Exam 16: Control Systems and Quality Management: Techniques for Enhancing Organizational Effectiveness

According to Kaplan and Norton, ________ maps are "visual representations of a company's critical objectives and the crucial relationships among them that drive organizational performance."

Throughout the last 60 years, the United States has had an interesting track record in regard to productivity. Recently productivity has been declining globally. Why?

This question contains two parts; be sure to answer both. First, define productivity and explain why increasing productivity is important. Second, imagine that you are the manager of a large chain department store. Suggest at least three ways that you might improve productivity at the store.

A balance sheet summarizes an organization's overall financial worth, or its assets and liabilities, at a specific point in time.

Explain why a company would need both a fixed and a variable budget.

Imagine that you manage a high-volume electronics store, Tech Geeks. Each of the salespeople has a very ambitious monthly sales goal; for the store to meet its overall goal, all of the salespeople need to meet their individual goals. Apply each of the four keys to a successful control system to Tech Geeks, explaining how you would implement an effective control system.

Twice daily, factory workers at Fabulous Skeins and Yarn select random samples from the production runs and test them for quality, rejecting runs if too many samples fall outside a standard range of acceptability. These workers are engaged in statistical process control.

Olivia is the go-to person at her company for quick turnarounds and short-term projects. She stays focused and meets all deadlines. Even though she seems successful, which time management mistake may Olivia be making?

Typically, operational control is accomplished through reports issued

TQM is a comprehensive approach dedicated to continuous

Colin was working on his budget. He had compiled his receipts, his employee's time sheets, the invoices he has sent to his suppliers and his bills that he owed others. He was now ready to assess his

Some managers use ________, which provides four indicators with which organizations can set goals and measure performance.

Explain how a manager would use each of the following: financial statement, balance sheet, income statement, and audit.

Enright Industrial Leasing has effective control processes, allowing its managers to discover ________ in bookkeeping right away, before a would-be embezzler could seriously affect its business.

Installing quality-control procedures that can be audited by independent quality-control experts is fundamental to

Define control and then describe why organizations need to use control.

When describing Deming's principles to a colleague, which of the following would you NOT discuss?

Evan accidentally quoted a customer a price for new flooring that was more than $1,000 less than the actual price. His manager had a choice of punishing Evan or providing him coaching and retraining on how to calculate the cost of flooring correctly. His manager chose to retrain Evan, using the control of

________ is the amount of acceptable deviation from a standard, determined when the standard was established.

Imagine that you are the general manager of the local hardware store. Explain the six areas of organizational control and how each is relevant to improving the customer's satisfaction with the operation of the store.