MGMT 340 Introduction to Organizations - Midterm Review (Chapters 1-8)

Comprehensive practice flashcards for MGMT 340 Introduction to Organizations covering Chapters 1 through 8 (Management Functions, Management Theory, Ethics & Stakeholders, Global Management, Planning, Strategic Management, Decision Making, and Organizational Culture & Structure).

Management

The pursuit of organizational goals efficiently and effectively by integrating the work of people through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the organization's resources.

Efficiency

The means of attaining an organization's goals by using resources (such as people, money, and raw materials) wisely and cost-effectively.

Effectiveness

The ends of attaining an organization's goals by achieving results, making the right decisions, and successfully carrying them out.

Planning

The management function defined as setting goals and deciding how best to achieve them.

Organizing

The management function defined as arranging tasks, people, and other resources to accomplish work.

Leading

The management function defined as motivating, directing, and otherwise influencing people to work hard to achieve the organization's goals.

Controlling

The management function defined as monitoring performance, comparing it with goals, and taking corrective action as needed.

Mintzberg's Managerial Roles

Ten organized sets of behaviors grouped into three categories: Interpersonal roles (Figurehead, Leader, Liaison), Informational roles (Monitor, Disseminator, Spokesperson), and Decisional roles (Entrepreneur, Disturbance Handler, Resource Allocator, Negotiator).

Technical Skills

Job-specific knowledge needed to perform well in a specialized field.

Conceptual Skills

The ability to think analytically, visualize an organization as a whole, and understand how the parts work together.

Human Skills

The ability to work well in cooperation with other people to get things done, especially in teams.

Scientific Management

A classical viewpoint pioneered by Frederick W. Taylor and the Gilbreths emphasizing the scientific study of work methods and motion studies to improve the productivity of individual workers.

Administrative Management

A classical viewpoint pioneered by Charles Clinton Spaulding, Henri Fayol, and Max Weber that is concerned with managing the total organization.

Hawthorne Effect

A finding by Elton Mayo's Western Electric plant studies showing that employees work harder if they receive added attention, believe managers care about their welfare, or if supervisors pay special attention to them.

Theory X

Douglas McGregor's pessimistic, negative view of workers which assumes they are irresponsible, resistant to change, lack ambition, hate work, and want to be led.

Theory Y

Douglas McGregor's optimistic, positive view of workers which assumes they are capable of accepting responsibility, self-direction, self-control, and creativity.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

A psychological theory proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943 proposing five levels of human needs: Physiological, Safety, Love and belonging, Esteem, and Self-actualization.

Operations Management

A branch of the quantitative viewpoint that focuses on managing the production and delivery of an organization's products or services more effectively.

Open System

A system that continually interacts with its environment and has the potential of producing synergy, where combined forces create an effect greater than the sum of individual parts ($1 + 1 > 2$).

Closed System

A system that has little interaction with its environment and focuses exclusively on the organization's inner workings.

Contingency Viewpoint

A management viewpoint emphasizing that a manager's approach should vary according to the individual and the environmental situation on a case-by-case basis.

Learning Organization

An organization that actively creates, acquires, and transfers knowledge within itself and is able to modify its behavior to reflect new knowledge.

Triple Bottom Line

A framework representing people, planet, and profit (the 3 Ps) that measures an organization's social, environmental, and financial performance.

Internal Stakeholders

Individuals inside an organization—consisting of employees, owners, and the board of directors—who have an important stake in performance and power to shape the organizational future.

Task Environment

A subset of external stakeholders consisting of 10 groups that interact with the organization on a regular basis, including customers, competitors, suppliers, distributors, and strategic allies.

General Environment

The set of broad forces in an organization's surroundings that determine its overall context, comprising economic, technological, legal-political, international, demographic, and sociocultural forces.

Ethical Dilemma

A situation in which you have to decide whether to pursue a course of action that may benefit you or your organization but that is unethical or even illegal.

Carroll's Global Corporate Social Responsibility Pyramid

A pyramid outlining four responsibilities expected of global corporate citizens: Economic responsibility (be profitable), Legal responsibility (obey the law), Ethical responsibility (be ethical), and Philanthropic responsibility (be a good global corporate citizen).

Ethnocentric Managers

Managers who believe that their native country, culture, language, and behavior are superior to all others (also referred to as parochialism).

Polycentric Managers

Managers who believe that native managers best understand native personnel and practices in foreign offices, so the home office should defer to them.

Geocentric Managers

Managers who accept that there are differences and similarities between home and foreign personnel and practices and use whichever techniques are most effective regardless of origin.

Global Outsourcing

Using suppliers outside the United States to provide labor, goods, or services; represents the international expansion method with the lowest risk and investment.

Wholly Owned Subsidiary

A foreign subsidiary that is totally owned and controlled by another organization; represents the international expansion method with the highest risk and investment.

Tariff

A trade barrier in the form of a customs duty, or tax, levied mainly on imports.

Import Quota

A trade barrier in the form of a limit on the quantity of a product that can be imported.

Embargo

A complete ban or prohibition of trade by one country with another so that no goods or services can be imported or exported.

Trading Bloc

A group of nations within a geographical region that have agreed to remove trade barriers with one another, such as the USMCA or European Union.

Hofstede's Model

A cultural framework identifying four dimensions: Individualism/Collectivism, Power distance, Uncertainty avoidance, and Masculinity/Femininity.

