The Management Process - Exam #2
____ control is associated with autonomous work groups.
Concertive
____ control is a method of gathering information about performance deficiencies as they occur.
Concurrent
____ is the process of discovering unknown patterns and relationships in large amounts of data.
Data mining
Which of the following statements about data mining is true?
Data mining typically uses data from a data warehouse.
____ is a general term that refers to subdividing work and workers into separate organizational units that are responsible for completing particular tasks.
Departmentalization
____ is a feeling of intrinsic motivation, in which workers perceive their work to have meaning and perceive themselves to be competent, having an impact, and capable of self-determination.
Empowerment
____ control is a method of gathering information about performance deficiencies after they occur.
Feedback
Which of the following statements about functional departmentalization is true?
Functional departmentalization allows work to be done by highly qualified specialists.
Which of the following statements about intranets is true?
Intranets are Web-based.
Which of the following is one of the critical issues companies need to address in order to sustain a competitive advantage through information technology?
Is the firm's use of information technology difficult for another company to create or buy?
____ is characterized by simple, easy-to-learn steps; low variety; and high repetition.
Job specialization
Which of the following statements about knowledge is true?
Knowledge is the understanding that one gains from information.
____ costs are the costs associated with implementing or monitoring control.
Regulation
____ occur in data mining when two or more database elements occur together in a significant pattern, with one of the elements preceding the other.
Sequence patterns
Which of the following statements about the Balanced Scorecard approach to control is true?
The customer perspective is the most important in the control process. The company's analysis of its controllable environment is most important to the company's success. The innovation and learning perspective is the most important in the control process. The company's analysis of its noncontrollable environment is most important to the company's success.
Which of the following statements about the organic form of organization design is true?
The organic form of organization design is characterized by broadly defined jobs and responsibility; loosely defined, frequently changing roles; and decentralized authority and horizontal communication based on task knowledge.
Unsupervised data mining can be used to recognize ____ patterns.
affinity, sequence, and predictive
Have you ever purchased a book or CD on Amazon.com and noticed that as soon as you put your selection in the shopping cart, you were offered a series of other items that people who made the same purchase as you did also bought? This would be an example of ____ data mining.
association
Unsupervised data mining is particularly good at identifying ____.
association or affinity patterns sequence patterns predictive patterns data clusters
Two critical steps are required to make sure that data can be accessed by authorized users and no one else. They are ____.
authentication and authorization
Companies that rely on bureaucratic control tend to ____.
be highly resistant to change
The two types of objective controls managers use are ____.
behavior and output
Companies may determine standards by ____.
benchmarking other companies
A system that requires employees to scan their thumbprints as they start work is called a(n)___________.
biometrics
An organization that relies heavily on ____ controls is likely to be highly resistant to change and slow to respond to customers and competitors.
bureaucratic
When the local fast-food restaurant manager caught one of her employees giving free food to his friends, she fired him on the spot. When another employee stayed late after work one night to help a woman start her car, the manager rewarded him. What type of control did the restaurant manager use in these two instances?
bureaucratic
Which of the following is a method managers can use to achieve control in their organizations?
bureaucratic self-control concertive normative
Which of the following is NOT one of the core job characteristics in the job characteristics model (JCM)?
client relationships
The goal of an executive information system is to provide information that is accurate, complete, relevant and ____.
complex
In a(n) ____, managers from different parts of the matrix report to matrix managers who help them sort out problems and conflicts
complex matrix
Ironically, ____ control may lead to even more pressure for workers to conform to expectations than ____ control.
concertive; bureaucratic
A manufacturer of acrylic and latex gloves sells to medical laboratories, to factories where employees handle chemicals, to companies that manufacture micro-tech equipment, and to cleaning services. Because it is organized to better satisfy the needs of each of its four target markets, the manufacturer uses ____ departmentalization.
customer
Large accounting agencies typically have separate departments that deal with households, businesses, and governments. This allows them to better serve the needs of their clients, by using ____ departmentalization.
