Bus 137

Amazon has hired a strategic consultant to consider a partnership with Porsche. Amazon would sell Porsche's cars. As part of a VRIO analysis, the consultant would realize that

. Amazon is not organized to realize the value of partnering with Porsche because Porsche must sell through local dealers.

Human needs are hierarchically ranked. Some needs are basic to all human beings, and in their absence, nothing else matters. As our basic needs are satisfied, we look to satisfy higher-order needs. Once a lower-level need is satisfied, it is no longer a motivator. This is the description of:

. Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Gary works in a team with strong opinions. He decides not to rock the boat with an issue. A new issue will cause a storm of discussion, and the team is working well now. This is the negative side of social cohesion, called

. groupthink

According to Robert Half Management Resources, most change efforts fail because of

. inadequate communication.

Nokia transitions caused disruptions in its labor force. New skills were needed and old skills were less important. Managers needed to motivate employees to adapt to the changes. Managers needed to be

. leaders

An investigation of the safety issues with the Chevrolet Cobalt car blamed GM's company culture in part. Mary Barra, the CEO, described the "GM Nod" as when everyone nods in agreement to a proposed plan of action, but then leaves the room expecting someone else to handle it. The GM Nod is a form of

. social loafing

What action can help a group avoid groupthink?

Assign a rotating devil's advocate role at every meeting.

Rob has made several successful investments. Each will earns $20,000 per year for the next 15 years. To expand the program, he will need an additional headcount. But Pat, another team member, wants additional headcount for a different investment. Management will only allow one hire. What does this situation illustrate?

Competition over resources can cause conflict.

______ is a positive reaction to stress that generates a desire to achieve and overcome challenges.

Eustress

________ include reduced workload (part time), compressed work weeks, and remote work (telework). For example, working from home can save employees 10 hours or more of commuting time each week.

Flexible work arrangements

One graphic representation of the tasks required over the course of a project is called a

Gantt chart

Taylor's Four Principles of Scientific Management included which of the following?

Heartily cooperate with the men to ensure all the work is done in accordance with the science that has been developed.

What does the ERG theory add to Maslow's assumptions?

It defines the "frustration-regression" principle.

What are the limitations of the leadership trait approach?

It neglects to consider the environment under which the leadership worked.

Which is a limitation of scientific management?

Knowledge-based work can't be observed and broken down for efficiencies like manual labor.

Macy's online store differs from the in-store experience. The online store offers free delivery on larger purchases, free returns, extensive information about the products, and reviews from other customers. Why might Macy's do business this way?

Many of the strategies needed to succeed in e-commerce are very different from competing in a non-digital environment

leadership means treating employees with respect, showing consideration for employee feelings, and building relationships with employees.

People-centered

People are not motivated when they do not have clear goals and do not know what is expected of them. ________ reduces uncertainty and indicates what everyone is expected to accomplish.

Planning

Henri Fayol was a mining engineer in the 1800s and later the head of a large mining firm. His experience led him to formulate principles for organization, including what he called

Scalar chain: An unbroken chain of command extends from the top to the bottom of the organization.

Amazon competes with low prices, selection, quick deliveries, and easy returns. Employees know they succeed through efficiency improvements in any part of the process. Customers rely on Amazon for prices, selection, and easy service. What does this illustrate about the relationship between Amazon's culture and brand?

The culture and the brand reinforce each other.

is committed to persuading followers to share a leader's vision and desired goals.

Transformational

________ look at each budget as if it were brand new and require managers to justify each of the budgeted items. This process ensures that budgets are closely tied to the latest organizational goals.

Zero-based budgets

An industrial chemical manufacturer had a company culture and mission statement that emphacized cutting costs and increasing revenue by any legal means. A new executive to the company begins requiring each department to come up with specific goals and objectives to become more socially and environmentally responsible. Each department supplies the new executive with their plans to match her criteria, but after three months, none have been implemented. This is an example of:

a company whose mission and culture are not aligned

When customers perceive the product differentiation as valuable, they will prefer to purchase the business's product over a competitor's products. This is called

a competitive advantage

As an employee, Mohammed is more comfortable when management confidently make decisions and give directions. He prefers a stable environment and enjoys working in an organization with efficient operations. He prefers an organization to have its policies, procedures, and rules written down in detail. He would fit best in a company with

a formal structure

Procter & Gamble has fickle customers and needs to rapidly innovate new products. It benefits from implementing

a matrix organization to manage a wide variety of demographic-specific products or services

