Introduction to Management

Escalating commitment is a cognitive bias where an individual or group faces increasingly negative outcomes from a decision but continues the behavior instead of altering course. Along with prior hypothesis, representativeness, and illusion of control, it represents a major systematic error in decision-making.

In organizational decision-making, information is often incomplete because managers lack the time to search for all possible alternatives. This limitation, combined with uncertainty and ambiguity, is a key component of bounded rationality.

Transactional leadership is characterized by a transaction-oriented relationship where leaders motivate followers through systemized rewards and punishments. In contrast, transformational leadership focuses on inspiring and intellectually stimulating followers.

Fiedler's Contingency Model of leadership states that there is no single best style of leadership; instead, a leader's effectiveness is contingent on how well their leadership style fits the situation.

Empowerment is the process of sharing power with employees, thereby giving them the authority to make decisions and take action in their jobs. While delegation involves assigning specific tasks, empowerment is a broader concept of enabling self-direction.

According to French and Raven's classic social power framework, the five bases of power are Legitimate, Coercive, Reward, Referent, and Expert power.

Organizational culture is transmitted to employees through several mechanisms, most notably the values of the founders, organizational rites and rituals, stories, and specialized language.

MBO stands for Management by Objectives, a strategic management model that aims to improve the performance of an organization by clearly defining objectives that are agreed to by both management and employees.

The three primary types of control based on timing are feedforward control (before the activity begins), concurrent control (while the activity is in progress), and feedback control (after the activity is completed).

In management theory, decisions are broadly classified into programmed decisions (repetitive and routine decisions handled by a systematic procedure) and non-programmed decisions (novel, unstructured, and unique decisions).

Boundary spanning refers to activities and roles that link an organization with key elements in its external environment, helping the organization manage external relationships and gather information.

The standard industry life cycle consists of five distinct stages: birth (or introduction), growth, shakeout, maturity, and decline.

According to Robert Katz, managers need three essential skills: technical skills (specialized knowledge), human skills (ability to work with people), and conceptual skills (ability to think strategically and abstractly).

Henry Mintzberg categorized ten managerial roles into three broad categories: interpersonal roles (dealing with people), informational roles (processing information), and decisional roles (making choices).

The four fundamental functions of management, often abbreviated as POLC, are Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling.