Exam 7: Management and Leadership

A vision is the overall explanation of why an organization exists and where it is trying to head.

A vision for a company is

Staffing is less important at Facebook, Google, and other high-tech firms because these firms sell technology.

The downsizing that has occurred in recent years has ________ middle managers in many organizations.

Eve is a manager of a medium-sized insurance company. She is currently involved in redesigning her department to ensure that employees and other resources can respond more quickly and efficiently to the needs of its customers. Eve's efforts are part of the organizing function of management.

Strategic planning is now much easier than it used to be because managers have access to very reliable computerized forecasting tools.

Kyra is a middle manager for her firm and just finished comparing the results of a promotional campaign with the company's outcome expectations. The next step in the control process is

Mini-Case Lauzy Fare left his position as senior vice president at Blue Skies Electronics a few weeks ago to become the new CEO of Idle Time Gaming. Before joining the new company, Lauzy spent time studying Idle Time's competitive position and talking to employees in all divisions and at all levels of the organization. Based on his findings, Lauzy believes that Idle Time has potential, but also faces some serious challenges if it expects to grow. Lauzy found that when confronted by him, most of Idle Time's professional employees seemed almost afraid to express their opinions. He learned that Otto Craddick, the previous CEO and founder of the company, viewed himself as the boss, and, as such, micromanaged every aspect of the business. This discouraged employees from using their own initiative and ideas to solve problems. For example, Otto required sales and service representatives to get his approval before they made any major commitments to customers. Otto's policy prevented the organization from responding quickly to customer requests, so sales were lost. Unlike his predecessor, Lauzy believes it is important for sales and service personnel to be able to deal with many types of customer requests without needing approval from top management. He is confident that giving employees the authority and flexibility to deal with customers, and providing them with the training and resources to help them do so, will improve morale within the company, create customer satisfaction, and grow revenues. Lauzy also wants to make workers throughout the organization feel more appreciated. He plans to continue meeting with them on a regular basis to seek their advice. He hopes his work colleagues will eventually respond to his leadership style. He has already encouraged middle managers to get employees more involved in decision making, and has suggested some problem-solving techniques the managers could try. Although he thought that changing the rigidity of the company culture would be his first challenge at the new firm, Lauzy quickly realized that there were no standards in place to measure the progress of changes in internal morale, customer satisfaction, and profitability. He has asked managers in those departments to spend more time setting performance standards and then monitoring actual performance. Lauzy is confident that in a relatively short period of time internal changes will lead to good company performance. As a member of top management, Lauzy performs a variety of important tasks. -Lauzy's decision to establish well-defined standards for monitoring performance means that he expects management to seriously engage in the ________ function of management.

The first step in developing a knowledge management system is to

Today, a mission statement should also address social responsibility.

Supervisory managers spend most of their time on

Colette has worked for Comfort Cove Hotel for a decade. Damon, however, is a new employee at the hotel. Mallory, who oversees both Colette and Damon, may find that she should use a different leadership style with each of these employees.

Alejandro is the general manager of a retail outlet in Arizona. By emphasizing teamwork and acting in a role of coach rather than boss, Alejandro is considered to be a modern manager.

________ is the art of utilizing organizational resources to accomplish goals at work.

Conceptual skills refer to the ability of a manager to perform the tasks associated with a specific discipline or department.

When setting standards used in controlling, it is better to simply state general goals such as "better quality" or "higher levels of consumer satisfaction" than it is to spend a lot of time and effort developing more specific standards.

Zariah is a middle manager at Simple Solutions, Inc. The company's top management has just announced that they are going to initiate a policy of empowerment. In order for this policy to succeed, Zariah and other managers will need to adopt a more autocratic style of leadership.

Department heads at Ironside Chemical usually make decisions after meeting with employees and seeking their ideas and suggestions. These department heads are making use of the ________ style of leadership.

In a company in which an effective vision has been provided

The steps of the controlling function include assigning tasks and establishing procedures to accomplish organizational goals.