Chapter 1,2,3

In the systems approach to management, synergy is an expression of the idea that

a whole is more than the sum of its parts.

What name is given to individuals who make decisions about the use of the organization's resources, and are concerned with planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the organization's activities so as to reach its objectives?

Managers

As defined in the text, organizations are groups of individuals who work together to achieve

goals and objectives important to them.

What is an organization?

A group of individuals who work together to achieve the goals or objectives that are important to these individuals

Stakeholders

A stakeholder is a person or a group that can affect, or be affected by, and organizations goals or steps to achieve those goals. One way that they can affect and organization is by impacting decisions. Many times organizations want to keep their stakeholders happy. Because of this, they will sometimes make decisions based on what the stakeholders want, rather than on what they themselves want. Another way stakeholders can affect the organization is by providing them money. Stakeholders can include people like customers. Customers are what keep businesses going because they are buying the products. If a customer doesn't like or trust in an organization, they won't buy the products. Therefore, the organization won't have any money.

What term describes the universality of management as a function that can be applied to all organizations?

Administrative management

What is the systems approach to management theory?

An approach to management theory that views organizations and the environments within which they operate as sets of interrelated parts to be managed as a whole in order to achieve a common goal

The fact that U.S. businesses now frequently engage in international trading relations is an illustration of what dimension of the general environment?

Global

The management professor who actually followed managers for several days and took detailed notes about the purpose of all their activities was

Henry Mintzberg.

Which of the following owners would you expect to have the greatest degree of influence and power within the organization?

The "hands-on" proprietor of a small business

In your job as manager of human resources for Homer's Humongous Heroes, Inc., you carry out all the performance appraisals of employees, as well as give out all the gold watches at the annual retirement dinner. What general managerial role category do your actions fall into?

Interpersonal

You own a munitions plant, and you decide that your middle managers are insensitive to employees' needs. You send them all out for two weeks of sensitivity training. You are sensitive to what skill deficiency that they have?

Interpersonal

At the age of 45, having made your fortune in the hamburger business, you sell the business, retire, and then take up full-time the hobby you love: painting. Whose theory or concept best describes your decision?

Maslow's self-actualization

You manage a group of five production-line employees and you (a) conduct their annual performance appraisals with them individually, and (b) meet with them as a group to discuss the new performance-appraisal process you are initiating. Which of Mintzberg's ten management roles have you played?

Leadership, disseminator, entrepreneur

Which of the following characteristics relates to human resources managers?

Managers concerned with developing and carrying out systems that are used to make decisions about employees such as selection, training, and compensation

What are lower or first-line managers?

Managers concerned with the direct production of items or delivery of service

You own your own university. You put all the professors on renewable one-year contracts, and give them raises only if their teaching evaluations are good and they publish one book a year. You also make them all teach three courses a semester. Who is cheering you on from his grave?

Morris Cooke

You are a small aerospace subcontractor, Airflite Associates, and you have a chance to land a major contract with Boeing for an in-flight stabilization device. You put together a team of seven of your brightest managers and employees to design and develop the device. In terms of the major management functions, you are primarily

Organizing

____ coined the term management by objectives in his 1954 work Practice of Management.

Peter Drucker

In firms that are large enough to have specialization, upper managers spend most of their time performing which functions?

Planning and leading

Planning

Planning is when management decides what the organization wants to accomplish and how they plan to accomplish it. It is important to an organization's success because it give employees an overall bench mark to focus on.

Four Functions of Management

Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling

You redivide your office area at the Wausau Washer Works so that five employees who were formerly fighting constantly over space now get along famously. They praise you for taking the initiative to reallocate the space. Which of Mintzberg's ten management roles have you played?

Resource allocator, disturbance handler

What name is given to those factors that have a direct effect on a specific organization and its managers, including customers, suppliers, competitors, substitutes, and potential new entrants to the industry?

Task environment

Which of the following characteristics relates to corporate governance?

The formal system of oversight, accountability, and control for organizational decisions and resources

What is meant by soldiering?

The systematic slowdown in work by laborers with the deliberate purpose of keeping their employers ignorant of how fast the work can be done

If you manage people using a traditional method of strong direction and tight control, you probably believe in the managerial assumptions of

Theory X.

What name is given to the assumption that people naturally want to work, are capable of self-control, seek responsibility, are creative, and try to fulfill higher-order needs at work?

Theory Y

You own a winery in California. You develop a fine new red wine, and you market it heavily to men and women aged 50 or older. Your strategy is based on your analysis of

changing demographic characteristics.

The lowering of the fat content in many American food products is an example of

changing values regarding food products.

You own a fast-food chain, and you develop a new low-fat milkshake that at first sells well, then dies. Customers tell you it doesn't taste good. Your product has suffered from

clashes in values regarding "healthy" food options.

You are the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and you make a commitment to find a new drug to cure Alzheimer's disease. Despite years of research and billions of investment dollars, you have not yet been successful. You keep spending and researching, however, in the belief that you will find a drug that will cure Alzheimer's. Your belief is influenced by

current organizational constraints.

The so-called "Protestant ethic" held that

hard work and self-denial would lead to a better afterlife.

Because there are numerous suppliers of potatoes for such major fast-food chains as McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King, the suppliers

have little control over the restaurants.

One of the significant conclusions that has been drawn from the Hawthorne studies is that

human relations and the social needs of workers are a critical variable in management.

Leading

is when management influences and encourages employees to work towards accomplishing the goals. This function is important because it gives employees a reason to accomplish the goal. It also reinforces employee's knowledge of the goal.

Because the bulk of your employees at the Potentially Profitable Pizzeria are high school students working part-time for $5 an hour, you create a set of monthly cash awards for the students who deliver pizza both swiftly and safely. In terms of the major management functions, you are primarily

leading

Peter Senge's theory of _______ states that modern organizations must be in a state of constant learning through continuous improvement and adaptation

learning organizations

The major timber companies in Oregon ask for a meeting with their state senators to persuade them to increase the timber-cutting quota in Oregon forests. They are using the interactive technique known as

lobbying.

Controlling

management monitors the employees and make adjustments as needed. This is important because it helps management to make sure that the work place is efficient and that people are assigned the right job. If they are not assigned the right job and there is a way to make production faster, then management makes those necessary changes.

When the manager of the Boston Red Sox uses the scouting, player development, and travel departments to make plans for an upcoming series, he is

organizing.

Perhaps the most basic assumption about the nature of people in Taylor's system of scientific management is that

people are rational beings and are economically motivated.

Lower-level or first-line managers are usually most concerned with

production of a good or delivery of a service.

After the "Citizens to Keep Students from Having a Good Time" group opposed the opening of Chester's bar, Chester had a

secondary stakeholder problem.

The Union Electric Company, a St. Louis utility, buys a large shipment of coal from Peabody Coal Company for use in its coal-fired plants. Peabody is one of Union Electric's

suppliers.

A reality or fact of life in many corporations is that

the board of directors does not exert the control it is legally obligated to provide.

The group in a corporation that has legal responsibility to represent the stockholders is

the board of directors.

According to Chester Barnard's theory of the acceptance of authority, authority flows up in the organization because

the decision to accept an order or communication lies with the person who receives it.

Henri Fayol criticized the management education available in his day as

too oriented toward mathematics and engineering.

Organizing

where managers design the job and create teams and assign teams to specific functions. This is important because it allows for employees to focus on the one job they are good at rather than doing many different tasks. This allows for a more efficient work place.

You produce piston rings (your only product) at your small factory in Michigan. You sell 95 percent of your products to General Motors. In your relationship with GM,

you are heavily dependent on GM.