Question: Ask a manager to recall the best

> Ask a manager how responsiveness to customers, quality, efficiency, and innovation are defined and measured in his or her organization.

> What products would be most helpful to your new organization system, and why?

> What tips about improving your personal work flow do you want to try out after reading the tips, and why?

> How does Tesla’s decision to produce its own batteries impact management of the company’s value chain?

> Do you think Musk’s recent decision to buy SolarCity will have an impact on Tesla Motors’ business strategies? Explain your reasoning.

> Describe how Tesla is creating a competitive advantage by bringing battery production in house.

> What is the output of the organization?

> What product attributes do customers of the organization desire?

> Describe the value chain activities that the organization uses to produce this output.

> Try to identify improvements that might be made to the organization’s value chain to boost its responsiveness to customers, quality, efficiency, and innovation.

> Like Mintzberg, try to find a cooperative manager who will allow you to follow him or her around for a day. List the types of roles the manager plays and how much time he or she spends performing them.

> In what ways can these managers develop a program to increase quality and innovation?

> What kinds of techniques discussed in the chapter can help your functional managers to increase efficiency?

> What critical lessons do these managers need to learn about value chain management?

> Using scenario planning, analyze the pros and cons of each of each alternative.

> Think about the various clothing retailers in your local malls and city, and analyze the choices they have made concerning how to compete along the low-cost and differentiation dimensions.

> Either by yourself or in a group, decide if the business practice of paying bribes is ethical or unethical.

> If bribery is common in a particular country, what effect would this likely have on the nation’s economy and culture?

> Should IBM allow its foreign divisions to pay bribes if all other companies are doing so?

> What is the difference between vertical integration and related diversification?

> Pick an industry and identify four companies in the industry that pursue one of the four main business-level strategies (low-cost, focused low-cost, and so on).

> Ask a middle or top manager, perhaps someone you already know to give examples of how he or she performs the management functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. How much time does he or she spend in performing each task?

> What is the relationship among corporate-, business-, and functional-level strategies, and how do they create value for an organization?

> How can scenario planning help managers predict the future?

> Describe the three steps of planning. Explain how they are related.

> Ask a manager about the kinds of planning exercises he or she regularly uses. What are the purposes of these exercises, and what are their advantages or disadvantages?

> Ask a manager to identify the corporate- and business-level, strategies used by his or her organization.

> Which corporate-level strategy is REI using?

> What makes REI different from other outdoor gear and apparel retailers?

> Describe some of REI’s stewardship efforts and how they impact the company’s corporate strategies.

> How does the functional-level strategy differ between Whole Foods and the new 365 stores? Explain.

> Provide a brief SWOT analysis for the new 365 stores.

> Visit an organization and talk to first-line, middle, and top managers about their respective management roles in the organization and what they do to help the organization be efficient and effective.

> Describe how senior management at Whole Foods could have used scenario planning in developing the 365 stores.

> What business-level strategies are these supermarkets currently pursuing?

> List the supermarket chains in your city and identify their strengths and weaknesses.

> What kind of supermarket would do best against the competition? What kind of business-level strategy should it pursue?

> As a group, spend 5-10 minutes generating ideas about the alternative restaurants that the members think will be most likely to succeed. Each group member should be as innovative and creative as possible, and no suggestions should be criticized.

> Spend the next 10-15 minutes debating the pros and cons of the alternatives. As a group, try to reach a consensus on which alternative is most likely to succeed.

> Either alone or in a group, think about the ethical implications of extreme decision making by groups.

> When group decision making takes place, should members of a group each feel fully accountable for outcomes of the decision? Why or why not?

> What is the difference between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship ?

> In what kinds of groups is groupthink most likely to be a problem? When is it least likely to be a problem? What steps can group members take to ward off groupthink?

> Choose an organization such as a school or a bank, visit it, and then list the different kinds of organizational resources it uses. How do managers use these resources to maintain and improve its performance?

> Why do capable managers sometimes make bad decisions? What can individual managers do to improve their decision-making skills?

> In what ways do the classical and administrative models of decision making help managers appreciate the complexities of real-world decision making?

> What are the main differences between programmed decision making and nonprogrammed decision making?

> What is organizational learning, and how can managers promote it?

> Think about an organization in your local community, university, or an organization that you are familiar with, that is doing poorly. Now think of questions managers in the organization should ask stakeholders to elicit creative ideas for turning around

> To what extent are the decisions entrepreneurs make characterized by risk and uncertainty?

> To what extent are the decisions entrepreneurs make nonprogrammed decisions?

> What roles do creativity and learning from feedback play in entrepreneurial success?

