MGMT 300 Chapter 1, 4, 7, 9

Six Reasons Why Managers Make Bad Decisions

Being influenced by initial impressions, justifying past decisions, seeing what you want to see, perpetuating the status quo, being influenced by emotion, overconfidence

Dimensions of a Global Mindset

Cognitive Dimension: know about the global environment and global business, mentally understand how cultures differ, and have the ability to interpret complex global changes Psychological Dimension: a liking for diverse ways of thinking and acting, a willingness to take risks, and energy and self confidence to deal with the unpredictable and uncertain Social Dimension: ability to behave in ways that build trusting relationships with people who are different from oneself

Organizational Planning Process

Develop the plan, translate the plan, plan operations, execute the plan, monitor and learn

Personal Decision Frameworks

Directive Style: people who prefer simple, clear cut solutions to problems Analytical Style: managers prefer complex solutions based on a lot of data Conceptual Style: managers like a broad Behavioral Style: managers with a deep concern for others

International Environments

Economic Environment: countries are categorized as either developed or developing based on per-capita income Legal Political Environment: differing laws and regulations make doing business a challenge for international firms Sociocultural Environment: nation's culture includes the shared knowledge, beliefs, and values, as well the common nodes of behaviors and ways of thinking among members of a society

Ten Manager Roles ; Decisional

Entrepreneur: initiate improvement projects, identify new ideas, delegate ideas responsibility to others Disturbance Handler: take corrective action during conflicts or crises, resolve disputes among subordinates Resource Allocator: decides who gets resources, schedule, budget, set prioritize Negotiator: represent team or department's interests, represent department during negotiation of budgets, unison contracts, purchases

Types of Multinational Corporations (MNC)

Ethnocentric Companies: place emphasis on their home countries Polycentric Companies: oriented toward the markets of individual foreign host countries Geocentric Companies: world oriented and favor no specific country

Market Entry Strategies

Exporting: maintaining its production facilities within the home countries and transfer products for sale to foreign countries Outsourcing: also called offshoring, work activities are done in countries with cheapest of sources of labor and supplies Licensing: enabling a company to produce and market a product in another country; franchising is licensing that provides a complete package of materials and services Direct Investing: high level of involvement, company manages and controls assets Joint Venture: a company shares costs and risks with another firm, typically in the host country Wholly owned foreign affiliate (direct acquisition): has complete control and provide cost saving Greenfield Venture: builds a subsidiary from scratch in a foreign country

Ten Manager Roles ; Interpersonal

Figurehead: perform ceremonial and symbolic duties such as greeting visitors, signing legal documents Leader: direct and motivate subordinates; train counsel, and communicate with subordinates Liaison: maintain information links inside and outside the organization; use email, phone, meetings

Horizontal Management Types

Functional Managers: responsible for departments that perform a single functional task and have employees with similar training and skills General Managers: responsible for several departments that perform different functions

Communication Differences (high and low)

High Context Culture: people are sensitive to circumstances and surrounding social exchange, use communication primarily to build personal personal relationships, meaning is derived from context Low Context Culture: people use communication primarily to exchange facts and information, meaning is derived from primarily from words, business transaction is more important than building relationships and trust, individual welfare and achievement is more important that the group

Manager Roles (categories)

Informal (managing by information) Interpersonal (managing through people) Decisional (managing through action)

Ten Manager Roles ; Informational

Monitor: seek and receive information; scan web, periodicals, reports, maintain personal contracts Disseminator: forward information to other organization members; send memos and reports, make phone calls Spokesperson: transmit information to outsiders through speeches, reports

What are the four management functions (with definitions)

Planning: select goals and ways to attain them; identify goals for future organizational performances and deciding on the tasks and use of resources to attain them Organizing: assign responsibility for task accomplishment; assigning tasks, grouping tasks in departments, delegating authority, and allocating resources across the organization Leading: use influence to motivate employees; use of influence to motivate employees to achieve the organizational goals Controlling: monitor activities and make corrections; monitoring employees' activities, determining whether the organization is moving towards its goals, and making corrections as necessary

Political Decision Making Model

Pluralistic conflicting goals, condition of uncertainty or ambiguity,, inconsistent viewpoints; ambiguous information, bargaining and discussion among coalition members

