Briefly explain how and why companies can create competitive advantage through people.

Compare and contrast the managerial roles of liaison, spokesperson, and negotiator. Explain both the similarities that link these roles behaviorally and the differences Mintzberg draws between them.

Compare and contrast the relative importance of the four characteristics that companies look for in managers as they rise through the management hierarchy. That is, describe the similarities and differences in these characteristics among lower, middle, and upper-level managers and explain the reasons for the differences.

Describe how managers approached management before the development of the theory of scientific management.

List the four principles of scientific management.

What did Henri Fayol mean when he argued that the success of an enterprise generally depends much more on the administrative ability of its leaders than on their technical ability?

What principles did the Hawthorne Studies demonstrate to be true?

When will people generally be indifferent to managerial directives or orders?

Differentiate between closed systems and open systems.

Discuss Mary Parker Folletts methods of dealing with conflict. What did she say about the value of each method?

How is your ability to be a manager influenced by acceptance of the contingency approach to management as the most effective way to manage?

Briefly differentiate between the external and internal environments that companies face and explain why these environments are important.

Briefly define and explain the relationship between environmental change, complexity, uncertainty, and resource scarcity.

Compare and contrast the general environment with the specific environment faced by a company.

Briefly identify the two predictors of future economic activity that are available to managers for decision making. Specify which one manager typically prefers.

Identify and provide examples of the two important ways in which socio-cultural changes and trends influence organizations.

Identify the major concern facing businesses from the perspective of the political/legal component of the general environment. What is the most appropriate action businesses can take to manage their legal responsibilities?

Briefly differentiate the two basic approaches used for monitoring customers.

Define advocacy groups. List the three approaches to influencing businesses that advocacy groups are likely to use. Specify which one of these three is most likely to impact company sales and profits.

List and briefly define the four characteristics of successful organizational cultures.

Discuss how difficult is it to change an organizational culture. Then identify three approaches that can be used to accomplish that goal.

Describe environmental change and its relationship to punctuated equilibrium theory. Give an example of an industry whose environments are characterized by the punctuated equilibrium model in recent years.

Identify and discuss the implications of changes in the political/legal component of the general environment facing organizations over the past decade. Give one example of a relevant recent change. What is the best way for companies to manage their legal responsibilities?

Define advocacy groups. Explain the basic techniques that advocacy groups use to achieve their goals. Provide one example of how advocacy techniques are used.

Identify and explain the three-step process that managers use to make sense of changes in their external environments. Explain how environmental scanning contributes to organizational performance.

List and describe the four characteristics of successful organizational cultures. Explain what is meant by success in this context. Identify an organization that you are aware of that seems to have a successful organizational culture. Characterize that organization on each of these four dimensions. Can an organization still have a successful culture if it is weak on one of these dimensions?

What is social responsiveness? Identify the four strategies that can be used to respond to social responsibility problems. How do these strategies differ? Use the relationship between social responsibility and economic performance to explain why a company might choose one strategy over another in a given set of circumstances.

Define the two types of conflict that may spontaneously occur in situations of group decision making. List and explain the approaches to structured conflict that may help to enhance the quality of group decisions. Be sure to comment on the research results which evaluate their effectiveness.

Explain how the rational decision-making process may help to overcome predispositions and biases that a manager has in a given decision-making situation.

How can organizations maintain flexibility as they plan? Explain how the method for maintaining flexibility is different from traditional planning.

Define the terms decision making and rational decision making. Briefly differentiate between them.

Explain what is meant by direct competition. Identify the factors that determine it, and specify the basic strategic moves involved in such competition. If you were heading a company engaged in direct competition with other firms, explain the circumstances under which you would prefer to engage in direct competition in order to develop a sustained competitive advantage?

Identify Porter's five industry forces and their role in industry-level strategy. Identify which one among these five forces could be considered the central one, with its value impacted by the relative values of the four other forces.

Explain the basics of portfolio strategy. Identify the best approach to diversification using this strategy. Be sure to explain your rationale for arguing that the specified approach to diversification is the best.

Identify and briefly describe the three things that companies need to be good at in order to successfully manage innovation streams. Explain why managing these factors is important. Specify which one of the three might tend to be more influenced by organizational culture and less influenced by the manager's own personal ability.

Explain how the concept of innovation streams relates to the concept of sustainable competitive advantage. Give an example of how this occurs in the business world.

A married manager with two children has been offered the opportunity to go abroad on an expatriate assignment for the company in a foreign country for a period of three years. If the manager chooses to accept the assignment, he or she wants to perform very well in order to continue moving up the corporate ladder. What sorts of preparations should the manager expect the company to provide in order to ensure his or her success on the assignment? Comment on these training and preparatory expectations in an ideal world as well as the real world that the manager probably will face.

Identify and discuss the basic components of an attractive business climate. Comment on the extent to which a fast food restaurant franchise might make a different assessment of relevant factors than would a capital-intensive business such as an oil refinery and pipeline company.

What is the phase model of globalization? Identify the factors that have allowed companies to follow different paths to globalization. Then explain the nature of the global new venture. Comment on the extent to which it is likely that this latter approach to globalization will increase.

Describe the virtual organization. Explain how the virtual organization could theoretically prove to be a more formidable competitor than any of the other types of organization in a highly complex, dynamic business environment.

Explain what is meant by authority. How can authority be centralized? How can it be decentralized? Describe the circumstances under which centralization rather than decentralization would be more desirable. Finally, as a manager in a large company, what particular challenge might you expect to face with regard to the use of decentralization?

List and briefly identify each of the five traditional departmental structures. Explain which one tends to be the most difficult to manage effectively.

Describe the four factors that companies can manage to make teams more effective. Specify which of these four factors you feel is of greatest importance in enhancing team performance. Explain the reason for your choice.

What are norms? What is cohesiveness? Why is team size an important consideration? How should a manager cope with team conflict? Specify how each of these four characteristics of teams are related to team performance.

Identify the key dimension on which teams differ. Define and describe the continuum of teams used by companies along this dimension. If a manager had a high need for personal power and control, explain which of these types of teams he or she would probably be most happy working with in a managerial capacity. Also explain how he or she might react to a proposal to introduce teams into his or her work unit.

Briefly identify the advantages and disadvantages of using teams. Describe a situation in which you or someone you know worked in a team setting. Be sure to specify which of the general advantages and/or disadvantages of using teams were manifest in that situation.

Compare and contrast charismatic and transformational leadership. Explain why ethical transgressions are less likely among transformational leaders than they are among charismatic leaders.

What does management research say about who leaders are and what leaders do? What is the best leadership style for all situations and employees? Provide an example of a leader that you know of or have worked with and explain how this individual demonstrates some of the typical characteristics and behaviors identified by management research as typical of leaders.

What is the difference between a leader and a manager? What is the relative importance of leaders and managers to the success of organizations today?

What are the two reasons why companies use organization-wide communication? Define three types of organization-wide communication. Give an example of the effective or ineffective use of each communication. Using the material from the text chapter on Managing Communication, explain why the example was particularly effective or ineffective.

Identify and briefly describe the different kinds of communication channels in organizations. Specify the things that managers should know about using these channels in order to maximize their managerial effectiveness.

Assume that you have just accepted your first job upon graduation from college. You are working as the supervisor of a group of manufacturing workers in a company that has had some financial problems. Workers have complained about being unfairly blamed for financial losses associated with the production process, and your predecessor quit as a result of grievances filed against him by his subordinates. Explain how you can use your understanding of attribution theory to be more effective in your personal perception of the causes of problems in your work unit and in your personal communications about those problems to your new subordinates.