customer
With divisions that focus on business clients and consumer clients, companies like Sprint, American Express, and others are examples of ____ departmentalization.
customer
The traditional approach to controlling financial performance does NOT examine ____.
customer defections
According to the text, which of the following factors can help managers to determine whether more control is possible?
cybernetic feasibility
A(n) ____ is an information system that helps managers understand problems and potential solutions by acquiring and analyzing information with sophisticated models and tools.
decision support system
The marketing manager of a company that manufactures church furniture has been given the job of increasing corporate profits by 5 percent during the upcoming year. The manager decided to give his assistant the full responsibility and authority for developing a mailing campaign to target churches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In other words, the marketing manager has ____.
delegated the task
As a consequence of the Industrial Revolution and its emphasis on specialization, institutions providing higher education developed strict departments that contained specialized functions. This organizational structure was perceived as a way to enhance the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge. Institutions providing higher education have traditionally used ____.
departmentalization
Kimberly-Clark is subdivided into organizational units called Kimberly-Clark Health Care, which provides products to hospitals, Kimberly-Clark Professional, which sells to businesses, and Kimberly-Clark Consumer, which sells the company's products to customers. From this information, you know that Kimberly-Clark uses ____.
departmentalization
A system that is designed to manage farm field irrigation and farming pest management decisions, based on 20 years of scientific research and data then advise farmers how much to irrigate and when to check soil temperatures is called a(n) _______.
expert system
A car manufacturer ordered 20,000 window assemblies from a supplier. To make sure the assemblies were made to specifications, the supplier of the window assemblies shipped a sample to the car manufacturer for testing. This is an example of ____ control.
feedforward
Caterpillar announced plans to cut its production of construction equipment due to forecasted increases in steel prices. By discovering the problem with product inputs and letting customers know that its output will fall short, Caterpillar used ____ controls.
feedforward
Which approach to control monitors inputs rather than outputs?
feedforward control
In the traditional control systems used at most companies, ____ measures are used to assess performance.
financial
When implementing the financial perspective, managers would use ____.
financial ratios
The Balanced Scorecard approach to control ____.
forces managers at each level of the company to set specific goals and measure performance in each of four areas
Disadvantages of ____ departmentalization include slower decision making, the development of managers and workers with narrow experience and expertise, and makes it more difficult for cross-departmental coordination.
functional
Process modification, material/product substitution, and ____ are the three strategies used for waste prevention and reduction.
good housekeeping
Control is a cybernetic process because it ____.
has a feedback loop
A table showing the order frequencies as well as the average dollar value of the orders of different segments of a catalog retailer's market would be an example of ____.
information
A company makes only one product. The company is carefully evaluating what it learned in becoming such a success to see if it could use the same strategy to expand internationally. Which perspective of the Balanced Scorecard is this manufacturer emphasizing?
innovation and learning perspective
The central concern of the job characteristics model (JCM) is ____.
internal motivation
The chain of command ____.
is described by none of these
The organizational process ____.
is the collection of activities that transform inputs into outputs that customers value
An organization that has increased the number of different tasks that a worker performs within one particular job has engaged in ____.
job enlargement
The Ryerson University Library is organized in a hierarchy with six unit heads reporting to a chief librarian. Within these units are fifteen librarians and forty-seven full-time library staff. One of the tools used in the organizational development of the library was to systematically move employees from one job to another to give them an opportunity to learn and use different skills. The Ryerson University Library used ____.
job rotation
Economic value added (EVA) is so important because it ____.
makes managers at all levels pay much closer attention to how they run their segment of the business
The two basic methods of capturing information are ____.
manual and electronic
Commerce Insurance Services has five divisions. They are personal; core commercial; Main Street business; major commercial; and benefits. The company is also departmentalized along product lines. Commerce Insurance Services uses ____ departmentalization.
matrix
Of all types of departmentalization, ____ departmentalization requires the highest level of management skill for successful implementation.
matrix
One of the advantages the Balanced Scorecard has over traditional control processes that rely solely on financial measures is that it ____.
