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.