test Flashcards
administrative management
A classical management
approach that attempted to identify major principles and
functions that managers could use to achieve superior
organizational performance, p 33.
bureaucracy
A classical management approach
emphasizing a structured, formal network of relationships
among specialized positions in the organization, p 34.
contingencies
Factors that determine the
appropriateness of managerial actions,
contingency perspective
An approach to the study of
management proposing that the managerial strategies,
structures, and processes that result in high performance
depend on the characteristics, or important contingencies,
of the situation in which they are applied, p 36.
economies of scale
Reductions in the average cost
of a unit of production as the total volume produced
increases, p 30
Hawthorne Effect
People’s reactions to being observed
or studied resulting in superficial rather than meaningful
changes in behavior, p 34.
human relations
A classical management approach
that attempted to understand and explain how human
psychological and social processes interact with
the formal aspects of the work situation to influence
performance, p 33.
organizational behavior
A contemporary management
approach that studies and identifies management activities
that promote employee effectiveness by examining the
complex and dynamic nature of individual, group, and
organizational processes, p 35.
quantitative management
A contemporary management
approach that emphasizes the application of quantitative
analysis to managerial decisions and problems, p 35.
scientific management
A classical management approach
that applied scientific methods to analyze and determine
the one best way to complete production tasks, p 31.
systematic management
A classical management
approach that attempted to build into operations the specific
procedures and processes that would ensure coordination
of effort to achieve established goals and plans, p 31.
systems theory
A theory stating that an organization is a
managed system that changes inputs into outputs, p 35.
conceptual and decision skills
involve the ability to identify and resolve problems for the
benefit of the organization and everyone concerned. Managers use these skills when they
consider the overall objectives and strategy of the firm, the interactions among different
parts of the organization, and the role of the business in its external environment. As you
acquire greater responsibility, you must exercise your conceptual and decision skills with
increasing frequency
controlling
monitors performance and implements necessary changes. By controlling,
managers make sure the organization’s resources are being used as planned and that the
organization is meeting its goals such as quality and safety.
Social capital
the goodwill stemming from your social relationships, and you can
mobilize it on your behalf. It aids career success, compensation, employment, team effectiveness,
successful entrepreneurship, and relationships with suppliers and other outsiders
value
a complex
concept.51 Fundamentally, it describes the monetary amount associated with how well a
job, task, good, or service meets users’ needs. Those users might be business owners, customers,
employees, society, and even nations. The better you meet those needs (in terms
of quality, speed, efficiency, and so on), the more value you deliver. That value is strategic
when it contributes to meeting the organization’s goals.
benchmarking
identifying the best-in-class performance by a company
in a given area, say, product development or customer service, and then comparing your
processes to theirs.
buffering
Buffering
creates supplies of excess resources to meet unpredictable needs. On the input side, organizations
establish relationships with employment agencies to hire part-time and temporary
help during rush periods when labor demand is difficult to predict. In the U.S. labor force,
these workers, known as contingent workers, include 2.5 million on-call workers, 1.2 million
temporary help agency workers, and more than 800,000 workers provided by contract
firms, suggesting widespread use of this approach to buffering labor input uncertainties.
competitive intelligence
the information
necessary to decide how best to manage in the competitive environment they have
identified
Environmental scanning
means both searching
out information that is unavailable to most people and sorting through that information
to interpret what is important and what is not. Managers can ask questions such as these:
Who are our current competitors?
Are there few or many entry barriers to our industry?
What substitutes exist for our product or service?
Is the company too dependent on powerful suppliers?
Is the company too dependent on powerful customers?34
cooperative strategies
Strategies used by two or
more organizations working
together to manage the
external environment.
divestiture
occurs when a company sells one or more businesses
prospectors
are more likely than others to engage in strategic
maneuvering.4
defenders
Companies that stay within a
stable product domain as a
strategic maneuver
independent strategies
Strategies that an organization acting on its own uses to change some aspect of its current environment.
strategic
maneuvering
By making a conscious effort to change the boundaries of its competitive
environment, a firm can maneuver around potential threats and capitalize on arising
opportunities.38 Managers can use several strategic maneuvers, including domain selection,
diversification, merger and acquisition, and divestiture
Domain selection
entrance by a company into another suitable market or industry.
For example, the market may have limited competition or regulation, ample suppliers
and customers, or high growth.
Diversification
occurs when a firm invests in different types of businesses or products
or when it expands geographically to reduce its dependence on a single market or technology.
Apple successfully diversified its product line when it added the iPod, iTouch, iPad,
and iPhone to its offerings of personal computers.
empowerment
The process of sharing power with employees, thereby enhancing their confidence in their ability to perform their jobs and their belief that they are influential contributors to the organization.
final consumer
when you buy
a pair of Nike running shoes or lunch at Panera Bread.
Intermediate consumers
buy
raw materials or wholesale products and then sell to final consumers, as when Lenovo,
Dell, and Hewlett Packard buy processors from Intel to use in their laptop computers.
smoothing
Leveling normal fluctuations
at the boundaries of the
environment. For example, during winter months in the
north, when automobile sales drop off, it is not uncommon for dealers to cut the price of
their in-stock vehicles to increase demand.
flexible processes
Methods for adapting the
technical core to changes in
the environment.
For example, firms increasingly try to customize
their goods and services to meet the varied and changing demands of customers. Even
in manufacturing, where it is difficult to change basic core processes, firms are adopting
techniques of mass customization that help them create flexible factories. Instead of massproducing
large quantities of a “one-size-fits-all” product, organizations can use mass customization
to produce individually customized products at an equally low cost.
open systems
systems—that is, they are
affected by and in turn affect their external environments.
inputs
goods or services from their environment
outputs
The products and services
organizations create
Organization culture
The set of important assumptions about the organization and its goals and practices that members of the company share. It is a system of shared values about what is important and beliefs about how the world works. In this way, a company’s culture provides a framework that organizes and directs people’s behavior on the job.54
