Short Description (Definition)

All Short Description from Human Resource Management System:

Accreditation: 

                    A way of recognizing a specified level of competency within a particular field. 

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS): A disease of the immune system in which the victim has impaired ability to fight off infections.

Across-the-board pay increases: General percentage pay increases for employees, usually to accommodate pressure from inflation. 

Action Research: The process of gathering information, feeding it back, and developing plans for implementing desired changes.

Active listening: Careful listening to words and feelings being expressed and reflecting them back to speakers in such a way that they know they have been understood.

Ad hoc arbitration:  Arbitration in which an arbitrator is appointed for each case.

Adverse impact: Disproportionate selection of any legally protected group, leading to conclusions of discrimination.

Affiliate: A subsidiary, joint venture, or branch of a company located in another country.

Affirmative action: A remedial concept that request employers and labor unions to take voluntary, positive steps to improve the work opportunities for women, racial and ethnic minorities, disabled workers, and others who have been deprived of job opportunities. The provision of equal opportunity for minority and female employees.

Age harassment: A type of harassment in which an older worker is subject to derogatory remarks and is denied the opportunity to learn new tasks.

Agency shop: A workplace in which nonunion members of the bargaining unit must contribute to union an amount usually equivalent to the regular dues.

Appraisal interview: An interview in which the results of a performance appraisal are verbally communicated to the employee.

Apprenticeship programs: Programs in which trainees learn by working with people already skilled in particualar jobs.

Appropriate bargaining unit: A group of employees who share common employment conditions and interests and who may reasonably act together for purposes of collective bargaining.

Arbitration: Outside appeal to neutral party in an attempt to resolve a dispute between labor and management.

Arbitrator: A neutral third party, selected by management and the union, who hears a dispute and hands down a decision that is final and binding.

Assessment center: Information about an employees, promote-ability and career development needs is gathered systematically and analyzed as the candidate participates in a series of tests, interviews, and exercises.

Attrition: A reduction in the number of employees through normal retirements and resignations.

Behavioral modeling: Presenting or showing participants a particular behavior or way of doing something, followed by practice of the behavior through role playing.

Behavioral Observation Scales (BOS): Scales on which several behaviors are listed individually for each performance dimension. The rater is required to assess the individual on each behavior.

Behavioral sciences: The social and biological sciences partaining to the study of human behavior.

Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS): Scales that focus on specific job behavior rather than on traits or characteristics. Scales are used for each important area of job behavior.

Behavior Modification: The process of shaping behavior through reinforcement. Also known as Operant Conditioning.

Benefit Survey: A survey of the benefits offered by other firms.

Benchmarking: Continuous rating of the company's best products and practices against the world's best firms.

Bid: To enter the competition for  a particular job opening.

Biodata: Biographical data

Bona fide occupational qualification: A legal, justifiable personnel decision based on sex, religion, or national origin.

Bottom-line-principle: In the uniform guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, a stipulation that as long as the firm's employee selection process does not produce an adverse impact, federal agencies generally will not challenge particular components of the process.

Boycotts: Organized refusals to buy products from certain companies to express protest.

Bumping: A system that permits the demotion of more senior employees to replace the more junior employees who have been laid off.

Business Agent: An employee of a craft union who negotiates and administers the labor contract and handles the union's day-to-day business affairs.

Cafeteria benefit plan: A benefit plan that allows employees to choose a particular mix of benefits that add up to a certain dollar amount.

Career management: The planning of staffing policies and systems.

Career progression ladders: Charts that illustrate the horizontal and vertical movement of employees from one job to another within an organization. Also called job ladders, promotion ladders, or career paths.

Case Studies: The analyses of written or video taped problem situations.

Catalyst-facilitator role: The role of stimulating a top-management discussion about management philosophy, leadership style, and organizational culture and climate.

CEO: Chief Executive Officer.

Check list method: An appraisal method in which the rater is presented with a list of positive or negative adjectives or descriptive behavioral statements and asked to check off all those that apply to the person being rated.

Chronobiologists: Scientists who study the biological rhythms of the human body.

