MGT 300 Exam 1 Definitions

Practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an organization's intellectual resources.

Introduction of new goods and services.

Excellence of your product.

Speed and dependability with which an organization delivers what customers want; focused on
continually meeting needs of customers to establish mutually beneficial long-term relationships.

Fast and timely execution, response, and delivery of results.

Keeping costs low to achieve profits and be able to offer prices that are attractive to consumers.

Process of working with people and resources to accomplish organizational goals.

Management function of systematically making decisions about the goals and activities that
an individual, group, work unit, or the overall organization will pursue; delivering strategic value.

Monetary amount associated with how well a job, task, good, or service meets users’ needs.

Management function of assembling and coordinating human, financial, physical, informational,
and other resources needed to achieve goals; building a dynamic organization.

Management function that involves the manager’s efforts to stimulate high performance by employees;
mobilizing people.

Management function of monitoring performance and making needed changes; learning and changing.

Senior executives responsible for the overall management and effectiveness of an organization.

Managers located in the middle layers of the organizational hierarchy, reporting to top-level
executives.

Lover-level managers who supervise the operational activities of the organization.

Ability to perform a specialized task involving a particular method or process.

Skills pertaining to the ability to identify and resolve problems for the benefit of the organization
and its members.

People skills; ability to lead, motivate and communicate effectively with others.

Skills of understanding yourself, managing yourself, and dealing effectively with others.

Goodwill stemming from your social relationships.

Organizations that are affected by, and that affect, their environment.

Goods and services organizations take in and use to create products or services.

Products and services organizations create.

All relevant forces outside a firm’s boundaries, such as competitors, customers, the government,
and the economy.

General environment; includes government, economic conditions, and other fundamental factors
that generally affect all organizations (i.e. legal, political, technological, demographic, social and natural)

Immediate environment surrounding a firm; includes suppliers, customers, rivals, new entrants,
substitutes and complements.

Measures of various characteristics of the people who make up groups or other social units. Ex.] Age, gender, family size, income, education, occupation, etc.

Conditions that prevent new companies from entering an industry.

Fixed costs buyers face when they change suppliers.

Managing of the network of facilities and people that obtain materials from outside the organization,
transform them into products, and distribute them to customers.

Those who purchase products in their finished form.

A customer who purchases raw materials or wholesale products before selling them to final
customers.

Lack of information needed to understand or predict the future.

Searching for and sorting through information about the environment.

Information that helps managers determine how to compete better.

A narrative that describes a particular set of future conditions

Method for predicting how variables will change the future.

The process of comparing an organization’s practices and technologies with those of other companies.

Process of sharing power with employees to enhance their confidence in their abilities to
perform their jobs and their belief that that are influential contributors.

Creating supplies of excess resources in case of unpredictable needs.

Leveling normal fluctuations at the boundaries of the environment.

Methods for adapting the technical core to changes in the environment

Strategies an organization acting on its own uses to change some current aspect of the environment.

Strategies used by two or more organizations working together to manage the environment

Conscious efforts to change boundaries of task environment.

Entering new market or industry with an existing expertise.

Firm’s investment in a different product, business, or geographic area.

One or more companies combining with one another.

One firm buying from another.

A firm selling one or more businesses.

Companies that continually change the boundaries for their task environments by seeking new products and markets, diversifying and merging, or acquiring new enterprises.

Companies that stay within a stable product domain as a strategic maneuver.

Set of important assumptions about the organization and its goals and practices that members
of the company share.

Decisions encountered and made before, having objectively correct answers, and solvable by using
simple rules, policies, or numerical computations.

New, novel, complex decisions having no proven answers.

Ideas that have been seen or tried before.

New, creative solutions designed specifically for the problem.

Alternative courses of action that can be implemented based on how the future unfolds.

Decision realizing the best possible outcome.

Choosing an option that is acceptable, although not necessarily the best or perfect.

Achieving the best possible balance among several goals.

Process in which a decision maker carefully executes all stages of decision making.

Belief that one can influence events, even when they have no control over what will happen.

Decision bias influenced by the way in which a problem or decision alternative is phrased or
presented.

Bias weighting short-term costs and benefits more heavily that longer-term costs and benefits.

Phenomenon that occurs in decision making when group members avoid disagreement as they strive
for consensus.

Condition that occurs when a decision-making group loses sight of its original goal and a
new, less important goal emerges.

Issue-based differences in perspectives or judgements.

Emotional disagreement directed toward other people.

Less-than-perfect form of rationality in which decision makers cannot be perfectly rational because
decisions are complex an complete information is unavailable or cannot be fully processed.

Model of organizational decision making in which major solutions arise through a series of smaller
decisions.

Model of organizational decision making in which groups with differing preferences use power
and negotiation to influence decisions.

Model of organizational decision making depicting a chaotic process and seemingly random decisions.

One who influences others to attain goals, orchestrate change, set direction, and motivate people
to overcome obstacles and move the organization toward its ideal future.

Challenge conventional beliefs and practices, and create change.

Appeal to people’s values and motivate them to care about an important mission.

Give people access to information and the power to perform to their full potential.

Don’t just tell people what to do; living examples of the ideals they believe in.

Show appreciation, provide rewards, and use various approaches to motivate people in positive
ways.

A mental image of a possible and desirable future state of the organization.

Behavior that provides guidance, support and corrective feedback for day-to-day activities.