minimizes the chances of suboptimization
Which of the following is NOT an example of a security problem that may threaten data and data networks?
mob flashing
Which of the following is an approach to managing interorganizational processes?
modular organizations
Data clusters ____.
occur when three or more database elements occur together in a significant way
Roughly 70 percent of all reengineering projects fail because ____.
of how the process affects people in the workplace
According to an electronics CEO, the first requirement of management is that it should make the fullest use of the capacities of its members. Thus any individual's job should be as little defined as possible so that it would 'shape itself' to the person's special abilities and initiative. This electronics company more than likely had a(n) ____ organization.
organic
Normative controls should be used when ____.
organizational culture, values, and beliefs are strong
While ____ emphasizes jobs and their authority relationships, ____ emphasizes the activities through which work gets done in the organization.
organizational structure; organizational process
Data mining is the ____.
process of discovering unknown patterns and relationships in large amounts of data
In recent years, the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) has undergone a radical change in how it determines and shares local weather conditions with pilots. Before the local base weather station was responsible for warnings. The quality of this information varied. Now AFWA provides the same high standard of weather information to all pilots. This is an example of ____?
reengineering
LexisNexis realized that its ability to serve new Web-based customers was severely straining its customer service department after thousands of small and midsize law firms representing a huge business opportunity had to wait 48 hours to have their Web accounts activated after signing up. Clearly, LexisNexis needed to revamp its customer sign-up and order-fulfillment processes, which were designed for large law firms and the ordering of hardcover legal tomes. LexisNexis would most likely use ____ to radically change its business practices.
reengineering
Which of the following factors can help managers determine whether more or different control is worthwhile?
regulation costs
To properly secure data and data networks, a manager should use all of the following EXCEPT ____.
roadblocks
Although firewalls can protect personal computers and network services connected to the corporate network, people away from their offices who interact with their company networks via the Internet face a safety risk. Which of the following technologies has proven to be a viable solution to this problem?
secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption
A manager has instructed Ralph and his fellow workers to develop a daily theme such as patience, empathy, and kindness. Each day, the workers are to try to emphasize the theme as they work with customers, suppliers, and each other. What kind of a control system is Ralph's manager using?
self-control
Baseball management discovered that its sales increased by almost 100 percent in those seasons when it held an open house prior to the opening game and allowed people to see the box seats and examine the view of the stadium from those seats. In terms of data mining, the management discovered a(n) ____ pattern.
sequence
The manual capture of information is ____.
slow expensive labor-intensive often inaccurate
The objective of the company that manufactures liqueur is to grow its international business. To determine its success, it compares its current export sales to 1998, the first year it had double digit growth in exports. For this company, the 1998 exporting data provide a(n) ____.
standard
A report calling for a company to set clear targets to improve fuel economy and to cut factory emissions would want the company to establish emission control ____.
standards
In October 2005, Cadbury Schweppes losses caused it to scale back its financial projections for the remainder of the year. These financial projections were ____ for the beverage company.
standards
The two major types of data mining are ____.
supervised and unsupervised
When a company emphasizes ____ as its quality goal, managers must simultaneously control excellence, price, durability, or other features of a product or service that customers strongly associate with it
value
According to the job characteristics model, ____ means pushing some managerial authority down to workers
vertical loading
The establishment of ____ is an information security procedure that encrypts Internet data at both ends of the transmission process.
virtual private networks
According to the text, which of the following levels produces the greatest minimization of waste?
waste prevention and reduction
____ involves assigning direct authority and responsibility to a subordinate to complete tasks for which the manager is normally responsible
Delegation of authority
Why is information strategically important for organizations?
Information can be used to obtain first-mover advantage.
