Which of the following statements is true about the contingency perspective?

• It states that the organizations which are not influenced by their external environments tend to be more successful than others.

• It states that effective managerial behavior in one situation cannot always be generalized to other situations.

• It states that all employees tend to perform better when they are promised higher incentives.

• It states that the behavior of employees at work is not influenced by social processes.

Improving the quality of products and services tends to increase

• Inertia

• Entropy

• Latency

• Productivity

• Divestment

___ encompasses the conversion processes used to transform inputs (such as materials or information) into outputs (such as products or services).

• Entropy

• Technology

• Synergy

• Divestiture

____ skills refer to the abilities of managers to think in the abstract.

• Time management

• Technical

• Conceptual

• Interpersonal

As a process, leadership can be defined as:

• the practice of empowering employees to participate in organizational decision making.

• the set of characteristics attributed to individuals who are perceived to be leaders.

• the use of noncoercive influence to shape an organization's goals.

• the ability to assess business process performance.

• the ability to adjust to and understand the changes in a workplace.

The needs for achievement, affiliation, and power are referred to as

• Security

• Manifest

• Physiological

• Esteem

• Hygiene

In its simplest form, _____ means setting an organization's goals and deciding how best to achieve them.

• coordinating

• Leading

• Organizing

• Controlling

• Planning

An organization shifts its budget from a few, large projects to accommodate a number of smaller projects every year. It also decentralizes power and gives additional responsibilities to individual project managers. This is an example of the use of __ control.

• Structural

• Human

• Information

• Financial

The first step in rational decision making is _____.

• identifying alternatives

• implementing an alternative

• selecting the best alternative

• recognizing and defining the decision situation

• evaluating alternatives

At Gamma Inc., there are separate departments of employees who specialize in sales, service maintenance, customer service, and accounting. What form of departmentalization does Gamma use?

• Functional departmentalization

• Product departmentalization

• Location departmentalization

• Customer departmentalization