The organisational and historical context Flashcards
What is the newest form of commercial organisations to achieve legal recognition in the UK?
Limited partnership
An organisation that owns several other organisations is often known as…
A holding company
The Kerry Group, Shell Oil, and Kellog’s are examples of…
Multinational corporations
What kind of organisations are quoted on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ?
Public limited companies
What does the acronym QUANGO stand for?
Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation
What two functions are served by an organisation’s culture?
Integration and communication
Schneider believed that organisational cultures are strongly influenced by…
the personality of the founder
What are the three main mechanisms by which a culture is perpetuated?
Attraction
Selection
Attrition
What two main types of culture did Hall identify?
Low context (Individualistic) High context (Rational)
Describe high-context cultures.
Where only part of the message is communicated in words, and the other part is inferred from the physical setting, body language, and previous history.
State 3 of the dimensions of culture identified by Hofstede.
Any 3 of the below:
- Power distance
- Individualism
- Masculinity
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Long term orientation
- Indulgence
To which school of management did Fredrick W Taylor belong?
Scientific management
What experiment is Fredrick W Taylor famous for?
Time study - experiments on loading iron and coal
Who was Henri Fayol and what did he identify?
A French industrialist who identified five major management processes
To which school of management did Max Weber belong?
Classical theorists
Max Weber is most famous for his work on…
Bureaucracy
Who created the field of industrial psychology?
Hugo Munsterberg
Which school of management did Mary Parker Follett and Elton Mayo belong to?
Human relations
What experiments is Elton Mayo famous for?
Lighting / Illumination experiments
Define the Hawthorn Effect.
When spurious results arise because people respond to the interest taken in them
What did Elton Mayo’s studies on the bank wiring room show?
That social norms influence productivity
The major distinction between “closed systems” and “open systems” is that the latter involves…
feedback from the environment
What is entropy?
The tendency for a system to run down, decay, and become chaotic in the absence of regular inputs
What is synergy?
The extra value created through the interaction between the parts of a system.
What is Fiedler famous for?
His research on contingency theory of leadership.
According to Fiedler, when should a task-oriented management style be used?
When situational control is either low or high
Which school of management did Woodward’s study of small firms belong to?
Contingency theory
According to Woodward, which type of production system is likely to result in the GREATEST span of control?
Mass production
According to Woodward, which type of production system is likely to result in the SMALLEST span of control?
Continuous production
