1.11 Key Terms

Accounting profit is achieved when revenues exceed the accounting costs the firm “pays” for those inputs.

Controlling involves ensuring that performance does not deviate from standards.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for their impact on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, communities, and the environment beyond their obligation to comply with legislation, including voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families, as well as for the local community and society at large.

Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, and control work and decision-making in autonomous ways.

Entrepreneurship is the process of creating new ventures by recognizing opportunities in the marketplace and innovating new products or services of value in meeting those needs.

Entrepreneur is a person who engages in the process of creating a new venture while managing the associated risks.

Environmental scanning is the ongoing process of evaluating and forecasting an organization’s internal and external environments to proactively manage strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats such as economic conditions, competition, and customer needs.

General manager is someone who is responsible for managing a clearly identifiable revenue-producing unit, such as a store, business unit, or product line.

Group is a collection of individuals.

Group performance is measured by the inputs of the group minus any process loss that results in the final output.

Intrapreneurs individuals who  participate in creative, innovative and entrepreneurial activities within an existing organization.

In-role performance is individual-level performance that includes productivity and quality dimensions associated with certain standards that you must meet to do your job.

Job design includes allocating the tasks, responsibilities and duties included in a specific job to ensure the organization meets its overall goals. Contemporary job design consists of ensuring employee empowerment, job enrichment, and teamwork.

Line manager is directly responsible for the products or services the organization creates.

Leadership is an act of influence that inspires action by others.

Leading involves the social and informal sources of influence used to inspire action in others.

Management is creatively solving problems to accomplish organizational goals through the efforts of other people.

Operational planning is short term (less than one year) planning to formulate specific action steps to meet subunit goals which contribute to the overall tactical and strategic goals of the organization.

Organizational design developing an organizational structure and allocating human resources to ensure the accomplishment of objectives.

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are voluntary (extra-role) individual-level performance behaviors employees perform that are beneficial to the organization but not part of your formal job description.

Principles of management are the means by which you manage, or get things done through others, and include planning, organizing, controlling and leading people, processes and practices to achieve the sought objectives of the enterprise.

Process loss is any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good problem-solving.

Strategy is made up of the clearly articulated goals and objectives that are part of the action plan an organization creates to achieve its long-term objectives.

Strategic management effectively formulating and communicating strategy to ensure an organization has a clear set of guidelines to enable effective decision making on a day to day basis.

Strategic planning is longer term (three years or more) planning, generally by top management, for an organization to achieve its mission and position itself to compete effectively based on environmental scanning and forecasting around the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in its environment.

Stakeholders an individual or group with an interest or concern in an organization, such as employees, investors, suppliers, customers, and society at large.

Tactical planning is intermediate-range (one to three years) planning that is designed to develop relatively concrete and specific means to implement the strategic plan.

Triple bottom line refers to the measurement of business performance along social, environmental, and economic dimensions.

Team is a cohesive coalition of people working together to achieve the team agenda (i.e., teamwork).