Bharti Airtel is the largest cellular provider in India, with more than 300 million customers as of 2014. It also supplies broadband and telephone services, as well as many other telecommunications services to both domestic and corporate customers. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone have an on/off relationship. Vodafone owned a 5.6% stake in the Airtel business, until it sold it back to Airtel and invested in Airtel's rival, Hutchison Essar. Knowledge and technology previously available to Airtel moved into the hands of one of its competitors. In a SWOT analysis, this point represents ________.

a threat

Bharti Airtel is the largest cellular provider in India, with more than 300 million customers as of 2014. It also supplies broadband and telephone services, as well as many other telecommunications services to both domestic and corporate customers. Until a few years ago Airtel did not own its own towers, which was a particular strength of some of its competitors, such as Hutchison Essar. Towers are important if your company wishes to provide wide coverage nationally. In a SWOT analysis, this point would be ________.

a weakness

Wharton professor Jerry Wind "believe[s] that digital networks are the key differentiator, [and] enable new forms of sharing, distributed intelligence and value creation." In his model, Uber and AirBnB are platforms for the collaborative economy and ________ organizations.

a. network

If you feel a strong need for success, you have a need for ________, according to McClelland's acquired-needs theory

achievement

In the________, most of the team's goals have been accomplished. The emphasis is on wrapping up final tasks and documenting the effort and results. As the work load is diminished, individual members may be reassigned to other teams, and the team disbands.

adjourning stage

In a decision tree with costs or net income and probabilities, each path of decisions and outcomes can be summarized in

an expected value

An instructor who is free to choose the textbook, design the course content, and use any relevant materials when delivering lectures has high levels of

autonomy

Bill Gore was the inventor of Gore-Tex, a fabric popular in many sports. When building his company, he wanted to harness the fast decision-making, diverse perspectives, and collaboration of small teams. His approach was that "We're all in the same boat," sharing risks and rewards and committed to what's best for the company and its long-term success. One advantage of teams is

better communication

An important implication of prospect theory is that the way people subjectively frame an outcome affects their decision. Narrow framing is when people evaluate new gambles in isolation, ignoring other relevant risks. This is an example of

bounded rationality

Mustafa and Jeff argued about an investment in asset swaps. Mustafa believed that the back office could not handle a tricky transaction. Jeff argued that the investment was worth the extra time to create and practice the procedure. Mustafa agreed if he could do the training himself. The conflict was settled by

collaborating

Baseball is not an inherently safe sport. Whenever several players are involved in a play, the risk for collisions is high. Teamwork and ________ dramatically reduce the risk of mishaps.

communication

In 1999, Wired magazine reported a story entitled "Metric Math Mistake Muffed Mars Meteorology Mission." A NASA review board found that the problem was in the software controlling the orbiter's thrusters. The software calculated the force the thrusters needed to exert in pounds of force, but a second step assumed the data was in the metric unit: newtons. Oops! The software developers needed better

communication

Financial strength can be a competitive advantage. In the Great Recession, General Motors went bankrupt, but Ford had acquired long-term financing beforehand that carried it through the downturn. This insight is part of

competitive analysis

Kelly has experience and knows there is only one way to run her business—full steam ahead! Dr. Kelly will struggle with the planning cycle that recommends

considering alternatives

The Deepwater oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was made much worse because BP Oil did not have plans in place for surprises. Planning for unexpected events is called

contingency planning

After a new company has developed a customer base, management needs to build more structure into the organization. In Greiner's model, the ________ will focus on accounting, and capital management will drive most business decisions.

direction phase

Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell responded to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, with this argument: "Amazon was created by Jeff Bezos, whose adoptive father was born in Cuba. Google was co-founded by Sergey Brin, who was born in Russia. Would we be a better country if they had not been admitted? Of equal importance, what are the chances that if Steve Jobs had lived his life in Syria he would have created Apple? Or Jeff Bezos in Cuba? Or Sergey Brin in Russia?" He argued that

diversity is America's strength.