The primary disadvantage of geographic departmentalization is ____.
duplication of resources
Job specialization can result in ____.
employee boredom
An article on public libraries contained the following statement: "The Balanced Scorecard helps organize and run the library according to a specific strategic plan, while demonstrating the library's value to the community as a whole." Standards suggested to use with the ____ area of the Balanced Scorecard include how quickly and effectively a new service can be offered and how the training staff responds to its introduction
innovation and learning perspective
A(n) ____ is a private company network that allows employees to easily access, share, and publish information using Internet software
intranet
Decentralization ____.
leads to faster decision making and more satisfied customers and employees
A(n) ____ function is an activity that contributes directly to creating or selling the company's products.
line
With ____ departmentalization, most employees report to two bosses.
matrix
In the process of capturing information, ASCII text is generated by ____.
optical character recognition software
A(n) ____ organization is one that is characterized by broadly defined jobs and responsibilities; loosely defined, frequently changing roles; and decentralized authority and horizontal communication based on task knowledge.
organic
In the automobile industry, three car manufacturers and a variety of suppliers and distributors have formed a network to create economies in production through outsourcing. It is intended for this ____ to cut as much as $3,000 from the costs of producing one car.
virtual organization
Although firewalls can protect personal computers and network services connected to the corporate network, people away from their offices who interact with their company networks via the Internet face a safety risk. Which of the following technologies has proven to be an inexpensive solution to this problem?
virtual private networks
____ is a control method that encourages managers to look beyond traditional measures to evaluate four different perspectives on company performance.
Balanced Scorecard
____ control regulates workers' actions and routines on the job, while ____ control measures the results of their efforts.
Behavior; output
____ allows a trucking company not only to compare its safety performance with other companies but to also adopt those practices found to be superior.
Benchmarking
____ control is top-down control in which managers try to influence employee behavior by rewarding or punishing employees for compliance or noncompliance with organizational policies, rules, and procedures.
Bureaucratic
____ controls should be used when it is necessary to standardize operating procedures and establish limits.
Bureaucratic
____ is the regulatory process of establishing standards that will achieve organizational goals, comparing actual performance to those standards, and then, if necessary, taking corrective action to restore performance to those standards.
Control
____ allow managers and employees to use a Web browser to gain access to customized company information and to complete specialized transactions.
Corporate portals
____ are a hybrid of executive information systems and intranets.
Corporate portals
____ is a performance assessment in which companies identify which customers are leaving and the rate at which customers are leaving.
Customer defection
An article on public libraries contained the following statement: "The Balanced Scorecard helps organize and run the library according to a specific strategic plan, while demonstrating the library's value to the community as a whole." When dealing with the customer area of the Balanced Scorecard, the article advised librarians to use customer surveys. Why might this be a poor strategy to use?
Customer surveys are typically misleading, skewed to positive feedback.
Which of the following statements about economic value added (EVA) is true?
EVA is the amount by which profits (after expenses) exceed the cost of capital in a given year.
____ is the direct electronic transmission of purchase and ordering information from one company's computer system to another company's computer system.
Electronic data interchange
Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of functional departmentalization?
Functional departmentalization produces managers with broader experience and expertise.
Which of the following are included in intranets?
Instant messaging Presence awareness Simultaneous access to files for team members Customizable email accounts
____ departmentalization is notorious for confusion and conflict between project managers in different areas of the organization.
Matrix
According to ____, the cost of computing will drop by 50 percent as computer-processing power doubles every 18 months.
Moore's law
Which of the following statements about matrix departmentalization is true?
Most employees in an organization that uses matrix departmentalization report to two bosses. With matrix departmentalization, there tends to be more cross-functional interaction among employees than in other types of departmentalization. With matrix departmentalization, there needs to be significant coordination between functional and project managers. The most common matrix combines product and functional departmentalization.
____ should be used when it is difficult to create good measures of worker behavior and output and when organizational culture, values, and beliefs are strong.
Normative control
Which of the following statements about normative control is true?
Normative control leads to an emphasis on very selective hiring.
Text and pictures that have been digitized cannot be searched or edited like text and pictures found in word processing software. ____ can be used to convert digitized documents into ASCII code that can be edited by word processing software.
Optical character recognition software
____ is the collection of activities that transform inputs into outputs that customer's value.
Organizational process
The three methods of tracing products through a distribution system are paper records, bar codes, and radio frequency identification tags. Which of the following statements about the tracing of products is true?
