A

Aptitude Test
Ordinarily a set of separate tests designed to measure the overall ability of an individual to learn.

Affirmative Action
Refers to positive steps to enhance the diversity of some group, often to remedy the cumulative effect of subtle as well as gross expressions of prejudice. It is designed to help eliminate past and present discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

B

Burnout
Job burnout, which is more than job stress, is a situation when a person believes that he or she cannot or will not continue to do the job. Burnout in essence is the overall perception that one giving more than one is receiving – in monetary rewards, recognition, support or advancement. It can occur at all organizational levels, at all pay levels and in all age groups.

Balanced Scorecard
Refers to a management system that measures the progress of an organization toward its strategic goals by translating their vision and objectives into tactics and measures across a balanced set of perspectives.

C

Contingency Management
It is any management style recognizing the fact that the application of theory to practice must necessarily take into consideration, and be contingent upon, the given situation. It is also called situational management. There is no one best way to manage. There are no plans, organization structures, leadership styles, or controls that will fit all situations. Instead managers must find different ways that fit different situations.

Cross Benefit Analysis
Refers to an analysis of the cost effectiveness of different alternatives in order to see whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

D

Dry Promotion
The jargon stands for a promotion in which though there is an increase in status but there is no monetary increase.

Diversity
Refers to visible dimensions of diversity such as personality and work style but also to secondary influences such as religion, socio-economics and education, to work diversities such as management and union, functional level and classification or proximity/distance to headquarters.

E

Ergonomics
Taking into account the human factor in designing the employee’s workstations is often termed as Ergonomics. The relationship between the employee and his workstation is considered to include the machines used, lighting, noise, chairs and so on. All these factors can ultimately affect employee productivity.

Emotional Intelligence
Refers to a type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions.

F

Functional Leadership
Concept holding that leadership emerges from the dynamics associated with the particular circumstances under which groups integrate and organize their activities, rather than from the personal characteristics or behavior of individuals.

Flexi-time
Refers to a system of scheduling working hours in places of employment, which allows employees to arrive at and leave work at times of their own choice, providing that they work the required number of hours and usually requiring that they be present during certain hours, called core time.

G

Groupthink
It is characterized by a ‘deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgement that results from in-group pressures’.

Glass Ceiling
Refers to an invisible barrier that determines the level to which a woman or other member of a demographic minority can rise in an organization.

H

HRD
Human Resource Development encompasses activities and processes which are intended to have an impact on organizational and individual learning. These activities and processes range from training of new employees and existing staff, job upgrading, introduction of new jobs and tasks to improvement of performance through development of new skills.

Human Resources Information System
Refers to multi-module software applications aimed specifically at the management of a company’s human resources.

I

Interpersonal Conflict
It involves two or more individuals with different goals or roles and arises due to interpersonal interactions.

Instructional Management System
Refers to a set of technical specifications defining how learning materials will be exchanged over the Internet and how organizations and individual learners will use these materials.

J

Job Rotation
Transferring a worker from one assignment to another in order to minimize boredom and/or enhance skills.

Job Descriptions
Refers to written statements that describe the duties, responsibilities, required qualifications, and reporting relationships of a particular job. Job descriptions are based on objective information obtained through job analysis, an understanding of the competencies and skills required to accomplish needed tasks.

K

Knowledge Management
Knowledge management refers to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival and competence against discontinuous environmental change. Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings.

Kirkpatrick’s Levels of Evaluation
Refers to four levels of evaluation for training. The first level answers the question: did the trainees like the training? The second level assesses whether they understood the material and could pass a test on it. The third level, usually involving a follow-up to the training six months down the road, examines whether the training changed the behavior of the trained. Level four evaluation tries to determine whether the training had a bottom-line impact on the company, i.e. did trainees sell more or waste less or somehow affect the financials of the company in a positive way as a result of the training.

L

Law of Effect
Fundamental concept in learning theory that holds that, other things being equal, an animal will learn those habits ending with satisfaction and will not learn (or learn only slowly) those habits causing nuisance.

Layoff
Refers to the elimination of surplus employees from a company’s payroll.

M

Management by Objectives (MBO)
Approach to managing whose hallmark is a mutual – by both organizational subordinate and superior – setting of measurable goals to be accomplished by an individual or term over a set period of time.

Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Refers to a personality test based on the psychological theories of Carl Jung. It looks at differences in personal style in four different areas:
- Interacting with others (extravert versus introvert)
- Understanding the world (sensing versus intuition)
- Making decisions (thinking versus feeling)
- Time allocation (perceiving versus judging)

N

Nepotism
It is any practice by which office-holders award positions to members of their immediate family. The term is derived from the Latin word nepos which means nephew or grandson.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Refers to a field that is concerned with the study of, and modeling of, human performance and excellence for the purpose of creating skill sets that can be transferred to others.

O

Outplacement
It refers to an extension of services to a terminated employee in order to minimize the impact of termination, reduce the time necessary to secure a new position, improve the person’s job search skills and ultimately bring about the best possible match between the person and available jobs.

Obsolescence
Refers to the degree to which an organization’s professionals lack uo-to-date knowledge or skills necessary to maintain effective performance in either their current or future work roles.

P

Performance Appraisal
Also called performance evaluation and performance reporting, title usually given to the formal method by which an organization documents the work performance of its employees. Performance appraisals are designed to serve a variety of functions.

Performance Planning and Evaluation (PPE)
Refers to any system that seeks to tie the formal performance appraisal process to the company’s strategies by specifying at the beginning of the evaluation period the types and level of performance that must be accomplished in order to achieve the strategy.

Q

Quality Circle
A small group of workers who meet to discuss and solve work-related problems. No supervisor is in charge. In Japan, we have 6 million workers participating in more than 600,000 quality circles.

Quality of Working Life
Refers to the extent to which employee’s personal needs and values are met through their work.

R

Retrenchment
The reduction in size of an organization’s workforce. Successful downsizing programmes carry all the implications of lay-offs but make jobs more financially bearable by offering employees early retirement programmes and generous severance pay plans.

Reengineering
Refers to the review and redesign of work processes to make them more efficient and improve the quality of the end product or service.

S

Sabbatical
The lengthy paid leave for professional, intellectual or emotional refurbishment.

Strategic Congruence
Refers to the extent to which the performance management system elicits job performance that is consistent with the organization’s strategy, goals and culture.

T

Time Management
Three keys to time management are: remembering, setting priorities and motivation. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking “I won’t forget that”. But the important thing is not just to remember it, but to remember it at the right time – a time when you can take the first step in doing it.

Training Needs Analysis
Refers to a formal process of identifying discrepancies between a learner’s current performance versus an organization’s desired performance for that employee. Identify whether training is the solution.

U

Union
A combination of persons, whether temporary or permanent, primarily for the purpose of regulating the relations between workers and employers, or between workers and workers, and for imposing restrictive conditions on the conduct of any trade or business, and includes the federation of two or more unions.

Unity of Command
Refers to line of command from subordinate to superior. A position should be accountable to only one other position for the same activity (key result area).

V

Voluntary Arbitration
The settlement agreed by two parties in the absence of any legal or contractual requirement.

Valence
Refers to the level of satisfaction a job applicant expects to receive from a job that ranks high in some attribute.

W

Work Sampling
It is a technique used to discover the proportions of total time devoted to the various components of a job. It is also known as job sampling. Data obtained from work sampling can be used to establish allowances applicable to a job, to determine machine utilization, and to provide the criteria for production standards.

Work-Flow Design
Refers to the process of analyzing the tasks necessary for the production of a product or service and allocating these tasks to particular work units or individuals.

X

X and Y Theory
Professor McGregor has presented two opposite sets of assumptions about employees, and about management views about the nature of man at work. These have been represented by the Theory X and Y. Theory X stands for the set of traditional beliefs held, while Theory Y stands for the set of beliefs based upon researches in behavioral science, which is concerned with modern social views on man at work.

Xenophobia
Refers to the hatred or fear of foreigners or strangers.

Y

Yellow-Dog Contract
It is a common tactic used by employers wary of union influences. It is an agreement either written or oral entered into by the employee with his employer, which compels the employee to resign from, or refrain from joining, a union.

Yield Ratios (Recruitment and Selection)
Refers to the percentage of applicants who successfully move from one stage of the recruitment and selection process to the next.

Z

Zone of Acceptance
The concept, also known as acceptance theory of authority, states that authority stems from the bottom-up. It is based on the extent to which individuals are willing to hold in abeyance their own critical faculties and accept the directives of their organizational superiors. The “zone of acceptance” itself is a theoretical range of tolerance within which organizational members will accept order without question.

Zeitgeist
Refers to the trend of though and feeling in a period.