Carcadian Cycles: The rhythmic biological cycles recurring approximately every twenty-four hours.

Classification method:  A method of job evaluation that starts with one-paragraph descriptions of a predetermined number of levels, grades, or "Classes" of jobs, each of which corresponds to pay grade.

Climate surveys: Questionnaires used to measure individual perceptions of the prevailing climate in the organization.

Closed shops: Companies that hire only union members.

Coaching: The frequent helping of a subordinate by a superior.

Coaching and development goals: Uses of performance appraisal for counseling and coaching employees to improve their performance, developing commitment to the organization, motivating employees, strengthening superior-subordinate relations, and diagnosing individual and organizational problems.

Co-determination: Indirect representative participation in which union representatives sit on boards of directors.

Coercive secondary boycott: Example: The picketing by union of an organization that uses, buys, or deals with products or services from the organization with which the union has a dispute.

Collective bargaining: The process by which a formal agreement is established between a union and management regarding wages, hours, working conditions, and similar matters.

Commission: A bonus given according to the number of items or dollar volume sold.


Commuter marriage: A marriage in which each spouse may work three to five days a week in a different location.

Compa ratio: A calculation that tells to what degree the jobs within a pay grade will average out near the midpoint of the range.

Comparable Worth: The concept that women should receive the same compensation as men in the same organization for work of comparable worth as well as for work of equal worth.

Compensation and reward: A process that determines what wages, salaries, and incentives are paid and what supplemental benefits and non financial rewards are provided.

Competition: Involves common goals and a good deal of common interest, along with limited opposing behaviors.

Competitive benchmarking: Continuous rating of the company's best products and practices against the world's best firms.

Compliance officers: Men and women from the safety and health field who have attended at least four weeks of specialized training at OSHA's  Training Institute and who conduct OSHA inspections.

Compressed workweek: A work schedule in which employees work the same number of hours per week but in fewer days than they previously worked.

Computer-assisted instruction: Programmed training of employees by computers

Computer-assisted interview:  An interview in which an applicant answers questions presented on a video screen.

Computer simulation models: Simulation programs that approximate various business situations.

Concessionary bargaining: A form of integrative bargaining in which labor actually gives up something it previously had won.

Conciliation: A procedure whereby a third party helps labor and management develop and adhere to an agenda, as well as gives them encouragement to address as objectively as possible the issues on which they are divided.

Conflict: Opposing behaviors between two or three people or groups who have incompatible goals.

Consent election: An election to determine whether a majority of employees favor a particular union to act as their bargaining representative.

Construct validity: The extent to which a selection device measures an abstract trait, such as numerical aptitude.

Consultant-adviser role: The role of advising management at all levels about the motivational, morale, and legal implications of various policies and practices.

Flexible benefit plan: A benefit plan that allows employees to choose a particular mix of benefits that add up to a certain dollar amount.

Content validity: The relationship between behaviors measured by a selection device and behaviors involved in the job.

Contingency plans: Options that can be implemented to minimize negative effects on a company’s human resources should an organizational crisis arise. 

Contingent workers: Workers who are on the payroll of an organization in a part-time or temporary capacity, or who are subcontractors, consultants, or leased employees.

Contract rights: The rights of employees for which they have contracted with management.

Contract trainers: Outside trainers hired when staff trainers are not available.

Craft union: A group of workers who possess the same skill or perform essentially the same task or function. It attempts to organize all the practitioners of that craft who are employed by  the  same employer or located within a particular area.

Criterion-related validity: The correlation between scores on a selection device and ratings on a particular criterion of job performance; expressed as a correlation coefficient.

Critical incidents: Worker behaviors that characterize either very good or very poor performance.

Critical-incidents technique: A record, kept by the appraiser, of unusually favorable or unfavorable occurrences in an employee’s work.

Cross-cultural training: Training to assist in understanding and accommodating to specific cultures; sometimes includes team building with persons from more than one culture.

Cross-functional teams: Groups comprising specialists from different functions, such as accounting, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, personnel, and so on.

Culture shock: An overall sense of difficulty in coping in a foreign locale.

Decertication election: An election held to determine whether a majority of employees want to end their affiliation with a union.

