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MANAGEMENT 3200
EXAM TWO OBJECTIVES (FROM THE NOTES & OUTSIDE READING)
DECISION-MAKING
1. Is decision-making a function of management?
2. Why do we make decisions as managers?
3. Whats the difference between programmed and non-programmed decisions?
4. Do managers make more programmed or non-programmed decisions, in general?
5. What is decision-making under conditions of certainty?
6. What is decision-making under conditions of risk?
7. What is decision-making under conditions of uncertainty?
8. Which decision-making condition is most common? Least common? Most difficult?
9. What is the key to making good decisions under risk?
10. How do programmed/non-programmed decisions and the different decision-making
conditions relate?
11. What does the traditional economic model assume about decision-makers? (2
assumptions)
12. Under what decision-making condition do decisions get made in the traditional
economic model?
13. What does the behavioral model assume about decision-makers?
14. What is bounded rationality? What three things bound ones rationality?
15. What is satisficing? How does it differ from maximizing? Is it irrational?
16. What is a heuristic? What are the advantages of and disadvantages of heuristics?
17. What is the availability heuristic? What factors cause you to overestimate the
frequency of an event? Underestimate the frequency of an event?
18. What is the representativeness heuristic? Whats the problem with this heuristic?

19. Under what decision-making conditions do decisions get made in the behavioral
model?
20. What does the irrational/implicit favorite model of decision-making say about
decision-making?
21. What types of decisions are made irrationally?
22. What is the basic purpose of a brainstorming session?
23. What are the four rules in brainstorming?
24. Can inhibitions be totally eliminated in brainstorming sessions?
25. What two creativity techniques does synectics use in helping the group to generate
better ideas?
26. What is the superhero technique?
27. In synectics, what is the job of the facilitator? Technical expert?
28. Whats the problem with synectics?
29. What research is NGT based on?
30. How is NGT different from brainstorming and synectics?
31. What in NGT does one try to eliminate to improve the decision-making process?
32. What are the steps in NGT?
33. What are the defining characteristics of the Delphi technique?
34. What is the reasoning behind the Delphi technique?
35. What are some problems that can be encountered when using the Delphi technique?
36. What is the stepladder technique?
37. What is the stepladder technique designed to prevent? Promote?
38. What are operations research techniques? What are they designed to do? What kind
of data do they usually require? Are they an aid or substitute for managerial decisionmaking? What do managers need to think critically about when they use these
techniques? Are they applicable to all decisions that managers make?

39. What is meant by the term confirmatory bias in decision-making?

40. What is the gamblers fallacy?
41. In making decisions, do people pay more attention to descriptive, qualitative
information or statistical, quantitative information?
42. In making decisions, people often violate the law of large numbers. What does that
mean? Why does it occur?
43. How does the framing of a decision affect decision-making? Positive framing?
Negative framing?
(ASSIGNED OUTSIDE READING QUESTIONS #s44-54)
44. What is group decision making a function of?
45. What is an assembly effect? process loss?
46. What is the optimal size for a decision making group?
47. What are the advantages of group decision making?
48. What are the disadvantages of group decision making?
49. What is the leveling effect?
50. When does a manager (under what conditions) use individual decision making rather
than group decision making?
51. Rank the following in terms of decision making accuracy: group, average individual
in the group, and best member in the group?
52. Which is more efficient: group or individual decision making? (consider both short
term and long term efficiency)
53. Where do you have greater creativity: five individuals generating ideas alone or
those same five individuals generating ideas as a group?
54. Which leads to greater acceptance of the decision and better implementation of the
decision: individual or group decision making?

JOB DESIGN
55. What function of management is concerned with job design and organizational
design?
56. What are the three aspects of job design?
57. What is skill variety?
58. What is task identity?
59. What is task significance?
60. What is autonomy?
61. What is feedback?
62. What is job breadth and job depth?
63. What task characteristic(s) is job breadth similar to?
64. What task characteristic is job depth similar to?
65. What job design is least prevalent today? Most prevalent today?
66. What is a specialized job and how does it load on the five task characteristics?
67. What are the advantages of specialized jobs?
68. What are the disadvantages of specialized jobs?
69. What is the purpose of job enlargement?
70. What two task characteristics does job enlargement increase?
71. The motivational benefits of job enlargement are short-lived or long-lived?
72. What is job rotation?
73. What is job enrichment? How is it different from job enlargement?

74. What are the advantages of job enrichment?

75. What are the different aspects of the job characteristics model?
76. What are the three moderators that influence the effectiveness of job enrichment?
How do they influence it?
77. What are the five steps in redesigning a job so it will be enriched? What happens at
each step and what task characteristics are increased?
78. What step in the redesign process is job enlargement?
79. What step in the redesign process is most important?
80. What are the disadvantages of job enrichment?
81. How does strategy influence job design?
82. What employee factors should be taken into consideration when designing jobs?
83. What type of motivation is best suited to specialized jobs? Enriched jobs?
84. What is instrumental motivation? Expressive motivation?
85. What is the Yerkes-Dodson law? (arousal and performance are related in what
manner?)
86. When someone is hyper-sensitive to their environment, what type of job design
should they be given? Why?
87. When someone is hypo-sensitive to their environment, what type of job design should
they be given? Why?
88. How does technology affect job redesign efforts?
89. How do unions feel about any attempt from management to redesign jobs?
90. How do economic factors affect redesigning of jobs?
ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN
91. What is the relationship between specialization and coordination according to the
specialization-coordination dilemma?

92. Where is it more difficult to coordinate within departments or between departments?

Why?
93. What is the primitive/agency organizational design? What are its
advantages/disadvantages?
94. What is the functional organizational design? How are activities grouped?
95. What are the advantages of a functional design?
96. What are the disadvantages of a functional design?
97. When does one use the functional design?
98. What is the product design? How are activities grouped?
99. What are the advantages of a product design?
100.

What are the disadvantages of a product design?

101.

When does one use the product design?

102.

What is a profit center and what are its benefits?

103.

What is a matrix design? How are activities grouped?

104.

What are the advantages of a matrix design?

105.

What are the disadvantages of a matrix design?

106.

When does one use the matrix design?

107.

What is the job of a project manager in the matrix design?

108.

What is the job of a functional manager in the matrix design?

109.

Which type of manager has no formal authority in the matrix design?

110. In which organizational design type, is it most difficult to replace the CEO from
within the organization? Why is this the case?
111.

Which organizational design accommodates growth readily?

112.

What is scalar chain or chain of command? What functions does it serve? What
structural mechanism does one use to bypass the strict chain of command in
organization?

113.

What is unity of command? Why does one try not to violate this principle of
organizing?

114.

Where is unity of command violated? In what organizational design type is unity

of command violate to the greatest extent?

115.

What is delegation of authority? Why do managers delegate authority?

116.

What cannot be delegated when a manager delegates authority?

117.

Why do managers resist delegating authority?

118.

What do the terms centralized and decentralized mean as they pertain to

delegation of authority?

119.

What are the signs that ones organization is becoming decentralized?

120.

What are the benefits of decentralized organizations?

121.

When does an organization need to decentralize?

122.

What does span of control mean?

123.

What is the relationship between span of control and organizational height?

124.

What is the paradox of managerial control as it relates to span of control?

125.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of wide spans of control?

126.

What is the optimal span of control?

127.

What are the factors that narrow span of control? widen span of control?