MGMT 309 Final Exam Study Guide

What is the communication process?

1.The sender decides what information to transmit to the receiver. 2.Encoding means choosing words and/or nonverbal methods to convey the information. 3.A channel is the means of transmission, such as a website, text, or video call. 4.Decoding is the interpretation of the message by the receiver.5.The receiver holds the information in their mind. The receiver's version may or may not match the sender's version.

What is a board of directors?

A governing body elected by the stockholders and charged with overseeing the general management of the firm to ensure that it is being run in a way that best serves the stockholders' interests.

What is job design?

A manager figures out the responsibilities of people in the organization through job design. There are a number of approaches to job design. Job specialization, which evolved from Adam Smith's concept of division of labor, concerns the degree to which the work of the organization is divided into smaller tasks. At one extreme, an unspecialized job would be held by a self-employed entrepreneur with no employees who does all of the work of the business alone. At the other extreme, a very large organization may have thousands of specialized jobs that each do a very small part of the work of the organization. •With job rotation, employees are intentionally moved from one position to another. High-skilled jobs are not appropriate for job rotation because they cannot be performed well if the employee in the job is always new to it. Therefore, the primary reason organizations use job rotation is to train workers on lower-level skills.•Job enlargement increases the number of tasks an employee performs. Having a variety of tasks is intended to increase satisfaction. However, job enlargement increases training costs; employees often believe they should be paid more; and the job may still be boring.•Job enrichment not only increases the number of tasks a worker performs but also gives the worker more control. In addition, employees are regularly given new, challenging tasks. For job enrichment to work, employees should be consulted about their preferences before being handed more work and asked to make more decisions.•The job characteristics approach includes an analysis of the work system (the way in which processes and activities are coordinated to produce products or services) and seeks to improve jobs along five dimensions, with differing degrees of success depending on the personality of the employee.•Employees in work teams are empowered to decide how to perform a set of tasks, which may include assigning responsibilities, monitoring performance, and scheduling work.

What is quantitative management?

A new perspective on management, the quantitative perspective, emerged during World War II. Government and military planners discovered that mathematical techniques developed by scientific management researchers decades earlier could help them deploy forces efficiently. After the war, companies began to use the same techniques to manage their workforces, plants, and equipment. The quantitative management perspective focuses on using mathematical models and computers to aid in decision making and increase economic effectiveness. It has two branches: •Management science focuses on using mathematical models to represent reality, aid in decision making and measure results. A manager might use mathematical modeling to decide how many workers should staff different facilities or set up a computer simulation to determine how well a product would withstand accidental damage. •Operations management but is less technical than management science, and is used to improve business operations and produce goods and services more efficiently. Examples of operations management include managing inventory, managing supply chains, and planning shipping routes. Quantitative management has provided managers with many tools to help them make better decisions and improve the efficiency of their organizations. Managers should be aware that, while useful, quantitative management has limitations. Benefits: •Sophisticated mathematical techniques help with decision making. •Models provide an increased understanding of complex organizational processes. •It has enhanced the management functions of planning and controlling. Limitations: •It does not fully explain or predict the behavior of people. •Managers may focus on mathematical analysis so much that they overlook other important skills. •If based on unrealistic assumptions, models may lead to poor decisions.

What is a psychological contract?

A psychological contract is similar in some ways to a standard legal contract but is less formal and well defined. In particular, a psychological contract is the overall set of expectations held by an individual with respect to what he or she will contribute to the organization and what the organization will provide in return.

What is administrative management?

Administrative management focuses on the whole organization. For example, Henri Fayol systematized the practice of management and identified four key managerial functions: •Planning •Organizing •Leading •Controlling Administrative Manager: Administrative, or general, managers are not associated with any particular management specialty. Administrative managers tend to be generalists; they have some basic familiarity with all functional areas of management rather than specialized training in any one area.

What is a highly socialized team?

After an individual joins a group, if they choose to adopt the group's norms, they gradually move from outsider to insider status in a process called socialization.

What are the various types of resurces? (Physical, Human, etc)

An organization is a group of people working together in a structured and coordinated way to achieve a set of goals. Management is the combining and coordinating of various resources to achieve the organization's goals. There are four types of resources: •Human •Financial •Physical •Information

What is impression management?

