ADMS 1010 Midterm (06-25-2024)

Question 1

Critical thinking is

Answer 1

explicit and conscious

Question 2

Critical thinking is an approach to

Answer 2

reading, thinking, and learning

Question 3

Critical thinking involves

Answer 3

asking question, examining assumptions, and weighing the validity of arguments

Question 4

Critical thinkers are

Answer 4

• self-aware (introspective, know personal biases, strategic)
• curious (explore beneath the surface of the issue, try new approaches, and seek new viewpoints)
• independent (listen and learn from others, develop opinions, make judgements)

Question 5

Business Corporation is the

Answer 5

dominant institution today.

Question 6

Business Corporation main discourse

Answer 6

economic performance, productivity, global markets, financial investments

Question 7

Business values are spreading

Answer 7

into non-business sphere (universities, health-care, government)

Question 8

Business corporation current affairs

Answer 8

• corporate scandals (2000), where companies faced serious ethical and global issues (Enron’s fraud case)
• Global financial crisis (2008) resulted in an economic downturn due to financial system failures

Question 9

Business corporations developed

Answer 9

ethics, CSR, governance, sustainability, age of experts

Question 10

Trouble with experts

Answer 10

noise (uncertainty) in business world

Question 11

Experts stepped in to fill the void

Answer 11

often wrong and disagree with each other

Question 12

Trouble with experts results in people having the

Answer 12

need to develop procedures to assess the validity of different ideas due to fake experts

Question 13

Bulldoze the business school?

Answer 13

• b-schools teach students how to get money from ordinary people
• b-schools teach Capitalist Market Managerialism
• Financial strategies to maximise returns from investment exacerbates social and economic inequalities.
• Human resources are exploited to maximise returns
• Ethics, CSR, and sustainability are seen as window dressing.
• Capitalist Market Managerialism is promoted as desirable, inevitable, and taught as a science rather than an ideology

Question 14

School of Administrative Studies

Answer 14

Administrating/Managing…
* Focuses on business, government (public administration), non-profits, disasters and emergencies

Question 15

Early Years of B-Schools

Answer 15

First U.S. B-schools were established around 1900 (turn of the century)
* Commerce de Paris
* Wharton UPenn
* U of Chicago Graduates.
Became common with publicly-traded corporations

Question 16

B-Schools aim

Answer 16

to develop a professional degree similar to law and medicine
* manage corporations in the interest of stakeholders (shareholders, employees, customers, society).
* Code of ethics and standardise body of knowledge.
The education was neither rigorous nor effective

Question 17

B-Schools Growth

Answer 17

Growth of B-Schools following WWII…
* returning soldiers needed jobs
* Public policy goal = have 0 unemployment

Question 18

Carnegie and Ford Foundations commission studies of business education in 1950

Answer 18

Critical of B-school students, faculty, curriculum…
* resulted in traditional academic curriculum, with specialised functional disciplines
*led to legitimacy and power within universities

Question 19

B-SChools Characteristic Friedman’s view

Answer 19

Goal of business is to maximise profit
* Teaching methods include traditional skill-base, lecture style, case-method

Question 20

Dilbert View

Answer 20

Managers do not to actual work, because all the decisions are made above and the work is done by the people below.

Question 21

Case method (harvard)

Answer 21

• no textbooks when Harvard was founded (1908)
• Harvard interview leading practitioners and wrote what they did are the best practices while lacking criteria to judge whether their actions were good or bad.
• Instead, read the case -> discuss in class -> offer recommendations with students taking on the role on manager.

Question 22

Critical Discourse: Classical View (Rational – Henry Fayol)

Answer 22

Managers plan, coordinate, organise, and control

Question 23

Manager Myth: Planning

Answer 23

Folklore: Managers are reflective and systematic planners.

Fact:
- Managers work unrelentingly.
- Manager activities are varied, discontinuous, and brief (brevity).
- Managers prefer actions, and avoid reflection.

Evidence:
- ½ of their activities lasts < 9 minutes.
- Average of 583 activities in 8 hours shift (1 every 48 seconds).
- Work for 30(+) minutes every 2 days.

Question 24

Manager Myth: Duties

Answer 24

Folklore: Effective managers have no regular duties.

Fact: Regular duties include..
- Ritual and ceremonial.
- Negotiations.
- Procession of soft information, linking organisation to its environment.

Evidence:
- Managers in small companies step in to fill the gap of staff specialists.
- See important customers.
- Ceremonial duties are part of managers work (meeting dignitaries, rewarding watches, christmas dinner).

