Chapter 1 : Understanding the Manager's Job

Y

Theory ___ is more positive and represents the assumptions made by human relations advocates.

X

Theory ____ is a relatively pessimistic and negative view of workers and is consistent with the views of scientific management.

60

Today's executives work at least an average of ____ hours a week.

Scientific

managers began to search for ways to use existing labor more efficiently. In response to this need, experts began to focus on ways to improve the performance of individual workers. Their work led to the development of _________________ management.

Manager

A(n) ______________, then, is someone whose primary responsibility is to carry out the management process.

Organization

A(n) ________________ is a group of people working together in a structured and coordinated fashion to achieve a set of goals, which may include profit, the discovery of knowledge, national defense, the coordination of various local charities, or social satisfaction.

Efficient

By ____________, we mean using resources wisely in a cost-effective way.

Effective

By ______________, we mean making the right decisions and successfully implementing them.

Planning

In its simplest form, ____________ means setting an organization's goals and deciding how best to achieve them.

The Management Process

Management involves four basic activities—planning and decision making, organizing, leading, and controlling.

Diagnostic

Successful managers also possess _____________________ skills or skills that enable them to visualize the most appropriate response to a situation

Behavioral

The _______________ management perspective placed much more emphasis on individual attitudes, behaviors, and group processes and recognized the importance of behavioral processes in the workplace.

Contingency

The __________________ perspective, in contrast, suggests that universal theories cannot be applied to organizations because each organization is unique.

Human Relations

The ___________________ movement, which grew from the Hawthorne studies and was a popular approach to management for many years, proposed that workers respond primarily to the social context of the workplace, including social conditioning, group norms, and interpersonal dynamics.

Controlling

The final phase of the management process is ____________, or monitoring the organization's progress toward its goals. As the organization moves toward its goals, managers must monitor progress to ensure that it is performing in such a way as to arrive at its "destination" at the appointed time.

Classical Management Perspective

The first important ideas to emerge are now called the __________________________, which actually includes two different viewpoints: scientific management and administrative management.

Top

The job of a _________ manager is likely to be complex and varied. Top managers make decisions about activities such as acquiring other companies, investing in R&D, entering or abandoning various markets, and building new plants and office facilities.

Administrative

Whereas scientific management deals with the jobs of individual employees, __________________ management focuses on managing the total organization.

Middle

__________ managers are primarily responsible for implementing the policies and plans developed by top managers and for supervising and coordinating the activities of lower-level managers

First line

____________ managers supervise and coordinate the activities of operating employees. Common titles for first-line managers are supervisor, coordinator, and office manager.

Organizing

_____________ involves determining how activities and resources are to be grouped.

Leading

______________ is the set of processes used to get members of the organization to work together to further the interests of the organization.

Operations

______________ managers are concerned with creating and managing the systems that create an organization's products and services. Typical responsibilities of operations managers include production control, inventory control, quality control, plant layout, and site selection.

Closed

______________ systems do not interact with their environment.

Universal

________________ perspectives because they try to identify the "one best way" to manage organizations.

Synergy

_________________ suggests that organizational units (or subsystems) may often be more successful working together than working alone.

Open

_________________ systems are systems that interact with their environment,

Entropy

__________________ is a normal process that leads to system decline. When an organization does not monitor feedback from its environment and make appropriate adjustments, it may fail.

Decision making

___________________ , a part of the planning process, involves selecting a course of action from a set of alternatives

Management

___________________ can be defined as a set of activities (including planning and decision making, organizing, leading, and controlling) directed at an organization's resources (human, financial, physical, and information) with the aim of achieving organizational goals in an efficient and effective manner.

Human Resources

___________________ managers are responsible for hiring and developing employees. They are typically involved in human resource planning, recruiting and selecting employees, training and development, designing compensation and benefit systems, formulating performance appraisal systems, and discharging low-performing and problem employees.

Communication

___________________ skills refer to the manager's abilities to both effectively convey ideas and information to others and effectively receive ideas and information from others.

Subsystems

___________________ —systems within a broader system. For example, the marketing, production, and finance functions within Mattel are systems in their own right but are also subsystems within the overall organization.

Organizational

____________________ behavior, acknowledge that human behavior in organizations is much more complex than the human relationists realized.

Operations

____________________ management techniques are generally concerned with helping the organization produce its products or services more efficiently and can be applied to a wide range of problems.

Conceptual

____________________ skills depend on the manager's ability to think in the abstract.

Quantitative

______________________ management perspective focuses on decision making, cost-effectiveness, mathematical models, and the use of computers. There are two branches of the _______________ approach: management science and operations management.

Technical

______________________ skills are necessary to accomplish or understand the specific kind of work done in an organization. ____________________ are especially important for first-line managers. These managers spend much of their time training their subordinates and answering questions about work-related problems.

Interpersonal

______________________ skills —the ability to communicate with, understand, and motivate both individuals and groups. As a manager climbs the organizational ladder, he or she must be able to get along with subordinates, peers, and those at higher levels of the organization.

Decision-making

_______________________ skills refer to the manager's ability to correctly recognize and define problems and opportunities and to then select an appropriate course of action to solve problems and capitalize on opportunities.

Management

________________________ science focuses specifically on the development of mathematical models. A mathematical model is a simplified representation of a system, process, or relationship.

Time Management

_________________________ skills refer to the manager's ability to prioritize work, to work efficiently, and to delegate work appropriately.

The Hawthorne Studies

__________________________ were a series of early experiments that focused on behavior in the workplace. In one experiment involving this group of workers, for example, researchers monitored how productivity changed as a result of changes in working conditions. _____________________ and subsequent experiments led scientists to the conclusion that the human element is very important in the workplace.

Marketing

______________managers work in areas related to the ______________ function—getting consumers and clients to buy the organization's products or services