(See related pages)
Below are the key terms featured in this chapter. Clicking on a term will reveal its definition. The textbook's full glossary is also available for online searching.
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| Benchmarking | Comparing an organization’s practices, processes, and products against the world’s best (See page(s) 268) |
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| Bureaucracy | An organization with many layers of managers who set rules and regulations and oversee all decisions (See page(s) 253) |
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| Centralized authority | An organization structure in which decision-making authority is maintained at the top level of management at the company’s headquarters (See page(s) 255) |
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| Chain of command | The line of authority that moves from the top of a hierarchy to the lowest level (See page(s) 253) |
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| Continuous improvement (CI) | Constantly improving the way the organization does things so that customer needs can be better satisfied (See page(s) 271) |
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| Core competencies | Those functions that an organization can do as well as or better than any other organization in the world (See page(s) 255) |
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| Cross-functional self-managed teams | Groups of employees from different departments who work together on a long-term basis (See page(s) 265) |
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| Decentralized authority | An organization structure in which decision-making authority is delegated to lower-level managers more familiar with local conditions than headquarters management could be (See page(s) 255) |
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| Departmentalization | The dividing of organizational functions into separate units (See page(s) 259) |
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| Flat organization structure | An organization structure that has few layers of management and a broad span of control (See page(s) 258) |
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| Formal organization | The structure that details lines of responsibility, authority, and position; that is, the structure shown on organization charts (See page(s) 272) |
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| Hierarchy | A system in which one person is at the top of the organization and there is a ranked or sequential ordering from the top down of managers who are responsible to that person (See page(s) 253) |
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| Informal organization | The system of relationships and lines of authority that develops spontaneously as employees meet and form power centres; that is, the human side of the organization that does not appear on any organization chart (See page(s) 272) |
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| Inverted organization | An organization that has contact people at the top and the chief executive officer at the bottom of the organization chart (See page(s) 270) |
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| Line organization | An organization that has direct two-way lines of responsibility, authority, and communication running from the top to the bottom of the organization, with all people reporting to only one supervisor (See page(s) 262) |
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| Line personnel | Employees who are part of the chain of command that is responsible for achieving organizational goals (See page(s) 263) |
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| Matrix organization | An organization in which specialists from different parts of the organization are brought together to work on specific projects but still remain part of a line-and-staff structure (See page(s) 264) |
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| Networking | The process of establishing and maintaining contacts with key managers in one’s own organization and other organizations and using those contacts to weave strong relationships that serve as informal development systems (See page(s) 267) |
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| Organizational (or corporate) culture | Widely shared values within an organization that provide coherence and cooperation to achieve common goals (See page(s) 272) |
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| Outsourcing | Assigning various functions, such as accounting, production, security, maintenance, and legal work, to outside organizations. (See page(s) 269) |
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| Real time | The present moment or the actual time in which some thing takes place; data sent over the internet to various organizational partners as they are developed or collected are said to be available in real time (See page(s) 267) |
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| Reengineering | The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of organizational processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance (See page(s) 271) |
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| Restructuring | Redesigning an organization so that it can more effectively and efficiently serve its customers (See page(s) 270) |
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| Span of control | The optimum number of subordinates a manager supervises or should supervise (See page(s) 256) |
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| Staff personnel | Employees who advise and assist line personnel in meeting their goals (See page(s) 263) |
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| Tall organization structure | An organization structure in which the pyramidal organization chart would be quite tall because of the various levels of management (See page(s) 258) |
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| Total quality management (TQM) | Striving for maximum customer satisfaction by ensuring quality from all departments (See page(s) 271) |
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| Transparency | A concept that describes a company being so open to other companies working with it that the once-solid barriers between them become see-through and electronic information is shared as if the companies were one (See page(s) 267) |
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| Virtual corporation | A temporary networked organization made up of replaceable firms that join and leave as needed (See page(s) 268) |