GLOBE Project

An ongoing cross-cultural research investigation of nine cultural dimensions: Power distance, Uncertainty avoidance, Institutional collectivism, In-group collectivism, Gender egalitarianism, Assertiveness, Future orientation, Performance orientation, and Humane orientation.

Strategic Management

A process that involves managers from all parts of the organization in the formulation, implementation, and execution of strategies and strategic goals to advance the purposes of the organization.

Mission Statement

A statement expressing the purpose and reason for being of the organization ('What is our reason for being?').

Vision Statement

A statement expressing what the organization should become and where it wants to go strategically ('What do we want to become?').

Value Statement

A statement expressing what the company stands for, its core priorities, the values its employees embody, and what its products contribute to the world ('What values do we want to emphasize?').

Strategic Plan

A plan set by and for an organization's top management spanning $1\text{--}5$ years that focuses on broad, general organizational goals.

Tactical Plan

A plan set by and for an organization's middle managers spanning $6\text{--}24$ months that focuses on actions needed to achieve strategic plans.

Operational Plan

A plan set by and for an organization's lower-level managers spanning $1\text{--}52$ weeks that ties short-term issues to tactical plans.

Operating Plan

A plan that breaks long-term output into short-term targets or goals, turning strategic plans into actionable short-term goals and action plans.

Action Plan

A plan that defines the course of action (tactics) needed to achieve a stated goal and contains a project date for completing desired activities.

SMART Goals

An acronym defining well-crafted goals as Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Achievable, Results-oriented/Relevant, and Target Date/Time-Bound.

The Planning/Control Cycle

A four-step cycle with two planning steps ((1) Make the plan, (2) Carry out the plan) and two control steps ((3) Control the direction by comparing results with the plan, (4) Control direction by correcting deviations or improving future plans).

Strategic Positioning

An approach that attempts to achieve sustainable competitive advantage by preserving what is distinctive, based on creating a unique position, making trade-offs, and establishing activity fit.

SWOT Analysis

A situational assessment tool analyzing internal Strengths and Weaknesses along with external Opportunities and Threats.

VRIO Framework

A framework for analyzing a resource or capability to determine its competitive potential based on four criteria: Value, Rarity, Imitability, and Organization.

Benchmarking

The process by which a company compares its performance with that of high-performing organizations to identify superior practices and understand what drives them.

BCG Matrix

A corporate portfolio management tool developed by the Boston Consulting Group evaluating business units on market growth rate and market share into Stars, Question Marks, Cash Cows, and Dogs.

Vertical Integration

A corporate strategy where a firm expands into businesses providing supplies needed to make its products (backward integration) or distributing and selling its products (forward integration).

Porter's Five Competitive Forces

Michael Porter's model establishing that business-level strategy originates in five forces: Threat of new entrants, Bargaining power of suppliers, Bargaining power of buyers, Threat of substitute products or services, and Existing competitor rivalry.

Cost-Focus Strategy

A competitive strategy that focuses on keeping costs and prices low for a narrow market segment (e.g., Aldi).

Focused-Differentiation Strategy

A competitive strategy that focuses on offering unique and superior value for a narrow market segment (e.g., Ferrari).

Rational Model of Decision Making

Also called the classical model; a prescriptive model explaining how managers should make decisions, assuming they make logical and optimal choices in the organization's best interests across four stages.

Bounded Rationality

The concept suggesting that the ability of decision makers to be rational is strictly limited by constraints such as complexity, time, money, and cognitive capacity.

Satisficing Model

A nonrational decision-making model where managers seek alternatives only until they find one that is satisfactory ('good enough'), rather than optimal.

Intuition Model

A nonrational decision-making model where choices are made without conscious thought or logical inference ('it just feels right').

Decision Tree

A graph of decisions and their possible consequences used to aid decision making, especially when evaluating legality, shareholder value, and ethical impact under uncertainty.

Descriptive Analytics

Data analytics that identify trends and relationships within big data through human-driven processing.

Predictive Analytics

Data analytics combining historical data with statistical models and machine learning to specify the likelihood of future outcomes via computer-driven processing.

Availability Bias

The barrier to rational decision making where managers use information readily available from memory to make judgments.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency of decision makers to seek out information that supports their point of view while discounting data that contradicts it.

Sunk-Cost Bias

The tendency in which money or resources already spent seems to justify continuing a course of action.

Escalation of Commitment Bias

The bias where decision makers increase their commitment to a project despite receiving negative information about its progress or viability.

Organizational Culture

The set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts to its various environments.

Organizational Structure

A formal system of task and reporting relationships that coordinates and motivates an organization's members so that they can work together to achieve organizational goals.

Three Levels of Organizational Culture

The model distinguishing organizational culture into three layers: Observable artifacts (dress, décor, ceremonies), Espoused values (stated values and slogans), and Basic assumptions (core deeply held, unobservable beliefs).

Clan Culture

An organizational culture type that has an internal focus and values flexibility and discretion, emphasizing collaboration, cohesion, participation, and morale.

Adhocracy Culture

An organizational culture type that has an external focus and values flexibility and discretion, emphasizing creation, innovation, adaptability, and cutting-edge output.

Market Culture

An organizational culture type that has an external focus and values stability and control, emphasizing competition, customer focus, productivity, and profitability.

Hierarchy Culture

An organizational culture type that has an internal focus and values stability and control, emphasizing formalized processes, consistency, efficiency, and timeliness.

Span of Control

The structural feature of an organization that refers to the number of people who report directly to a given manager.

Matrix Structure

A traditional organizational structure design in which employees report to two chains of command: functional and divisional.