Monday, September 27, 2010

Chapter 5:

*Ethics
-The system of rules that governs the ordering of values.

Caux Principles:
*Kyosei
-Living and working together for the common good, allowing cooperation and mutual prosperity to coexist with healthy and fair competition.
*Human dignity
-Concerns the value of each person as an end, not a means to the fulfillment of others’ purposes.

Ethical Systems:
*Egoism
-Ethical system defining acceptable behavior as that which maximizes consequences for the individual.
*Utilitarianism
-An ethical system stating that the greatest good for the greatest number should be the overriding concern of decision makers.
*Relativism
-Philosophy that bases ethical behavior on the opinions and behaviors of relevant other people.
*Virtue ethics
-Classification of people based on their level of moral judgment.
*Kohlberg’s model of cognitive moral development
-Perspective that what is moral comes from what a mature person with “good” moral character would deem right.
The Ethics Enviroment:
*Sarbanes-Oxley Act
-An act passed into law by Congress in 2002 to establish strict accounting and reporting rules in order to make senior managers more accountable and to improve and maintain investor confidence.

The Danger signs:
1.Excessive emphasis on short-term revenues over longer-term considerations.
2.Failure to establish a written code of ethics.
3.A desire for simple, “quick fix” solutions to ethical problems.
4.An unwillingness to take an ethical stand that may impose financial costs.
5.Consideration of ethics solely as a legal issue or a public relations tool.
6.Lack of clear procedures for handling ethical problems.
7.Responding to the demands of shareholders at the expense of other constituencies.

A process for Ethical decision making:


Ethical Decsion Making:
*Moral awareness
-Realizing the issue has ethical implications.
*Moral judgment
-Knowing what actions are morally defensible.
*Moral character
-The strength and persistence to act in accordance with your ethics despite the challenges.

The Business Costs of Ethical Failure:


Pyramid of Global Corporate SocialResponsibility and Performance:

*Ecocentric Management

-Goal is the creation of sustainable economic development and improvement of quality of life worldwide for all organizational stakeholders.

*Life-cycle analysis (LCA)
-A process of analyzing all inputs and outputs, though the entire “cradle-to-grave” life of a product, to determine total environmental impact

Friday, September 24, 2010






Chapter 4:






Planning and Strategic Management:





*Situational analysis
-A process planners use, within time and resource constraints, to gather, interpret, and summarize all information relevant to the planning issue under consideration.




Alternative Goals and Plans:



*Plans
-The actions or means managers intend to use to achieve organizational goals.



*Contingency plans
-sets of actions to be taken when a company’s initial plans have not worked well or if events in the external environment require a sudden change.








Strategic Planning:



1.Where will we be active?
2.How will we get there?
3.How will we win in the marketplace?
4.How fast will we move and in what sequence will we make changes?
5.How will we obtain financial returns












Strategy Map:





Strategic Planning:
*Strategic management
-A process that involves managers from all parts of the organization in the formulation and implementation of strategic goals and strategies.








Strategic Management Process:













Internal Resource Analysis:















Analysis of Internal Strength and Weaknesses:


*Benchmarking
-process of assessing how well one company’s basic functions and skills compare with those of another company or set of companies.
-goal of benchmarking is to thoroughly understand the “best practices” of other firms and to undertake actions to achieve both better performance and lower costs.




SWOT analysis and Strategy Formulation:


*SWOT analysis
-A comparison of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that helps executives formulate strategy.




Summary of Corporate Strategies:




Strategy Implementation:
1.Define strategic risks
2.Assess organization capabilities
3.Develop an implementation agenda
4.Create an implementation plan


BCG Matrix:


Monday, September 20, 2010

Chapters 1-3

Chapter 1:
Global- offices all over the world.
† Means that a company’s talent can come from anywhere
† Internet makes globalization inevitable

Knowledge Management:
-Practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an organization’s intellectual resources
-Knowledge workers

Management
† The process of working with people and resources to accomplish organizational goals.
† Planning process involves management.
† Organizing process involves management.
† Leading process involves management.
† Controlling process involves management.

Top level managers
Middle level managers
Frontline managers

Common Practices of successful executives:
-They ask “What needs to be done?” rather than “What do I want to do?”
-They write an action plan. They don’t just think, they do, based on a sound, ethical plan.
-They take responsibility for decisions.
-They focus on opportunities rather than problems.





Chapter 2:

Materials- metal
Services- Hair cut
Equipment- scissors
Capital- Money, investments
Information- Marketing information and studies


Open systems- Organizations that affect and are affected by their environment.
Microenvironment- Fundamental factors that affect all environments.


Demographic trends:
† Growth of the labor force
† Increasing education and skill levels
† Immigration
† Increased numbers of women in the workforce
† Increasingly diverse workforce


The competitive Enviroment:



Environmental uncertainty
† Lack of information needed to understand or predict the future

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

Independent Action:

Cooperative Action:

Strategic maneuvering
† An organization’s conscious efforts to change the boundaries of its task environment.

Domain selection
† Entrance to a new market or industry with an existing expertise

Diversification
† Occurs when a firm invests in a different product, business, or geographic area
Mergers
† One or more companies combine with another
Acquisitions
† One firm buys another
Divestiture
† A firm sells one or more businesses
Prospectors
† Continuously change the boundaries or their task environment by seeking new products and markets, diversifying and merging, or acquiring new enterprises
Defenders
† Stay within a stable product domain as a strategic maneuver

Competing Values Model of Culture:


Chapter 3:

Characteristics of Managerial Decisions:

Lack of Structure:
*Programmed decisions
-Decisions encountered and made before, having objectively correct answers, and solvable by using simple rules, policies, or numerical computations.
*Nonprogrammed decisions
-New, novel, complex decisions having no proven answers

Comparisons of Types of Decisions:

*Conflict- tension not always an argument.

The stages of Decision making:
(The Top red should be: Identifying and diagnosing the problem.)
Making the Choice:
*Satisficing
-Choosing an option that is acceptable, although not necessarily the best or perfect
*Optimizing
-Achieving the best possible balance among several goals
Implementing the Decision:
1.Determine how things will look when the decision is fully operational.
2.Chronologically order the steps necessary to achieve a fully operational decision.
3.List the resources and activities required to implement each step.
4.Estimate the time needed for each step.
5.Assign responsibility for each step to specific individuals.
Implementing the Decision continued:
-What problems could this action cause?
-What can we do to prevent the problems?
-What unintended benefits or opportunities could arise?
-How can we make sure they happen?
-How can we be ready to act when the opportunities come?

Barriers to Decision making:



Pros and Cons of using Group decsion making:

Managing Gruop Decsion making:

Constuctive Conflict:
*Cognitive conflict
-Issue-based differences in perspectives or judgments.
*Affective conflict
-Emotional disagreement directed toward other people.
*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.
Brainstorming:
*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.