Decision making leave: A one-day, paid leave during which the employee is to think through his or her commitment to the organization and willingness to solve an immediate problem.

Defined benefit pension plan: A pension plan that specifies the amount of the pension that will be received by the retiree; it is usually based on a combination of salary and length of service.

Defined contribution pension plan: A pension plan that features a specified formula for contributions going into the plan but does not specify the amount to be received by the retiree.

Demotion: A reduction in job responsibilities, usually accompanied by a reduction in hourly pay or salary.

Deregulation: Reduction or elimination of governmental regulation and control or particular industries.

Development: An organizational outcome: the extent to which individual employees, groups of workers and the total organization are developing in their capacity to meet future opportunities and challenges.

Diagnostic role: The role of identifying the underlying causes of an organizational problem and developing solutions- or systems for solving the problem- that correspond with the diagnosis.

Differential piece-rate plans: Plans in which the worker who exceeds standard production is compensated for all work at a higher rate than workers who satisfy only the minimum standard.

Direct participation: The direct interaction of employees with those in authority in a collaborative effort to achieve organizational goals.

Discharge: Management action in which an employee is separated from the organization and the payroll for violation of company rules or inadequate performance.

Disciplinary action: The penalty or punishment associated with violation of a rule.

Disciplinary layoff: The temporary separation of an employee from the organization and the payroll, usually for a rule violation.

Disciplinary review board: A committee-usually three or more managers and sometimes a psychiatrist or psychologist-that reviews instances of disciplinary action and can correct or amend a penalty that an employee considers to be unfair or too harsh.

Discrimination: Employment decisions based on racial, sexual, age, handicapped status or other kinds of prejudice.

Distributive bargaining:  A form of collective bargaining that involves the distribution of things that exist in limited quantity, such as wealth and power.

Diversity, managing cultural: A term broadly applied to the recruitment, selection, promotion, and training of minorities and the training of all employees in more cultural awareness and appreciation.

Docking: The withholding of wages from an employee for time missed at work due to absenteeism or tardiness.

Documentation: In the context of work rules violations, careful recording of the facts of the situation.

Downsizing: Layoffs.

Dual-career couples: A couple in which both spouses are employed.

Dual ladders: Parallel avenues for advancement; for example, opportunities for scientists to be promoted to more complex technical positions in contrast to managerial posts.

Due process: In organizations, fair and orderly procedures carried out in accordance with established rules and principles that acknowledge the rights of individual employees.

Economic strike: A strike over wages, hours, or conditions of work.

Effectiveness: An organizational outcome: the extent to which organizational goals are achieved.

Efficiency: An organizational outcome: the ratio of outputs to inputs or of benefits to costs.

Elder care: An employee benefit that provides assistance in the care of elderly relatives.

Employee assistance programs (EAPs):  Counseling programs in organizations that focus on such problems as mental health, stress, alcohol and drug use, and legal and financial difficulties.

Employee association: A professional association that advances the professional interests of its members and engages in collective bargaining with employers

Employee benefits: The services and programs offered workers by organizations, ranging from legally required benefits, such as social security payments, to various optional benefits, such as time off with pay for personal business, vacation, and health insurance.

Employee-Centered behavior: A type of managerial behavior that includes being friendly and approachable, listening to subordinates, and involving them in planning or decision making.

Employee referrals: Suggestions from employees or friends of the organization as to likely candidates for jobs.

Employee stock ownership plan (ESOP): A plan in which employees may purchase company stock through payroll-deduction or installment plans, usually below market price.

Employment agents: In organizations around the turn of the century, clerks who handled much of the recruiting and initial screening of applicants.

Employment-at-will rule: A doctrine specifying that en employer in a private institution may dismiss an employee, with or without specific cause, in the absence of a written employment agreement. Sometimes called a termination-at-will rule or the absolute right to discharge.

Employment eligibility: The legal right to accept a job in the United States.

Empowerment: The enhanced autonomy, creativity, and productivity of subordinates, achieved through training, delegation, involvement, and support.

