Fundamentals of Management: Essential Concepts and Applications - Softcover

Robbins, Stephen P.; Decenzo, David A.

3.65

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9780130176011: Fundamentals of Management: Essential Concepts and Applications

Softcover

ISBN 10: 013017601X ISBN 13: 9780130176011

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2000

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(Pearson Education) And introduction to management including the latest concepts and practices. Discusses issues of small and large companies, e-business, and other important issues to managers in the 21st century. Softcover. DLC: Management.

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From the Publisher:

Brief approach to Principles of Management. Streamlined and specialized to allow full coverage in a single term, Fundamentals of Management provides a sound foundation for understanding key management issues, maintains a functional focus and reaches the latest research studies in the field.

From the Inside Flap:

Preface

Welcome to the third edition of Fundamentals o f Management. In the first two editions of this book, we said we thought there was a market for a "different" kind of management textbook. Not different just for the sake of being different but a book that was truly reflective of the contemporary trends in management and organizations. To us, that meant a book that focused on the foundations of management—covering the essential concepts in management, providing a sound foundation for understanding the key issues, offering a strong practical focus, and yet also covering the latest research studies in the field. It should also be able to be completed in a one-term course. In essence, we wanted to create a book that provided significant value both in relevance and cost to its readers. We believe our first two editions fulfilled these goals. We think this revision continues this tradition.

We use this preface to address three critical questions:

What assumptions guided the development of this book? What'sVnew in this revision? How does the book encourage learning? What Were Our Assumptions in Writing This Book?

Every author who sits down to write a book has a set of assumptions—either explicit or implicit—that guide what is included and what is excluded. We want to state ours up front.

Management is an exciting field. The subject matter encompassed in an introductory management text is inherently exciting. We're talking about the real world. We're talking about why Amazon is revolutionizing the book-selling industry; how SiloCaf, a coffee bean-processing plant, uses sophisticated technologically based controls to enhance productivity and ensure consistent quality in their work; why companies like London Fog are struggling to survive; how teams at Hewlett-Packard redesigned a production process, cut waste, controlled costs, and increased productivity; and what techniques can make a university more efficient and responsive to its students. A good management text should capture this excitement. How? Through a crisp and conversational writing style, elimination of nonessential details, a focus on issues that are relevant to the reader, and inclusion of examples and visual stimuli to make concepts come alive.

It's our belief that management shouldn't be studied solely from the perspective of "top management," "billion-dollar companies," or "U.S. corporations." The subject matter in management encompasses everyone from the lowest supervisor to the chief executive officer. The content should give as much attention to the challenges and opportunities in supervising a staff of 15, some of whom may be telecommuting, as those in directing a staff of MBA-educated vice presidents. Similarly, not everyone wants to work for a Fortune 500 company. Readers who are interested in working in small businesses, entrepreneurial ventures, or not-for-profit organizations should find the descriptions of management concepts applicable to their needs. Finally, organizations operate today in a global village. Readers must understand how to adjust their practices to reflect differing cultures. Our book addresses each of these concerns.

Before we committed anything to paper and included it in this book, we made sure it met our "so what?" test. Why would someone need to know this fact? If the relevance isn't overtly clear, either the item should be omitted or its relevance should be directly explained. In addition, content must be timely. We live in dynamic times. Changes are taking place at an unprecedented pace. A textbook in a dynamic field such as management must reflect this fact by including the latest concepts and practices. Our does!

This book is organized around the four traditional functions of management—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. It is supplemented with material that addresses current issues affecting managers. For example, we take the reader through Managing in Today's World (Chapter 2), Understanding Work Teams (Chapter 9), and Leadership and Trust (Chapter 11). We also integrate throughout the text such contemporary topics as work process engineering, empowerment, diversity, and continuous improvements. There are a total of 14 chapters, plus 3 modules that describe the evolution of management thought, focus on popular quantitative techniques used in business today, and provide some special information to students regarding how to build their management careers.

