Unit 4: Environmental, Organizational Culture, and Diversity

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering competitive advantage, the business environment, total quality management, organizational culture, and multicultural workplace diversity.

Competitive Advantage

A core competency that allows an organization to deal with market and environmental forces better than its competitors, clearly setting it apart and providing an advantage in the marketplace.

General Environment

The overarching environmental context composed of socio-cultural, economic, legal-political, educational, technological, and natural conditions.

Specific (Task) Environment

The external environment comprised of specific people and groups with whom an organization directly interacts and conducts business.

Stakeholders

Persons, groups, and institutions directly affected by an organization, including customers, suppliers, competitors, regulators, investors, and owners.

Value Creation

Creating value for and satisfying the needs of a mapped region.

Environmental Uncertainty

The lack of complete information regarding what external developments may occur, defined by two dimensions: environmental complexity and the rate of change.

External Customers

Customers who purchase an organization's goods or utilize its services.

Internal Customers

Persons or groups within an organization who depend on the results of others' work to do their own jobs.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

A strategic management process that establishes and maintains high standards of customer service to build lasting relationships with customers and add value for them.

Supply Chain Management

The strategic linking of all management operations relating to an organization's resource suppliers.

Total Quality Management (TQM)

An approach to managing that involves an organization-wide commitment to continuous improvement, product quality, and meeting customer needs.

Crosby's Four Absolutes

Four quality management principles: quality means conformance to standards, quality comes from defect prevention rather than correction, the performance standard is defect-free work, and quality saves money.

Continuous Improvement

The ongoing search for new ways to improve the company, emphasized by W. Edwards Deming alongside constant innovation, statistical methods, and quality assurance training.

Quality Circle

A group whose members meet periodically to discuss product and service quality and find ways of improving quality.

Lean Production

A production approach that uses new technologies to streamline operational systems.

Flexible Manufacturing

Manufacturing processes that can be adjusted or changed quickly to produce different products or modifications of existing ones.

Design for Manufacturing

A product design practice that emphasizes lower production costs and high-quality results while ensuring products are easy to manufacture efficiently.

Design for Disassembly

A product design approach that involves taking into account how components will be recycled.

Organizational Culture

The system of shared beliefs and values that guides the behavior of members within an organization.

Observable Culture

What an individual sees and hears when walking around an organization, manifested in stories, heroes, rites and rituals, and symbols.

Core Culture

The underlying assumptions and beliefs that influence behaviors and contribute to the observable culture.

Core Values

The small but enduring set of beliefs and values shared by organization members that anchor long-term success.

Value-Based Management

A management style where managers actively develop, communicate, and enact shared values evaluated by relevance, integrity, pervasiveness, and strength.

Symbolic Leadership

Leadership that uses symbols, organizational language, and metaphors to establish and maintain a desired organizational culture.

Diversity

Race, gender, age, and other individual differences among people in the workplace that can serve as a potential source of competitive advantage.

Multicultural Organization

An organization based on pluralism that operates with inclusivity and respect for diversity across all organizational dimensions.

Pluralism

A condition in a multicultural organization where members of both minority cultures and majority cultures are influential in setting key values and policies.

Structural Integration

A characteristic of multicultural organizations where minority culture members are well represented in jobs across all levels and functional responsibilities.

Informal Network Integration

The presence of mentoring and support groups that assist the career advancement of members in minority culture groups.

Organizational Subcultures

Groups that exist among people with shared values and beliefs based on work responsibilities or personal characteristics such as ethnic, national, gender, racial, or generational backgrounds.

Glass Ceiling

An invisible barrier to the career advancement of minorities and women in an organization.

Biculturalism

An adaptive strategy where minority group members navigate the workplace by displaying the cultural characteristics of both their own culture and the majority culture.

Affirmative Action

A diversity leadership approach that commits the organization to hiring and advancing minorities and women to create upward mobility.

Valuing Diversity

A diversity leadership approach that commits the organization to education and training programs to build quality relationships with respect for diversity.

Managing Diversity

A diversity leadership approach that commits the organization to changing the organizational culture to build an inclusive work environment where everyone can reach their full potential.