Principles of Management:Chapters 10-14

Product Change

A change in an organization's products or services.

Cross Functional Teams

A group of employees from various functional departments that meet as a team to solve mutual problems.

Emotion

A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes.

Stereotype

A rigid, exaggerated, irrational belief associated with a particular group of people.

Recruiting

Activities or practices that define the desired characteristics of applicants for specific jobs; Sometimes called talent acquisition.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

An assessment that measures a person's preferences for introversion versus extroversion, sensation versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving.

Pluralism

An environment in which the organization accommodates several subcultures, including employees who would otherwise feel isolated and ignored.

Self-Efficacy

An individual's strong belief that he or she can successfully accomplish a specific task or outcome.

Glass ceiling

An invisible barrier that separates women and minorities from top management positions.

Functional Structure

An organizational structure in which activities are grouped together by common function from the bottom to the top of an organization.

Divisonal structure

An organizational structure that groups employees and departments based on similar organizational outputs.

Chain of Command

An unbroken line of authority that links all individuals in the organization and specifies who reports to whom.

Continuous Process production

Involves mechanization of the entire workflow and nonstop production, such as in chemical plants or petroleum refineries.

Discrimination

Making hiring and promotion decisions based on criteria that are not job relevant.

Accountability

Means that people with authority and responsibility are subject to reporting and justifying task outcomes to those above them in the chain of command.

Halo Effect

Occurs when a manager gives an employee the same rating on all dimensions of the job, even though performance may be good on some dimensions and poor on others.

Departmentalization

The basis for grouping individual positions into departments and departments into the total organization.

Perception

The cognitive process that people use to make sense out of the environment by selecting, organizing, and interpreting information.

Responsibility

The duty to preform the task or activity that one has been assigned.

Human Capital

The economic value of the combined knowledge, experience, skills, and capabilities of employees.

Authority

The formal and legitimate right of a manager to make decisions, issue orders, and allocate resources to achieve outcomes desired by the organization.

Ethnocentrism

The natural tendency among people to regard their own culture as superior to others.

Reengineering

The radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, service, and speed.

Staff Authority

The right to advise, counsel, and recommend in the manager's area of expertise.

Persoanlity

The set of characteristics that underline a relatively stable pattern of behavior in response to ideas, objects, or people in the environment.

Monoculture

a culture that accepts only one way of doing things and one set of values and beliefs

New Venture Team

a unit separate from the mainstream organization that is responsible for initiating and developing innovations.

Diversity

all the ways in which employees differ.

Idea Incubator

an organizational program that provides a safe harbor where employees can generate and develop ideas without interference from company bureaucracy or politics

Technology Change

change in production processes - how the organization does its work.

Locus of Control

defines whether an individual places the primary responsibility for his successes and failures within himself or on outside forces

Job Specification

outlines the knowledge, skills, education, physical abilities, and other characteristics needed to perform a specific job adequately.

Affirmative Action

requires that employers take positive steps to guarantee equal employment opportunities for people within protected groups.

Multicultural Teams

teams made up of members from diverse national, racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.

Organizational Change

the adoption of a new idea or behavior by an organization.

Work Specialization

the degree to which organizational tasks are subdivided into individual jobs; also called division of labor.

Line Authority

the formal power to direct and control immediate subordinates.

Creativity

the generation of novel ideas that may meet perceived needs or respond to opportunities for the organization.

Span of Management

the number of employees reporting to a supervisor.

Performance Appraisal

the process of assessing how well employees are doing their jobs

Prejudice

the tendency to view people who are different as being deficient.

Role Ambiguity

uncertainty about what behaviors are expected of a person in a particular role

Delegation

when managers transfer authority and responsibility to positions below them in the hierarchy.