RFID tags are most efficient because they can be read by a radio that has been tuned to a specific frequency
____ is the process of solving problems by consistently applying the same rules, procedures, and processes.
Standardization
____ are a basis of comparison for measuring the extent to which organizational performance is satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
Standards
____ is the degree to which a job is perceived to have a substantial impact on others inside or outside the organization.
Task significance
Elena works in a data processing department for a large credit reporting service and is bored. She spends her days inputting an endless stream of monotonous data into much larger data bases. According to the job characteristics model (JCM), one of the primary reasons for her boredom is ____.
a low degree of task identity
When managers delegate work, three transfers occur. The three transfers are responsibility, authority, and ____.
accountability
According to an Indian Cardinal by the name of Varkey Vithayathil, the greatest weakness of the Catholic Church is the way papal authority is exercised without the participation of those concerned. His eminence Cardinal Vithayathil is criticizing the fact that the Catholic Church relies on ____.
centralization of authority
Where standardization is important, it is appropriate to ____.
centralize authority
An international distribution company has a shipping division, a warehouse division, a computer hardware and software distribution center, as well as, a marketing research department, a human resources department, and an accounting department. A salesperson who works in the shipping division is told by the accounting department that he must turn in a weekly expense account. His supervisor in the shipping division wants expense accounts submitted monthly. The salesperson is likely experiencing a problem with ____.
chain of command
Organizational authority is traditionally characterized by ____.
chain of command
Instead of individual sales people calling on its business customers, Cedartree Tech uses sales teams. The sales team is given complete responsibility for developing long-term partnering relationships with each customer. What kind of control would the company's sales managers most likely approve?
concertive control
The three basic control methods are ____.
concurrent control, feedback control, and feedforward control
Control is a(n) ____ process.
continuous, dynamic, and cybernetic
McDonald's fast-food restaurants have a well-designed training program for all new employees. Each new employee is supposed to learn how to perform standardized tasks. Due to labor shortages in some areas, these new employees begin work as soon as they are hired and do not receive any off-the-job training. This nonconformity to standards creates ____.
control loss
By examining checkout data, supermarkets have learned that people who are buying beer typically also buy a bag of salty snacks. As a result of this finding from ____, supermarkets often place displays of beer near the chips and pretzel aisle.
data mining
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could use data it has collected from millions of suspected drug-related adverse event reports and other electronic medical information to identify a pattern of adverse drug events in a specific population. This data collected by the FDA would be held in a(n) ____.
data warehouse
A manufacturer of pharmaceuticals can access information about its sales and share new product information with drug store chains through the use of ____.
electronic data interchange (EDI)
Because they are inexpensive and easy to use, ____, which convert printed text and pictures into digital images, have become an increasingly popular method for capturing data electronically.
electronic scanners
Leaders during any disaster need to give their employees a sense that everyone is participating in the relief effort. The Gap gave its employees the authority to transfer their paid time off to some 1,300 employees affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Gap used ____ to allow its employees to gain a feeling of intrinsic motivation.
empowermen
Quality is typically defined and measured in three ways. They are ____.
excellence, value, and conformance to expectations
A(n) ____ uses internal and external sources of data to provide managers and executives the information they need to monitor and analyze organizational performance.
executive information system
Three kinds of information technology are used by executives, managers, and workers inside the company to access and share information. They are ____.
executive information systems, portals, and intranets
Just a teaspoon too much or too little of a single ingredient can turn a great cake into a mediocre cake. The ability to know just how much to add, how long to stir, and how the cake should smell when it is cooked is a skill that a long-time baker would have. Through the use of ____, others can capture this specialized knowledge.
expert systems
A company has built a(n) ____ that will automate its purchasing transactions and other e-commerce activities with its small- to mid-size suppliers. It will provide thousands of the company's suppliers with secure access to critical trading partner information and will facilitate trading partner automation.
extranet
A(n) ____ allows companies to exchange information and conduct transactions by purposefully providing outsiders with direct, Web browser-based access to authorized parts of a company's intranet.
