MGMT 309 Exam 1

What are the different managerial roles? Examples of each

1. Interpersonal Roles Figurehead: person in charge (taking visitors to dinner, attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies, etc. Involved in more ceremonial and symbolic activities) Leader: (hiring, training, and motivating employees) Liaison: involves dealing with other people (serving as a coordinator or link among people, groups or organizations) 2. Informational Roles Monitor: monitor the organization (actively seeks information that may be of value) Disseminator: they work with the information that comes from above. They decide whether the people underneath them need this information (transmitting relevant information back to others in the workplace) Spokesperson: (relays information to people outside the unit or outside the organization 3. Decisional Roles Entrepreneur: new ideas (the voluntary initiator of change) Disturbance handler: (handles problems such as strikes, copyright infringements, or problems in public relations or corporate image) Resource allocator: decide how many people/resources are needed Negotiator: relates primarily to making decisions (the manager enters into negotiations with other groups or organizations as a representative of the company)

What are the 5 basic characteristics of bureaucracy?

1. The organization should adopt a distinct division of labor, and each position should be filled by an expert 2. The organization should develop a consistent set of rules to ensure that task performance is uniform 3. The organization should establish a hierarchy of positions or offices that creates a chain of command from the top of the organization to the bottom 4. Managers should conduct business in an impersonal way and maintain appropriate social distance between themselves and their subordinates 5. Employment and advancement in the organization should be based on technical expertise, and employees should be protected from arbitrary dismissal

What is administrative management?

Focuses on managing the total organization

What did Weber do?

Max Weber (Pronounced Veber) was a German sociologist. He was the first person to really conceptualize bureaucracy. His work really helps us to understand the structure of modern organizations and some of the challenges as organizations get larger. According to Weber, these are the six characteristics of bureaucracy: Task specialization (division of labor). ... Hierarchical management structure. ... Formal selection rules. ... Efficient and uniform requirements. ... Impersonal environment. ... Achievement-based advancement.

How would you define an organization? what are some examples?

Organization: a group of people working together in a structured and coordinated fashion to achieve a set of goals Example: Anything from a fortune 500 company to a TAMU club.

What are the functions of management?

Planning, Organizing, Controlling, Leading

What is decision making/planning?

Planning: setting the organization's goals and deciding how best to achieve them Decision Making: involves selecting a course of action from a set of alternatives

How do cultural differences impact our business practices?

Values, symbols, beliefs, and language differ from one country to another. Ex. Barbie dolls do not sell well in Muslim countries. Different cultures value time differently. Language can pose a barrier Both spoken words and nonverbal aspects of language can pose problems for managers

Theory X

a pessimistic and negative view of workers consistent with the views of scientific management Assumptions: people don't like work and try to avoid it, managers have to control, direct, coerce and threaten employees to get them to work toward organizational goals, people prefer to be directed, to avoid responsibility, and to want security, they have little ambition

Theory Y

a positive view of workers; it represents the assumptions that human relations advocates make Assumptions: people do not naturally dislike work, people are internally motivated to reach objectives to which they are committed, people are committed to goals when they receive personal rewards for reaching objectives, people will both seek and accept responsibility under favorable conditions, people have the capacity to be innovative in solving problems, people are bright but their potential is underutilized

What are tariffs?

a tax collected on goods shipped across national boundaries

What is a bureaucracy?

based on a rational set of guidelines for structuring organizations in the most efficient manner. It laid the foundation for contemporary organization theory. Max Weber viewed the bureaucratic form of organization as logical, rational, and efficient.

What is systems theory?

by viewing an organization as a system, we can identify four basic elements: inputs, transformation processes, outputs, and feedback

What is a market system?

clusters of countries that engage in high levels of trade with one another

External Environment of an Organization

everything outside an organization's boundaries that might affect it. Includes general environment and task environment

What is management science

focuses specifically on the development of mathematical models A mathematical model is a simplified representation of a system, process, or relationship Focuses on models, equations, and similar representations of reality

What is management?

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

What is a competitor and what are its characteristics?

other organizations that compete with another organization for resources. The most obvious resource competitors compete over is customer dollars

What is contingency theory?

suggests that universal theories cannot be applied to organizations because every organization is unique. Instead, it suggests that appropriate managerial behavior in a given situation depends on, or is contingent on, a wide variety of elements. Basically, effective managerial behavior in one situation cannot always be generalized to other situations

General Environment

the set of broad dimensions and forces in an organization's surroundings that create its overall context

What is social responsibility?

the set of obligations an organization has to protect and enhance the societal context in which it functions

What is operations management? Define it.

they are concerned with creating and managing the systems that create an organization's products and services. Responsibilities include production control, inventory control, quality control, plant layout, and site selection