MGMT 339 Vocabulary
Strategy
A broad and general plan developed to reach long term objectives.
Jury of executive opinion method
A method of predicting future sales primarily by asking appropriate managers to give their opinions on what will happen to sales in the future.
Career plateauing
A period of little or no apparent progress in a career
Short range
A period of time about one year or less into the future
Long range
A period of time extending about three to five years into the future.
Management employability skills
A person's ability to gain and maintain a career as a manager.
Sales forecast
A prediction of how high or low sales of the organization's products or services will be over the period of time under consideration.
Gantt chart
A scheduling device developed by Henry L Gantt is essentially a bar graph with time on the horizontal axis and the resource to be scheduled on the vertical axis.
Program evaluation and review technique (PERT)
A scheduling tool that is essentially a network of project activities showing estimates of time necessary to complete each activity and the sequence of activities that must be followed to complete the project.
Career
A sequence of work related positions occupied by a person over the course of a lifetime.
Symptom
A sign that a problem exists
Strategic business unit
A significant organizational segment that is analyzed to develop organizational strategy aimed at generating future business or revenue.
Budget
A single use financial plan that covers a specified length of time
Program
A single use plan that is designed to carry out a special project within an organization
Activities
A specified set of behaviors within a project
Rule
A standing plan that designates specific required actions.
Policy
A standing plan that furnishes broad guidelines for taking action that is consistent with reaching organizational objectives
Procedure
A standing plan that outlines a series of related actions that must be taken to accomplish a particular task.
Swot analysis
A strategic development tool that matches internal organizational strengths and weaknesses with external opportunities and threats
Stability
A strategy adopted by management to maintain or slightly improve the amount of business that an SBU is generating
Growth
A strategy adopted my management to increase the amount of business that an SBU is generating
Divestiture
A strategy adopted to eliminate an SBU that is not generating a satisfactory amount of business and that has little hope of doing so in the near future.
Critical question analysis
A strategy development tool that consists of answering basic questions about the present purposes and objectives of the organization, present direction, and environment.
Focus
A strategy that emphasizes making an organization more competitive by targeting a segment of customers.
Cost leadership
A strategy that focuses on making an organization more competitive by producing products more cheaply than competitors can
Management by objectives (MBO)
A valuable tool and approach for nonprofit organizations such as libraries and community clubs.
Mission statement
A written document developed by management that describes and explains the mission of the organization.
Management Functions
Activities that make up the management process
Organizational resources
All assets available for activation during the production process like human resources, monetary, raw materials, and capital resources.
Business portfolio analysis
An organizational strategy formulation technique that is based on the philosophy that organizations should develop strategy much as they handle investment portfolios.
Problem
Any factor within an organization that is a barrier to organizational goal attainment
Murphy's Law
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This law reminds managers to remain alert for possible problems because even if management system appears to be operating well, it might be eroding under the surface.
Human skills
Build cooperation within the team being led. Ex: working with people
Strategic control
Consists of monitoring and evaluating the strategic management process as a whole to ensure that it is operating properly.
Control
Ensuring that an event occurs as it was planned to occur
Differentiation
Focuses on making an organization more competitive by developing a product or products that customers perceive as being different from products offered by competitors.
Delphi method
Gathers, evaluates, and summarizes expert opinions as the basis for a forecast, but the procedure is more formal than that for the jury of executive opinion method.
Star
Has a large share of a high growth market and needs large amounts of cash to support rapid and significant growth
Cash cow
Has a large share of a market that is growing only slightly.
Dog
Has a relative small share of a low growth market
Strategic workforce planning (SWP)
Helps organizations identify the workforce they need to achieve their strategic goals.
Establishment stage
Individuals about 25-45 years of age start to become more productive with higher performance. Employment sought during this stage is guided by what was learned during the exploration stage.
Maintenance stage
Individuals who are 45-65 years old show either increased performance, stabilized performance, or decreased performance.
Decline stage
Involves people about 65 years old whose productivity is declining. Individuals are close to retirement, semi retired, or fully retired. Some might have lost interest in their careers
Strategy implementation
Involves putting formulated strategies into action
Product life cycle
Is made up of the five stages through which most products and services pass.: introduction, growth, maturity, saturation, decline
Retrenchment
Management attempts to strengthen or protect the amount of business and SBU is generating
Task related activities
Management efforts aimed at carrying out critical management duties in organizations. Ex: short term planning and monitoring operations and performance is an example of task related activities
People related activities
Management efforts aimed at managing people in organizations. Ex: providing support and encouragement to others, developing skills and confidence of organization members. Empowering others to solve conflict.