Another common political behavior is impression management, which is an intentional effort by people to enhance the way in which they are perceived by others. Employees may engage in impression management for a number of reasons: •To advance in their careers•To boost their self-esteem by receiving compliments•To acquire more power and hence more control Members of an organization who are concerned with impression management may be careful in their attire, their verbal and body language, and the professional appearance of their desk or video backdrop. They may also seek to be associated with successful projects and high-status people. There is nothing wrong with presenting oneself in a good light to make a positive impression on others. Indeed, this behavior is expected in situations such as job interviews. Impression management becomes problematic only when people lie about their accomplishments, take credit for others' work, or resort to other unethical conduct to try to look better to others.

What is two-factor theory?

Another content perspective on motivation is the two-factor theory of motivation, developed by Frederick Herzberg. This theory proposes that one set of factors causes satisfaction and another set causes dissatisfaction. Thus, as shown in the figure, an individual operates on two spectrums at the same time, one governed by motivation factors and the other by hygiene factors. The employee may feel satisfied about some employment conditions and simultaneously be dissatisfied by others. According to the two-factor theory, a manager should ensure the hygiene factors are not causing dissatisfaction so that employees are not demotivated, then attend to motivation factors to promote higher performance. Researchers in the field of motivation do not give Herzberg's theory much credence, but it continues to play a prominent role in managers' thinking about the importance and processes of motivation.

What is attribution?

Attribution is a mechanism through which we observe behavior and then attribute causes to it.

What is belongingness?

Belongingness needs relate to social processes. They include the need for love and affection and the need to be accepted by one's peers. These needs are satisfied for most people by family and community relationships outside of work and by friendships on the job. A manager can help satisfy these needs by allowing social interaction and by making employees feel like part of a team or work group.

What is diversification?

Diversification describes the number of different businesses that an organization is engaged in and the extent to which these businesses are related to one another. There are three types of diversification strategies: single-product strategy, related diversification, and unrelated diversification. A company has the least amount of diversification when it has a single-product strategy, providing just one product or service, often in a single market. A large organization operating in multiple different but related businesses, industries, or markets is practicing related diversification. Businesses can be related in different ways, or have different bases of relatedness: •Similar technology•Shared distribution and marketing channels•Shared brand name and reputation•Shared customers A large organization operating in multiple businesses, industries, or markets with little or no relation to each other is practicing unrelated diversification.

What is empowerment?

Empowerment is the process of enabling workers to set their own work goals, make decisions, and solve problems within their sphere of responsibility and authority. The role of participation and empowerment in motivation can be expressed in terms of both content perspectives and expectancy theory. Employees who participate in decision making may be more committed to executing decisions properly. Furthermore, the successful process of making a decision, executing it, and then seeing the positive consequences can help satisfy one's need for achievement, provide recognition and responsibility, and enhance self-esteem.

What are organizational goals?

Goals serve four purposes in organizations: •To serve as a "compass," giving people a single path to direct their activity •To be an input to sound planning, which in turn will inform future goal setting •To motivate employees. To be motivational, a goal should be specific and somewhat challenging, and people should be rewarded if they attain the goal. •To assist with evaluation and control of organizational performance. Performance is measured against the goal, and adjustments may be made to improve performance or modify the goal. •The mission is the organization's unique purpose that distinguishes it from other organizations.•Strategic goals are set by top management to guide top managers' performance. They are broad in scope (e.g., to increase market share by 10 percent each year for the next three years).•Tactical goals are set by and for middle managers. They state how to achieve the strategic goals (e.g., to increase market share, we will add desirable features to our products each year for the next three years).•Operational goals (objectives) are set by and for lower-level managers and address shorter-term actions needed to meet the tactical goals (e.g., to add desirable features, we will research and design new features for two products each quarter this year).

What is a GANTT chart?

Henry Gantt, another contributor to scientific management, was an associate of Taylor at Midvale, Simonds, and Bethlehem Steel. Later, working alone, he developed other techniques for improving worker output. One, called the Gantt chart, is still used today. A Gantt chart is essentially a means of scheduling work and can be generated for each worker or for an entire complex project. Gantt also refined Taylor's ideas about piecework pay systems.

