I2B Week 1 Flashcards
Strategic level/context and strategy
— concerned with those management decisions, and the influences on those decisions, that determine the direction of business activities.
- range of products and services;
- amount spent on advertising;
- numbers and type of people employed;
- the shape and nature of the organisation
— strategy: comprises a set of objectives and methods of achieving those objectives;
usually formulated by top management and is based on a mixture of careful analysis of the environment and the organisation, the personal preferences of the managers involved, and a process of negotiation with other stakeholders
organizational level / context
at this level we are concerned w issues grouped under such headings:
- goals;
- structure;
- ownership;
- size;
- organisational or corporate culture.
— an organisation refers to the way in which people are grouped and the way in which they operate to carry out business activities;
we define key elements of the organisation as the goals of the business and the way they are formulated, ownership, control, size, … (first bullet points)
environmental level / context
the factors that operate at this level:
- the economy;
- the state;
- technology;
- labour;
- cultural and institutional differences.
— the influence of all these elements and their interaction with individual org takes place within the context of globalisation
The systems approach
— assumes that all organisations are made up of interdependent parts, which can only be understood by reference to the whole;
- as such, orgs may be analysed in terms of inputs, processes and outputs.
Principles of systems theory
- permeability — systems are open
- holism — systems need to be considered in their entirety (interdependent parts in the company, interrelated subsystems)
- entropy — beware the mess: maintaining the balance and system in order
- equifinality — more than one best way