Behavior that gives purpose and meaning to organizations, envisioning and creating a positive
future.

The ability to influence others.

A leadership perspective that attempts to determine the personal characteristics that great
leaders share.

Leadership perspective that attempts to identify what good leaders do; that is, what behaviors
they exhibit.

Actions taken to ensure that the work group or organization reaches its goals.

Actions taken to ensure the satisfaction of group members, develop and maintain harmonious
work relationships, and preserve the social stability of the group.

Highlights the importance of leader behaviors not just toward the group as a whole but toward
individuals on a personal basis.

Leader behaviors that managers perform in involving their employees in making decisions.

Leader makes decisions on his/her own and then announces those decisions to the group.

Leader solicits input from subordinates.

Leadership philosophy characterized by an absence of managerial decision making.

Leadership perspective proposing that universally important traits and behaviors do not exist,
and that effective leadership behavior varies from situation to situation.

Situational model that focuses on the participative dimension of leadership.

Situational approach to leadership postulating that effectiveness depends on the personal
style of the leader and the degree to which the situation gives the leader power, control and influence over the situation.

Places primary emphasis on completing a task.

Places primary emphasis on maintain good interpersonal relationships.

Life-cycle theory of leadership postulating that a manager should consider an employee’s psychological
and job maturity before deciding whether task performance or maintenance behaviors are more important.

Level of the employee’s skills and technical knowledge relative to the task being performed.

An employee’s self-confidence and self-respect.

Theory that concerns how leaders influence subordinates’ perceptions of their work goals and
the oaths they follow toward attainment of those goals.

Factors in the workplace that can exert the same influence on employees that leaders can provide.

Person who is dominant, self-confident, convinced of the moral righteousness of his/her beliefs,
and able to arouse a sense of excitement and adventure in followers.

Leader who motivates people to transcend their personal interests for the good of the group.

Combination of strong professional will (determination) and humility that builds enduring
greatness.

Leaders who manage through transactions, using their legitimate, reward, and coercive powers
to give commands and exchange rewards for services rendered.

Leader is true to himself/herself while leading.

Leaders who talk about positive change but allow their self-interest to take precedence over
followers’ needs.

Leader who serves others’ needs while strengthening the organization.

Leader who bridges conflicting value systems or different cultures.

Rotating leadership, in which people rotate through the leadership role based on which person
has the most relevant skills at a particular time.

Colleagues at the same hierarchical level are invited to collaborate and facilitate joint
problem solving.

Forces that energize, direct, and sustain a person’s efforts.

Motivation theory stating that people have conscious goals that energize them and direct their
thoughts and behaviors toward a particular end.

Targets that are particularly demanding, sometimes even thought to be impossible.

Law formulated by Edward Thorndike in 1911 stating that behavior that is followed by positive
consequences will likely be repeated.

Positive consequences that motivate behavior.

Application of reinforcement theory in organizational settings.

Applying consequences that increase the likelihood that a person will repeat the behavior
that led to it.

Removing or withholding an undesirable consequence.

Withdrawing or failing to provide a reinforcing consequence.

Theory proposing people will behave based on their perceived likelihood that their effort
will lead to a certain outcome and on how highly they value that outcome.

Employees’ perception of the likelihood that their efforts will enable them to attain their
performance goals.

Value an outcome holds for the person contemplating it.

Perceived likelihood that performance will be followed by particular outcome.

Rewards given to a person by the boss, company, or some other person.

Reward a worker derives directly from performing the job itself.

Changing from one routine task to another to alleviate boredom.

Giving people additional tasks at the same time to alleviate boredom.

Changing a task to make it inherently more rewarding, motivating, and satisfying.

Herzberg’s theory describing two factors affecting people’s work motivation and satisfaction

Degree to which individuals want personal and psychological development.

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.

States that people assess how fairly they have been treated according to two key factors: Outcomes; Inputs

Using fair process in decision making and making sure others know that the process was as
fair as possible.

Programs designed to create a workplace that enhances employee well-being.

Set of perceptions of what employees owe their employers, and what their employers owe them.

Small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set
of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Teams that make or do things like manufacture, assemble, sell, or provide service.

Teams that work on long-term projects but disband once the work is completed.

Teams that operate separately from the regular work structure, and exist temporarily.

Teams that coordinate and provide direction to the subunits under their jurisdiction and integrate
work among subunits.

Work groups composed of multinational members whose activities span multiple countries.

Teams that are physically dispersed and communicate electronically more than face-to-face.

Working less hard and being less productive when in a group.

Working harder when in a group than when working alone.

Degree to which a group is attractive to its members, members are motivated to remain in
the group, and members influence one another.

Team strategy that entails making decision with the team and then informing outsiders of its
intentions.

Team strategy that entails simultaneously emphasizing internal team building and achieving external
visibility.

Team strategy that requires team members to interact frequently with outsiders, diagnose their
needs, and experiment with solutions.

Style of dealing with conflict involving cooperation on behalf of the other party but not
being assertive about one’s own interests.

Reaction to conflict that involves ignoring the problem by doing nothing at all, or deemphasizing
the disagreement.

Style of dealing with conflict involving moderate attention to bother parties’ concerns.

Style of dealing with conflict involving strong focus on one’s own goals and little or no concern for the other person’s goals.

Style of dealing with conflict emphasizing both cooperation and assertiveness to maximize
both parties’ satisfaction.

Higher-level goals taking priority over specific individual or group goals.