Question 25

Manager Myth: Information

Answer 25

Folklore: Managers need aggregated information provided by a formal management information system. Fact: Managers favour verbal media, calls, and meetings over documents. Evidence: - 66%-80% of time in verbal communication. - Treat mails/reports a burden. - Prefer soft information (gossip, hearsay, speculation) for speed.

Question 26

Manager Myth: Science and Profession

Answer 26

Folklore: management is a science and profession. Fact: - Managers' programs remain locked in their mind. - Rely on judgement and intuition for ignorance. Evidence: - Managers verbally communicate and make decisions - Managers cannot easily delegate tasks. - Managers' work is superficial, brief, and fragmented.

Question 27

Manager’s Roles (Formal authority and status)

Answer 27

Interpersonal Roles: Figure Head, Leader, Liaison. Informational Roles: Monitor, Disseminator, Spokesperson. Decisional Roles: Entrepreneur, Disturbance Handler, Resource Allocator, Negotiator

Question 28

EFfective Management

Answer 28

Managers need to be introspective to learn on the job.

Question 29

Managing Oneself

Answer 29

Compare yourself to yesterday. Importance: - Knowledge workers must be their own CEO’s. - Companies do not manage their employees careers.

Question 30

Knowing Oneself

Answer 30

What are my strengths? - Feedback analysis (when making a decision, create a forecast of 9/12 months and compare). - Knowing one’s strengths encourages performance, results, and remedies bad habits. - Implications are to improve strengths, do not focus on weakness, and root out intellectual arrogance. How do I perform? - Reader or Listener? - Do I learn by writing, acting, talking, or reading? - Do I work well in groups? - Am I a decision maker or adviser? - Am I uncertain or structured? - Big organisation or small? What are my values? - Not just about ethics (mirror test). - Values alignment. Where do I belong? - Most do not know until past 25. - Knowing strengths, performance, values, and where you do not belong helps. What should I contribute? - What does the situation require? - What results should be achieved to make a difference? (look 12-18 months ahead). - Goals should be challenging and achievable. - Contributions should be meaningful, visible, and measurable

Question 31

Claims

Answer 31

Major conclusion that the author is trying to persuade you to accept.

Question 32

Identifying Claims

Answer 32

First step in evaluating an argument - Are the claims explicit or implicit? - Claims may be in the title, introduction, or conclusion. - State the claim in your own words fairly. - Claim indicators: therefore, thus, in summary, I believe that, clearly, in short, the data shows that, as a result, in fact

Question 33

Tips on Identifying Claims

Answer 33

- Avoid referencing just the title, being distracted by a strong opening statement, latching onto a secondary claim. Steps to identify the Primary Claim: - Read the entire article, review the title, intro, and conclusion, and ask yourself, “What is the main point the author is trying to convince me?”

Question 34

Representing Claims

Answer 34

- Present main ideas with clarity and emphasis - Place claim near the beginning or end, using cue words - Use titles effectively and create a memorable claim - A concept map

Question 34

Types of Claims

Answer 34

Uncontested Claims: - Consistent with experiences and observations, and includes facts that are independent of interpretation. - Agreed amongst experts and can be technical or mathematical claims. Contestable Claims: - Questionable validity of claim that must be justified with evidence, and with forceful rhetoric (“the fact is…”, “There is no doubt…”).

Question 35

Chandler – Big

Answer 35

- Logic of managerial enterprise is growth and competition. - Large companies can be bought, sold, split up, and recombined. - If managerial firms fail to maintain and nourish their competitive advantage, they will lose markets and profits. - Primary Claim: Bigger is better (business/industry). - Large firms are able to capitalise on economies of scale and scope. - Caveat: unrelated diversification is bad.

Question 36

Schumacher – Small

Answer 36

Primary Claim: Small is beautiful (people/society). One size does not fit all, both are needed. People who favour smallness without considering its purpose will oppose anything large. Some endeavours require: Order for large scale unity and coordination. Other endeavours require: Freedom for small autonomous units (i.e.: entrepreneurship, innovation, and action).

Question 37

Organisations: Primary Characteristics

Answer 37

- Social entities are made up of people, pursuing a common goal - Linked to the external environment

Question 38

Traditional Organization Type

Answer 38

- Business: for-profit/private - Government: public - Non-profit (NGO): civil society

Question 39

Organisational Theory

Answer 39

- Study of structures and operations of organisations (businesses, and bureaucratic institutions), and its relationship with the environment. - Size (big or small). - Strategy (relationship with environment). - Structure (relationships, groupings, designs).