extranet
A manufacturer of automatic locking devices shipped 20,000 devices to a car manufacturer that was unable to use them because of a design flaw. If the manufacturer of the devices waited until the parts were returned before determining why it created unusable component parts, it would be using ____ control.
feedback
An accident at a U.S. refinery killed two workers. By gathering information about how the men died in order to prevent a recurrence, the company used ____ control.
feedback
Novo Nordisk is a European manufacturer of pharmaceuticals. An employee , Rikke NedergaardBischoff, who is a clinical-development scientist, contends that Novo upholds the standards expected of public institutions without the stifling bureaucracy. She says, "There's a great deal of empowerment at Novo Nordisk." Novo Nordisk provides NedergaardBischoff with ____.
feelings of intrinsic motivation
The first company to use new information technology to substantially lower costs or differentiate products or services often gains ____.
first-mover advantage
Which of the following types of departmentalization does NOT have a problem with the duplication of resources?
functional
Unlike an executive information system, a decision support system (DSS) ____.
helps managers understand problems and potential solutions by acquiring and analyzing information with sophisticated models
Companies that use electronic data interchange, extranets, and the Internet to gain a competitive advantage have experienced ____.
higher productivity
In essence, reengineering changes organizations by ____.
increasing reciprocal interdependence
A military expert describes how the military forces were organized for Operation Desert Storm as pooled interdependence. This means that each branch of the military that took part in the operation ____.
independently contributed to the success of the campaign
An article on public libraries contained the following statement: "The Balanced Scorecard helps organize and run the library according to a specific strategic plan, while demonstrating the library's value to the community as a whole." When dealing with the ____ area of the Balanced Scorecard, the article advised librarians to ask, "How can the library continue to improve and create value?"
innovation and learning perspective
According to the resource-based view of information technology, sustainable competitive advantage ____.
is difficult to create or acquire can be created by using information technology to continuously improve and support the core functions of a business differs across firms occurs when information technology adds value
The job design approach associated with ____ involves increasing the number of different tasks that a worker performs within one particular job and giving workers the authority and control to make meaningful decisions about their work.
job enlargement and job enrichment
In terms of the chain of command, ____ authority is the right to command immediate subordinates, while ____ authority is the right to advise but not command others who are not subordinates.
line; staff
A chain of specialty fashion stores has interviewed a sample of its female customers and learned that a customer can be expected to visit the store looking for new merchandise on average every two weeks. The chain of stores was able to set this standard through ____.
listening to customers
Because of problems associated with conflicts over schedules, budgets, and available resources (including employees), ____ departmentalization often evolves from a simple form to a more complex form.
matrix
A(n) ____ organization is an organization that is characterized by specialized jobs and responsibilities; precisely defined, unchanging roles; and a rigid chain of command based on centralized authority and vertical communication.
mechanistic
In a(n) ____ organization, the normal procedure for dealing with any matter lying outside the boundaries of one individual's functional responsibility is to refer it to the point in the system where such responsibility is known to reside, or, failing that, to lay it before one's superior.
mechanistic
When higher management in a(n) ____ organization admits there is a need for better communication, the response is to tether subordinates to their jobs and to appoint newly hired employees who specialize in establishing liaison relationships.
mechanistic
A sales manager requires each member of his sales force to make three calls per day on current customers, to call on two potential customers every week, and to sell a minimum of $10,000 worth of merchandise weekly. Which of the following control methods does this indicate the sales manager is using?
objective
For the purposes of data mining, ____ patterns are just the opposite of association patterns.
predictive
Intranets are ____.
private company networks that allow employees to easily access, share, and publish information using Internet software
Hallmark has four departments. These departments are (1) Flowers and Gifts, (2) Cards and E-cards, (3) Hallmark Collectibles, and (4) Photo Albums and Scrapbooks. Hallmark uses ____ departmentalization.
