QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Accounts Payable - ANSWER Money an organization owes its vendors and suppliers.
Accounts Receivable - ANSWER Money an organization's customers owe the organization.
Action Plans - ANSWER Detailed steps a unit, department, or team will take in order to achieve short-
term objectives.
Amendment - ANSWER Modification or the Constitution or a law; modification may be either formal
(written) or informal (unwritten).
Assets - ANSWER Financial, physical, and sometiems intangible properties an organization owns.
Balance Sheet - ANSWER Statement of a firm's financial position at a particular time.
Balanced scorecard - ANSWER Measurement approach that provides an overall picture of an
organization's performance as measured against goals in finance, customers, internal business processes,
and learning and growth.
Bill - ANSWER Proposal presented to a legislative body for possible enactment as a law.
Break-even analysis - ANSWER Analysis that shows point in time at which total revenue associated with a
program is equal to the total cost of the program.
Business Case - ANSWER Description of an organizational challenge and possible alternative solutions,
arguing for specific solution.
Capacity - ANSWER To an operations department, the ability to yield output.
, Cash flow statement - ANSWER Record of how much cash is flowing into and out of an organization,
including its sources or destinations.
Centralization - ANSWER Degree to which decision-making authority is restricted to higher levels of
management in an organization.
Code of ethics - ANSWER Principles of conduct within an organization that guide decision making and
behavior.
Consumer price index - ANSWER Measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by
consumers for goods and services.
Control - ANSWER To an operations department, an after-the-fact evaluation of a company's ability to
meet its own specifications and its customers' needs.
Correlation - ANSWER Measure that indicates the relationship between two variables.
Cost-benefit analysis - ANSWER Ratio of value created to cost of creating that value; allows management
to determine the financial impact particular activities and programs have on an organization's
profitability.
Decentralization - ANSWER Degree to which decision-making authority is given to lower levels in an
organization's hierarchy.
Departmentalization - ANSWER Way an organization groups jobs to coordinate work.
Divestiture - ANSWER Sale by a company of an asset that is not performing well, that is not core to the
company's business, or that is worth more as a separate entity.
Divisional structure - ANSWER Organizational structure in which segments ae separated by product,
customer or market, or region.
,Due diligence - ANSWER Process of conducting an intensive investigation of an organization as one of the
first steps in a pending merger or acquisition.
Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) - ANSWER Act that makes it unlawful to intercept
messages in transmission, access stored information on electronic communication services, or disclose
this information.
Enterprise management - ANSWER Integrated processes and tools to allow information sharing and
process management across functions, sometimes even with external partners, such as suppliers.
Environmental scanning - ANSWER Process that involves a systematic survey and interpretation of
relevant data to identify external opportunities and threats.
Equity - ANSWER Amount of owners' or shareholders' portion of a business.
Ethics - ANSWER System of moral principles and values that establish appropriate conduct.
Extended organization - ANSWER Alliance between organizations to create processes and information
channels that allow communication and collaboration.
Financial ratios - ANSWER Calculations designed to describe an organization's financial health and
performance from various perspectives.
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) - ANSWER Prohibits American companies from making corrupt
payments to foreign officials for the purpose of obtaining or keeping business.
Formula budgeting - ANSWER Form of budgeting in which an average cost is applied to comparable
expenses and general funding is changed by a specific amount.
Functional structure - ANSWER Organizational structure that defines departments by what services they
contribute to the organization's overall mission.
, Gantt chart - ANSWER Project planning tool that graphically displays activities of a project in sequential
order and plots them against time.
Liabilities - ANSWER Organization's debts and other financial obligations.
Line units - ANSWER Work groups that conduct the major business of an organization.
Long-term objectives - ANSWER Specific results, to be accomplished in three to five years, that an
organization seeks to achieve in pursuing its mission.
Marketing - ANSWER Process of planning, pricing, promoting, and distributing goods and services to
satisfy organizational objectives.
Matrix structure - ANSWER Organizational structure that combines departmentalization by division and
function to gain the benefits of both.
Mean - ANSWER Average score or value in a set of data.
Median - ANSWER Middle point above and below which 50% of scores in a set of data lie.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) - ANSWER Combination of two separate firms either by their joining
together as a relative equals (merger) or by one acquiring the other (acquisition).
Mid-term objectives - ANSWER Serve a purpose similar to short-term objectives but are completed in
one to three years.
Mission statement - ANSWER Specifies what the organization does, who its customers are, and the
priorities it has set in pursuing its work.
Mode - ANSWER Value that occurs most frequently in a set of data.