allows for quick decision making.
+Encourages innovation and creativity.
-Difficult to justify.
-Reliant on experience and expertise.
What are the steps in Scientific decision making?
- Set objectives
- Gather data
- Analyse data
- Make decision
- Implement decision
- Review decision
Then back to the start
What are the advantages of Decision Trees?
+They set out the problem clearly and encourage a logical approach to decision making.
+They encourage careful consideration of all options.
+They encourage a quantitative approach that might improve the results and also means that the process can be computerised.
+They take risk into account and encourage a quantitative assessment of such risk.
+They are useful when similar scenarios have occurred before.
+They are useful when making tactical rather than strategic decisions.
What are the disadvantages of Decision Trees?
-They ignore the constantly changing nature of the business environment.
-It is difficult to get accurate and realistic data in order to estimate probabilities.
-It is quite easy for management bias to influence the estimates of probabilities and financial returns, and to manipulate data.
-They are less useful for completely new decisions.
-Few decisions can be made on a purely objective basis; they must include a subjective element based on experience and intuition.
-They make lead to managers taking less account of important qualitative issues.
What is an example of Compulsorily Purchased?
The government has imposed that people in the way of the HS2 route need to sell their homes.
What is the Tannenbaum Schmidt Continuum
-It is the leadership model based on a spectrum between two extremes of manager centred and subordinate (works for manager) centred approaches.
-It recognises that in reality leaders are unlikley to be at either extreme but some where along the spectrum.
-Not so much about leadership styles but how decisions are made.
Where do the different leadership styles lie on The Tannenbaum Schmidt Continuum?
Autocratic - 1/2
Paternalistic - 3/4
Democratic - 5/6
Laissez Faire - 7
What words are associated with each leadership style on The Tannenbaum Schmidt Continuum?
Autocratic - Tells
Paternalistic - Sells
Democratic - Consults
Laissez Faire - Participates
What are each of the numbers on the scale of The Tannenbaum Schmidt Continuum?
1 - Manager takes and announces decisions.
2 - Manager sells decisions.
3 - Manager presents decision with ideas and invites questions.
4 - Manager suggests provisional decisions and invites discussion.
5 - Manager presents the situation, gets feedback and then decides.
6 - Manager explains, defines parameters and asks team to decide.
7- Manager allows team to develop options and decide on action based within managers limits.
How do the forces in the manager (what drives them to manage that way) effect the approach that the manager will adopt?
-Personality and Characteristics.
-Experience.
-Attitude towards and trust in subordinates.
How do the forces in the subordinates effect the approach that the manager will adopt?
-Personality and Characteristics.
-Experience.
-Attitude towards and trust in the leader.