What are values?

Values are individual beliefs that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behavior.

What is an organizational team?

In contrast, task groups are created by the organization to execute a relatively small set of objectives within a certain time before disbanding. One type of task group is the team, which often carries out tasks and functions with little supervision; supervisors move into the role of coach or facilitator. The team might be formed to solve a problem (problem-solving team), coordinate work across teams (management team), or simply do the work of the organization (often called a self-managed team when empowered to make decisions). Virtual teams work together online. When teams are properly empowered and supported, they often become highly cohesive, high-performing groups.

What is Theory X and Theory Y?

In the 1950s, Douglas McGregor put forward a model known as Theory X and Theory Y: •Theory X: People do not like to work and have little ambition, so managers must coerce them into working toward the organization's goals. •Theory Y: People accept work as a necessary part of life, so they will be motivated to work and accept responsibility for it under favorable conditions where they can receive rewards for reaching objectives. Theory X is a pessimistic view in line with scientific management theory, while Theory Y is a more optimistic view that reflects the beliefs of human relations advocates. McGregor said that Theory Y is a more appropriate view for managers to adopt.

What is job specialization?

Job specialization, which evolved from Adam Smith's concept of division of labor, concerns the degree to which the work of the organization is divided into smaller tasks. At one extreme, an unspecialized job would be held by a self-employed entrepreneur with no employees who does all of the work of the business alone. At the other extreme, a very large organization may have thousands of specialized jobs that each do a very small part of the work of the organization. Job specialization helps organizations in four ways: •Employees who do small, simple tasks become good at them. •Employees lose less time to task switching since they are doing fewer tasks. •Specialized equipment can be developed to help with a very specific job. •It is easy and inexpensive to train replacement workers. Job specialization also has downsides: •Employees with very narrow jobs tend to become bored and thus unhappy. •When each worker does only a small part of the work, work must be handed off many times, each time resulting in some loss of efficiency.

When assessing an employee's performance, what is the difference between a ranking system and a rating system?

Judgmental methods, including ranking and rating techniques, are the most common way to measure performance. Ranking compares employees directly with one another and orders them from best to worst. Rating differs from ranking in that it compares each employee against a fixed standard rather than with other employees. A rating scale provides the standard. Figure 13.3 gives examples of three graphic rating scales for a bank teller.

What is labor relations?

Labor relations is the management of employees who are represented by a union. •The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act, spells out procedures by which employees can establish labor unions and requires organizations to bargain collectively with legally formed unions.•The Labor-Management Relations Act, also known as the Taft-Hartley Act, limits the power of unions and specifies management rights during a union-organizing campaign.

What is leadership?

Leadership is both a process and a property: •Process—Leadership is the use of noncoercive influence to shape the organization's goals, motivate behavior toward the achievement of those goals, and help define organizational culture. •Property—Leadership is the set of characteristics attributed to those individuals perceived as leaders. Thus, leaders are individuals who can influence others without relying on coercion and/or people whom others accept as leaders. Someone can be a manager or a leader, or both.

What is merit pay vs incentive pay?

Merit pay is determined by the relative value of an employee's contributions such that employees who make greater contributions receive more pay. Merit pay plans formally base at least some meaningful portion of compensation on merit. They are typically implemented through annual pay raises, where employees who are judged to have performed better receive larger increases, all other factors being equal. After an employee gets a merit raise, then even if her performance level drops, her pay typically does not drop. Incentive reward systems pay employees directly for producing something of value for the organization. Under a piece-rate incentive plan, the organization pays the worker for each unit produced. For example, an agricultural worker might be paid for each bushel of produce harvested. Individual incentive plans reward employees for performance shortly after the good performance occurs. For instance, a salesperson meets the monthly sales quota and is paid a bonus on the next paycheck. If the salesperson does not meet the quote the following month, he does not receive a bonus in that pay period.

What is motivation?

Motivation is the set of forces that cause an individual to behave in certain ways. The figure shows how a person feels motivated to act.

What is body language?

Nonverbal communication often relies on body language—facial expressions, posture, gestures, and so forth.

