Entrepreneurship & Small Business: Management & Leadership Theories

From The Penguin Dictionary of Economics
The pattern of human motivation built into any economic theory.

Organization whose structure and operations are governed to a high degree by written rules and a hierarchy of offices; in its broadest sense, all forms of administration, and in its narrowest, rule by officials.

From Business: The Ultimate Resource
In management, a situation of unpredictability and rapid change. Chaos theory emerged in the 1970s as a mathematical concept that defied the theory of cause and effect to assert that behavior is essentially random.

From Collins Dictionary of Business
An approach to organizational analysis which emphasizes that the character and structure of organizations can take a number of forms, and may be related to the technology in use or the organization's environment. Organizational features can be said to be contingent on such factors.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
In statistics and related subfields of philosophy, the theory and method of formulating and solving general decision problems.

From Business: The Ultimate Resource
The maintenance, control, and improvement of organizational activities that are required to produce goods or services for consumers.

From The New Penguin Business Dictionary
A theory of individual decision-making under risk that became popular in management from the 1970s onwards.

From Collins Dictionary Of Sociology.
A set of principles governing the design of jobs which entail the separation of mental from manual labour, subdivision of tasks, deskilling, close managerial control of work effort and incentive wage payments.

From The New Penguin Dictionary of Business
The totality of management decisions that determine the purpose and direction of the firm. It involves strategic planning and eventually implementation.

From Business: The Ultimate Resource
A technique employed for organizational decision making and problem solving involving the use of computer systems. The systems approach uses systems analysis to examine the interdependency, interconnections, and interrelations of a system’s components.

From The New Penguin Dictionary of Business
Two contrasting theories of employee motivation. Theory X assumes employees dislike work, will attempt to avoid it, dislike responsibility, have a strong desire for security and must be coerced to perform (a negative view of human motivation).

From Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Psychology
A theory (Fiedler 1978) that leadership effects on group performance depend on three ‘contingencies’ (see s. 1) – leader–member relations (good–bad), task (structured–unstructured) and leader’s power (weak–strong) – and their moderating effect on leadership style.

From The New Penguin Business Dictionary
A theory of motivation. An employee will exert more effort when he believes increased effort will result in a good performance appraisal, that a good appraisal will lead to some form of tangible reward (such as a pay rise), and that it will also satisfy personal goals.

From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Intrinsic motivation is a type of motivation based in people’s inherent interest in activities that provide novelty and challenge. Intrinsically motivated behaviors are an expression of an individual’s self and do not depend on external reinforcements.

From The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology
Lit., motivation that originates in factors outside the individual. Behaviour that is motivated by rewards and/or punishments administered by outside forces is extrinsically determined.

From The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology
A point of view in historical investigations which contends that accomplishments in a field are due primarily to the efforts of great men.

From Elsevier's Dictionary of Psychological Theories
The term reinforcement contains a considerable amount of diversity of usage in psychology where most of the definitional variations stem from theoretical issues in learning theory concerning what reinforcement is and how it functions.

From The New Penguin Business Dictionary
A contingency theory of leadership that focuses on the readiness and maturity of followers. In essence, it says ‘leaders are as good as their followers’.

From Elsevier's Dictionary of Psychological Theories
The earliest investigation of leadership that is regarded as uniquely psychological is attributed to the Italian statesman Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) in his 16th century book “The Prince.”

From Business: The Ultimate Resource
The belief that all leaders display the same key personality traits.

From Business: The Ultimate Resource
A theory that describes sets of feelings, thoughts, and behavior or ego states that influence how individuals interact, communicate, and relate with each other.

From Business: The Ultimate Resource
The idea that effective leadership is based on inspiring and enthusing subordinates with a corporate vision in order to gain their commitment.

Austrian-born management expert, who emigrated to the USA in 1937 and worked as an economist and political scientist before starting a career as a professor of management in 1950.

US management consultant and academic. After teaching at the London Business School for ten years from 1983, he moved back to California to found Strategos, an international consulting firm specializing in strategy.

US management consultant and founder of the global company McKinsey & Co. He was a university professor and a member of an accountancy practice when he founded McKinsey in 1926 to give financial and management advice to corporations.

Leading authority on competitive strategy. Michael Porter is a university professor at Harvard Business School, and an influential thinker on management strategy and economics. His ideas on strategy have become the basis for the required strategy course at the Harvard Business School, and his work is taught in virtually every business school around the world.

US engineer, management consultant, and the founder of scientific management.