Midterm #2

Staff Function

An activity that does not contribute directly to creating or selling the company's products but instead supports line activities

Licensing

An agreement in which a domestic company, the licensor, receives royalty payments for allowing another company, the licensee, to produce the licensor's product, sell its service, or use its brand name in a specified foreign market

Strategic Alliance

An agreement in which companies combine key resources, costs, risks, technology, and people

Experiential Approach to Innovation

An approach to innovation that assumes a highly uncertain environment and uses intuition, flexible options, and hands-on experience to reduce uncertainty and accelerate learning and understanding

Compression Approach to Innovation

An approach to innovation that assumes that incremental innovation can be planned using a series of steps and that compressing those steps can speed innovation

Personality Test

An assessment that measures the extent to which an applicant possesses different kinds of job-related personality dimensions

Virtual Teams

Are groups of geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers who use a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task Often suffer from a lack of understanding regarding the team's purpose and team member roles

Inaction Stage

As organizational performance problems become more visible, management may recognize the need to change but still take no action

Crisis Stage

Bankruptcy or dissolution (breaking up the company and selling its parts) is likely to occur unless the company completely reorganizes the way it does business

Social Loafing

Behavior in which team members withhold their efforts and fail to perform their share of the work

Ethnocentrism

Belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group

Cooperation

Can limit the risk associated with foreign ownership of a business Involves the use of joint ventures and collaborative contracts Does not minimize the political uncertainty of doing business in a country

Generational Change

Change based on incremental improvements to a dominant technological design such that the improved technology is fully backward compatible with the older technology

Storming Stage

Characterized by conflict and disagreement, in which team members disagree over what the team should do and how it should do it

Deep-level Diversity

Consists of differences that are communicated through verbal and nonverbal behaviors and are recognized only through extended interaction

Surface-level Diversity

Consists of differences that are immediately observable, typically unchangeable, and easy to measure

Blinded Stage

Decline begins because key managers fail to recognize the internal or external changes that will harm their organizations

Faulty Action Stage

Faced with rising costs and decreasing profits and market share, management will announce belt-tightening plans designed to cut costs, increase efficiency, and restore profits

Discrimination and Fairness Paradigm

Focuses on equal opportunity, fair treatment, recruitment of minorities, and strict compliance with the equal employment opportunity laws

Documentary Training

Focuses on identifying specific critical differences between cultures

Learning and Effectiveness Paradigm

Focuses on integrating deep-level diversity differences, such as personality, attitudes, beliefs, and values, into the actual work of the organization

Access and Legitimacy Paradigm

Focuses on the acceptance and celebration of differences to ensure that the diversity within the company matches the diversity found among primary stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, and local communities

Customer Departmentalization

Organizing work and workers into separate units responsible for particular kinds of customers

Product Departmentalization

Organizing work and workers into separate units responsible for producing particular products or services

Performing Stage

Performance improves because the team has matured into an effective, fully functioning team

Affirmative Action

Purposeful steps taken by an organization to create employment opportunities for minorities and women

Collectivism

Putting group goals ahead of personal goals

Exporting

Selling domestically produced products to buyers in other countries

Cordiality

Sincere affection and kindness

Standardization

Solving problems by consistently applying the same rules, procedures, and processes

Departmentalization

Subdividing work and workers into separate organizational units responsible for completing particular tasks

Refreezing

Supporting and reinforcing new changes so that they stick

Norming Stage

Team members begin to settle into their roles, group cohesion grows, and positive team norms develop

Specific Ability Test

Tests that measure the extent to which an applicant possesses the particular kind of ability needed to do a job well

Cognitive Ability Test

Tests that measure the extent to which applicants have abilities in perceptual speed, verbal comprehension, numerical aptitude, general reasoning, and spatial aptitude

Work Sample Test

Tests that require applicants to perform tasks that are actually done on the job

Structural Accommodation

The ability to change organizational structures, policies, and practices in order to meet stretch goals

Expropriation

The action by the state or an authority of taking property from its owner for public use or benefit