> Identify the criteria you used, either consciously or unconsciously, to guide your decision making.

> What kinds of management changes need to be made to solve them?

> Having answered the previous five questions, do you think in retrospect that you made a reasonable decision? What, if anything, might you do to improve your ability to make good decisions in the future?

> In retrospect, do you think your choice of alternative was shaped by any of the cognitive biases discussed in this chapter?

> Try to remember how you reached the decision. Did you sit down and consciously think through the implications of each alternative, or did you make the decision on the basis of intuition? Did you use any rules of thumb to help you make the decision?

> How much information did you have about each alternative? Were you making the decision on the basis of complete or incomplete information?

> List the alternatives you considered. Were they all possible alternatives? Did you unconsciously (or consciously) ignore some important alternatives?

> Decide what you must know about (a) your future customers, (b) your future competitors, and (c) other critical forces in the task environment if you are to be successful.

> Based on this analysis, list some of the steps you will take to help your new copying business succeed.

> Evaluate the main barriers to entry into the copying business.

> In what cultures might Home Depot find better success?

> What could Home Depot have done to avoid its mistake?

> What kinds of organizing and controlling problems is Achieva suffering from?

> Why is it important for managers to understand the forces in the global environment that are acting upon them and their organization?

> After the passage of NAFTA, many U.S. companies shifted production operations to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs and lower standards for environmental and worker protection. As a result, they cut their costs and were better able to survive

> How do political, legal, and economic forces shape national culture? What characteristics of national culture do you think have the most important effect on how successful a country is in doing business abroad?

> The population is aging because of declining birth rates, declining death rates, and the aging of the baby boom generation. What might some of the implications of this demographic trend be for (a) a pharmaceutical company, and (b) the home construction i

> Which organization is likely to face the most complex task environment--a biotechnology company trying to develop a cure for cancer or a large retailer like The Gap or Macy’s? Why?

> Choose an organization, and ask a manager in that organization to list the number and strengths of forces in the organization’s task environment. Ask the management to pay particular attention to identifying opportunities and threats that result from pre

> Find a company on the list that is based in a country other than your home country. How has that company had to adapt to become a global organization?

> What criteria are used to select the great places to work? Do you agree that these criteria are what make an organization a great place to work?

> What are the forces in the global task environment and in the global general environment that affect the organization?

> If you were a manager for a U.S. company in China, would you allow your local employees to use the app as part of their daily business activities?

> Do you think the focus of managers in an algorithm-based business will change dramatically in the near future? Explain.

> Do you think WeChat would be as successful in other cultures as it is in China?

> Do you see Facebook or Twitter becoming the dominant social platform in the United States the way WeChat has taken over the Chinese way of life?

> Describe the main forces in the global task environment that are affecting the organization.

> Explain how these environmental forces affect the job of an individual manager within this organization. How do they determine the opportunities and threats that its managers must confront?

> Describe the main forces in the global general environment that are affecting the organization.

> Analyze the major forces in the task environment of a retail clothing store.

> Devise a program that will help other managers and employees to better understand and respond to their store's task environment.

> Discuss whether your observation reflects an underlying problem. If so, why? If not, why not?

> Discuss why the patterns of communication that you observed might be occurring in your restaurants.

> Discuss whether you should address this issue with your staff and in your restaurants. If so, how and why? If not, why not?

> What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of replacing human managers with “robo-advisers”?

> Either individually or in a group, think about the ethical implications of requiring long hours and extensive amounts of travel for some jobs.

> What obligations do you think managers and companies have to enable employees to have balanced lives and meet non-work needs and demands?

> Discuss why violations of the principles of distributive and procedural justice continue to occur in modern organizations. What can managers do to uphold these principles in their organizations?

> Think about a situation in which you would have benefited from mentoring but a mentor was not available. What could you have done to try to get the help of a mentor in this situation?

> Why is it important to consider the numbers of different groups of employees at various levels in an organization’s hierarchy?

> Why is mentoring particularly important for minorities?

> How does the similar-to-me effect influence your own behavior and decisions?

> Discuss an occasion when you may have been treated unfairly because of stereotypical thinking. What stereotypes were applied to you? How did they result in your being treated unfairly?

> Discuss the ways in which schemas can be functional and dysfunctional.

> Why would some employees resent accommodations made for employees with disabilities that are dictated by the Americans with Disabilities Act?

> What management challenges does the financial services industry face as more and more jobs are automated?

> What advantages can you tell consultants they will obtain when they use the new IT?

> According to the acquisition method of accounting for business combinations, costs paid to attorneys and accountants for services in arranging a merger should be a. Capitalized as part of the overall fair value acquired in the merger. b. Recorded as an e