Who is Chester Barnard? What is his theory?

One of the primary contributors to administrative management between 1886 and 1961. Chester Barnard, former president of New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, made notable contributions to management in his book The Functions of the Executive. The book proposes a major theory about the acceptance of authority. The theory suggests that subordinates weigh the legitimacy of a supervisor's directives and then decide whether to accept them. An order is accepted if the subordinate understands it, is able to comply with it, and views it as appropriate. The importance of Barnard's work is enhanced by his experience as a top manager.

What are the various types of communication?

Oral communication involves using the spoken word to express meaning. There are a number of benefits to oral communication. Nonverbal communication either does not use words or uses words to carry more meaning than that of the words themselves. It may involve facial expressions, body movements, physical contact, proximity between communicators, eye contact, gestures, images, attire, and settings. Examples of written communication are letters, reports, memos, handwritten notes, emails, and text messages. Written communication has a number of benefits, including some that oral communication lacks. A communication network is the pattern through which the members of a group or team communicate. Research has identified typical patterns in groups of three, four, and five individuals. The figure shows common patterns in groups of five.

What is organizational change?

Organization change is any substantive modification to some part of the organization. Organization change can be prompted by external or internal forces.

What is organizational culture?

Organizational culture is the set of values, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that give the organization a unique identity in terms of what it stands for, how it works, and what it values. Culture gives the organization its "feel." Especially in a large organization, different parts of the organization may have different cultures. Though difficult to observe or measure, culture is vital to the effectiveness of the organization. Organizations with strong cultures tend to be more successful than those with weak cultures. Organizational culture is formed by many influences over time. These include the following: •The founder •Symbols •Stories •Heroes •Slogans •Ceremonies •History of successes •Shared experiences Managers must first understand their organization's culture. Then a key decision is whether to maintain the culture or change it. •If the culture is a source of strength, then managers should maintain it. They do this by rewarding employees who act in accordance with the culture. They also express the culture through stories, ceremonies, and so forth. •If the culture is no longer a strength due to changes in the environment, then it should be changed. To change the culture, a manager first needs to have a clear vision of what the new culture should be. Then the manager can intentionally adopt new slogans, tell new stories, stage new ceremonies, and break with traditions attached to the organization's history. Another way to change culture is to hire managers from outside the organization, because they will bring new ways of thinking and acting to the organization.

What are the various types of strategy? (Direct invetment, etc.)

Organizations increase their international presence through a variety of strategies: •An organization engages in importing when it acquires a good, a service, or capital abroad and brings it into the home country. Exporting means making the product or service in the home country and selling it abroad. •With licensing, one organization allows another to use its brand name, trademark, technology, patent, copyright, or other assets according to strict specification in exchange for a royalty. •In a strategic alliance, organizations cooperate for mutual gain through a partnership or other contractual agreement. Strategic alliances may exist between organizations offering different services to the same customers or between suppliers and buyers. In a joint venture, the allies are co-owners of a new enterprise. •Direct investment involves building or buying manufacturing capability in another country. An example is the purchase of maquiladoras in Mexico by non-Mexican companies to manufacture goods where labor costs are low.

What is organizational structure?

Organizing is deciding how to arrange and assemble certain elements so an organization will be as successful as possible. Managers have many options for how they build an organizational structure. The activity of organizing can be thought of as having two stages: selecting elements and then deciding how to put them together. When determining organizational structure, managers make decisions about six elements: •Designing jobs •Grouping jobs •Establishing reporting relationships between jobs •Distributing authority among jobs •Coordinating activities among jobs •Differentiating among positions

Why do people choose to join groups?