Equal employment opportunity: Equal consideration of all qualified job applicants regardless of sex, race, age, religion, national origin, or handicapped status.

Equity: The quality of being just or fair.

Error of central tendency: An error that occurs when an appraiser tends to rate the performance of all or most of the persons being appraised around the center of the rating scale.

Essay method: A method of appraisal in which the appraiser writes a free-form essay describing subordinates’ performances in a number of board categories.

Ethics: A system of moral principles pertaining to the standards of a particular group, profession, or culture. One way to consider the ethics of a given action is to assess the extent of its constructive consequences to others versus the extent of its harmful or destructive consequences.

Evaluation goals: Uses of performance appraisal

(        a)    To provide feedback to employees;

(        b)   To develop valid data for pay and promotion decisions;

(        c)    To help the manager make retention and discharge decisions and 

              provide a means for warning employees about unsatisfactory

              performance

Executive search firm: A private employment agency that specializes in searching out top-level executives to fill critical corporate positions.

Exempt employees: As defined by the Fair Labor Standards Act, employees who are exempt from being paid overtime.

Exit interview: An interview, usually conducted by a representative of the personnel department, to determine why an employee is leaving.

Expatriate: An employee assigned to work in an-other country, or anyone who has chosen to work in a foreign country.

Expedited arbitration: An accelerated form of arbitration in which the two parties in the dispute do not file prehearing or post hearing briefs, no stenographic record is taken, awards are made within five days of the end of the hearing, and the arbitrator’s opinions, when required, are kept very short. 

Extrinsic rewards: External reinforcements such as pay, recognition, or promotion.

Facilitator: A professional who has had special training in participative skill development, in structuring and moderating problem-solving meetings, and in the use of action research.

Fact-finding: A procedure in which a neutral party, either an individual or a panel, is appointed to determine the facts in a dispute, then makes a report that will provide the parties engaged in the dispute with a more accurate understanding of the situation and thus increase the likelihood that an agreement can be reached.

Fallback position: A position with the same status and pay as a promoted employee’s original job, to which the employee may be transferred if the promotion proves unsuccessful.

Family leave: Leave of absence for taking care of an infant, a family member who is ill or elderly relatives.

Featherbedding provisions: Labor contract provisions that force the employer to hire unnecessary employees.

Feedback: Information provided to employees concerning how well they are doing their jobs.

Field recruiting: The sending or recruiters into the field-college campuses, meetings of professional associations, and the like to locate prospective employees.

Final-offer arbitration: A procedure in which each party submits a package of contract provisions to an arbitrator, who must make a choice. Sometimes called last-offer ballot or forced-choice arbitration.

Flexible benefit plan: A benefit plan that allows employees to choose a particular mix of benefits that add up to a certain dollar amount. Also called a cafeteria benefit plan.

Flextime: A schedule under which employees may choose when to arrive at work and when to depart; includes a core time when everyone must be on the job.

Focus groups: Small groups of consumers (or employees) assembled to respond to selected questions and/or topics by market (or organizational) researchers.

Formal groups: Groups established by management, such as a work group, a special committee, or a task force.

Functionally illiterate: Unable to read, write, calculate, or solve problems at a level that enables one to cope with even the simplest organizational tasks.

Gaming simulation: A management development exercise in which participants are given background information, instructions about conditions and rules to follow, and perhaps roles to play.

Garnishment: A legal proceeding in which a creditor of an employee gets a court order requiring the company to turn over some fraction of that employee’s wages.

Glasnost: Russian term meaning openness; used to characterize former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s campaign for more openness.

Glass ceiling: Invisible barrier to advancement confronting women and minorities.

Glass wall: Invisible barrier to lateral mobility confronting women and minorities.

Globalization: A focus on international competition and interdependency.

Golden parachute: Severance pay, often quite generous, at the executive level.

Graphic rating scale method: A rating scale that concentrates on specific employee behaviors or characteristics as they relate to work performance.

Green circle jobs: Jobs identified as being underpaid when wages or salaries are plotted against job evaluation points.

Grievance: A formal complaint filed by an employee following an established grievance procedure.

