Management 1 Test - UST

Limits to rational decision making

- Maximizing the decision Not possible many situations - Satisficing the decision The good enough solution

What are cultures based on?

- adaptability - employee involvement - a clear mission - consistency

Acting on threats and opportunities

- after interpreting threats, managers decide how to respond to these environmental factors - managers rely on models of external environments

What 2 strategies help corporate level strategy?

- diversification - portfolio strategy

What does a grand strategy entail?

- growth -stability - retrenchment

What are some political/legal component?

- legislation - regulations - court decisions that regulate business behavior

What are some responsibilities of middle managers?

- one responsibility if to plan and allocate resources to meet objectives - coordinate and link groups, departments, and so on - monitor and manage the performance of subunits - implementing the changes from top managers

What are some adaptive strategies?

- prospector - defender - analyzer - reactor

What are some advocacy groups components?

- public communications - media advocacy - product boycott

What are some customer components?

- reactive customer monitoring - proactive monitoring

What does a diversified portfolio strategy entail?

- single business - related diversification - unrelated diversification

What are some supplier components?

- supplier dependence - buyer dependence - opportunistic behavior

What includes General Environment

-Economy -Technological component -Sociocultural component -Political/Legal component

What are some responsibilities of top managers?

-creating context for change -develop employee's commitment to and and ownership of the companies performance

What are some disadvantages of group decision making?

-groupthink: a barrier to good decision making caused by pressure within the group for members to agree with each other - takes too much time - dominate in group discussions.

What are some responsibilities of a first-line managers?

-they do not supervise other managers - monitor, teach, and short term planning. -they encourage, monitor, and reward performance. -teach entry level employee's

What are the 3 steps of the strategy-making process?

1. Assess need for strategic change 2. conduct situational analysis 3. choose strategic alternatives

What are the steps into Rational Decision Making?

1. Define the Problem 2. Identify the decision criteria 3. Weight the criteria 4. Generate alternative courses of action 5. Evaluate each alternative 6. Compute the optimal decision

What are some advantages of group decision making?

1. Defining the problem 2. generating alternative solutions.

What does the sustainable competitive advantage entail?

1. Resources 2. Valuable 3. rare 4. Imperfectly inimitable 5. non-subtitutables

How do you make a plan that works?

1. Set goals 2. Develop commitment 3. Develop effective action plans 4. Track progress toward goal achievement 5. Maintain flexibility

What is the sociocultural component?

1. demographic characters -marital status - age - gender 2. socialcultural - beliefs -attitudes -behavior

What are the steps of decision making?

1. identify and define the problem 2. be aware of the problem

Opportunistic behavior

A transaction in which one party in the relationship benefits at the expense of the other

Planning

Choosing a goal and developing a strategy to achieve that goal

What are the essential managerial skills?

Conceptual, human skills, and technical skills

What are some positioning strategies?

Cost leadership differentiation focus

When being a manager what are two important things that you should worry about?

Efficiency and Effectiveness

Management

Getting work done through others

Efficiency

Getting work done with a minimum of effort, expense, or waste

SMART goals

Goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely

Team Leaders

Managers responsible for facilitating team activities toward goal accomplishment

Resources

The assets, capabilities, processes, employee time, information, and knowledge that an organization uses to improve its effectiveness and efficiency and create and sustain competitive advantage

Buyer Dependence

The degree to which a supplier relies on a buyer because of the importance of that buyer to the supplier and the difficulty of finding other buyers for its products

General Environment

The economic, technological, sociocultural, and political/legal trends that indirectly affect all organizations

What are the 4 kind of managers?

Top, middle, first-line managers, and team leaders

Sustainable competitive advantage

a competitive advantage that other companies have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate and have, for the moment, stopped trying and duplicate

Portfolio Strategy

a corporate-level strategy that minimizes risk by diversifying investment among various businesses or product lines

Problem

a gap between a desired state and an existing state

BCG matrix

a portfolio strategy developed by the Boston Consulting Group that categorizes a corporation's businesses by growth rate and relative market share and helps managers decide how to invest corporate funds.

Diversification

a strategy for reducing risk by busying a variety of items (stocks or in the case of a corporation, types of businesses) so that the failure of one stock or one business does not doom the entire portfolio

Rational decision making

a systematic process of defining problems, evaluating alternatives, and choosing optimal solutions

________ strategy is the strategy for managing different businesses in a corporation.

a. Group c. Adaptive b. Competitive d. Portfolio

Which of the following companies is most likely operating in a dynamic environment?

a. a bakery b. a video game manufacturer c. a brewery, winery, or distillery in the liquor industry d. a cereal manufacturer e. a manufacturer of pet food

What are some responsibilities of a team leader?

bring, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resources to the team.