Fundamentals o f Management, third edition, is lean and focused. To get down to 14 chapters, we had to make some difficult decisions regarding the cutting and reshaping of material. We were assisted in this process by feedback from previous users. The result, we believe, is a text that identifies the essential elements students need in an introductory management course. What's New in This Third Edition?

Several features and content topics have been added or expanded in this revision.

New and relevant topics: We continue to present material that is current and relevant. These include:

Management competencies (Chapter 1) Knowledge workers (Chapter 2) Electronic commerce and e-business (Chapter 2) Six sigma (Chapter 3) Labor-management cooperation (Chapter 6) Workplace violence (Chapter 6) Internet job searches (Career Module) Internships (Career Module) Emotional intelligence (Chapter 8) Motivating professionals (Chapter 10) Visionary leadership (Chapter 11) Building Trust (Chapter 11) Team leadership (Chapter 11) Technology transfer (Chapter 14) Supply chain management (Chapter 14) Project management (Chapter 14)

A skill-focused approach: It's not enough to know about management. Today's students want the skills to succeed in management. So we expanded on our skill component in this edition. You'll see this in the Management Workshop at the end of each chapter.

The Management Workshop is designed to help students build analytical, diagnostic, teambuilding, investigative, Internet, and writing skills. We address these skill areas in several ways. For example, we include experiential exercises to develop team building skills; cases to build diagnostic, analytical, and decision-making skills; suggested topical writing assignments to enhance writing skills; and Internet search exercises to develop Internet research skills.

A practicing perspective: Our experience has led us to conclude that students like to see and read about people who have made a contribution to their organization and use the management techniques we discuss. So we've included "One Manager's Perspective" boxes. Managers from all types of organizations contribute their perspective on how they use one or more tools discussed in the relevant chapter.

How have we encouraged understanding with in-text learning aids? Just what do students need to facilitate their learning? We began to answer that question by pondering some fundamental issues: Could we make this book both "fun" to read and pedagogically sound? Could it motivate students to read on and facilitate learning? Our conclusion was that an effective textbook could and should teach, as well as present ideas. Toward that end, we designed this book to be an effective learning tool. Let's specifically describe some of the pedagogical features—in addition to what we've mentioned previously—that we included to help students better assimilate the material.

Learning outcomes: Before you start a trip, it's valuable to know where you're headed. That way, you can minimize detours. The same holds true in reading a text. To make learning more efficient, we open each chapter of this book with a list of outcomes that describe what the student should be able to do after reading the chapter. These outcomes are designed to focus students' attention on the major issues within each chapter. Each outcome is a key learning element for readers.

Chapter summaries: Just as outcomes clarify where one is going, chapter summaries remind you where you have been. Each chapter of this book concludes with a concise summary organized around the opening learning outcomes.

Review and discussion questions: Every chapter in this book ends with a set of review and discussion questions. If students have read and understood the contents of a chapter, they should be able to answer the review questions. These "Reading for Comprehension" review questions are drawn directly from the material in the chapter.

The discussion questions go beyond comprehending chapter content. They're designed to foster higher-order thinking skills. That is, they require the reader to apply, integrate, synthesize, or evaluate management concepts. The "Linking Concepts to Practice" discussion questions will allow students to demonstrate that they not only know the facts in the chapter but also can use those facts to deal with more complex issues. Supplements Package

Fundamentals comes with a complete, high-tech support package for faculty and students. This includes a comprehensive instructor's manual and test bank; a dedicated Web site (prenhall/robbins); inclusion on PHLIP (Prentice Hall Learning on the Internet Partnership), a faculty-support Web site featuring Instructor's Manual, PowerPoint slides, current news articles, and links to related Internet sites; an on-line student study guide; electronic transparencies; and the Robbins Self-Assessment Library, which provides students with insights into their skills, abilities, and interests.

Instructor's Manual with Video Guide: Designed to guide the educator through the text, each chapter in the instructor's manual includes learning objectives, chapter contents, a detailed lecture outline, questions for discussion, and boxed materials.

