Managers and Managing

Organizations
collections of people who work together and coordinate their actions to achieve a wide variety of goals or desired future outcomes.

Management
the planning, organizing, leading, and controlling of human and other resources to achieve organizational goals efficiently and effectively.

organizational performance
a measure of how efficiently and effectively a manager uses resources to satisfy customers and organizational goals.

efficiency
a measure of how productively resources are used to achieve a goal.

effectiveness
a measure of the appropriateness of the goals an organization is pursuing and of the degrees to which the organization achieves those goals.

planning
identifying and selecting appropriate goals. one of the four principal tasks of management.

strategy
a cluster of decisions about what goals to pursue, and how to use resources to achieve goals.

organizing
structuring working relationships so organizational members work together to achieve organizational goals, one of the four principle tasks of management.

organizational structure
a formal system of task and reporting relationships that coordinates and motivates organizational members so that they work together to achieve organizational goals.

leading
articulating a clear vision and energizing and enabling organizational members so that they understand the part they play in achieving goals. one of the four principle tasks of management.

controlling
evaluating how well an organization is achieving its goals and taking action to maintain or improve performance. one of the four tasks of management.

department
a group of people who work together and possess similar skills or use the same knowledge, tools or techniques to perform their jobs.

first-line manager
a manager who is responsible for the daily supervision of nonmanagerial employees.

middle manager
a manager who supervises the first line managers and is responsible for finding the besdt way to use resources to achieve organizational goals.

top manager
a manager who establishes organizational goals, decides how departments should interact, and monitors the performance of middle managers.

top-management team
a group composed of the CEO, the COO, the president, and the heads of the most important departments.

conceptual skills
the ability to analyze and diagnose the situation and to distinguish between cause and effect.

human skills
the ability to understand, alter, lead, and control the behavior of other individuals and groups.

technical skills
the job specific knowledge and techniques required to perform an organizational role.

core competency
the specific set of departmental skills, knowledge, and experience that allows one organization to outperform another.

restructuring
downsizing an organization by eliminating the jobs or large numbers of top, middle, and first managers and nonmanagerial employees.

outsourcing
contracting with another company, usually abroad, to have it perform an activity the organization previously performed itself.

empowerment
the expansion of employees' knowledge, tasks, and decision making responsibilities.

self-managed team
a group of employees who assume responsibility for organizing, controlling, and supervising their own activities and monitoring the quality of the goods and services they produce.

global organization
organizations that operate and compete in more than one country.

competitive advantage
the ability of one organization to outperform another because it produces desired goods or services more efficiently and effectively than they do.

innovation
the process of creating new or improved goods and services or developing better ways to produce or provide them.

turnaround management
the creation of a new vision for a struggling company based on a new approach to planning and organizing to make better use of a company's resources to allow it to survive and prosper.


See Also