management 371
What major challenges do managers face, and why? What is knowledge management?
1. Globalization. 2. Technological change. 3. The importance of knowledge and ideas. 4. Collaboration across organizational boundaries. 5. Increasingly diverse labor force Knowledge management is the set of practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an organization's intellectual resources—fully utilizing the intellects of the organization's people. Knowledge management is about finding, unlocking, sharing, and capitalizing on the most precious resources of an organization: people's expertise, skills, wisdom, and relationships.
Philantropic responsibilities
Activities that promote human welfare or goodwill generally through donations of time and money or products and services.
What is benchmarking and why do companies use it?
Benchmarking: the process of comparing an organization's practices and technologies with those of other companies A benchmarking team collects information about its own company's operations and those of the other firm in order to determine gaps. These gaps serve as a point of entry to learn the underlying causes of performance differences. Ultimately, the team maps out a set of best practices that lead to world-class performance.
What is buffering, smoothing, competitive aggression, competitive pacification, public relations, voluntary action, legal action and political action, and what are examples?
Buffering: creating supplies of excess resources in case of unpredictable needs Smoothing: leveling normal fluctuations at the boundaries of the environment
What is the bureaucracy? What are its aims? What are advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
Bureaucracy: a classical management approach emphasizing a structured, formal network of relationships among specialized positions in the organization
merger
Combination of two or more companies into a single firm
What are contracts,
Contracts—negotiating an agreement between the organization and another group to exchange goods, services, information, patents, and so on. Suppliers and customers, or managers and labor unions, may sign formal agreements about the terms and conditions of their future relationships. These contracts are explicit attempts to make their future relationship predictable.
domain selection
Entering a new market or industry with an existing expertise
What are the different sources of competitive advantage? What are some examples?
Innovation is the introduction of new goods and services. quality is the excellence of your product or service. service means giving customers what they want or need, when and where they want it. speed—rapid execution, response, and delivery of results—often separates the winners from the losers. cost competitiveness, which means keeping costs low enough so the company can realize profits and price its products (goods or services) at levels that are attractive to consumers.
What are the three different environments companies operate in?
Macroenvironment Competitive Environment External Environment
What is a macroenvironment? What are components of it?
Macroenvironment: the general environment; includes governments, economic conditions, and other fundamental factors that generally affect all organizations
Relativism
Philosophy that bases ethical behavior on the opinions and behaviors of relevant other people
classical theories of management?
The classical period extended from the mid-19th century through the early 1950s. The major approaches that emerged during this period were systematic management, scientific management, bureaucracy, administrative management, and human relations.
What are contemporary and classical theories of management?
The contemporary approaches to management include sociotechnical systems theory, quantitative management, organizational behavior, and systems theory. The contemporary approaches have developed at various times since World War II, and they continue to represent the cornerstones of modern management thought.
What is management?
The process of working with people and resources to accomplish organizational goals
What are the different levels of management and what do they do? What skills should managements at different levels have? What are the different skills managers should have?
Top-level manager. are the organization's senior executives and are responsible for its overall management. Top-level managers, often referred to as strategic managers, focus on the survival, growth, and overall effectiveness of the organization. Middle-level manager. ocated in the organization's hierarchy below top-level management and above the frontline managers and team leaders. Sometimes called tactical managers, they are responsible for translating the general goals and plans developed by strategic managers into more specific objectives and activities. Frontline manager. or operational managers, are lower-level managers who execute the operations of the organization. These managers often have titles such as supervisor or sales manager. They are directly involved with nonmanagement employees, implementing the specific plans developed with middle managers. This role is critical because operational managers are the link between management and nonmanagement personnel. Your first management position probably will fit into this category. Team leader. engages in a variety of behaviors to achieve team effectiveness.31 The use of teams (discussed in Chapter 12) has increased as organizations shift from hierarchical to flatter structures that require lower-level employees to make more decisions
coalition
a group of individuals with a common interest on which every political party depends
life cycle analysis (LCA):
a process of analyzing all inputs and outputs, through the entire "cradle-to-grave" life of a product, to determine total environmental impact
Diversification
a strategy of increasing sales by introducing new products into new markets
Cooptation
absorbing new elements into the organization's leadership structure to avert threats to its stability or existence. Many universities invite wealthy alumni to join their boards of directors.
