WGU - C483 Principles of Management

WGU - C483 Principles of Management Conceptual and Decision Skills Skills pertaining to the ability to identify and resolve problems for the benefit of the organization and its members Controlling The management function of monitoring performance and making needed changes Cost Competitiveness Keeping costs low to achieve profits and be able to offer prices that are attractive to consumers Emotional Intelligence The skills of understanding yourself, managing yourself, and dealing effectively with others Frontline Managers Lower-level managers who supervise the operational activities of the organization Innovation The introduction of new goods and services Interpersonal and Communication Skills The ability to lead, motivate, and communicate effectively with others Knowledge Management Practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an organization's intellectual resources Leading The management function that involves the manager's efforts to stimulate high performance by employees Management The process of working with people and resources to accomplish organizational goals Middle-Level Managers Managers located in the middle layers of the organizational hierarchy, reporting to top-level executives Organizing The management function of assembling and coordinating human, financial, physical, informational, and other resources needed to achieve goals Planning The management function of systematically making decisions about the goals and activities that an individual, a group, a work unit, or the overall organization will pursue Quality The excellence of your product (goods or services) Service The speed and dependability with which an organization delivers what customers want Speed Fast and timely execution, response, and delivery of results Sustainability The effort to minimize the use of resources, especially those that are not polluting and nonrenewable. Technical Skill The ability to perform a specialized task involving a particular method or process Top-Level Managers Senior executives responsible for the overall management and effectiveness of the organization Value The monetary amount associated with how well a job, task, good, or service meets user's needs Acquisition One firm buying another Barriers to Entry Conditions that prevent new companies from entering an industry Benchmarking The process of comparing an organization's practices and technologies with those of other companies Buffering Creating supplies of excess resources in case of unpredictable needs Competitive Environment The immediate environment surrounding a firm; includes suppliers, customers, rivals, and the like Competitive Intelligence Information that helps managers determine how to compete better Cooperative Strategies Strategies used by two or more working organizations working together to manage the external environment Defenders Companies that stay within a stable product domain as a strategic maneuver Demographics Measures of various characteristics of the people who make up groups or other social units Diversification A firm's investment in a different product, business, or geographic area Divestiture A firm selling one or more businesses Domain selection Entering a new market or industry with an existing expertise Empowerment The process of sharing power with employees, thereby enhancing their confidence in their ability to perform their jobs and their belief that they are influential contributors to the organization Environmental Scanning Searching for and sorting through information about the environment Environmental Uncertainty Lack of information needed to understand or predict the future External Environment All relevant forces outside a firm's boundaries, such as competitors, customers, the government, and the economy Final Consumer Those who purchase products in their finished form Flexible Processes Methods for adapting the technical core to changes in the environment Forecasting Method for predicting how variables will change the future Independent strategies Strategies that an organization acting on its own uses to change some aspect of its current environment Inputs Goods and services organizations take in and use to create products or services Intermediate consumer A customer who purchases raw materials or wholesale products before selling them to final customers Macroenvironment The general environment; includes governments, economic conditions, and other fundamental factors that generally affect all organizations Merger One or more companies combining with another Open Systems Organizations that are affected by, and that affect, their environment Organizational Climate The patterns of attitudes and behavior that shape people's experience of an organization Organization Culture The set of important assumptions about the organization and its goals and practices that members of the company share Outputs The products and services organizations create Prospectors Companies that continually change the boundaries for their task environments by seeking new products and markets, diversifying and merging, or acquiring new enterprises Smoothing Leveling normal fluctuations at the boundaries of the environment Strategic Maneuvering An organization's conscious efforts to change the boundaries of its task environment Supply Chain Management The managing of the network of facilities and people that obtain materials from outside the organization, transform them into products, and distribute them to customers Switching Costs Fixed costs buyers face when they change suppliers Affective Conflict Emotional disagreement directed toward other people Bounded Rationality A less-than-perfect form of rationality in which decision makers cannot be perfectly rational because decisions are complex and complete information is unavailable or cannot be fully processed Brainstorming A process in which group members generate as many ideas about a problem as they can; criticism is withheld until all ideas have been proposed Certainty The state that exists when decision makers have accurate and comprehensive information Coalitional Model Model of organizational decision making in which groups with differing preferences use power and negotiation to influence decisions Cognitive Conflict Issue-based differences in perspectives or judgments Conflict Opposing pressures from different sources, occurring on the level of psychological conflict or of conflict between individuals or groups Contingency Plans Alternative courses of action that can be implemented based on how the future unfolds Custom-Made Solutions New, creative solutions designed specifically for the problem Devil's Advocate A person who has the job of criticizing ideas to ensure that their downsides are fully explored Dialectic A structured debate comparing two conflicting courses of action Discounting the Future A bias weighting short-term costs more heavily than longer-term costs and benefits Framing Effects A decision bias influenced by the way in which a problem or decision alternative is phrased or presented Garbage Can Model Model of organizational decision making depicting a chaotic process and seemingly random decisions Goal Displacement A condition that occurs when a decision-making group loses sight of its original goal and a new, less important goal emerges Groupthink A phenomenon that occurs in decision making when group members avoid disagreement as they strive for consensus Illusion of Control People's belief that they can influence events, even when they have no control over what will happen Incremental Model Model of organizational decision making in which major solutions arise through a series of smaller decisions Maximizing A decision realizing the best possible outcome Non-programmed Decisions New, novel, complex decisions having no proven answers Optimizing Achieving the best possible balance among several goals Programmed Decisions Decisions encountered and made before, having objectively correct answers, and solvable by using simple rules, policies, or numerical computations Ready-Made Solutions Ideas that have been seen or tried before Risk The state that exists when the probability of success is less than 100 percent and losses may occur Satisficing Choosing an option that is acceptable, although not necessarily the best or perfect Uncertainty The state that exists when decision makers have insufficient information Vigilance A process in which a decision maker carefully executes all stages of decision making Business Strategy The major actions by which a business competes in a particular industry or market Concentration A strategy employed for an organization that operates a single business and competes in a single industry Concentric Diversification A strategy used to add new businesses that produce related products or are involved in related markets and activities Conglomerate Diversification A strategy used to add new businesses that produce unrelated products or are involved in unrelated markets and activities Core Competence A unique skill and/or knowledge an organization possesses that gives it an edge over competitors Corporate Strategy The set of businesses, markets, or industries in which an organization competes and the distribution of resources among those entities Differentiation Strategy A strategy an organization uses to build competitive advantage by being unique in its industry or market segment along one or more dimensions Functional Strategy Strategies implemented by each functional area of the organization to support the organization's business strategy Goal A target or end that management desires to reach Low-Cost Strategy A strategy an organization uses to build competitive advantage by being efficient and offering a standard, no-frills product Mission An organization's basic purpose and scope of operations Operational Planning The process of identifying the specific procedures and processes required at lower levels of the organization