Glossary
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Chapter 2
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administrative principles
| A subfield of the classical management perspective that focuses on the total organization rather than the individual worker, delineating the management functions of planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling.
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behavioral sciences approach
| A subfield of the humanistic management perspective that applies social science in an organizational context, drawing from economics, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines.
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bureaucratic organizations
| A subfield of the classical management perspective that emphasized management on an impersonal, rational basis through such elements as clearly defined authority and responsibility, formal record-keeping, and separation of management and ownership.
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classical perspective
| A management perspective that emerged during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that emphasized a rational, scientific approach to the study of management and sought to make organizations efficient operating machines.
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closed system
| A system that does not interact with the external environment.
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contingency view
| An extension of the humanistic perspective in which the successful resolution of organizational problems is thought to depend on managers’ identification of key variations in the situation at hand.
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customer relationship management (CRM)
| Systems that help companies keep in close touch with customers, collect and manage customer data, and collaborate with customers to provide the most valuable products and services.
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economic forces
| Forces that affect the availability, production, and distribution of a society’s resources among competing users.
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Hawthorne studies
| A series of experiments on worker productivity begun in 1924 at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric Company in Illinois; attributed employees’ increased output to managers’ better treatment of them during the study.
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human relations movement
| A movement in management thinking and practice that emphasizes satisfaction of employees’ basic needs as the key to increased worker productivity.
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human resources perspective
| A management perspective that suggests jobs should be designed to meet higher-level needs by allowing workers to use their full potential.
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humanistic perspective
| A management perspective that emerged near the late nineteenth century and emphasized understanding human behavior, needs, and attitudes in the workplace.
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learning organization
| An organization in which everyone is engaged in identifying and solving problems, enabling the organization to continuously experiment, improve, and increase its capability.
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management science perspective
| A management perspective that emerged after World War II and applied mathematics, statistics, and other quantitative techniques to managerial problems.
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open system
| A system that interacts with the external environment.
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outsourcing
| Contracting out selected functions or activities of an organization to other organizations that can do the work more cost efficiently.
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political forces
| The influence of political and legal institutions on people and organizations.
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scientific management
| A subfield of the classical management perspective that emphasized scientifically determined changes in management practices as the solution to improving labor productivity.
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social forces
| The aspects of a culture that guide and influence relationships among people—their values, needs, and standards of behavior.
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subsystems
| Parts of a system that depend on one another for their functioning.
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supply chain management
| Managing the sequence of suppliers and purchasers, covering all stages of processing from obtaining raw materials to distributing finished goods to final customers.
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synergy
| The concept that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
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system
| A set of interrelated parts that function as a whole to achieve a common purpose.
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systemic thinking
| Seeing both the distinct elements of a situation and the complex and changing interaction among those elements.
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systems theory
| An extension of the humanistic perspective that describes organizations as open systems characterized by entropy, synergy, and subsystem interdependence.
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total quality management (TQM)
| A concept that focuses on managing the total organization to deliver quality to customers. Four significant elements of TQM are employee involvement, focus on the customer, benchmarking, and continuous improvement.
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