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Essentials Of Contemporary Management 7th Edition Gareth Jones, Jennifer George - Solutions
Which organization is likely to face the most complex task environment: a biotechnology company trying to develop a new cure for cancer or a large retailer like the Gap or Macy’s? Why?
The population is aging because of a combination of declining birth rates, declining death rates, and the aging of the baby boom generation. What might be some of the implications of this demographic trend for (a) a pharmaceutical company, and (b) the home construction industry?
How do political, legal, and economic forces shape national culture? What characteristics of national culture do you think have the most important effect on how successful a country is in doing business abroad?
Following the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, many U.S. companies shifted production operations to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs and lower standards for environmental and worker protection. As a result, they cut their costs and were better able to survive in an
Choose an organization, and ask a manager in that organization to list the number and strengths of forces in the organization’s task environment. Ask the management to pay particular attention to identifying opportunities and threats that result from pressures and changes in customers,
Describe the main forces in the global task environment that are affecting the organization.
Describe the main forces in the global general environment that are affecting the organization.
Explain how these environmental forces affect the job of an individual manager within this organization. How do they determine the opportunities and threats that its managers must confront?
1. Either by yourself or in a group, discuss if it is ethical to employ children in factories, and whether U.S. companies should buy and sell products made by these children. What are some arguments for and against child labor?2. If child labor is an economic necessity, what could be done to make
Decide what you must know about (a) your future customers, (b) your future competitors, and (c) other critical forces in the task environment if you are to be successful.
Evaluate the main barriers to entry into the copying business.
Based on this analysis, list some of the steps you will take to help your new copying business succeed.
1. Analyze the major forces in the task environment of a retail clothing store. 2. Devise a program that will help other managers and employees to better understand and respond to their store's task environment.
1. What kinds of advantages can Chinese companies obtain if they move production into the United States? 2. What are some possible disadvantages and threats of moving production to the United States? 3. Will more Chinese companies make investments in the United States as opposed to China in the
1. What forces in the global environment are leading to outsourcing? 2. What has outsourcing meant to countries like India? 3. Do you think outsourcing is helping or hurting America?
What are the main differences between programmed decision making and nonprogrammed decision making?
In what ways do the classical and administrative models of decision making help managers appreciate the complexities involved in real- world decision making?
Why do capable managers sometimes make bad decisions? What can individual managers do to improve their decision-making skills?
In what kinds of groups is groupthink most likely to be a problem? When is it least likely to be a problem? What steps can group members take to ward off groupthink?
What is organizational learning, and how can managers promote it?
What is the difference between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship?
Ask a manager to recall the best and the worst decisions he or she ever made. Try to determine why these decisions were so good or so bad.
Think about an organization in your local community or your university, or an organization’s that you are familiar with, that is doing poorly. Now think of questions managers in the organization should ask stakeholders to elicit creative ideas for turning around the organization’s fortunes.
Identify the criteria you used, either consciously or unconsciously, to guide your decision making.
List the alternatives you considered. Were they all possible alternatives? Did you unconsciously (or consciously) ignore some important alternatives?
How much information did you have about each alternative? Were you making the decision on the basis of complete or incomplete information?
Try to remember how you reached the decision. Did you sit down and consciously think through the implications of each alternative, or did you make a decision on the basis of intuition? Did you use any rules of thumb to help you make the decision?
In retrospect, do you think that your choice of alternative was shaped by any of the cognitive biases discussed in this chapter?
Having answered the previous five questions,, do you think in retrospect that you made a reasonable decision? What, if anything, might you do to improve your ability to make good decisions in the future?
1. Either alone or in a group, think about the ethical implications of extreme decision making by groups 2. When group decision making takes place, should members of a group each feel fully accountable for outcomes of the decision? Why or why not?
As a group, spend 5 or 10 minutes generating ideas about the alternative restaurants that the members think will be most likely to succeed. Each group member should be as innovative and creative as possible, and no suggestions should be criticized.
Spend the next 10 to 15 minutes debating the pros and cons of the alternatives. As a group, try to reach a consensus on which alternative is most likely to succeed.
After making your decision, discuss the pros and cons of the brainstorming method, and decide whether any production blocking occurred.
