Decision-Making and Values

Values

• Values are unspoken principles that guide decisions and actions in society
• Organizations use values to establish culture
• Integrity: ethical decision-making
• Innovation: fostering creativity

Programmed vs. Non-programmed Decisions

• Programmed decisions are structured, recurring, and predictable (e.g., restocking inventory)
• Non-programmed decisions are unstructured, infrequent, and difficult to predict (e.g., developing a new product line).

Decision-Making Conditions

• Certainty: the decision-maker knows all alternatives and their outcomes with confidence (e.g., knowing exact pre-orders and production costs).
• Risk: alternatives and their outcomes are associated with probability estimates (e.g., launching a product with a 70% chance of success).
• Uncertainty: alternatives and their outcomes are unknown (e.g., early COVID-19 decisions).

Cross-Training

• Teaching employees multiple job roles without regular rotation.
• Benefits: flexibility in staffing, improved understanding of operations, and increased employee satisfaction.

Product/Service Mix

• Determining the number and types of products and services to offer.
• Driven by corporate, business and marketing strategies
• Managers must decide how many to offer and what varieties.

Capacity Utilization

• Measuring the percentage of available capacity being used.
• Calculated as (Actual output / Potential output) * 100

Job Design

• Defining responsibilities and tasks for a job to meet organizational goals & employee expectations.
• Components: responsibilities, decision-making authority, success indicators.

Organizational Structure

• The arrangement of elements within an organization.
• Job Design, Job Grouping (departmentalization), Reporting Relationships, and Authority Distribution (centralized/decentralized).
• Coordination is crucial to connect various departments.

Staff Position

• Support roles offering expertise, advice, and assistance to line positions.
• Ex: Legal advisors, HR consultants.

Job Specialization

• Breaking down tasks into smaller components to improve efficiency.
• Can lead to worker proficiency but also boredom and decreased motivation
• Important for mass-production assembly lines.

Job Enrichment

• Increasing task variety and control to counter the drawbacks of specialization.
• Aims to boost worker motivation and skills.

Organizational Change

• Significant alterations in structure, processes, or culture (e.g., shifting work schedules).
• Strategic, people-focused approach to improve organizational health and effectiveness.

Labor Relations

• Process of managing employee relations with unions
• Key activities include collective bargaining, resolving grievances, and complying with labor laws.

Ranking vs. Rating in Employee Evaluation

• Ranking compares employees directly, ordering them from best to worst.
• Rating compares each employee to a fixed standard.

Trademark Law Revision of 1988

• Not directly related to human resource management.

Oral Communication

• Face-to-face, group discussions, using spoken words to transmit meaning.
• Pros: prompt feedback, builds connections
• Cons: potential for inaccuracies.

Nonverbal Communication

• Using images, settings, body language, etc. without words to transmit meaning,
• Pros: adds nuance to oral/written communication, conveys emotions
• Cons: susceptible to misinterpretation.

Written Communication

• Memos, letters, reports etc. transmitting meaning using written word.
• Pros: high accuracy, provides permanent record
• Cons: inhibits feedback, lacks immediate response.

Types of Communication

• Oral, Nonverbal, Written.

Power Types

• Legitimate Power (authority granted by position)
• Reward Power (ability to grant rewards)
• Coercive Power (ability to threaten punishment)
• Referent Power (influence due to personal appeal)
• Expert Power (influence due to knowledge or skill).

Communication Process

• The steps in transmitting, receiving and responding to information between sender and receiver: sender, encoding, transmission, receiver, feedback.

Psychological Contract

• Unwritten expectations of contributions and rewards between employees and organizations.

Perception Management

• Interpreting and shaping work environment information, through Selective and Strategic Perception

Attribution

• Observing behavior and assigning causes to it
• This includes the process of observing behavior (s) and inferring the reasons (s) or cause(s) of that behavior.

Labor Relations: Key Activities

• Negotiating collective bargaining agreements
• Handling grievances or disputes
• Ensuring compliance with labor laws.

What is Attrition?

• A natural process where individuals leave the workforce.
• Management involves planning, organizing, leading, and controlling activities.

Leading

• Motivating and guiding team members toward organizational goals using clear communication and recognition.