product
Procter & Gamble has divisions for personal and beauty, house and home, health and wellness, baby and family, and pet nutrition and care. These divisions indicate that the company uses ____
product
At their core, companies are ____ systems that combine inputs such as labor, raw materials, capital, and knowledge to produce finished products and other types of output.
production
The goal of an executive information system (EIS) is to ____.
provide accurate, complete, relevant, and timely information to managers
Pages listing all of the felony crimes perpetrated in a given city during the last decade would be an example of ____.
raw data
The term ____ refers to facts and figures that are in an unusable form.
raw data
Imagine a manufacturer that has a 99 percent error-free production rate and decides it wants 100 percent error-free production. Its management needs to examine ____ to determine if the costs of increased controls outweigh the benefits of error-free production.
regulation costs
Jennifer Lee works in the public relations department of a large pharmaceutical company. It is her job to write speeches for the company's top managers, to issue press and video releases, to host plant tours, and to be involved in community affairs. Lee has ____.
staff authority
Like most large U.S. hospitals, University Health Care System spends an enormous amount on patient supplies. The hospital has more than 15,000 individual products that are purchased on a routine basis. Its purchasing manager instituted a hospital-wide purchasing policy that gave a specific code to each individual item. In other words, the purchasing manager engaged in ____.
standardization
When Billy Ingram founded White Castle, much of the public thought that hamburgers were made from rotten beef and not fit for human consumption. Ingram ground fresh beef in front of customers to prove it was safe and was the first to successfully sell hamburgers to the middle class. Today Ingram is credited as the founder of the fast-food industry. Yet, today White Castle has 330 locations, and McDonald's has 25,000 stores. From this information, you know ____.
the competitive advantage White Castle achieved from being first was not sustainable
Honeywell Inc. reorganized its European operations along customer lines to prepare for a unified European Union. In doing so, it abandoned matrix departmentalization. Why would Honeywell engage in such restructuring?
to end conflict between product managers in different parts of its matrix
Using ____ data mining, the user simply tells the data mining software to uncover whatever patterns and relationships it can find in a data set.
unsupervised
The key to sustaining competitive advantage is ____.
using information technology to continuously improve and support the core functions of a business
A park, recreation, and open space (PROS) cooperative is a recognized association of park, recreation, open space, and related entities united voluntarily. PROS cooperatives conserve the diversity of valued resources and recreation opportunities for the benefit these afford individuals, communities, the economy, and the environment. A PROS cooperative is an example of a ____ organization.
virtual
A(n) ____ organization is part of a network in which many companies share skills, costs, capabilities, markets, and customers with each other.
virtual
The composition of a ____ organization is always changing.
virtual
____ is the degree to which a job gives workers the discretion, freedom, and independence to decide how and when to accomplish their jobs.
Autonomy
____ is the extent to which it is possible to implement each step in the control process.
Cybernetic feasibility
____ control is a method of gathering information about performance deficiencies before they occur.
Feedforward
Which of the following statements about firewalls is true?
Firewalls are a way to protect data. Firewalls can be in the form of hardware or software. Firewalls prevent unauthorized use of data. Firewalls sit between the computers in an internal organizational network and outside networks.
____ departmentalization is defined as organizing work and workers into separate units responsible for particular business functions or areas of expertise.
Functional
When it comes to finances, the Balanced Scorecard focuses on one simple question. That question is ____.
How are we performing for our shareholders?
____ determines the number, kind, and variety of tasks that individual workers perform in their jobs.
Job specialization
Which of the following statements about mechanistic organizations is true?
Mechanistic organizations work best in stable, unchanging business environments.
____ is a measure of performance that indicates how many inputs it takes to produce or create an output.
Productivity
____ is the process of ensuring that data are reliably and consistently retrievable in a usable format for authorized users, but no one else.
Protecting information
____ is a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance such as cost, quality, service, and speed.
Reengineering
A large university library has decided to make it nearly impossible for all but the most renowned Civil War experts to access their Civil War collection. The librarian in charge of this collection feels that this new policy will adversely influence the use of the collection in research on the experiences of everyday people during the war. This is an example of the use of control creating ____.