1. What kind of decisions has chief executive Ben Verwaayen been making at Alcatel-Lucent? 2. To what extent are these decisions subject to risk and uncertainty? 3. To what extent do you think Verwaayen and other top managers have satisficed when making these decisions? 4. How might Verwaayen
1. Which aspect of LaserMonks’ formula—quality products, competitive prices, or social entrepreneurship—would increase the chance that you would buy from this company? 2. Which entrepreneurial characteristics does Brother Bernard McCoy exhibit? 3. What does the fact that Brother Bernard and
Describe the three steps of planning. Explain how they are related.
What is the relationship among corporate-, business-, and functional-level strategies, and how do they create value for an organization?
Pick an industry and identify four companies in the industry that pursue one of the four main business-level strategies (low-cost, focused low-cost, etc.).
What is the difference between vertical integration and related diversification?
Ask a manager about the kinds of planning exercises he or she regularly uses. What are the purposes of these exercises, and what are their advantages or disadvantages?
Ask a manager to identify the corporate- and business-level strategies used by his or her organization.
What is are the main industry(ies) in which the company competes ?
What business-level strategy does the company seem to be pursuing in this industry? Why?
What corporate level strategies is the company pursuing? Why?
Have there been any major changes in its strategy recently? Why?
1. Either by yourself or in a group, decide if this business practice of paying bribes is ethical or unethical. 2. Should IBM allow its foreign divisions to pay bribes if all other companies are doing so? 3. If bribery is common in a particular country, what effect would this likely have on the
Using scenario planning, analyze the pros and cons of each alternative.
Think about the various clothing retailers in your local malls and city, and analyze the choices they have made about how to compete with one another along the f low cost and differentiation dimensions.
1. List the supermarket chains in your city and identify their strengths and weaknesses. 2. What business-level strategies are these supermarkets currently pursuing? 3. What kind of supermarket would do best against the competition? What kind of business-level strategy should it pursue?
1. What kind of business-level strategy is Nestle pursuing? 2. What kind of competencies do its CEO and managers possess that allow it to pursue these strategies? 3. In what ways may its strategies allow it to outperform its rivals such as Kraft and General Mills
1. Why is planning important for organizations like State Farm? 2. What kind of diversification took place when State Farm entered the banking field? 3. How does State Farm differentiate its banking services from those of its competitors?
Would a flexible or a more formal structure be appropriate for these organizations: (a) a large department store (b) a Big Five accountancy firm (c) a biotechnology company? Explain your reasoning.
Using the job characteristics model as a guide, discuss how a manager can enrich or enlarge subordinates’ jobs.
How might a salesperson’s job or a secretary’s job be enlarged or enriched to make it more motivating?
When and under what conditions might managers change from a functional to (a) a product (b) a geographic, or (c) a market structure?
How do matrix structures and product team structures differ? Why is the product team structure more widely used?
Find and interview a manager and identify the kind of organizational structure that his or her organization uses to coordinate its people and resources. Why is the organization using that structure? Do you think a different structure would be more appropriate? Which one?
With the same or another manager, discuss the distribution of authority in the organization. Does the manager think that decentralizing authority and empowering employees is appropriate?
Interview some employees of an organization, and ask them about the organization’s values and norms, the typical characteristics of employees, and the organization’s ethical values and socialization practices. Using this information, try to describe the organization’s culture and the way it
Which contingencies are most important in explaining how the organization is organized? Do you think it is organized in the best way?
Using the job characteristics model, how motivating do you think the job of a typical employee in this organization is?
Can you think of any ways in which a typical job could be enlarged or enriched?
What kind of organizational structure does the organization use? If it is part of a chain, what kind of structure does the entire organization use? What other structures discussed in the chapter might allow the organization to operate more effectively? For example, would the move to a product team
How many levels are there in the organization’s hierarchy? Is authority centralized or decentralized? Describe the span of control of the top manager and of middle or first-line managers.
Is the distribution of authority appropriate for the organization and its activities? Would it be possible to flatten the hierarchy by decentralizing authority and empowering employees?
What are the principal integrating mechanisms used in the organization? Do they provide sufficient coordination among individuals and functions? How might they be improved?
