Globalization - companies spread internationally

Technological change - the development of new goods and/or better ways of producing goods and service

Knowledge management - set of practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an organization’s intellectual resources

Collaboration across organizational boundaries - leveraging knowledge for maximum impact, requires people in different departments, divisions of subunits of the organization to collab and communicate effectively

Centralized management - board of directors make policy decisions while corporate officers tun the day-to-day operations

Decentralized management - decision making is moved down to the level of staff

Innovation - the introduction of new goods and services

Quality - the excellence of your product

Management - the process of working with people and resource to accomplish organizational goals

Cost competitiveness - keeping costs low enough so that the company can realize profits and price its products at levels that are attractive to consumers

Sustainability - the effort to minimize the use and loss of resources, especially those that are polluting and not renewable

Service - giving customers what they want or need when they want it

Intangible - not graspable/physical

Tangible - objects, products

Emotional intelligence - the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Speed as an important factor - fast execution, response, delivery - often separates winners from losers

4 traditional functions of management - planning, organizing, leading, controlling

Planning - specifying goals ot be achieving and deciding in advance the appropriate actions needed to achieve those goals

Organizing - assembling and coordinating the human, financial, physical, information, and other resources needed to achieve goals

Leading - stimulating people to be high performers

Controlling - monitors performance and takes any needed corrective action

Top level managers - senior executives of an organization - responsible for its overall management

Middle level managers - located in the organization’s hierarchy below top level management and above frontline managers

Frontline managers - lower level managers who supervise the operational activities of the organization

Technical skills - skills that involve the ability to perform tasks in specific method or process

Conceptual and decision skills - skills related to abilities that help identify and resolve problems for the benefit of the organization and everyone concerned

Competitive environment - composed of the firm and its rivals, suppliers, customers, new entrants, and substitute/complementary products

Open system - affected by and in turn affect their external environment

Inputs - human resources and investment capital from their environment; use them to create products and service that are outputs to their environment

External environment - all relevant forces outside a firm’s boundaries, such as competitors, customers, the government, and the economy

Macroenvironment - includes legal, political, economic, technological, demographic, and social and natural factors that generally affect all organizations

Substitute - a potential threat, an alternative

Complement - a potential opportunity, bought together

Complementary goods - a good whose se is relate to the use of an associate or paired good

Suppliers - companies that provide material, human, financial and informational resources to other companies

Switching costs - fixed costs buyers face when they change suppliers

Supply chain management - aka extended enterprise: managing of the entire network of facilities and people that obtain raw material from outside the organization, transform them into products and distribute them to customers

Customers - people who buys goods and services

Intermediate customer - purchase raw material or wholesale products before selling them to final customers

Final customers - purchase products in their finished form

Environmental uncertainty - managers do not have enough information about the environment to understand or predict the future

Environmental scanning - the process of collecting information about forces in the marketing environment

Best case scenario - an analysis in which all of the input variables are set at their best reasonably forecasted values

Worst case scenario - an analysis in which all of the input variables are set at their worst reasonably forecasted values

Contingency plan - an alternative course of action to be followed if a specific problem arises

Forecast - a simple prediction of the future

Benchmarking - identifying the best in class performance by a company in a given area and then comparing your processes to theirs

Domain selection - entering a new market or industry with existing expertise

Diversification - occurs when a firm invest in a different product, business, or geographic area

Merger of acquisition - takes place when two or more firms combine or one firms buys another to form a single company

Divestiture - occurs when a company sells one or more business

Defenders - companies that stay within a stable product domain as a strategic maneuver

Organization culture - set of important assumptions about the organization and its goals and practices that members of the company share

Moment of truth - a time when a person or thing is tested, a decision has to be made, or a crisis has to be faced

Organizational climate - consists of the patterns of attitudes and behavior that shape people's experience of an organization

Economy - all organizations operate in a macroenvironment, so external factors are taken into consideration

Technology - a company cannot succeed without incorporating it

Laws and regulations - us government policies impose strategic constraints on organizations but also may provide some opportunities

Competitive advantage - a condition or circumstance that puts a company in a favorable or superior business position

Demographics - measures of various characteristics of the people who make up groups or social units

Social issues - societal trends have major implications for management of labor force, corporate social actions, and strategic decisions about products and markets

Sustainability and the natural environment - organization depends on the natural environment to provide them with resources

Capital requirements - requirement that the owners of banks hold substantially more assets that the value of bank deposits

Brand identification - memory is stored in terms of the brands name

Cost advantages - a firm that can produce a particular product or service at a lower cost than the competition

Distribution channels - the path through which products or services get to customers