People in organizations join groups for a variety of reasons. For one, almost everyone who is hired into an organization is placed in the functional group to which their job belongs. An employee might also be asked or told to join a task group. When part or all of the motivation for joining a group is voluntary, the reasons for joining include the following: •Interpersonal attraction results when people simply like each other. Similar attitudes, personalities, or shared life experiences help generate interpersonal attraction. For example, if her manager asks Tara to join a team tasked with developing uniform design principles for the company's products, Tara might respond by asking, "Who else is on the team?" because she wants to know whether she would be working with people she respects and likes. •The need for affiliation motivates many people to join a group, since groups provide the opportunity to interact with others and meet new people. •The group's goals may be appealing. As an example, employees may join a "green workplace" group to promote environmentally conscious practices at work because they want to have a positive impact on the planet. •A desire for certain instrumental benefits may motivate group membership. For instance, Craig may seek to join a team charged with improving the quality of customer service, not because he particularly cares about customer service but because the executive leading the team is someone whom he'd like to work for someday. He hopes that by joining the team, he can establish a closer relationship with this executive and impress them with his work.

What is resistance to change?

People resist change for a variety of reasons, which managers must address. Here are some of the most common reasons people are reluctant to change: •Change is inherently uncertain, so people often feel anxious about whether the change will negatively affect them. •Threatened self-interest arises when people know the change will reduce their influence or cause the organization to value their jobs less. •Sometimes people resist a change because they disagree with it. They have different perceptions of the situation or different opinions about the best response, and so they try to block the manager from acting. •Employees may feel a sense of loss during organization change, as their jobs, procedures, systems, status, and workplace relationships change.

What is a planned vs reactive change?

Planned changes are made in anticipation of future events. Reactive changes are responses, often rushed and inadequate, to developing circumstances.

What are the various functions of management?

Planning is setting an organization's goals and deciding how to achieve them. Part of planning is decision making, which is choosing a course of action from various alternatives. •Organizing means deciding how people, their activities, and the organization's resources should be grouped so that they work together in a coordinated way. •Leading is motivating and managing members of the organization to work together in the interests of the organization. •Controlling is monitoring and correcting the organization's progress toward its goals.

What are the various types of power?

Power is the ability to affect the behavior of others. Having power and actually using it are different: often a manager or leader is well advised to use their power sparingly, as it is more influential when unused. Leaders in organizations may have five kinds of power: •Legitimate power is essentially authority: it is power that the organization grants to people occupying particular positions in the hierarchy. Managers have legitimate power over their direct reports; essentially, a manager can tell subordinates what to do and how to do it. Although leaders may have this power, exercising this power does not constitute leadership. •Reward power is the ability to give or withhold formal and informal rewards. A leader is someone whose informal rewards, such as praise, gratitude, and recognition, are valued by others. If members of the organization value only the formal organizational rewards controlled by the manager, then the manager is not a leader. •Coercive power is the ability to force compliance by means of psychological, emotional, or physical threat. The exercise of coercive power may involve verbal and written reprimands, fines, demotion, suspension, and termination. It may also involve verbal abuse, humiliation, and manipulation. The more coercive power a manager uses, the less others will view the manager as a leader. •Referent power is an abstract power that inspires others to adopt the vision of the leader and even emulate the leader. Followers may identify with a leader who is similar to them in personality, background, or attitudes. Or the leader may possess charisma, an intangible attribute that inspires loyalty and enthusiasm. Some managers have referent power, but it is more closely associated with leadership. •Expert power is derived from information or expertise, with those with the knowledge having power over those who do not. Examples of expert power include knowing how to interact with a difficult stakeholder, having the capability of developing the organization's technology platform, and understanding how to navigate the organizational structure to get work done. Usually leaders and managers have a great deal of expert power.

What is social responsibility?

Society expects organizations to act responsibly, meaning they should avoid doing harm to others. Social responsibility refers to the set of obligations an organization has to protect and enhance the society in which it functions. Social responsibility toward organizational stakeholders means dealing with them fairly and honestly while following all regulations that may govern the stakeholder relationship (for example, issuing truthful financial disclosures to the organization's investors). The stakeholders of an organization vary depending on what it does, whom it serves, and whom it answers to. The figure shows a number of possible stakeholders. In recent years, responsibility for the natural environment has taken on greater urgency for organizations, due to heightened public awareness of environmental issues. Some prominent environmental issues include: •Climate change •Oil spills •Fracking Many organizations burnish their social responsibility credentials by promoting the general social welfare. For example, they might contribute to the arts, educational institutions, and community groups. Some believe organizations should act more broadly to correct political injustices in the world; thus, managers may deliberately avoid doing business in countries with oppressive regimes.