In the summer of 1998, Dr. Rumelt, a professor and consultant, got an opportunity to talk with Steve Jobs about strategy. Rumelt argued that everything we know about the PC business says that Apple cannot really push beyond a small niche position. The network effects are just too strong to upset the PC standard. He then asked for Jobs' strategy. Jobs said, "I am going to wait for the next big thing." Nearly twenty years later, Apple is the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. This story shows that in the context of strategy, the tech market is ________.

dynamic

Walmart has the highest in-store revenues for any U.S. retailer but it is a distant second to Amazon's online sales. Walmart believes it needs a better ________.

e-commerce strategy

Jack and Jill disagreed on how best to fetch water to the house, a daily task. They bickered every day and neither could compromise. Their conflict is

emotional

To coordinate efforts, managers must also take into account

employees' preferences, job satisfaction, and engagement

The Ritz Carlton is a luxury hotel chain. The Ritz has calculated that the lifetime value of a customer is a quarter million dollars. To keep customers happy and coming back, they

empower employees to spend $2000 per incident to help out customers, without asking a manager

Individuals are motivated by a sense of fairness in their interactions. According to ________, our sense of fairness is a result of the social comparisons we make.

equity theory

Martin Winterkorn, ex-CEO of Volkswagen, was known for his exacting standards and perfectionism. He set VW on a path to become the world's largest automobile manufacturer. In the culture he shaped, failure simply was not an option,

even if it meant taking illegal steps

E-commerce creates a great deal of data on how consumers interact with a website. L.L.Bean keeps records that show how quickly consumers make decisions, how many alternatives they explore, and whether they stop without completing a purchase. When a manager sees an issue and proposes a solution, the company can easily test the solution. This is an example of

evidence-based decision-making

Controlling may be the most important management function. The control process is also described as

feedback loops

A ________ budget does not change or flex when sales or some other activity increases or decreases.

fixed

Team norms set a standard ________ that all team members are expected to follow.

for behavior, attitude, and performance

Nick works with a large team at a social media company. He has proposed and finished several projects which the company implemented. He has a great sense of pride in doing his job. The company has three products currently, and the sales division and marketing division are responsible for increasing product adoption. Nick works in the marketing division and often gets marketing campaign ideas from talking with the customer service division and the salespeople. He enjoys the information communication in the company. Nick works for a company with a:

functional departmentalization structure

IBM's credit department reduced 4 positions to one and shortened the processing time for credit requests. This flatter organization structure resulted in

greater productivity

Some of the visible clues to a company's culture are

how employees dress, snack areas and candy jars, and plaques and awards.

Wells Fargo, a bank, followed a common management technique, goal-setting theory: set a goal and step back and let employees figure out the best way to get there. At Wells Fargo, the goal was to increase sales by cross-selling accounts to existing customers. Some employees figured out a shortcut that involved

illegally creating new accounts without customers' knowledge

Goal-setting theory is one of the most influential management practices. There is strong evidence that setting goals

improves performance toward the goal.

A robust competitive analysis will allow you to focus on those companies that will compete for customers

in your target market

To engage and motivate employees, many firms offer both salary and

incentive pay

Apple's current vision statement was introduced by CEO Tim Cook, who stated, "We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products." This is part of the ________ role of managers.

informational

The National Football League controls the performance-based pay for professional football players. For example, Tom Brady received $14,102.25. His annual salary is $20 million, so he may not have noticed when this hit his checking account. Since the way team members function as a group is as important to the team's success as the individual effort, the NFL performance pay

is not giving the right incentives

If a team is too small

it may not have enough resources or skills

Google's motto is "Don't be evil." When the company neglects this to make more money, consumers are quick to criticize. Management has neglected its function of

leading

Frank is angry and arguing with Jeff about procedures. Jeff wants to ignore the written policy because the accountants are not familiar with the procedure. The company is under investigation by regulators and the FBI for accounting fraud. External conditions may cause ________.

low team morale and conflict

Departmentalization often leads to the problem of silos. Employees in different departments do not talk to each other regularly. Issues between departments go up the management chain for senior management to resolve. A ________ fixes this by giving each employee two managers with different specialties.

matrix structure

Managers encourage, support, and foster talented employees. The managers who focus in this area are

middle manager

Transactional leadership is ________ transformational leadership.

more common and familiar than

A new investment product, housing revenue bonds, requires expertise in back-office processes, accounting policy, legal issues, and, of course, a portfolio manager's judgment on value. Difficulties at any step will influence the value of the investment. The opinions of the experts are interdependent, so the portfolio manager recommends a team approach for

more efficiency

Information management is the ________ of a company. Information management is concerned with the collection, preservation, storage, processing, and delivery of information. The purpose of information management is to make sure information is available to the right people at the right time in a form that they can apply.

nervous system

A ________ structure tries to borrow the flexibility of a social system. The goal of this structure is to achieve rapid organizational evolution and adaptation to constantly changing external and internal environments.