Change related activities
Management efforts aimed at modifying organizational components. Ex: monitoring the organization's external environment, proposing new strategies and visions.
Managerial effectiveness
Management's use of organizational resources in meeting organizational goals
Corrective action
Managerial activity aimed at bringing organizational performance up to the level of performance standards.
Commitment principle
Managers should commit funds for planning only if they can anticipate in the foreseeable future, a return on planning expenses as a result of long range planning analysis.
Exploration stage
Occurs at the beginning of a career and explores jobs available. Individuals are about 15-25 years of age. Ex: cooking at McDonald's
Standing plan
Plans that are used over and over because they focus on organizational situations that occur repeatedly.
Regression method
Predicts future sales by analyzing the historical relationship between sales and time.
Product stages method
Predicts future sales by using the product life cycle to better understand the history and future of a product
Salesforce estimation method
Predicts future sales levels primarily by asking appropriate salespeople for their opinions
Competitor capability
Refers to a firm's ability to undertake an action.
Competitor awareness
Refers to how mindful a company is of its competitor's actions
Tactical planning
Short range planning that emphasizes the current operations of various parts of an organization.
Question mark
Small share of a high growth market
Demographics
Statistical characteristics of a population.
Planning tools
Techniques managers can use to develop plans.
Technical skills
The ability to apply knowledge and expertise to techniques and procedures. Ex: engineering, computer programming, accounting.
Management skill
The ability to carry out the process of reaching organizational goals by working with and through people and other organizational resources.
Organizing skill
The ability to create throughout the organization a network of people who can help solve implementation problems as they occur.
Interacting skill
The ability to manage people during implementation
Allocating skill
The ability to provide organizational resources necessary to implement a strategy.
Conceptual skills
The ability to see the organization as a whole. The ability to understand how the organization relates to the environment and how changes in one part affect the rest of the organization.
Monitoring skill
The ability to use information to determine whether a problem has arisen that is blocking strategy implementation
Five forces model
The best known tool for industry analysis, developed by internationally strategic management expert Michael E. Porter.
Event
The completion of major project tasks
Power
The extent to which an individual is able to influence others so that they respond to orders
Competitor motivation
The incentives that drive an organization to take action.
Standard
The level of activity established to serve as a model for evaluating organizational performance
Internal environment
The level of an organization's environment that exists inside the organization and normally has immediate and specific implications for managing the organization.
General environment
The level of an organization's external environment that contains components having broad, long term, implications for managing the organization. The components are economic, social, political, legal and technological.
Industry environment
The level of an organization's external environment that contains components normally having specific and immediate implications for managing the organization
Competitive dynamics
The process by which firms undertake strategic and tactical actions and how competitors respond to these actions.
Controlling
The process managers go though to control
Strategy formulation
The process of determining appropriate courses of action for achieving organizational objectives and thereby accomplishing the organizational purpose.
Planning
The process of determining how the organization can get where it wants to go and what it will do to accomplish its objectives
Strategic management
The process of ensuring that an organization possesses and benefits from the use of an appropriate organizational strategy.
Scheduling
The process of formulating a detailed listing of activities that must be accomplished to attain an objective, allocating the resources necessary to attain the objective, and setting up and following time tables for completing the objective
Forecasting
The process of predicting the likelihood of uncertain events or outcomes that will influence the operation of the organization.
Management
The process of reaching organizational goals by working with and through people and other organizational resources.
Managerial efficiency
The proportion of total organization resources used during the production process
Organizational mission
The purpose for which and the reason why an organization exists.
Social values
The relative degrees of worth that a society places on the ways in which it exists and functions.
Authority
The right to command or give orders
Critical path
The sequence of events and activities requiring the longest period of time to complete.
Environmental analysis
The study of the organizational environment to point environmental factors that can influence organizational operations.
Organizational objective
The target toward which the open management system is directed. It flows from the organization's mission.
Organizational objectives
The targets toward which the open management system is directed
Principle of the objective
This principle holds that before managers initiate any action, they should determine, understand, and state organizational objectives.
Single use plan
Used only once or a few times and focuses on rare situations within the organization
Moving Average Method
Utilizes historical data to predict future sales levels
Organizational purpose
What the organization exists to do, given a particular group of customers and customer needs,
Strategic planning
the process of determining the major goals of the organization and the policies and strategies for obtaining and using resources to achieve those goals