Question 40

Evidence

Answer 40

- Response to the question: Why is it true? - Argument = Claim + Evidence - Quality of evidence should be accurate, precise, sufficient, representative, and authoritative. - Insufficient evidence results in the fallacy of hasty generalisation. - Accepting a claim because an authoritative figure says so, results in the fallacy of false appeal to authority. - Claiming a truth because many people think so, results in the fallacy of argumentum ad populum (appeal to people/ bandwagon effect).

Question 41

Corporate Social Responsibility

Answer 41

Use its resources and engage in activity in order to maximise profits. - Only people can have social responsibilities (corporations are legal entities and cannot have social or moral responsibilities). - Corporate executives (agents) are employees of shareholders (principals). - Agents must act in the interest of the principals and generate profit. - CEO’s can choose to spend their money however they want (i.e.: social causes). - As agents, CSR expenditures equate to spending someone else’s money (taxes, spending proceeds).

Question 42

Social Responsibility of Business

Answer 42

Private competitive enterprise forces people to be responsible for their actions and make it difficult for them to “exploit” others.

Question 43

Backstory

Answer 43

- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): First government department to mandate natural environment. - Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC): Created oil embargo and introduced fuel efficiency standards. - Stakeholder Approach: Firms perform better if they focus on stakeholders rather than shareholders. - Sustainable Development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. - ISO: Environmental standard for industrial firms. - Triple Bottom Line (TBL): Economic, social, and environmental performance is the dominant concept of business and sustainability. - Energy Company Enron collapses amidst corporate fraud, along with Arthur Andersen (resulted in a new focus on ethics and corporate governance). - Roundtable stated, the purpose of a corporation is to serve shareholders, deliver value to their customers, invest in employees, deal fairly with suppliers, and support the communities they operate in.

Question 44

Disparate View

Answer 44

Business (most important system) is separate from society and nature.

Question 45

Intertwined View

Answer 45

- Concept of CSR/Sustainability - Doing well by doing good (social and environmental initiative generate profits) - Create simultaneous value in all dimensions.

Question 46

Embedded View

Answer 46

- Business is the most dependent system (cannot exist without society and nature). - Finite system.

Question 47

IPCC 6

Answer 47

- Primary Claim: Human activities change the earth's climate and threaten the livability of the planet. - Despite combating climate change, GHG emissions are high. - Immediate action to limit the rise in temperature to 1.5-2 degrees C. - Energy is responsible for ⅓ and industry for ¼ of GHG. - Impacts include the increasing water cycles, changes in sea levels and frozen regions, and increased extreme weather.

Question 48

Wealth of Nations

Answer 48

- Division of Labour: Specialising tasks to increase productivity. - Factors of Production: Land, Labour, Capital. - Self-interest: Individuals pursue their own advantage in economic decisions. - Invisible Hands: Self-interest in markets promotes social benefit.

Question 49

Marginalist Revolutionaries

Answer 49

- Marginal Utility: Increase/decrease in value from a marginal consumption. - Diminishing Marginal Return: Increase in additional units leads to less value.

Question 50

Homo Economicus (Behavioural Assumptions)

Answer 50

- Self-interested Utility Maximizer: Decisions are made to benefit oneself. - Rational: Preferences are known and stable. - Independent: Agents act independently and can compete. - Perfect Competition.

Question 51

Neoclassical Economics (Unrealistic Assumptions)

Answer 51

- Rational or ‘bounded rationality’ - Over-dependence on complex mathematical models.

Question 52

Heuristics and Biases

Answer 52

- Representative Heuristics: Objects of similar appearance are assumed (can neglect relevant base rates). - Availability Heuristics: Judgement is based on how easily we remember an event, rather than complete data. - Framing Effect affects decisions - Loss Aversion (Prospect theory): Individuals prefer to avoid losses than making gains. - Risk-seeking when choices are framed as gains and risk-averse when choices are framed as losses.

Question 53

Neoliberal Claim

Answer 53

- Competition is the Only means of coordination that does not require coercion. - Money is an instrument of freedom, allowing people to make a choice. - Market is capable of coordinating activities (free market = better society).

Question 54

Underlying Assumptions

Answer 54

- Fills the gap between evidence and claim. - What must be true if the claim is to follow from this evidence? - What principle might link this particular claim to this particular evidence? - What beliefs might I expect from this type of person? - Could someone believe this evidence and still disagree with the claim? Why? - Reality Assumptions: Beliefs about reality (positive) and changes with information. - Value Assumptions: Moral/ethics (normative) and resistant to change.