Small business administration and management
Questions
Ch 7
Describe how personal values influence strategic decisions.
How influential are the personal values of a company’s founders 10 years after the company is established? 25 years later? 50 years later?
If a company founder dies or retires, how long will the core values that guided the company strategy continue to have a strong influence?
Is it ever wrong for a Christian executive to attempt to gain a competitive advantage over rival companies? If so, under what conditions?
Student Exercise
Identify one of the companies that you are most interested in. Using resources on the Internet try to identify whether this company is striving to achieve a low-cost leadership, differentiation, or best-cost strategy.
Ch 8
Discussion Questions
Has the traditional hierarchical bureaucracy completely outlived its usefulness to businesses?
How can the leaders in a large bureaucracy humanize the work environment without destroying the structural elements that contribute to efficiency?
What can an individual mid-level manager do to humanize the work environment for subordinates? For other managers?
How can college student organizations improve how they are managed by using structural changes?
Student Exercise
Select an organization that does not have a formal organizational chart. Your task is to draw an organizational chart for the organization showing reporting relationships. Boxes in the chart contain titles but not names. Solid lines show direct reporting relationships between superiors and subordinates. Dotted lines show liaison (or other coordinating) relationships between individuals or departments. You can draw the charts by hand or use software such as Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
Ch 9
When managers expect workers to perform their jobs with the lowest possible expense in terms of capital equipment, materials, and work time, shouldn’t workers rightly expect that managers perform their work with the lowest possible expense in terms of equipment, materials, work time, and perks?
When civil law requires that a Christian HR professional take an action that goes against God’s will, what is the HR professional to do?
What contributes to the fact that are there roughly 10 times as many claims to the EEOC for alleged retaliation as there are claims for religious discrimination?
What are the fundamental talents needed to be successful as a manager? For example, what talents lead to success for the following types of managers?
- Assembly-line supervisor in an automobile factory
- Building construction supervisor
- Nurse manager
- Retail store owner-manager
- Sales manager
- Supervisor in an accounting department
- Chief executive of an injection molding factory
- Chairperson of the board of trustees for a nonprofit museum
Student Exercise
Internet Resources—Job Descriptions. Go online and find two websites that offer job descriptions or job description templates for businesses. From a site that offers free sample job descriptions download a job description for a job you think you might like to have someday. Evaluate the details of the job description in terms of the kind of experience you need to obtain before you are qualified to take such a job.
Ch 10
Why is it sometimes better to listen than to speak even if the person you are listening to seems to have incorrect information?
How do a person’s communication patterns reflect the personal values of the communicator?
Think about an organization that you are a member of. What suggestions do you have for improving communication inside the organization? What is your rationale for these suggestions?
Comparing top-down communication with bottom-up communication, which of these two is the more difficult to control? Why?
Student Exercise
Write a memo introducing yourself. In a memo written to your instructor, introduce yourself telling about your background, your interests, why you are in the course, and what you hope to accomplish as a result of this course. Use the following memo format and any other instructions provided by your instructor:
Date:
To:
From:
Subject:
Body:
Ch 11
Imagine that you are a manager. One of your employees comes to you and complains that he is not getting paid what he is worth. Considering the implications of equity theory, how would you respond to this employee?
Herzberg believed that humans have a dual nature, that is, they are sinful and they have great positive potential. Assuming that motivation is essentially something that takes place in the heart and mind of a worker, what should a Christian manager do to encourage motivation?
How should managers’ belief that humans are made in the image of God affect what they do to improve performance of their workers?
Which of the Ten Commandments refer to motivation? What motives are at stake in these?
Student Exercise