Grievance-arbitration procedures: Systematic, union-management deliberations of a complaint filed either by an employee or by management at successively higher organizational levels and potentially by a neutral third party.

Group incentive plans: Individual plans applied to small groups of workers, to encourage the team work and cooperation needed to attain high productivity or performance.

Group interview: An interview of a number of job candidates at once. Generally the applicants are allowed to discuss job-related matters among themselves while their performance is rated by one or more observers.

Group maintenance behaviors: Behavior that pertain to the emotional life of the work group.

Group task behaviors: Those group member behaviors that relate directly to the task such as initiating, information giving, and summarizing.

Halo effect: The tendency for an interview to be influenced by a particular area in which the applicant looks impressive, to the exclusion of other matters.

Halo error:  A situation in which a supervisor generalizes from one dimension of a person’s job performance to all dimensions of performance.

Hazing: The harassment of a new employee with unnecessary tasks or practical jokes.

Health and industrial hygienists: Specialists who assist in maintaining the health of the work force by preventing or controlling occupational and non occupational diseases and disabilities.

Health Maintenance Organization (HMO): Organization offering total health care, including such services as general practitioner, specialist, laboratory, surgical, hospital, consulting-nurse, emergency-room, and pharmacy services.

Home-based work: Working at home for an employer.

Honesty tests: Pencil and paper questionnaires that inquire into a job applicant’s attitudes about theft.

Horizontal restructuring: A method of job enlargement that involves broadening the scope of the job to include tasks that previously preceded or followed in the flow of the work.

 Horn effect: The tendency for an interviewer to turn one negative characteristic of a job candidate into the conclusion that the candidate is weak in all areas.

Hostile environment sexual harassment: A form of sexual harassment in which an unwelcome or hostile environment is created.

Hot cargo (or hot goods) agreement: An illegal agreement between a company and a union to cease handling the products of, or cease doing business with, other firms or persons.

Human relations movement: A movement focusing on group behavior and on workers’ feelings as they relate to productivity and morale.

Human resources: The people who work for a business or service organization, combining their efforts, talents, and skills with other resources, such as knowledge, materials, and energy, to create useful products and services.

Human Resources Management (HRM): The philosophy, policies, procedures, and practices related to the management of people within an organization; includes human resources planning, job and work design and analysis, staffing, training and development, performance appraisal and review, compensation and reward, employee protection and representation, and organization improvement.

Human Resources Management (HRM) Audit: A comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of an organization’s Human Resources policies and practices.

Human Resources Planning: The process of assessing an organization’s human resources needs in relation to organizational goals and making plans to ensure that a component, stable work force is employed.

Hygiene factors: In Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, the factors whose absence or negative qualities result in dissatisfaction: company policy and administration, supervision, salary, interpersonal relation, and working conditions.

Illegal bargaining issues: Bargaining issues that would conflict with the law and therefore may not be made a part of a labor contract, even if both sides agree to do so.

Immigration Reform and Control Act: Legislation requiring employers of four or more workers to hire only U.S. citizens and aliens authorized to work in the United States.

Impasse: A deadlock in negotiations.

Implied contract: An inferred understanding of the conditions of continued employment.

 Improshare: A productivity gain sharing plan that focuses on the number of hours saved for a given number of units produced.

In-basket training: A method that consists giving trainees a set of memos, letters, and other items that managers might find in their in-baskets upon arriving at work and that they are required to respond to by delaying a decision about the issue, referring the issue to someone else in the organization, or making decision about the issue.

Incentive Plans: Reward systems that provide financial or nonfinancial compensation to employees who make substantial contributions to organizational effectiveness.

Incident process: Specialized form of case method focusing on a dilemma.

Individual incentive plans: Rewards system tied to the performance of individual employees.

Industrial-organizational psychology: A scientific discipline that focuses on such subjects as assessment methods, aptitudes, motivation, leadership, group dynamics, and decision making.

 Industrial union: A union composed mainly of unskilled workers in a given industry no matter what jobs these workers perform.

Industrial welfare movement: Attempts of employers around the turn of the century to improve working conditions in their own factories.

