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A CEO is often the president of the firm and is responsible for developing the strategic
plans.
78. The recent recession eliminated many middle managers giving the remaining managers
more employees to supervise.
79. Supervisory managers are those who directly oversee the activities of workers and
evaluate their daily performance.
80. Middle managers usually are responsible for tactical planning and controlling.
81.
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The CIO, COO, and CFO are classified as top management positions.
82. In this day of rapidly changing technology, technical skills are the most important skills
for all levels of management.
83. Conceptual skills refer to the ability of a manager to perform the tasks associated with a
specific discipline or department.
84. First-line managers typically spend less time on conceptual tasks and more time on
technical skills.
85.
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Most of a top manager’s time is devoted to conceptual and human relations activities.
86. The ability to plan, coordinate, and delegate are among a manager’s most basic technical
skills.
87. A person who is a good first-line manager is automatically likely to be a good middle or
top manager.
88. Human relations skills include those associated with leadership, coaching, morale building
and supportiveness.
89.
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The question of how to implement change within an organization is the responsibility of
the firm’s CEO.
90. Staffing involves recruiting, hiring, motivating, and retaining the best people available for
the organization.
91. Due to the growth of the Internet, recruiting is less important today than in the past.
92. Staffing is a less important management function today than in the past.
93.
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Organizing involves developing a structure or framework that relates all workers, tasks
and resources to each other.
Feedback: Operationally, organizing means allocating resources, assigning tasks, and
establishing procedures for accomplishing the organizational objectives.
94. Top management is also known as first-line management because it deals with key
managerial decisions on a priority basis.
Feedback: Top management consists of the president and other key company executives. On
the other hand, first-line managers are immediately above an organization’s workers.
95. Supervisory managers usually work more with ideas than with people.
Feedback: Supervisory managers are responsible for assigning specific jobs to workers and
evaluating their daily performance. Their jobs often bring them into direct contact with the
workers they supervise. Figure 7.6 illustrates this by showing that first-line managers rely
more on human relations skills than on conceptual skills.
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96. Because of the complex nature of their jobs, top managers spend most of their time
developing and using technical skills.
Feedback: Top managers spend most of their time on tasks requiring conceptual and human
relations skills.
97. The experience gained by first-line managers as they perform their jobs enables them to
acquire all the skills they will need when promoted to higher levels of management.
Feedback: Different skill sets are needed at different levels of management. First-line
managers tend to use technical skills extensively, but spend much less time using conceptual
skills. On the other hand top managers use very few technical skills, but often perform tasks
requiring exceptional conceptual skills. Thus, the skills learned by a first-line manager may
not be very useful at higher levels of management.
98. Mark is a manager for Cable Connection. He spends most of his time scheduling the
specific service calls that each employee performs during the day, verifying job
completion, and evaluating employee performance on each call. These responsibilities
suggest that Mark is a middle manager.
Feedback: First-line managers typically carry out the tasks that Mark is performing. Middle
managers generally are more involved in tactical planning and controlling.
99.
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Chris was recently promoted to a position as a first-line manager. At this level of
management, he will use human relations and conceptual skills as well as technical skills.
Feedback: Though they rely on technical skills more than managers at other levels, first-line
managers must also use human and conceptual skills to a certain degree. In fact, as Figure 7.6
on page 189 shows, all three levels of management, to varying degrees, must use all three
types of skills.
100. Liz is a first-line manager at her company, which is very traditional in its approach to
management. In her position, Liz probably spends a lot of time giving employees detailed
and specific instructions.
Feedback: First-line managers are directly responsible for supervising workers and evaluating
their performance.
101. Fatma wants to become a manager. However, she is shy and avoids conversation with
strangers. She is very comfortable with computers and information technology and has
great technical skills in these areas. Fatma’s personal traits make her a good candidate for
a top management position.
Feedback: Top managers typically use few technical skills. Instead, almost all of their time is
devoted to human relations and conceptual tasks.
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102. Staffing is less important at Sony, IBM and other high-tech firms because these firms
sell technology.
Feedback: At most high-tech companies, like IBM and Sony, the primary capital equipment is
brainpower, so staffing is essential to obtain the best people available to accomplish these
companies’ objectives.
103. People who are good leaders also are almost always good managers.
104. Leadership is the management function of checking to determine whether or not an
organization is progressing toward its objectives, and taking corrective action if it is not.
105. One difference between managers and leaders is that managers strive to achieve
stability while leaders embrace change.