What is a mission statement?

Statement of its "fundamental, unique purpose that sets a business apart from other firms of its type and identifies the scope of the business's operations in product and market terms."

What are the various organizational environments? (Task, Sociocultural, etc)

The general environment is the set of broad dimensions and forces that create the overall context in which the organization operates. There are five dimensions of the general environment: •The economic dimension is the health of the economy. Economic growth, inflation, interest rates, and unemployment are typically important factors for business. •The technological dimension involves the means by which the organization can convert resources into products and services. Examples of technologies include website shopping-cart apps, solar panels, and the CRISPR genetic-engineering technique. •The sociocultural dimension includes society's customs, mores, values, and demographic characteristics. These factors determine what products, services, and behaviors society will value. For example, society might put more or less value on being environmentally friendly, or consumer tastes might shift away from alcoholic beverages and toward caffeinated beverages. •The political-legal dimension concerns the relationship between business and government. Governments pass laws and exercise oversight that affect nearly every aspect of business; a vivid example is the legislation enacted in 2020 to respond to the spread of COVID-19. The stability and trustworthiness of a government also affects how confident an organization feels about conducting operations. •The international dimension involves competitors from other countries, supply chains that cross national boundaries, and trade agreements between countries. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is an example of an element of the international dimension. The task environment consists of the external groups that act on the organization. •Competitors compete with the organization for customers or resources. For example, two banks might compete to offer loans to people buying homes, to attract deposits so they have money to lend out, and to recruit well-qualified loan officers to work for them. •Customers are those individuals or groups that pay for the organization's products or services. Examples of customers are people who order pizza from a restaurant, a corporate campus that pays for landscaping services, students who pay tuition for an education, and local tax

What is the Trademark Revision Act of 1988?

Trademark Law Revision Act of 1988 - Amends the Lanham Act to permit a person who has a bona fide intention to use a trademark in commerce to apply to register the trademark. Requires that such trademark actually be used in commerce before it becomes a registered trademark.

What are ethics?

We define ethics as one's personal beliefs about whether a behavior, action, or decision is right or wrong. Note that we define ethics in the context of the individual—people have ethics; organizations do not. Ethics is a set of beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. This varies from person to person, based on culture and life experience, but most societies have broad social norms that define what is and is not acceptable. •Ethical behavior conforms to widely accepted social norms. •Unethical behavior violates such norms. ethical standards—the social norms—of its citizens code of ethics: states the values and standards that guide the firm's actions managerial ethics: Managerial ethics are the standards of behavior that guide individual managers in their work. The three basic areas of concern for managerial ethics are the relationships of the firm to the employee, the employee to the firm, and the firm to other economic agents. Managers need to approach each set of relationships from an ethical and moral perspective.

What are the various types of strategy?

When managers know the organizational goals they want to support, the process of formulating and implementing strategy is systematic and planned, and the result is a deliberate strategy. When an organization chooses to allocate resources in an unexpected direction, outside any established mission and goals, an emergent strategy arises. Michael Porter states that at the business level, organizations may pursue a differentiation, overall cost leadership, or focus strategy. Each is applicable to a wide range of competitive situations. •With a differentiation strategy, an organization makes products or services of high quality to distinguish them from those of its competitors. Customers are willing to pay more for these products/services. Advertising that highlights features of a product/service is aimed at creating a perception of high quality, and thus differentiation, among consumers.•An organization that pursues an overall cost leadership strategy seeks to reduce costs so it can charge lower prices than its competitors and still make a profit. Advertising that highlights low prices is communicating this strategy to consumers.•If an organization adopts a focus strategy, it concentrates on a particular region, product, or customer group. Within that area, the organization may pursue either a differentiation strategy or an overall cost leadership strategy. In the framework developed by Raymond Miles and Charles Snow, business-level strategies are classified as prospector, defender, analyzer, or reactor. •An innovative firm that takes risks in order to grow uses the prospector strategy. This firm is constantly expanding into new markets and opportunities.•A firm that focuses on maintaining stable growth by protecting its current business uses the defender strategy. This firm tries to lower costs and improve the performance of its core products/services.•A firm may fall between the prospector and defender positions, both maintaining its current business and trying to innovate. This analyzer strategy is common among large companies, which have not only sizable existing businesses that are worth protecting but also the resources to pursue new opportunities.•A firm that reacts to changes in the environment with no

What is Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

a federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.

