Or-Pr

Organizing

Organizing is the managerial function of arranging people and resources to work toward a goal. The purposes of organizing include but are not limited to determining the tasks to be performed in order to achieve objectives, dividing tasks into specific jobs, grouping jobs into departments, specifying reporting and authority relationships, delegating the authority necessary for task accomplishment, and allocating and deploying resources in a coordinated fashion.

Outsourcing and Offshoring

Outsourcing refers to a firm's practice of paying another firm to perform a function or produce a product that could be done or made in-house by the paying firm. It usually involves more information exchange, coordination, and trust than a mere vendor relationship, since a certain amount of management control is transferred to the supplier.

Participative Management

Participative (or participatory) management, otherwise known as employee involvement or participative decision making, encourages the involvement of stakeholders at all levels of an organization in the analysis of problems, development of strategies, and implementation of solutions. Employees are invited to share in the decision-making process of the firm by participating in activities such as setting goals, determining work schedules, and making suggestions.

Patents and Trademarks

Trademarks and patents, along with copyrights, constitute the major forms of legal protection for what is commonly referred to as intellectual property. Although the rights in these three kinds of intellectual property protection are somewhat similar, trademarks, patents, and copyrights differ in what they protect.

Performance Measurement

Improvement in individual, group, or organizational performance cannot occur unless there is some way of getting performance feedback. Feedback is having the outcomes of work communicated to the employee, work group, or company.

Personality and Personality Tests

Personality is a set of enduring traits and characteristics that relate to a person's emotions, motivations, interpersonal interactions, and attitudes. Personality is different from ability.

Pioneers of Management

The study of management as a discipline is relatively new, especially when compared with other scientific disciplines. Yet, to truly understand current management thought, it is necessary to examine the historical links.

Planning

Planning is the management function that involves setting goals and deciding how to best achieve them. Setting goals and developing plans helps the organization to move in a focused direction while operating in an efficient and effective manner.

Poison Pill Strategies

Poison pill strategies are defensive tactics that allow companies to thwart hostile takeover bids from other companies. Many companies may find themselves unprepared when facing such bids.

Poka-Yoke

Poka-yoke is a technique for avoiding simple human error in the workplace. Also known as mistake-proofing, goof-proofing, and fail-safe work methods, poka-yoke is simply a system designed to prevent inadvertent errors made by workers performing a process.

Popular Press Management Books

The past several decades have witnessed a profusion of management books published in the popular press, many becoming best sellers. This trend began during economic hard times when managers were searching for some easy-to-understand cures for their organizations' financial woes.

Porter's 5-Forces Model

A means of providing corporations with an analysis of their competition and determining strategy, Porter's five-forces model looks at the strength of five distinct competitive forces, which, when taken together, determine long-term profitability and competition. Porter's work has had a greater influence on business strategy than any other theory in the last half of the twentieth century, and his more recent work may have a similar impact on global competition.

Pricing Policy and Strategy

Managers should start setting prices during the development stage as part of strategic pricing to avoid launching products or services that cannot sustain profitable prices in the market. This approach to pricing enables companies to either fit costs to prices or scrap products or services that cannot be generated cost-effectively.

Problem Solving

A managerial problem can be described as the gap between a given current state of affairs and a future desired state. Problem solving may then be thought of as the process of analyzing the situation and developing a solution to bridge the gap.

Process Management

Process management is a concept that integrates quality/performance excellence into the strategic management of organizations. It is Category 6.0 of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

Product-Process Matrix

The product-process matrix is a tool for analyzing the relationship between the product life cycle and the technological life cycle. It was introduced by Robert H.

Product Design

Product design is cross-functional, knowledge-intensive work that has become increasingly important in today's fast-paced, globally competitive environment. It is a key strategic activity in many firms because new products contribute significantly to sales revenue.

Product Life Cycle and Industry Life Cycle

Recognizing that all living things go through a cycle of birth, growth, maturity, and death, the inspiration for the concepts of product life cycle and industry life cycle comes from biology. The life-cycle concept is an appropriate description of what happens to products and industries over time.

Production Planning and Scheduling

Production planning is the function of establishing an overall level of output, called the production plan. The process also includes any other activities needed to satisfy current planned levels of sales, while meeting the firm's general objectives regarding profit, productivity, lead times, and customer satisfaction, as expressed in the overall business plan.