Remediation

The correction of something bad or defective

Task Significance

The degree to which a job is perceived to have a substantial impact on others inside or outside the organization

Task Identity

The degree to which a job, from beginning to end, requires the completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work

Extraversion

The degree to which someone is active, assertive, gregarious, sociable, talkative, and energized by others

Agreeableness

The degree to which someone is cooperative, polite, flexible, forgiving, good-natured, tolerant, and trusting

Conscientiousness

The degree to which someone is organized, hardworking, responsible, persevering, thorough, and achievement oriented

Forming Stage

The first stage of team development, in which team members meet each other, form initial impressions, and begin to establish team norms

Technological Lockout

The inability of a company to competitively sell its products because it relies on old technology or a non-dominant design

Decentralization

The location of a significant amount of authority in the lower levels of the organization

Skill Variety

The number of different activities performed in a job

Technological Discontinuity

The phase of an innovation stream in which a scientific advance or unique combination of existing technologies creates a significant breakthrough in performance or function

Downsizing

The planned elimination of jobs in a company

Cultural Simulation

The practice of adapting to cultural differences

Validation

The process of determining how well a selection test or procedure predicts future job performance; the better or more accurate the prediction of future job performance, the more valid a test is said to be

External Recruiting

The process of developing a pool of qualified job applicants from outside the company

Change Intervention

The process used to get workers and managers to change their behaviors and work practices

Purchasing Power

The relative cost of a standard set of goods and services in different countries

Staff Authority

The right to advise, but not command, others who are not subordinates in the chain of command

Line Authority

The right to command immediate subordinates in the chain of command

Policy Uncertainty

The risk associated with changes in laws and government policies that directly affect the way foreign companies conduct business

Political Uncertainty

The risk of major changes in political regimes that can result from war, revolution, death of political leaders, social unrest, or other influential events

Coercion

The use of formal power and authority to force others to change

Awareness Training

Training that is designed to raise employees' awareness of diversity issues and to challenge the underlying assumptions or stereotypes they may have about others

Skills-based Diversity Training

Training that teaches employees the practical skills they need for managing a diverse work force, such as flexibility and adaptability, negotiation, problem solving, and conflict resolution

Adverse Impact

Unintentional discrimination that occurs when members of a particular race, sex, or ethnic group are unintentionally harmed or disadvantaged because they are hired, promoted, or trained (or any other employment decision) at substantially lower rates than others

Adaptive Screening

Used to assess how well managers and their families are likely to adjust to foreign cultures

Avoidance Strategy

Used when the political risks associated with a foreign country or region are viewed as too great

Creative Work Environment

Workplace culture in which workers perceive that new ideas are welcomed, valued, and encouraged

Appraisal

An act of assessing something or someone

Line Function

An activity that contributes directly to creating or selling the company's products

Franchising

A collection of networked firms in which the manufacturer or marketer of a product or service, the franchisor, licenses the entire business to another person or organization, the franchisee

Design Iteration

A cycle of repetition in which a company tests a prototype of a new product or service, improves on that design, and then builds and tests the improved prototype

Tariff

A direct tax on imported goods

Production Blocking

A disadvantage of face-to-face brainstorming in which a group member must wait to share an idea because another member is presenting an idea

Quid Pro Quo Sexual Harassment

A form of sexual harassment in which employment outcomes, such as hiring, promotion, or simply keeping one's job, depend on whether an individual submits to sexual harassment

Protectionism

A government's use of trade barriers to shield domestic companies and their workers from foreign competition

Traditional Work Group

A group composed of two or more people who work together to achieve a shared goal

Specialization

A job composed of a small part of a larger task or process

Organizational Decline

A large decrease in organizational performance that occurs when companies don't anticipate, recognize, neutralize, or adapt to the internal or external pressures that threaten their survival

Diversity Pairing

A mentoring program in which people of different cultural backgrounds, sexes, or races/ethnicities are paired together to get to know each other and change stereotypical beliefs and attitudes