Hofstede's Value Dimensions

Power Distance: high power distance means that people accept inequality in power among institutions, organizations, and people; low power distance means that people expect equality in power Uncertainty Avoidance: high uncertainty avoidance means that members of a society feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity; low uncertainty avoidance means that people have great tolerance for the unstructured, the unclear, and the unpredictable Individualism and Collectivism: individualism reflects a value for a loosely knit social framework in which individuals are expected to take care of themselves. Collectivism means a preference for a tighly knit social framework in which individuals look after on another and organizations protect their members' interests Masculinity and Femininity: masculinity stands for preference for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, work centrality, and material success. Femininity reflects the value of relationships, cooperation, group decision making, and quality of life

Stages of Crisis Planning

Prevention: build relationships and detect signals from the environment Preparation: designate crisis management team and spokesperson, create detailed crisis management plan, set up effective communications system

6 Steps for Managerial Decision Making

Recognition of Decision Requirement, Diagnosis of Analysis of Causes, Development of Alternatives, Selection of Desired Alternatives, Implementation of Chosen Alternative

What are the five categories of management activities

Set Objectives: establish goals for the group and decide what must be done to achieve them Organize: divide work into manageable activities and select people to accomplish tasks Motivate and Communicate: create teamwork via decisions to pay, promotions, etc. and through communication Measure: set targets and standards, appraise performance Develop People: recognize the value of employees and develop the critical organizational asset

4 Steps to an MBO

Set goals, develop action plans, review progress, appraise overall performance

Single Use Plans vs Standing Plans

Single Use: achieve one time goals, programs and projects Standing Plans: ongoing plans, policies, rules, and procedures

Management Skills

Technical Skills: understanding and proficiency in the performance of specific tasks Human Skills: ability to work with and through other people and to work effectively as a group member Conceptual Skills: cognitive ability to see the organization as a whole system and the relationship among its parts

Which of the following has the highest possibility of failure?

The condition of ambiguity

Vertical Management Types

Top Managers: responsible for the entire organization (president, chairperson, executive director) Middle Managers: responsible for business units and major departments (department head, division head, manager of quality control) Project Managers: responsible for temporary project work that involves the participation of people from various functions and levels of the organization First-Line Managers: directly responsible for production of goods and services

Administrative Decision Making Model

Vague problem and goals, condition of uncertainty, limited information about alternatives and their outcomes, satisficing choice for resolving problem using intuition

Goal:

a goal is a desired future circumstance or condition that the organization attempts to realize

Plan:

a plan is a blueprint for goal achievement and specifies the necessary resource allocations, schedules, tasks, and other actions

Which model of decision making is associated with satisficing, bounded rationality, and uncertainty

administrative

Certainty

all information is fully available

Managers are considered to have a(n) _______ style when they prefer to consider complex solutions based on as much data as they can gather

analytical

Programmed Decisions

associated with decision rules, or following a policy

Classical Decision Making Models

clear cut problems and goals, condition of certainty, full information about alternatives and their outcomes, rational choice by individual for maximizing outcomes

RIsk

clear-cut goals; good information available; but future outcomes subject to chance of loss or failure

Quasi-rationality

combine intuitive and analytical thought

The biggest mistake that many managers make is the failure to:

communicate effectively

Juan Perez is the President of WV Railroad. His organization faces issues related to the environment, government regulation, and competition. He will need to rely primarily on his:

conceptual skills

All of the following are characteristics of the administrative decision making model except:

conditions of certainty

Serving the Bottom of the Pyramid

corporations can alleviate problems and make large profits by selling to the world's poorest people

A nation's _______ includes the shared knowledge, beliefs and values, as well as the common modes of behavior and ways of thinking, among members of.a society

culture

Satisficing

decision makers choose the first solution that satisfies minimal decision criteria

Examples of nonprogrammed decisions would include the decision to:

develop a new product or service

Stefan, a supermarket cashier, recently received an award for having the highest scan rate among all cashiers. This is an example of organizational:

efficiency

Most firms begin with which strategy to enter foreign markets?

exporting

Which of these reflects a cultural preference for cooperation, group decision making, and quality of life?