network

What group decision-making process uses a series of written responses to a series of questionnaires instead of meeting in person to make decisions?

nominal group technique (NGT)

Walmart developed its supply chain and inventory management to be very efficient and set the standard for other companies. These specialties are grouped under

operations management

The O in VRIO refers to ________ , meaning a company's capacity to use its resources with purposeful integration to achieve a particular result.

organized to capture value

Michael Porter defined classified competitive strategies based on a grid of price strategy and target markets. Microsoft's Windows Operating System competes with Apple's MAC OS X and Linux. Linux is free. What is Microsoft's strategy in this grid?

overall differentiation

Criticism of Taylor's Scientific Management sparked a new movement called Humanistic Management. This movement shifted management emphasis to

people and work relationships

Diversity as a strategy hopes to gain, for example, from more problem-solving approaches or more connections. In this context, diversity includes

personality, cognitive style, education, and social background

Management as a process means

planning, organizing, leading, and controlling resources and people to meet organizational goals

Research shows that when actions are coordinated and focused on specific outcomes, they are much more effective. The primary mechanism for coordinating and focusing staff is

plans, which can direct everyone's actions toward desired outcomes

The general environment analysis considers broad societal dimensions influencing the industry or firms within it. The general environment areas include

political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal

Apple and Microsoft are competitors in selling computer operating systems, the MAC OS and Windows. Yet they have very different cultures and values. Apple is known for design and attention to detail. Microsoft is aggressive, launching products before they are finished. Both cultures reflect

their founders.

Managers pay careful attention to the external environment of the organization: the economy, proposals for laws that would affect profits, stakeholder demands, and consumer and public relations. The managers most involved in these activities are

top managers

Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, has his own rule for the right-sized teams: the team should only be as big as can be fed with ________ pizzas

two

In the resource view of strategy, VRIO stands for:

valuable, rare, inimitable, and organized

A company wishes to convince customers that its product or service provides more value to them than a competitor's product or service. That is, it offers a

value proposition

Reinforcement theory was developed in training animals. B.F. Skinner called it operant conditioning and worked with pigeons, rats, and dogs. Rewards are generally effective, but some people, especially professionals,

will take offense if they are treated like animals.

Procedures are steps to be followed in established and repeated operations. An investment advisor should write procedures for

the proper method for wiring funds to JP Morgan bank

Natalie, a location scout, has been very busy with work and noticed her cell phone is breaking down. She likes her old Pamsung phone but needs to get one that has faster network abilities, is not more than two hundred dollars, has international roaming capabilities, and is water-resistant if possible. She thinks maybe the latest Phonei would work, but then she realizes the most important criteria are water resistance and international roaming. After visiting five stores and spending countless hours online researching the various phones, she evaluates her options and decides to go with the Yons Aperix Z3v. She buys the phone and sets out to find her latest movie location. What decision model did Natalie use to pick her new phone?

rational decision-making model

For most of our decisions, we do not try to optimize the decision but simply make a good decision and move on. This is called

satisficing

Pivotal Labs, a software firm, never tried to reduce or get rid of managers or create ________. Instead, CEO Rob Mee, who co-founded Pivotal in 1989, based his culture on extreme programming and designed the most efficient project team structure for getting things done fast and well. Managers were never part of the mix. And it worked.

self-managed teams

Employees that understand how their company operates and competes can make better decisions. Therefore management can create a competitive advantage by

sharing information with employees

The job characteristics model argues that ________ can lead to high-quality performance, high internal motivation, and high satisfaction.

skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback

Paul looks forward to working with his team. They are a good group that looks out for each other and the success of the group. Paul's team is an example of

social cohesion

Mayo theorized that management workers at the Hawthorne Western Electric plant were motivated more by

social dynamics than by economic or environmental factors

Guiseppe has been manufacturing puppets for a while, but his current crew cannot keep up with demand. Currently, each employee works on every step of the process, from cutting the wood to painting the eyes. Guiseppe's crew can do more if each person will ________ .

specialize in certain tasks

Starbucks focuses on making coffee. By ________, they are faster, more consistent, and their production costs are lower than McDonald's. Although they have an advantage in the coffee department, they fall well short of par in the food department.

specializing in making coffee

Senior management has written some policies about hiring new employees. This allows middle management to make decisions without constantly going back and asking permission. These plans are

standing plans

Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership Theory categorizes leadership behavior into four categories. These are

telling, selling, participating, and delegating

Strategic management's first function is deciding how to compete. The second function is to make sure

that the people in the organization support the strategy