Instructor's Resource CD-ROM: This all inclusive multimedia product is an invaluable asset for professors who prefer to work with electronic files rather than traditional print supplements. On this single CD-ROM, instructors will find' the Instructor's Manual, the complete set of PowerPoint slides, the Test Item File, and the Prentice Hall Test Manager program.

Test Item File: Each chapter contains true/false, multiple choice, short answer/essay questions, and situation-based questions. Together the questions cover the content of each chapter in a variety of ways providing flexibility in testing the students' knowledge of the text.

Windows/Prentice Hall Test Manager: Contains all of the questions in the printed TIE Test Manager is a comprehensive suite of tools for testing and assessment. Test Manager allows educators to easily create and distribute tests for their courses, either by printing and distributing through traditional methods, or by on-line delivery via a Local Area Network (LAN) server.

PowerPoint Electronic Transparencies with Teaching Notes: A comprehensive package, these PowerPoint transparencies are designed to aid the educator and supplement in-class lectures. To further enhance the lecture, teaching notes for each slide are included both electronically, and as a printed, punched, and perforated booklet for insertion into a three-ring binder, allowing the educator to customize the lecture.

Color Transparencies: Designed to aid the educator and enhance classroom lectures, 100 of the most critical PowerPoint electronic transparencies have been chosen for inclusion in this package as full-color acetates.

Skills Videos: Five videos (one for each part of the text) offer dramatizations that highlight various management skills. The videos provide excellent starting points for classroom discussion and debate. These videos are available on VHS for classroom presentation.

WebCT On-Line Course: This third edition offers a fully developed on-line course for management.

Study Guide: Designed to aid student comprehension of the text, the study guide contains chapter objectives, detailed chapter outlines, review, discussion, and study questions.

Self-Assessment Library CD-ROM: Free as a value pack, this valuable tool includes 45 individual self-assessment exercises, organized around individuals, groups, and organizations. Each exercise can be taken electronically and scored immediately, giving students individual feedback.

PHLIP/CW Web Site: Fundamentals is supported by PHLIP (Prentice Hall Learning on the Internet Partnership) the book's companion Web site. An invaluable resource for both instructors and students, PHLIP features a wealth of up-to-date, on-line resources at the touch of a button! A research center, current events articles, an interactive study guide, exercises, and additional resources all combine to give you the most advanced text-specific Web site available. A Short Note To Students

Now that our writing chores are over, we can put our feet up on the table and offer a few brief comments to those of you who will be reading and studying this book. First, this text provides you exposure to the fundamentals of management. As you'll see in our first chapter, fundamentals implies coverage of the basic functions of management. We've made every effort to give you the essential information a student will need to solidly build a knowledge foundation. A knowledge base, however, is not easily attained unless you have a text that is straightforward, timely, and interesting to read. We have made every effort to achieve those goals with a writing style that tries to capture the conversational tone that you would get if you were personally attending one of our lectures. That means logical reasoning, clear explanations, and lots of examples to illustrate concepts.

A book, in addition to being enjoyable to read and understand, should help you learn. Reading for reading's sake, without comprehension, is a waste of your time and effort. So, we've done a couple of things in this book to assist your learning. We've introduced major topic headings in each chapter. These green underlined heads provide exposure to a broad management concept. Most of these leading heads are followed by questions. Each "question" heading was carefully chosen to reinforce understanding of very specific information. Accordingly, as you read each of these sections, material presented will address the question posed. Thus, after reading a chapter (or a section for that matter), you should be able to return to these headings and respond to the question. If you can't answer a question or are unsure of your response, you'll know exactly what sections you need to reread or where more of your effort needs to be placed. All in all, this format provides a self-check on your reading comprehension.

We've added other check points that you should find useful. Our review and discussion questions (called Reading for Comprehension and Linking Concepts to Practice, respectively) are designed to reinforce the chapter outcomes from two perspectives. First, review questions focus on material covered in the chapter. These are another way to reinforce your comprehension of the important concepts in the chapter. The discussion questions require you to go one step further. Rather than asking you to recite facts, discussion questions require you to integrate, synthesize, or apply a management concept. True understanding of the material is revealed when you can apply these more complex issues to a variety of ...

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