Informal groups: Groups in an organization that have not been established by management but that form spontaneously as a result of individuals’ proximity of similarity of work, mutual interests, mutual need fulfillment, or combinations of reasons. Also called shadow groups, because they tend to be less visible to management than formal groups.

 Injunctions: Court orders that prohibit workers and unions from certain actions during labor disputes.

Inspection tour: A compliance officer’s inspection of a workplace to check safety and health conditions.

Insubordination: The refusal to carry out instruction from a superior.

Intact work teams: Members of a work group plus the supervisor. 

Integrative bargaining: A form of collective bargaining in which both sides 

engage in problem solving and benefit from an agreement because both labor and management share common goals and concerns.

Interactive Video (IAV): A video that allows for interaction; uses a computer and keyboard, video screen, material stored on a videodisc, and video camera and tape.

Interest arbitration: A procedure that involves submitting to an arbitrator any point that the parties cannot agree on in negotiating a contract.

Intergroup Problem Solving: A participative technique for solving problems between two groups, involving both groups and a facilitator.

Internal tribunals: Committees-usually including one or more fellow workers, management representatives, and representative of the human resources department-who arbitrate complaints or grievances of workers and hand down binding decisions consistent with company-published policies and procedures. Also called peer review panels.

International Human Resources Management (IHRM): The systematic planning and coordination of job and work design, staffing, training and development, appraising, rewarding, and protecting and representing the human resources in the foreign operations of an organization.

Intrinsic rewards: Internal reinforcements, such as a feeling of accomplishment or self-worth.

Inverse seniority: A system in which the most senior workers are given the first opportunity to elect layoff.

Involuntary transfer: An organization-initiated reassignment of an employee from one job to another, one department to another, one shift to another, or one geographic location to another.

Job analysis: An outgrowth of job design, the process of investigating the tasks and behaviors associated with a particular job.

Job and work design: Specifies the tasks to be performed by individuals and groups within an organization and establishes the rules, schedules, and working conditions under which people perform those tasks.

Job content: The set of activities to be performed on the job, including the duties, tasks, and job responsibilities to be carried out; the equipment, machines, and tools to be used; and the required interactions with others.

Job description: Written summary, sometimes called a position description, of the basic tasks associated with a particular job.

Job design: The process of determining the specific tasks and responsibilities to be carried out by each member of an organization.

Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS): An instrument used to determine whether there is a need to redesign work and whether doing so is feasible, given the existing structure of the jobs and existing conditions in the organization.

Job enlargement: The addition of more and different tasks to a job. Sometimes called horizontal restructuring.

Job enrichment: The process of enhancing job characteristics for the purpose of increasing worker motivation, productivity, and satisfaction. Sometimes called vertical restructuring.

Job evaluation: The systematic determination of relative worth of jobs within an organization to establish wages and salaries.

Job factors: Factors, such as responsibility, skill, effort, or working conditions, that are considered appropriate dimensions for determining relative job worth, or value to an organization.

Job instruction training (JIT): Determination of training needs, recognition of the needs of the trainee, feedback from the trainee, frequent appraisal, and correction.

Job posting: The announcement of job openings to all current employees.

Job relatedness: The extent to which selection or appraisal standards are relevant to performance on the job.

Job satisfaction: A person’s emotional response to aspects of work (such as pay, supervision, and benefits) or to the work itself.

Job Service: In most states, an agency responsible for assistance in job placement.

Job sharing: The splitting of a job into two four hour segments that are shared by two people, or the splitting of a job so that one person works full days for part of a weak and another person works the other days.

Job specifications: The qualification needed to perform a job, frequently listed as part of a job description.

Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA): Legislation that created a federal program that helps retrain workers.

Job worth:  The value of a job to an organization.

Joint Apprenticeship Committees: Joint management union committees to plan and manage local apprentice programs.

Jurisdictional strikes: Strikes organized to force an employer to assign work to one union, trade, or craft instead of to some other.

Just cause: Valid, job related reasons for terminating employment.

Key job:  A job that is found in many organizations and that has relatively stable content.

Knowledge-based pay: The wages paid to individual members of a work group according to the number of tasks they can perform or the number of skills they have mastered. Also called knowledge-based pay.