What is a compressed work schedule?

compressed work schedule, working a full 40-hour week in fewer than the traditional five days. One approach involves working 10 hours a day for four days, leaving an extra day off. Another alternative is for employees to work slightly less than 10 hours a day, but to complete the 40 hours by lunch time on Friday (many medical practices use this schedule). And a few firms have tried having employees work 12 hours a day for three days, followed by four days off.

What is the decision making process?

the decision-making process includes recognizing and defining the nature of a decision situation, identifying alternatives, choosing the "best" alternative, and putting it into practice. Decision making is the act of choosing one alternative from among a set of alternatives. The decision-making process includes several steps: 1.Recognizing and defining the nature of a decision situation. First, the manager needs to appreciate that a decision needs to be made. 2.Identifying alternatives. If there is only one possible course of action, then no decision needs to be made; the manager does the only thing that can be done. Almost always, however, there are multiple options. 3.Choosing the most effective alternative. To make this judgment, the manager needs to have a clear definition of effectiveness as it applies to the situation. For example, in one situation, the most effective decision is one that minimizes costs, while in another situation, the most effective decision is one that maximizes market share. 4.Putting the decision into effect. The manager makes a plan to translate the decision into actions.

What is cross training?

training team members to do all or most of the jobs performed by the other team members. Part of increasing employee involvement which increases productivity.

What is infrastructure?

•A country's infrastructure includes the systems that support economic activity, such as the transportation, communication, energy, education, and health care systems. Countries vary widely in the quality of their infrastructure.

What are inducements?

•Inducement occurs when a manager offers something of value to someone in exchange for their support. For example, Cara is running a project that is behind schedule. She offers to support Wayne's top-priority project during the budgeting process in exchange for his lending her two of his best team members so she can complete the project on time.

What is informational justice?

•Informational justice is the degree to which members see that decisions are made using all available information.

What is job enrichment?

•Job enrichment not only increases the number of tasks a worker performs but also gives the worker more control. In addition, employees are regularly given new, challenging tasks. For job enrichment to work, employees should be consulted about their preferences before being handed more work and asked to make more decisions.

What is operations management?

•Operations management is less technical than management science, and is used to improve business operations and produce goods and services more efficiently. Examples of operations management include managing inventory, managing supply chains, and planning shipping routes. This is part of the quantitative management perspective. The quantitative management perspective focuses on using mathematical models and computers to aid in decision making and increase economic effectiveness. It has two branches:

What is an operations manager?

•Operations managers are responsible for the systems that generate the organization's products and services. They lead activities such as production, inventory, and quality.

What are programmed vs non-programmed decisions?

•Programmed decisions are clearly structured and/or arise frequently. For example, if a call center has a rule that upset customers are to be transferred to a supervisor, when a representative realizes a customer is angry, he makes a programmed decision to transfer the customer. •Unprogrammed decisions are new and unstructured. In other words, it is not immediately clear what action should be taken. The manager must invest a great deal of capacity into understanding the situation and rely on intuition to make the decision. For example, as television executives decide how to handle the loss of market share to customers who prefer to stream shows via the internet, they are making a series of unstructured decisions, since this problem has never been solved before.

What is a strategic plan?

•Strategic plans lay out the allocation of resources, priorities, and action steps needed to achieve strategic goals. These plans are made by top managers. Planning discussions center on issues such as scope, resource deployment, competitive advantage, and synergy.

What is a tactical plan?

•Tactical plans support tactical goals and are made by upper and middle management. Whereas strategic plans are primarily about deciding what the organization should do, tactical plans are more about getting things done. Tactical plans tend to have shorter time frames than strategic plans do.

What is scope?

•The scope of an organization's strategy describes the types of markets in which the organization will compete. A company, for example, might choose to manufacture casual sports attire; manufacture sports equipment; or manufacture sports attire and equipment, and operate sports arenas. Those are all different scopes of strategy.