Essentials of Contemporary Management - Chapters 1 to 4 Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts, terminology, personality dimensions, ethics principles, diversity factors, and global environment models from Chapters 1 through 4 of Essentials of Contemporary Management.

Management

The planning, organizing, leading, and controlling of human and other resources to achieve organizational goals effectively and efficiently.

Managers

The people responsible for supervising the use of an organization's resources to meet its goals.

Organizations

Collections of people who work together and coordinate their actions to achieve a wide variety of goals.

Organizational Performance

A measure of how efficiently and effectively managers use available resources to satisfy customers and achieve organizational goals.

Efficiency

A measure of how productively resources are used to achieve a goal.

Effectiveness

A measure of the appropriateness of the goals that managers have selected for the organization to pursue and the degree to which the organization achieves those goals.

Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Performance Matrix

A framework illustrating organizational performance outcomes based on low versus high efficiency and effectiveness.

Four Tasks of Management

The essential managerial functions consisting of Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling.

Planning

The process of identifying and selecting appropriate goals and courses of action.

Strategy

A cluster of decisions about what goals to pursue, what actions to take, and how to use resources to achieve goals.

Organizing

Structuring working relationships in a way that allows organizational members to work together to achieve organizational goals.

Organizational Structure

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

Leading

Articulating a clear vision and energizing and enabling organizational members so they understand the part they play in achieving organizational goals.

Controlling

Evaluating how well an organization is achieving its goals and taking action to maintain or improve performance.

Department

A group of people who work together and possess similar skills or use the same knowledge, tools, or techniques to perform their jobs.

First-Line Managers

Managers responsible for the daily supervision of non-managerial employees.

Middle Managers

Managers who supervise first-line managers and are responsible for finding the best way to use resources to achieve organizational goals.

Top Managers

Managers responsible for the performance of all departments who establish organizational goals, decide how departments interact, and monitor middle managers.

Top Management Team

A group composed of the CEO, the COO, and the vice presidents of the most important departments of a company.

Conceptual Skills

The ability to analyze and diagnose a situation and distinguish between cause and effect.

Human Skills

The ability to understand, alter, lead, and control the behavior of other individuals and groups.

Technical Skills

The job-specific knowledge and techniques required to perform an organizational role.

Core Competency

A specific set of departmental skills, abilities, and experiences that allows one organization to outperform its competitors.

Restructuring

Downsizing an organization by eliminating the jobs of large numbers of top, middle, or first-line managers and non-managerial employees.

Outsourcing

Contracting with another company, usually abroad, to have it perform an activity the organization previously performed itself.

Empowerment

A management technique that gives employees more authority and responsibility over the way they perform their work activities.

Self-Managed Team

A group of employees who assume responsibility for organizing, controlling, and supervising their own activities and monitoring the quality of the goods and services they provide.

Global Organizations

Organizations that operate and compete in more than one country.

Competitive Advantage

The ability of one organization to outperform other organizations because it produces desired goods or services more efficiently and effectively than they do.

Building Blocks of Competitive Advantage

The four foundational elements required to gain advantage: Efficiency, Quality, Innovation, and Responsiveness to Customers.

Innovation

The process of creating new or improved goods and services or developing better ways to produce or provide them.

Turnaround Management

The creation of a new vision for a struggling company based on a new approach to planning and organizing to make better use of a company's resources.

Personality Traits

Enduring tendencies to feel, think, and act in certain ways.

Big Five Personality Traits

The five general personality dimensions: Extraversion, Negative Affectivity, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience.

Extraversion

The tendency to experience positive emotions and moods and feel good about oneself and the rest of the world.

Negative Affectivity

The tendency to experience negative emotions and moods, feel distressed, and be critical of oneself and others.

Agreeableness

The tendency to get along well with others.

Conscientiousness

The tendency to be careful, scrupulous, and persevering.

Openness to Experience

The tendency to be original, have broad interests, be open to a wide range of stimuli, be daring, and take risks.

Internal Locus of Control

The tendency to locate responsibility for one's fate within oneself.

External Locus of Control

The tendency to locate responsibility for one's own fate in outside forces.

Self-Esteem

The degree to which people feel good about themselves and their capabilities.

Need for Achievement

The extent to which an individual has a strong desire to perform challenging tasks well and to meet personal standards for excellence.

Need for Affiliation

The extent to which an individual is concerned about establishing and maintaining good interpersonal relations, being liked, and having other people get along.

Need for Power

The extent to which an individual desires to control or influence others.

Terminal Values

A personal conviction about lifelong goals or objectives that an individual seeks to achieve.

Instrumental Values

A personal conviction about desired modes of conduct, or ways of behaving, that an individual seeks to follow.

Norms

Unwritten, informal codes of conduct that prescribe how people should act in particular situations.

Value System

The terminal and instrumental values that are guiding principles in an individual's life.

Job Satisfaction

The collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have about their current jobs.

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCB)

Behaviors that are not required of organizational members but contribute to and are necessary for organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and competitive advantage.

Organizational Commitment

The collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have about their organization as a whole.

Mood

A feeling or state of mind.

Emotion

More intense than moods, relatively short-lived feelings, usually linked to a specific cause.

Emotional Intelligence

The ability to understand and manage one's own moods and emotions and the moods and emotions of other people.

