2025/2026
Macroenvironment - Answers The general environment; includes governments, economic
conditions, and other fundamental factors that generally affect all organizations.
Competitive environment - Answers The immediate environment surrounding a firm; includes
suppliers, customers, rivals, and the like.
Internal environment - Answers The controllable elements inside an organization, including its
people, its facilities, and how it does things that influence the operations of the organization
knowledge management - Answers Practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an
organization's intellectual resources.
innovation - Answers The introduction of new goods and services; a change in method or
technology; a positive, useful departure from previous ways of doing things.
cost competitiveness - Answers Keeping costs low to achieve profits and be able to offer prices
that are attractive to consumers.
top-level managers - Answers Senior executives responsible for the overall management and
effectiveness of the organization.
Middle-level managers - Answers Managers located in the middle layers of the organizational
hierarchy, reporting to top-level executives.
Front-line managers - Answers lower-level managers who supervise the operational activities of
the organization
open systems - Answers organizations that are affected by, and that affect, their environment
External environment - Answers All relevant forces outside a firm's boundaries, such as
competitors, customers, the government, and the economy.
final consumer - Answers a customer who purchases products in their finished form
intermediate consumer - Answers a customer who purchases raw materials or wholesale
products before selling them to final customers
environmental uncertainty - Answers when managers do not have enough information about the
environment to understand or predict the future
environmental scanning - Answers Searching for and sorting through information about the
environment.
competitive intelligence - Answers information that helps managers determine how to compete