Direct Foreign Investment

A method of investment in which a company builds a new business or buys an existing business in a foreign country

Dominant Design

A new technological design or process that becomes the accepted market standard

Social Stratification

A society's categorization of its people into rankings of socioeconomic tiers based on factors like wealth, income, race, education, and power

Cross-functional Team

A team composed of employees from different functional areas of the organization

Self-designing Teams

A team that has the characteristics of self-managing teams but also controls team design, work tasks, and team membership

Self-managing Teams

A team that manages and controls all of the major tasks of producing a product or service

Organizational Plurality

A work environment where (1) all members are empowered to contribute in a way that maximizes the benefits to the organization, customers, and themselves, and (2) the individuality of each member is respected by not segmenting or polarizing people on the basis of their membership in a particular group

Unfreezing

Getting the people affected by change to believe that change is needed

Disparate Treatment

Intentional discrimination that occurs when people are purposely not given the same hiring, promotion, or membership opportunities because of their race, color, sex, age, ethnic group, national origin, or religious beliefs

Field Simulation

Made by the US corps, places trainees in an ethnic neighborhood for hours to talk to residents about cultural differences

Employee Involvement Teams

Meet on company time on a weekly or monthly basis to provide advice or make suggestions to management concerning specific issues such as plant safety, customer relations, or product quality

Semi-autonomous Work Groups

Not only provide advice and suggestions to management but also have the authority to make decisions and solve problems related to the major tasks required to produce a product or service

Disparate Impact

Occurs when an employer creates a seemingly fair employment practice that has a negative impact on members of a protected class

Geographic Departmentalization

Organizing work and workers into separate units responsible for doing business in particular geographic areas

Functional Departmentalization

Organizing work and workers into separate units responsible for particular business functions or areas of expertise

Which of the following is a difference between employee involvement teams and semi-autonomous work groups? a. Members of employee involvement teams can change the designs of teams, whereas members of semi-autonomous groups cannot change the designs of teams. b. Employee involvement teams do not have the authority to make decisions, whereas semi-autonomous groups have the authority to make decisions. c. Employee involvement teams provide advice and suggestions to management, whereas semi-autonomous groups do not have the authority to give advice and suggestions to management. d. Members of employee involvement teams are selected based on their experience, whereas members of semi-autonomous groups are selected based on their expertise.

b. Employee involvement teams do not have the authority to make decisions, whereas semi-autonomous groups have the authority to make decisions.

Which of the following is a disadvantage of franchising? a. Franchisors face tariff and nontariff barriers when trying to enter a market. b. Franchisors face a loss of control when they sell businesses to franchisees who are thousands of miles away. c. Franchisors face power struggles and a lack of leadership when trying to adapt the franchisee's management practices. d. Franchisors can eventually become competitors, especially when a licensing agreement includes access to important technology or proprietary business knowledge.

b. Franchisors face a loss of control when they sell businesses to franchisees who are thousands of miles away.

If companies focus too much on local adaptation, they run the risk of: a. Using management procedures poorly suited to particular countries' markets, cultures, and employees. b. Losing the cost effectiveness and productivity that result from using standardized rules and procedures throughout the world. c. Losing control over the quality of the product or service sold by the foreign licensee. d. Failing to benefit from an active global strategy.

b. Losing the cost effectiveness and productivity that result from using standardized rules and procedures throughout the world

Which of the following about Surface-level Diversity is true? a. Surface-level diversity can only be perceived by a few, whereas deep-level diversity can be perceived by almost everyone. b. Surface-level diversity consists of differences that are typically changeable, whereas deep-level diversity consists of differences that are typically unchangeable. c. Knowledge of deep-level diversity gives way to the better understanding of surface-level diversity, whereas surface-level diversity is not helpful in understanding deep-level diversity. d. Surface-level diversity is immediately observable, whereas deep-level diversity usually reveals itself at a later stage.

d. Surface-level diversity is immediately observable, whereas deep-level diversity usually reveals itself at a later stage.