What is administrative management? What are its aims? What are advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
administrative management: a classical management approach that attempted to identify major principles and functions that managers could use to achieve superior organizational performance
What are barriers to entry, complementary products and switching costs?
barriers to entry: conditions that prevent new companies from entering an industry
What are business ethics?
business ethics: the moral principles and standards that guide behavior in the world of business
What is the competitive environment (Porter's forces)? What are the different forces and what makes them a high/low threat?
competitive environment: the immediate environment surrounding a firm; includes suppliers, customers, rivals, and the like
What are compliance-based vs.
compliance-based ethics programs: company mechanisms typically designed by corporate counsel to prevent, detect, and punish legal violations
What is contingency theory?
contingency perspective: an approach to the study of management proposing that the managerial strategies, structures, and processes that result in high performance depend on the characteristics, or important contingencies, or the situation in which they are applied 1. Circumstances in the organization's external environment. 2. The internal strengths and weaknesses of the organization. 3. The values, goals, skills, and attitudes of managers and workers in the organization. 4. The types of tasks, resources, and technologies the organization uses.
What is environmental scanning?
environmental scanning: searching for and sorting through information about the environment
What is an ethical climate and what are danger signs of a bad ethical climate?
ethical climate: in an organization, the processes by which decisions are evaluated and made on the basis of right and wrong
What is the hawthorne affect
hawthorne effect: people's reactions to being observed or studied resulting in superficial rather than meaningful changes in behavior
What is human relations management? What are its aims? How is it different than organizational behavior? What are advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
human relations: a classical management approach that attempted to understand and explain how human psychological and social processes interact with the formal aspects of the work situation to influence performance.
Utilitarianism
idea that the goal of society should be to bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people
integrity-based ethics programs?
integrity-based ethics programs: company mechanisms designed to instill in people a personal responsibility for ethical behavior
ecocentric management:
its goal is the creation of sustainable economic development and improvement of quality of life worldwide for all organizational stakeholders
corporate social responsibility:
obligation toward society assumed by business
What is organizational culture? How can managers use it (leverage it)?
organization culture: the set of assumptions that members of an organization share to create internal cohesion and adapt to the external environment
What is organizational behavior? What are its aims? What is Theory X and Theory Y?
organizational behavior: a contemporary management approach that studies and identifies management activities that promote employee effectiveness by examining the complex and dynamic nature of individual, group, and organizational processes Theory X managers assume workers are lazy and irresponsible and require constant supervision and external motivation to achieve organizational goals. Theory Y managers assume employees want to work and can direct and control themselves. An important implication for managers who subscribe to Theory X is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Theory Y perspective, suggesting that managers who encourage participation and allow opportunities for individual challenge and initiative would achieve superior performance.
What are the four functions of management and their definitions/activities?
planning, organizing, leading, controlling
What is quantitative management? Why is it a supplementary tool?
quantitative management: a contemporary management approach that emphasizes the application of quantitative analysis to managerial decisions and problems Quantitative management helps a manager make a decision by developing formal mathematical models of the problem.
What is scientific management? What are its aims? What are advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
scientific management.9 This approach advocated the application of scientific methods to analyze work and to determine how to complete production tasks efficiently. 1. Management should develop a precise, scientific approach for each element of one's work to replace general guidelines. 2. Management should scientifically select, train, teach, and develop each worker so that the right person has the right job. 3. Management should cooperate with workers to ensure that jobs match plans and principles. 4. Management should ensure an appropriate division of work and responsibility between managers and workers.
What is systems theory? What are its aims? How is it different from other theories?
systems theory: a theory stating that an organization is a managed system that changes inputs into outputs Organizations are open systems, dependent on inputs from the outside world, such as raw materials, human resources, and capital. They transform these inputs into outputs that (ideally) meet the market's needs for goods and services.
egoism
the tendency to see things in relation to oneself; self-centeredness
divestiture
the transfer of total or partial ownership of some of a firm's operations to investors or to another company
legal responsibilities
to obey local, state, federal, and relevant international laws
economic responsibilities
to produce goods and services that society wants at a price that perpetuates the business and satisfies its obligations to investors