Suboptimization
____ occurs when performance improvement is attained in one part of an organization but only at the expense of decreased performance in another part.
Suboptimization
Which of the following positions most likely performs a staff function?
a member of the office cleaning crew
By examining checkout data, supermarkets have learned that people who are buying beer often also buy a bag of salty snacks. The use of data mining led to the discovery of a(n) ____ pattern.
affinity
A decision support system (DSS) ____.
allows managers to better understand a problem and its potential solutions
Functional departmentalization ____.
allows work to be done by highly qualified specialists
When Marriott decided to improve the quality of service offered to customers, it asked special corporate guests to comment on the good and bad issues of their stay and also to tell what the competition is doing that is better than Marriott. The Marriott acted accordingly. In other words, it used ____.
benchmarking
A company developed a(n) ____ to allow its more than 50 department heads and executive managers to use a Web browser to view sales results and distribution plans with a single click..
corporate portal
Understanding that consumers wanted clean, convenient food when they were away from home was the information the first fast food restaurant founder used to ____.
create a first-mover advantage
As a class project, Senora is working with other classmates to create a company that would market NASCAR memorabilia. Senora's teacher has instructed her to use the traditional approach to create the organization's structure. What should Senora do?
create an organizational structure with vertical and horizontal configurations
The data used in data mining typically come from ____ that store huge amounts of data that have been prepared for data mining analysis by being cleaned of errors and redundancy.
data warehouses
An Indian Catholic Cardinal's call for local church leaders to have more power and for papal authority to be distributed to lower levels within the Catholic hierarchy has elicited agreement from other church leaders in India. He also asserted that bishops should not have "to run to Rome for everything" and that canon law should be modified to allow the pope to share his authority. Vithayathil is calling for ____.
decentralization
The primary disadvantage of customer departmentalization is ____.
duplication
Most ____ work by using a collection of "if-then" rules to sort through information and recommend a course of action.
expert systems
The primary advantage of ____ departmentalization is the fact that it allows companies to manage large, complex tasks efficiently by minimizing duplication.
matrix
Except for the core business activities that they can perform better, faster, and cheaper than others, ____ outsource all remaining business activities to outside companies, suppliers, specialists, or consultants.
modular organizations
Marriott's top management decided that there was need for a serious effort to "put democracy back in the company" and make employees feel "involved in the success of the company." Employees asked special corporate guests to comment on the good and bad issues of their stay and also to tell what the competition is doing that is better than Marriott. Then the employees acted accordingly. Marriott adopted ____ control.
normative
Modular organizations ____.
outsource all but the core business activities that they can perform best
Which of the following is NOT one of the four perspectives measured in the Balanced Scorecard approach to control?
policies and procedures perspective
The three types of task interdependence are
reciprocal, pooled, and sequential
Several extended-stay hotel chains ask guests to hang their towels so they can be reused as a way to help the environment. This request reflects which stage of waste minimization?
recycle and reuse
Zara clothing stores has developed a system that can order new fashions and deliver them to the store in only three weeks. It uses ____ to pass information to the next person in the line of development.
sequential interdependence
A(n) ____ is a form of matrix departmentalization in which managers in different parts of the matrix negotiate conflicts and resources directly.
simple matrix
Robert Strickland works in the legal department at a large consumer products manufacturer. It is his job to craft warnings on package labels. This is Strickland's ____.
staff function
Using ____ data mining, the user usually begins by telling the data mining software to look and test for specific patterns and relationships in a data set.
supervised
The basic control process of business begins with ____.
the establishment of clear standards of performance
Which of the following approaches to job redesign entails more than simply providing additional variety in job tasks?
the job characteristics model
A provider of computer technical support that is using the Balanced Scorecard approach to control would look at ____.
the percentage of its employees that have received training during the last year customer defections its cash flow percentage of computer owners that requested support more than five times in a month
As a result of their structures, matrix organizations automatically violate the principle of ____.
unity of command
One of the key assumptions underlying the chain of command is ____, which means that workers should report to just one supervisor.
unity of command
