Business organization & environment
The 4Ps method of analysis in a fishbone diagram
What are paraphernalia, policies, procedures, and people?
Culture of organizations where the focus is on getting results. Individuals and teams are empowered and have some discretion over their responsibilities.
What are task cultures?
The fall in value of fixed assets over time, from wear and tear (due to the asset being used) or obsolescence (outdated or out of fashion).
What is depreciation?
A quantitative management technique used to predict a firm's level of sales over a given time period.
What is sales forecasting?
The process of identifying best practice in an industry, in relation to products, processes and operations. It sets the standards for other firms to emulate.
What is benchmarking?
The squares on a decision tree that indicate where a decision is to be made.
What is a decision node?
Cultures where there is one dominant individual or group that holds decision-making power.
What are power cultures?
An efficiency ratio that measures the average number of days it takes for a business to collect the money owed from debtors.
What is debtor days ratio?
The additional three P's of the extended marketing mix.
What are people, processes and physical evidence?
An inventory management system based on stocks being delivered as and when they are needed in the production process. As stocks are delivered just before they are used, there is no need to have buffer stocks.
What is just-in-time (JIT)?
A social psychologist who invented the force field analysis in 1951.
Who is Professor Kurt Lewin?
Cultures where staff in similar positions and with similar expertise and training establish groups to share their knowledge.
What are person cultures?
The measure of the percentage of an organization's capital employed that comes from external sources (long term liabilities), such as debentures and mortgages.
What is gearing ratio?
The practice of selling domestically produced goods or services to overseas buyers in order to gain access to larger international markets.
What is exporting?
Japanese term for 'continuous improvement', a philosophy where workers and managers continually try to find ways to improve work processes and efficiency.
What is kaizen?
The two different forces that respectively push for and against change in a force field analysis.
What are the driving and restraining forces?
Cultures that exist in highly structured firms with formal rules, policies and procedures. Job roles are clearly stated in job descriptions and power is devolved to middle managers.
What are role cultures?
The total discounted net cash flows minus the initial cost of an investment project.
What is net present value?
The marketing of an organizations products in foreign countries.
What is international marketing?
The process that attempts to encourage all employees to make quality assurance paramount in the various functions(production, finance, marketing and HRM) of an organization.
What is total quality management (TQM)?
A visual representation of all the tasks in a particular project plotted on a timescale. As a planning and scheduling tool, it allows managers to monitor progress.
What is a Gantt chart?
When there is conflict or incompatibility between two or more cultures within an organization, e.g. when two firms integrate via a hostile takeover.
What is culture clash?
The financial plan of expected revenue and expenditure for a department or an organization, for a given period of time.
What is a budget?
A forecasting technique used to identify the trend by using past data and extending this trend to predict future sales.
What is extrapolation?
The process of developing a plan before an unwanted event occurs by using "what if?" questions to identify all problems and threats.
What is contingency planning?