Now that you have analyzed the way this organization is structured, what advice would you give its managers to help them improve the way it operates?
1. What ethical rules (see Chapter 3) should managers use to decide which employees to terminate when redesigning their hierarchy? 2. Some people argue that employees who have worked for an organization for many years have a claim on the organization at least as strong as that of its shareholders.
1. Discuss ways in which you can improve how the current functional structure operates so that it speeds website development. 2. Discuss the pros and cons of moving to a (a) multidivisional, (b) matrix, or (c) product-team structure to reduce website development time. 3. Which of these structures
1. How would you describe how Google’s organizational structure has developed since its founding? 2. What are some of the problems that Google has run into recently as a result of its organizational structure? 3. In what ways do you think Larry Page needs to change Google’s structure to make it
1. How would you rate teaching according to the five characteristics that determine how motivating a job is? What does the Rabouin High School situation show about the effect those in authority have on motivation and morale? 2. What types of organizational structures does the New Orleans Recovery
What is the relationship between organizing and controlling?
How do output control and behavior control differ?
Why is it important for managers to involve subordinates in the control process?
What is organizational culture, and how does it affect the way employees behave?
What kind of controls would you expect to find most used in (a) a hospital, (b) the Navy, (c) a city police force? Why?
Ask a manager to list the main performance measures that he or she uses to evaluate how well the organization is achieving its goals.
Interview some employees of an organization, and ask them about the organization’s values, norms, socialization practices, ceremonies and rites, and special language and stories. Referring to this information, describe the organization’s culture.
Does the organization have a management by objectives system in place? If it does, describe it. If it does not, speculate about why not.
How important is behavior control in this organization? For example, how much of managers’ time is spent directly supervising employees? How formalized is the organization? Do employees receive a book of rules to instruct them about how to perform their jobs?
What kind of culture does the organization have? What are the values and norms? What effect does the organizational culture have on the way employees behave or treat customers?
Based on this analysis, do you think there is a fit between the organization’s control systems and its culture? What is the nature of this fit? How could it be improved?
1. Either by yourself or in a group, think about the ethical implications of organizations’ monitoring and collecting information about their employees. What kind of information is it ethical to collect or unethical to collect? Why? Should managers and organizations inform subordinates they are
Design a control system that you think will best motivate salespeople to achieve these goals.
What relative importance do you put on (a) output control, (b) behavior control, and (c) organizational culture in this design?
1. What kind of output controls will best facilitate positive interactions both within the teams and among the teams? 2. What kind of behavior controls will best facilitate positive interactions both within the teams and among the teams? 3. How would you go about helping managers develop a culture
1. In what ways did Benetton’s use of its control systems result in declining performance? 2. How did its competitors use their control systems to gain a competitive advantage? 3. What kinds of changes has Benetton made to its control systems? Do you think it has gone far enough? Will they be
1. Why might output control be preferable to behavior control for a manager whose employees use Facebook at work? 2. How could clan control affect employee use of Facebook and other social networking sites? 3. Do you think employers should have policies to ban or limit using Facebook and similar
Discuss why two people with similar abilities may have very different expectancies for performing at a high level.
Describe why some people have low instrumentalities even when their managers distribute outcomes based on performance.
Analyze how professors try to promote equity to motivate students.
Describe three techniques or procedures that managers can use to determine whether a goal is difficult.
Discuss why managers should always try to use positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement.
Interview three people who have the same kind of job (such as salesperson, waiter/waitress, or teacher), and determine what kinds of needs each is trying to satisfy at work.
Interview a manager in an organization in your community to determine the extent to which the manager takes advantage of vicarious learning to promote high motivation among subordinates.
What would be your levels of expectancy and instrumentality on this job? Which outcomes would have high valence for you on this job? What steps would your manager take to influence your levels of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence?
Whom would you choose as a referent on this job? What steps would your manager take to make you feel that you were being equitably treated? What would you do if, after a year on the job, you experienced underpayment equity?
What goals would you strive to achieve on this job? Why? What role would your manager play in determining your goals?
What needs would you strive to satisfy on the job? Why? What role would your manager play in helping you satisfy these needs?
What behaviors would your manager positively reinforce for you on this job? Why? What positive reinforcers would your manager use?
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