What are the 2 types of conflict?

c-type and a-type

Satisficing

choosing a "good enough" alternative

Planning

choosing a goal and developing a strategy to achieve that goal

unrelated diversification

creating or acquiring companies in completely unrelated businesses

Grand strategy

creating or acquiring companies that share similar products, manufacturing, marketing, technology, or cultures

Related diversification

creating or acquiring companies that share similar products, manufacturing, marketing, technology, or cultures

Successful Organization Cultures

cultures bases on adaptability, involvement, a clear mission, and consistency.

A-type conflict

disagreement that focuses on individuals or personal issues

C-type conflict

disagreement that focuses on problem and issue related differences of opinion

One of the primary reasons for the slow response to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina was an antiquated government system that was bogged down in bureaucratic red tape. In other words, despite the well-intended purpose of the operations, the failure of assistance to arrive in a timely fashion was due to a lack of:

efficiency

What are some advantages of planning?

effort, persistence, direction, and creation of task strategies.

Top Managers

executives responsible for the overall direction of the organization

What are some disadvantages of planning?

impede change, prevent adaptation, creates false sense of certainty, detachment of planners,

What is the organization for economic cooperation and development?

influencial, independent, non-profit organization that works with government to improve economic and social well being regularly publishes country economic forecasts

technological component

inputs: are authors, editors, and artists outputs: use of equipment such as computers, ink, glue, etc

How can the strategic alternatives help the situational analysis?

it will help the company create or maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.

Competitive advantage

providing greater value for customers than competitors can

Middle Managers

responsible for setting objectives consistent with top managements goals and of planning and implementing subunit strategies for achieving these objectives

First-Line Managers

responsible for training and supervising the performance of nonmanagerial employees who are directly responsible for producing the company's products or services.

Environmental scanning

searching the environment for important events or issues that might affect an organization

Conceptual skills

the ability to see the organization as a whole understand how the different parts affect each other and recognize how the company fits into or is affected by its environment

Human Skills

the ability to work well with others

Specific environment

the customers, competitors, suppliers, industry regulations, and advocacy groups that are unique to an industry and directly affect how a company does business

Goal commitment

the determination to achieve a goal

Relationship Behavior

the establishment of mutually beneficial, long-term exchanges between buyers and suppliers

Internal environment culture

the events and trends inside an organization that affect management, employees, and organizational culture

Environmental complexity

the number and intensity of external factors in the environment that affect organizations

Corporate level strategy

the overall organizational strategy that addresses the question "What business or businesses are we in or should we be in?"

Cost leadership

the positioning strategy of producing a product or service of acceptable quality at consistently lower production costs than competitors can so that the firm can offer the product or service at the lowest price in the industry

Differentiation

the positioning strategy of providing a product of service that is sufficiently different from competiors offering that customers are willing to pay a premium price for it

Focus Strategy

the positioning strategy of using cost leadership or differentiation to produce a specialized product or service for a limited, specially targeted group for customers in a particular geographic region or market segment

Decision making

the process of choosing a solution form available alternatives

Acquisition

the purchase of a company by another company

Technical skills

the specialized procedures, techniques, and knowledge required to get the job done.

Decision Criteria

the standards used to guide judgments and decisions

Strategic reference points

the strategic targets managers use to measure whether a firm has developed the core competencies it needs to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage

Punctuated equilibrium

theory that companies go through long period of stability (equilibrium), followed by short periods of dynamic, fundamental change, and then a new equilibrium

Marie-Helene de Taillac is a well-known European designer of understated, very delicate jewelry. Once she determined that further growth was impossible without changing how she distributed her product, she decided to open her own retail outlet to sell her products rather than letting department stores sell it. Since she made this decision with neither extensive data collection nor full examination of costs associated to implementing her decision, she has engaged in ____ behavior in decision making.

a. leapfrogging b. satisficing c. benchmarking d. laddering e. maximizing

An ad for a major brand of clothes washer reads, "Since our humble beginnings back in 1950, we have been dedicated to building machines with superior cleaning power, reliability, and style." This manufacturer is more than likely using which kind of positioning strategy?

a. retrenchment b. differentiation c. diversification d. stability e. focus

Effectiveness

accomplishing tasks that help fulfill organizational objectives

Interpreting environmental factors

after scanning, mangers determine what environmental events and issues mean to the organization.

External environments

all events outside a company that have the potential to influence or affect it

SWOT analysis

an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in an organization's internal environment and the opportunities and threats in its external environment

Dynamic environment

an environment in which the rate of change is fast

Stable environment

an environment in which the rate of change is slow