Organizational Culture

Shared set of beliefs, expectations, values, norms, and work routines that influence how members of an organization relate to one another and cooperate to achieve organizational goals.

Attraction-Selection-Attrition Framework

A model that explains how personality may influence organizational culture, asserting that founders tend to hire employees whose personalities are similar to their own.

Factors That Maintain and Transmit Organizational Culture

The key elements shaping culture: Values of the founder, Socialization, Ceremonies and rites, and Stories and language.

Organizational Socialization

The process by which newcomers learn an organization's values and norms and acquire the work behaviors necessary to perform jobs effectively.

Rites of Passage

Ceremonies that determine how individuals enter, advance within, or leave the organization.

Rites of Integration

Ceremonies that build and reinforce common bonds (norms and values) among organizational members.

Rites of Enhancement

Ceremonies that let organizations publicly recognize and reward employees' contributions and strengthen their commitment to organizational values.

Ethical Dilemma

A type of quandary in which people have to decide if they should act in a way that might help another person or group even though doing so might go against their own self-interest.

Ethics

The inner-guiding moral principles, values, and beliefs that people use to analyze or interpret a situation and then decide what is the 'right' or appropriate way to behave.

Stakeholders

The people and groups that supply a company with its productive resources and so have a claim on and a stake in the company.

Rules for Ethical Decision Making

The four guidelines used to analyze decision impacts on stakeholders: Utilitarian Rule, Moral Rights Rule, Justice Rule, and Practical Rule.

Utilitarian Rule

An ethical decision principle stating that an ethical decision should produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Moral Rights Rule

An ethical decision principle stating that an ethical decision should maintain and protect the fundamental rights and privileges of people.

Justice Rule

An ethical decision principle stating that an ethical decision should distribute benefits and harm among people in a fair, equitable, and impartial manner.

Practical Rule

An ethical decision principle stating that an ethical decision should be one that a manager has no hesitation about communicating to people outside the company because typical people would find it acceptable.

Trust

The willingness of one person or group to have faith or confidence in another person's goodwill, even though this puts them at risk.

Reputation

The esteem or high repute that individuals or organizations gain when they behave ethically.

Code of Ethics

Formal standards and rules, derived from societal, professional, and individual sources, that managers use to make decisions concerning stakeholder interests.

Societal Ethics

Standards that govern how members of a society should deal with each other on issues such as fairness, justice, poverty, and the rights of the individual.

Professional Ethics

Standards that govern how members of a profession are to make decisions when the way they should behave is not clear-cut.

Individual Ethics

Personal values and attitudes that govern how individuals interact with other people.

Ethics Ombudsman

An ethics officer who monitors an organization's practices and procedures to ensure they are ethical, communicates standards, creates monitoring systems, and trains managers.

Diversity

Differences among people due to age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, education, experience, physical appearance, capabilities, or disabilities.

Sources of Diversity in the Workplace

The key characteristics comprising workforce diversity, including age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, capabilities/disabilities, education, experience, physical appearance, and other characteristics.

Glass Ceiling

A metaphor alluding to the invisible barrier that prevents minorities and women from being promoted to top corporate positions.

Quid Pro Quo Sexual Harassment

Asking for or forcing an employee to perform sexual favors in exchange for receiving some reward or avoiding negative consequences.

Hostile Work Environment Sexual Harassment

Telling lewd jokes, displaying pornography, making sexually oriented remarks about appearance, and other sex-related actions that make the work environment unpleasant.

Global Environment

The set of global forces and conditions that operate beyond an organization's boundaries but affect a manager's ability to acquire and utilize resources.

Task Environment

The set of forces and conditions that originate with suppliers, distributors, customers, and competitors and affect an organization's ability to obtain inputs and dispose of its outputs.

General Environment

The wide-ranging global, economic, technological, socio-cultural, demographic, political, and legal forces that affect an organization and its task environment.

Forces in the Global Environment

A model depicting the organization surrounded by its Task Environment (Competitors, Suppliers, Distributors, Customers) and broader General Environment (Economic, Technological, Sociocultural, Demographic, Political/Legal forces).

Suppliers

Individuals and organizations that provide an organization with the input resources that it needs to produce goods and services.

Global Outsourcing

The purchase or production of inputs or final products from overseas suppliers to lower costs and improve product quality or design.

Distributors

Organizations that help other organizations sell their goods or services to customers.

Customers

Individuals and groups that buy the goods and services that an organization produces.

Competitors

Organizations that produce goods and services that are similar to a particular organization's goods and services.

Potential Competitors

Organizations that presently are not in a task environment but could enter if they so choose.

Barriers to Entry

Factors that make it difficult and costly for an organization to enter a particular task environment or industry.

Economies of Scale

Cost advantages associated with large operations, such as manufacturing in large quantities or bulk buying.

Brand Loyalty

Customers' preference for the products of organizations currently existing in the task environment.

Economic Forces

Interest rates, inflation, unemployment, economic growth, and other factors that affect the general health and well-being of a nation or regional economy.

Technology

The combination of tools, machines, computers, skills, information, and knowledge that managers use to design, produce, and distribute goods and services.

Technological Forces

Outcomes of changes in the technology that managers use to design, produce, or distribute goods and services.

Sociocultural Forces

Pressures emanating from the social structure of a country or society or from the national culture.

Social Structure

The traditional system of relationships established between individuals and groups in a society.