Labor department specialists: In turn-of-the-century organizations, a person responsible for responding to complaints from union employees and for monitoring working conditions and wage policies.

Labor union: An organization that bargains for employees over wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment.

Laboratory training: Experience-based learning workshops that generally emphasize interaction between trainers and trainees.

Layoff: The temporary or indefinite removal of employees from the payroll.

Layout and physical arrangements: The design of the workplace itself, the technology and equipment made available for completing tasks, and other characteristics of the organization’s physical environment.

Leadership: The process of influencing individual and group behavior toward the attainment of organizational goals.

Leniency error: An error made when an appraiser gives employees higher ratings than they deserve.

Local hire: An employee hired from the local community where the plant or office is located.

Lockout: Literally, a locking out of employees by managers in the hope that the employees, or the union that represents them, will be more eager to reach agreement if the workers no longer have an income.

Maintenance behaviors: Those group member behaviors that relate to the emotional life of the group and its developing, such as harmonizing, gate keeping, and encouraging.

Maintenance of membership requirements: Clauses in union contracts that require workers who belong to a union at the beginning of a contract’s term to remain members throughout the period covered by the contract (except for a special interval near the contract’s expiration date, when withdrawal is permitted).

Make-work provisions: Labor contract provisions that create jobs with no substance or purpose.

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award: Established by congress to recognize companies that have successfully implemented total quality management (TQM) system.

Management and career development: Efforts to increase an organization’s present and future ability to meet its goals by educating managers and all employees above and beyond the immediate technical requirements of their jobs.

Management by Objectives (MBO): A system that features an agreement between a superior and a subordinate on the subordinate’s objectives for a particular period and a scheduled review of how well the subordinate has achieved those objectives.

Management Game:  A management development exercise in which participants are given background information, instructions about conditions and rules to follow, and perhaps roles to play.

Management Philosophy: The set of ideas and beliefs held by executives about how people should be managed.

Management Systems: Procedures and devices for channeling organizational activities such as planning, goal setting, staffing, purchasing, marketing, accounting, communicating, and the like.

Managing diversity: A term broadly applied to the recruitment, selection, promotion, and training of minorities and the training of all employees in more cultural awareness and appreciation.

Mandatory bargaining issues: Items about which unions and management must negotiate, including wages, hours, and conditions of work.

Mandatory benefits: Employee benefits that organizations are required by law to provide.

Mandatory retirement: A retirement required by the organization.

Measured day-rate plan: An individual incentive plan under which employees are rated every two or three months on several factors, such as productivity, quality of work, dependability, and versatility.

Mechanistic system: A managerial system including such features as high task specialization, extensive reliance on each hierarchical level for coordination and control, conservative communications, emphasis on vertical interactions, insistence on loyalty, and a one-on-one leadership style.

Med-arb: A combination of mediation and arbitration in which union and management agree that a third party will mediate, but will then decide issues that cannot be settled through mediation.

Mediation: A procedure in which a third party suggests specific alternatives for the consideration of labor and management and assists the two sides in reaching agreement.

Mentor: A person more senior in position or experience who is available to a junior person for coaching or counseling concerning job and career progress.

Merit: Quality performance that deserves reward.

Merit pay: Pay increase based on job performance.

Merit-pay plan: Under this plan, pay raises are determined by job performance. Employees who achieve a certain level of performance relative to established standards or relative to the performance of others earn an increase in their regular rate.

Mission Statement: A written statement of an organization’s overall purpose, or mission.

Motivate behavior: The desire and willingness of employees to expend effort to reach and sustain high levels of performance.

Motivation: The desire and willingness of a person to expend effort in order to reach particular goal or outcome.

Motivators: In Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, the key factors in motivation and satisfaction: achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, and advancement.

Multinational Corporation (MNC): A company with operations in more than one country.

Multi-skilling: Training employees to have multiple skills.

National: A citizen of the country where the plant or office exists.

National Emergency Dispute: A strike that could threaten the economic well-being of the nation or imperil the national defense.

Needs forecasting: The process of determining an organization’s future demand for human resources.