Introduction to Business Chapt.7

Enabling

Giving workers the education and tools they need to assume their new decision-making powers.

Objectives

Specific, short-term statements detailing how to achieve the goals.

Managing diversity

Building systems and a climate that unite different people in a common pursuit without undermining their individual strengths.

Decision making

Choosing among two or more alternatives.

External customers

Dealers, who buy products to deal to others, and ultimate customers, who buy products for personal use.

Knowledge management

Finding the right information, keeping the information in a readily accessible place, and making the information known to everyone in the firm.

Goals

The broad, long term accomplishments an organization wishes to attain.

Internal customers

Individuals and units within the firm that receive services from other individuals or units.

Staffing

A management function that includes hiring, motivating, and retaining the best people available to accomplish business objectives.

Organization chart

A visual device which shows the relationship and divides the organization's work: it shows who is accountable for the completion of specific work and who reports to whom.

SWOT Analysis

An analysis of the organization strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Mission statement

An outline of the fundamental purposes of an organization.

Participative (democratic) leadership

Consists of managers and employees working together to make decisions.

Empowerment

Giving employees the authority and responsibility to respond quickly to customer requests.

Top management

Highest level of management which consists of the president and other key executives, who develop strategic planning.

Middle management

Includes general managers, division managers, and branch and plant managers, who are responsible for tactical planning.

Human relations skills

Involve communication and motivation; they enable managers to work through and with people.

Technical skills

Involve the ability to perform tasks in specific discipline or department.

Conceptual skills

Involve the ability to picture the organization as a while and the relationship among its various departments.

Autocratic leadership

Involves making managerial decisions without consulting others.

Laissez Faire (free-rein) leadership

Involves managers setting objectives and employees being relatively free to do whatever it takes to accomplish those objectives.

Supervisory management

Managers who are directly responsible for supervising workers.

Strategic planning

The process of determining the major goals of the organization and the policies and strategies for obtaining and using resources to achieve those goals.

Tactical planning

The process of developing detailed, short-term decisions about what is to be done, who it to do it, and how it is to be done.

Contingency planning

The process of preparing alternative courses of action that may be used if the primary plans don't achieve the objectives of the organization.

Operational planning

The process of setting work standards and schedules necessary to implement the tactical objectives.

Management

The process used to accomplish organizational goals through planning, organizing, leading and controlling people and other organizational resources.