femininity

MBO Benefits

focuses manager and employee efforts on activities that will lead to goal attainment, can improve performance at all company levels, improves employee motivation, aligns individual and departmental goals with company goals

Scenario Building

forecasting technique to look at current trends and discontinuities and visualize future possibilities

________ managers are responsible for departments that perform a single functional task and have employees with similar training and skills

functional

______ places an emphasis on a worldwide perspective

geocentric companies

Benefits of Planning

goals and plan provide a source of motivation and commitment, guide resource allocation, guide to action, set a standard of performance

Limitations of Planning

goals and plans can create a false sense of uncertainty, may cause rigidity in a turbulent environment, get in the way of intuition and creativity

Ambiguity

goals or problem is unclear; alternatives are difficult to define; information is unavailable

All of the following are characteristics of effective goal setting except:

goals should be set for every aspect of employee behavior

A ______ interaction requires more time because a relationship has to be developed, and trust and friendship must be established

high-context

Coalition

informal alliance to support specific goal

Which of the following is not one of the conceptual categories of managerial roles Mintzberg defined?

intrapersonal

Which of the following is a sociocultural factor in the international environment?

language

In interpersonal operations, the economic environment represents all of the following factors except:

laws and regulations

Which of the following is not a decisional role?

liaison

Jana has a high tolerance for the unstructured, the unclear, and the unpredictable. She can best be described as having:

low uncertainty avoidance

_________ is primarily responsible for operational goals/plans

lower management

What are the common approaches for executing plans?

management by objectives, performance dashboards, single use plans, decentralized responsibilities

Uncertainty

managers know which goals they want to achieve; but information is incomplete

The _____ is the basis for the strategic level of goals and plans in which turn shapes the ____, and _______ level

mission, tactical, operational

_________ is the approach that defines how a decision maker should make decisions and provides guidelines for reaching an ideal outcome for the organization

normative

_______ goals lead to the attainment of _____ goals, which in turn lead to the attainment of ______ goals

operational, tactical, strategic

Which of the following is NOT a tool for executing a plan?

operations map

Bounded Rationality

people have limits or boundaries on how rational they can be

Robert, a top-level manager at an advertising agency, spends a significant part of his work day identifying goals for future organizational performance and deciding how to use resources to attain these goals. This involves which management function?

planning

When senior managers at Gap Inc decided to become the number one service quality clothing company in the world, they were engaging in the management function of _______

planning

_______ is the act of determining the organization's goals and the means for achieving them.

planning

Contingency Planning

planning for emergencies, setbacks, or unexpected conditions

_________ refers to the degree to which people accept inequality in power among institutions, organizations, and people

power distance

Intuition

quick apprehension of situation based on past experience without conscious thought

The classical model of decision making is based on _______ assumptions

rational

Stretch Goals

reasonable yet highly ambitious, clear, compelling, and imaginative - require innovation to reach them

Programmed decisions are made in response to ______ organizational problems

recurring

Organizational Efficiency

refers to the amount of resources used to achieve an organizational goal; efficiency = output / input

Globalization

refers to the extent to which trade and investments, information, social and cultural ideas, and political cooperation flow between countries

Under conditions of _______, statistical analyses are useful

risk

_____ is the first step in the MBO process

setting goals

Which of the following best describes Stacey's position as a functional manager?

she supervises employees with similar training and skills

Organization

social entity that is goal directed and deliberately structured

Language, values, religion, education all describe which dimension in the international environment?

sociocultural

Which of the following is a visual representation of the key drivers of an organization's success, showing the cause and effect relationships among goals and plans?

strategy map

Which type of plan helps managers implement the overall strategic plan?

tactical

Which of the following is most important at lower organizational levels?

technical skills

Organizational Effectiveness

the degree to which the organization achieve a stated goal, or succeeds in accomplishing what it tries to do; providing a product or service that customers value

Which of these is true about single-use plans?

they are developed to achieve a set of goals that are unlikely to be repealed in the future

_________ means that managers know which goals they wish to achieve, but information about alternatives and future events is incomplete

uncertainty

Crisis Planning

unexpected events that are sudden and devastating

Nonprogrammed Decisions

unique situations, poor defined, unstructured, important consequences