106.
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Management carries out of the vision created by leadership.
107. Effective leadership includes both the ability to welcome change and to promote
ethical behavior.
108. Good leaders motivate workers and create the environment for workers to motivate
themselves.
109. Managers must lead by doing, not just by saying.
110.
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A leader’s most important job may be to transform the way the company does business so
that it’s more effective and efficient.
111. Researchers have determined that all effective leaders have similar traits.
112. There is no single leadership style that works best in all situations.
113. Research has shown that the democratic style of leadership is the most effective style
of leadership.
114. Research on leadership supports the idea that the best leadership style depends on
several factors, including the people being led and the situation.
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120.
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Free-rein leaders tend to carefully monitor their subordinates to make sure they are doing
the job in the correct way.
121. Managers are most effective when they consistently use the same leadership style with
every employee assigned to their work group.
122. In traditional organizations, directing includes both giving assignments to workers and
providing feedback on their performance.
123. When businesses empower their employees, the role of a manager becomes less that of
a “boss” and more that of a coach, counselor, or team player.
124.
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Empowerment means that more authority and responsibility is given to top management.
125. Enabling is the term used to describe the process by which employees recognize and
respect the authority of managers to issue orders.
126. Knowledge management involves finding the right information, keeping the
information accessible, and making the information known to everyone in the firm.
127. The focus of knowledge management is to make sure top managers have all of the
information they need to run the company.
128.
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The first step to developing a knowledge management system is to develop the technology
to keep information secure.
129. A comparison of leadership and management suggests that leadership is about creating
a vision, while management is about carrying out that vision.
Feedback: Leadership is creating a vision, while management is the carrying out of the
leadership’s vision.
130. The Social Media in Business box titled, “Using Social Media to Build Customer
Support,” reflects upon the use of blogs and Twitter and other social media sources to
measure customer satisfaction. This is part of the control function of management.
Feedback: As part of the control function, customer satisfaction is a key criterion that is
measured. Traditionally, companies performed customer surveys to collect this data, or
recorded the number of customer complaints through their customer service departments. The
use of social media has expanded opportunities to stay current on how customers perceive
products and services. Now, customers tweet their perceptions. Companies continuously
scan social media in order to react more quickly to customer complaints.
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131. Heather has a strong desire to maintain and preserve order and stability. She is very
good at developing tactical plans to achieve her company’s goals and objectives. These
characteristics suggest that Heather has characteristics of an exceptional leader.
Feedback: One of the characteristics of leaders is that, rather than striving for order and
stability, they create and embrace change. The fact that Heather strives to produce order and
stability suggests she might be a good manager, and her planning skills reinforce this
conclusion. However, not all good managers make good leaders.
132. Brett heads a department in a major manufacturing corporation. He strives to maintain
a free-rein approach to leadership in most situations. Recently, Brett’s company lost a
major contract that it needs to continue the current level of operation. The company needs
to take quick action to adjust, including slashing expenses. Under these conditions, Brett
should maintain his free-rein style of leadership.
Feedback: No single leadership style is always effective. The best style will depend on the
people being led, the organization, and the situation. Good managers often vary their
leadership styles as conditions change. In crisis situations, the autocratic approach is
sometimes more effective than a free-rein approach.
133.
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Lamont is quick and decisive. He makes most decisions by himself, issues orders, and
expects his subordinates to follow them without question. Lamont’s behavior is an
example of the free rein style of leadership.
Feedback: A free rein manager is one who gives his or her subordinates a substantial amount
of freedom. Lamont’s approach, with its emphasis on issuing orders without consultation, is
more consistent with the autocratic style of leadership.
134. A recent customer survey has convinced top managers at Akwip Corporation that their
firm is doing a poor job of responding quickly to the needs of customers. The managers
are very concerned about this problem. Empowerment might be an approach that would
help Akwip improve its responsiveness.
Feedback: Empowerment means giving employees the authority and responsibility to respond
quickly to consumer requests.
135. Juanita is a project manager for a group of experienced and creative programmers at
Idle Time Gaming, a publisher of popular computer games. Since the programmers are
bright, creative, and highly motivated, Juanita brainstorms basic ideas with her group,
then allows the programmers a great deal of freedom to do what it takes to reach the
agreed upon objectives. Juanita is using a free-rein leadership style.
Feedback: A free-rein leader gives subordinates a great deal of freedom to do whatever it
takes to accomplish the organization’s objectives.
