Library: Management & Leadership by Credo Reference: Terms & Concepts

Management Terms & Concepts

Adhocracy
From Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Opposite of a bureaucracy. An adhocracy is an organization that disregards the traditional principles of management where each employee has a clearly defined and permanent role. Instead, a more fluid organization is advocated, where individuals are free to deploy their talents as required.
Balanced Scorecard
From Collins Dictionary of Business
A tool for setting and communicating corporate goals and for measuring corporate performance
Benchmarking
From Business: The Ultimate Resource
A systematic process of comparing the activities and work processes of an organization or department with those of outstanding organizations or departments in order to identify ways to improve performance.
Brand equity
From The New Penguin Business Dictionary
The value of a brand. One view of brand equity is to see it largely as a financial valuation (‘financial-based brand equity’). An important reason for taking this view has been the move to list brands on company balance sheets (along with other intangible assets), or to agree a value when brands are being bought, sold or licensed.
Corporate culture
From The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate culture can be defined as an organisation’s unique body of knowledge that is nurtured over a long period of time resulting in commonly held assumptions, values, norms, paradigms and world views.
Corporate identity: Topic Page
Corporate identity is not only what an organization perceives itself to be but also what an organization says it is.
Corporate social responsibility: Topic Page
Many of the world’s largest businesses rival nationstates, religions, and even nature itself as agents of change. Multinational corporations have become the primary force shaping human material well-being.
Decision tree
From Collins Dictionary of Business
An aid to decision-making in uncertain conditions, that sets out alternative courses of action and the financial consequences of each alternative, and assigns subjective probabilities to the likelihood of future events occurring.
Gap analysis
From Collins Dictionary of Business
The comparison between an organization's objective and its expected performance from its current and planned operations. Gap analysis helps to identify means by which the gap might be filled.
Key performance indicators
From QFinance: The Ultimate Resource
A key performance indicator (KPI) is a way for an organization to measure its success or otherwise in reaching its defined goals or objectives.
Managerial grid
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Tool aiming to identify an individual's management style. The managerial grid was invented by US academics Robert Blake and Jane Mouton.
Net-present value: Topic Page
An assessment of the long-term profitability of a project made by adding together all the revenue it can be expected to achieve over its whole life and deducting all the costs involved.
Project management
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Technique for matching available resources (time, money, and people) against business project aims (early completion date, final cost, and so on).
Strategic planning
From The New Penguin Business Dictionary
A top-down approach to business planning, with an emphasis on long-term businesswide issues.
SWOT analysis
From Collins Dictionary of Business
A framework for identifying the internal strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) of a firm, and the external opportunities (O) open to it and the threats (T) it faces.

Leadership Terms & Concepts

Authority
From A glossary of political theory
A contentious concept that some see as a form of power while others contrast it to power. Authority involves a relationship between one individual or group and another, and is characterised by persuasive pressures rather than a threat of force.
Brainstorming
From Business: The Ultimate Resource
Since the 1950s, brainstorming has been put forward as a significant antidote to all forms of organizational rigidity and defensiveness—and an important catalyst for liberating organizational creativity.
Command and control approach
From Business: The Ultimate Resource
A style of leadership that uses standards, procedures, and output statistics to regulate the organization. A command and control approach to leadership is authoritative in nature and uses a top-down approach.
Empowerment
From The Dictionary of Alternatives
The term has its origins in the turn within radical politics away from COLLECTIVISM and towards issues of individual consciousness and emancipation.
Groupthink
From Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology
Groupthink is a condition in which highly cohesive groups in “hot” decision situations display excessive levels of concurrence seeking that suppress critical inquiry and result in faulty decision making.
Hierarchy of credibility
From Collins Dictionary of Sociology
The notion that societies are so organized that those who occupy top positions and positions of authority tend more readily to have their versions of the truth accepted, while the views of those who are ‘underdogs’ or ‘outsiders’ often go unrepresented.
Integrity
From Encyclopedia of Ethics
Integrity is ascribed to people, newspapers, works of art, nations, and other things, but it will be considered here simply as human virtue.
Mentoring
From QFinance: The Ultimate Resource
A form of employee development whereby a trusted and respected person, the mentor, uses his or her experience to offer guidance, encouragement, career advice, and support to another person, the mentee.
Mindfulness
From The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology
The state of being calmly, intentionally and actively aware of what one is feeling, thinking and doing; hence the state of being attentive to the moment without becoming entangled in it.
Motivation: Topic Page
In psychology, the intention of achieving a goal, leading to goal-directed behavior. Some human activity seems to be best explained by postulating an inner directing drive.
Stakeholders
From Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
A neologism, denoting any person or group that has a vital interest (a ‘stake’) in the success or conduct of an enterprise. In discussing business enterprises the stakeholder is usually contrasted with the shareholder.
Teamwork
From Business: The Ultimate Resource
ollaboration by a group of people to achieve a common purpose. Teamwork is often a feature of day-to-day working, and is increasingly used to accomplish specific projects, in which case it may bring together people from different functions, departments, or disciplines.
Values
From Cambridge dictionary of sociology
Values refer to moral principles or other judgments of worth. The term is used by sociologists in a number of different ways.