Controlling

• Monitoring progress and making adjustments to stay on track toward goals (Ex. checking sales data).

What is Leadership?

• Inspiring and empowering employees to achieve a common goal

What is a Manager?

• Focuses on optimizing processes and controlling resources effectively.

What is Impression Management?

• Efforts to present a favorable image to others
• Often involves actions like dressing professionally, boosting one’s own self esteem etc.

What is a Group or team?

• Two or more people working together to achieve common goals, in order to address various challenges through information sharing, problem solving of social needs etc..

Missional Statement

• A description of a company's purpose and overall mission.
• It usually identifies the scope of the business, and what sets it apart from other firms..

Types of Goals

• General goals set by top level management (e.g. increasing overall profitability)
• Tactical goals set by middle managers (e.g., implementing steps for each store profit increase).
• Operational goals set by lower-level managers (e.g., daily promotions for the store).

Diversification Strategy

• A company's strategy concerning how many different businesses they are engaged in, and how related those businesses are to each other.
• (Single Product), (Related Diversification), and (Unrelated Diversification).

Scope

• The range of management processes applied to various organizations (e.g., for-profit vs. non-profit).

Emergent Strategy

• A pattern of actions that develop during uncertain/changing environments, often reacting to unfolding situations rather than pre-planning.

Decision-Making Processes

• Identifying a problem (or need).
• Identifying possible Solutions
• Choosing the best solution.
• Implementing the chosen solution.

Inducements

• Something a manager offers in exchange for employee efforts or support (e.g., promotions)

Motivation

• The underlying reason(s) behind an individuals actions and behaviors.

Two-factor theory

• Proposes that motivators and hygiene factors are separate and independent motivators of employee behavior.
• (Motivators lead to satisfaction) (Hygiene factors prevent dissatisfaction, but don't lead to satisfaction)..

Extinction

• A process which involves removing a reinforcing stimulus, ultimately leading to a decrease in behavior which no longer results in any reinforcement.

Compressed Work Schedule

• Working a full 40-hour week in fewer than the traditional five days

Merit Pay

• Pay based on contribution to the organization.

Formal/Informal Leaders

• Defined by the way they lead in an established or informal way.

External/Internal Environment

• Internal environment: conditions and forces within an organization.
• External environment: the factors outside the organization that can affect an organization.

What is Social Responsibility

• Obligations to preserve and enhance societal well being, in relation to organizations actions.

What are Ethics?

• Personal convictions concerning the rightness or wrongness of behaviors, actions and decisions.
• Includes examining whether a behavior is ethical or unethical. This often determined through social norms.

Areas of Ethical Concern in an Organization

• Organization-Employee (Fair pay to employees),
• Employee-Organization (Honesty, trust from employees),
• Economic Agents (Fairness in dealings with customers).

Types of Justice

• Distributive , Procedural, and Interpersonal Justice.

Interpersonal Justice

• Fairness of treatment in interactions.
• Important factors include respect and compassion.

What is Competition

• Understanding of both rivals, market trends, customer demands, and researching new products, services and technologies.

What is Infrastructure

• Physical and organizational structure (e.g., roads and communication systems) which make up a company's economic environment.

What is Organizational Stability

• Strategic planning to allocate resources (e.g., inventory, time, and money) related to daily operations, and long term business goals

What is Autonomy

• Degree of control a worker has over their jobs/ tasks, relating to work environment, and job characteristic preferences in regards to work.

Import/ Export Strategy

• Exporting: selling products in another country after production/ manufacturing
• Importing: acquiring or bringing a product that was produced/ manufactured in another country into one that requires the product.

Strategic Plan

• An outline of a company's long term goals and plans of action.
• Focuses on resource allocation and priority of actions.

Tactical Plan

• Details of implementation of the strategic plan. - Short term, focused plans regarding strategies outlined in a broader strategic plan.

Whistle-Blowing

• Disclosure of unethical or illegal activity within an organization to external sources/ people (ex. authorities)

Explore the foundations of decision-making and the role of values in shaping organizational culture. This quiz covers programmed versus non-programmed decisions, various decision-making conditions, and the concept of cross-training in the workplace. Test your understanding of these critical management principles.