Management glossary A–Z

Ranking items by value: A is few items carrying most value and tightly controlled; C is many low-value items controlled lightly.

The ability of a country, industry, region or firm to take in knowledge and technology spilling over from multinationals; a condition for FDI spillovers.

Responsibility for meeting performance expectations and for showing that they were met. It sits at the centre of results-based management and of evaluating change.

Recording revenue when earned and cost when incurred regardless of cash timing, which is why profit differs from cash.

Active tries to beat an index by selection and timing; passive tracks the index at low cost.

Under deprivation people lower their aspirations to fit their narrow options, so what they say they want may not reflect what they need.

When one side knows more, the other cannot tell quality apart and the market distorts.

The degree to which employees truly want a change to succeed rather than merely comply. A study of three banks linked attention to people and organisation during a CRM roll-out with better results.

A structured discussion soon after an event asking what happened, why, and what to do differently. Keiser and Arthur's meta-analysis finds it effective, with the effect varying by how the review is run.

The sum of monitoring, bonding and residual losses when managers do not act wholly for owners.

Managers (agents) may pursue their own interests instead of the owners'; monitoring and incentives narrow the gap.

Three traps: automating work that still needs judgement, unverifiable multi-step chains, and runaway agent loops.

Umbrella term for both predefined LLM workflows and self-directing agents.

Using market knowledge and a responsive network to exploit opportunities in a volatile market.

In a cyber incident, organisations that disclose early, say what is known and unknown, and update continually usually protect trust better. Aoyama and colleagues studied the roles of agility, transparency and positive reinforcement.

A system where the model decides its own next steps and uses tools in a loop to reach a goal.

A short document describing you, your firm, style and no-go zones, preloaded so you need not re-explain.

Use AI as the default to speed work up, but keep final responsibility with people, especially for sensitive data, code quality and customer commitments.

An organisation that redesigns workflows end to end around AI instead of bolting AI onto old ones.

An AI classification system that systematically disadvantages a group, not necessarily from intent but from skewed data, proxies or background injustice.

Automated systems that classify user content (matching or prediction) and decide removal or flagging, raising transparency, fairness and de-politicisation issues.

Estimates are pulled toward the first number seen, even an arbitrary one.

The tendency for estimates to be pulled toward a first number or idea, with later adjustment usually insufficient. In strategy, an opening target or forecast can anchor everything discussed afterwards.

How far the nature of a technology and the legal system let an innovator keep the benefits it creates. A tight regime makes copying hard, a weak one makes it easy, and that shapes who earns the profit.

A family of models using the series' own past values and shocks; needs a reasonably stable series.

Schein's three levels of culture: what can be seen, what the organisation declares, and what is taken for granted. The deeper the level, the harder it is to see and to change.

A social entrepreneur selected and supported by the Ashoka network.

Dividing a portfolio among asset classes by goals and risk appetite; it drives most of the time-series variation in returns.

How specialised an asset is and how hard to find on the open market; the higher it is, the more sensible to keep it in-house.

When a shortfall costs many times more than a surplus (lost sales versus warehouse rent), deliberately err on the cheaper side.

Rules for crediting touchpoints that led to a purchase; last-click credits only the final touch, so it shows association, not cause.

A language model plus retrieval, tools and memory; the basic building block of agentic systems.

The tendency to trust automated outputs uncritically.

A frame describing the world as brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible, offered as a successor to VUCA.

How often something happens without the factor in question; without it, multipliers mislead.

How the main political, legal and economic institutions fit into one system of cooperation and divide its benefits. Justice assesses this first.

Re-engaging users based on earlier behaviour such as viewing a product or abandoning a basket.

A customer action, such as abandoning a basket, that automatically sets off a timely personalised message.

Sensitivity of an asset's return to the market's return; above 1 means more volatile than the market.

Unbalanced treatment of family and non-family members in a family firm.

CRM records, purchase histories, web and app behaviour, social media, sensors and customer conversations.

A hierarchical list of every material and quantity needed for one product.

A distributed ledger that records and verifies transactions across many computers; used for provenance, though an ordinary database is often enough.

Red ocean is head-on rivalry in an existing market; blue ocean is creating new market space so price rivalry matters less.

Avoiding outside capital through thrift, used equipment, customer prepayments and shared costs.

Another label for an INV: international almost from birth rather than via slow Uppsala-style steps.

A firm that takes a global view of its market and trades internationally from inception.

Turning satisfied customers into people who actively recommend the brand by word of mouth, creating credible peer-to-peer marketing.

The extra value a brand name adds, seen in how customers respond differently when they know the brand than when they do not.

The visual and verbal elements (logo, colour, typography, tone) that create a brand's image and should stay consistent with its positioning and audience.

The bottleneck at the first promotion to manager, where fewer women than men advance, thinning the pipeline above.

Order variability grows as it moves up the chain, even when end demand is fairly stable.

Reasonable people still disagree on ethics because weighing values is hard, so personal convictions cannot justify political coercion.

A wealthy individual who invests in young firms for equity or convertible debt, often adding connections.

Changing how a firm creates, delivers and captures value: revenue streams, customer relationships or key activities.

The prospect of earning economic profit from a market gap or imperfection.

Business principles are broader than profit maximisation and moral sentiments reach far into economics. The author warns against grand claims such as "Asian values beat Western morals".

A clear prompt, such as “Buy now”, telling the reader what to do next and why now.

The process of analysing long-term projects and choosing which enter the capital plan.

Days of inventory plus days of receivables minus days of payables; shorter means less cash trapped.

Starting from a given goal and choosing the best means to reach it.

Centralising gives speed and consistency; decentralising gives local fit but risks inconsistency.

States stay bound together through financial, information and supply networks, so decoupling is hard, and that interdependence is used to coerce rivals.

Getting a model to write out intermediate reasoning steps before the final answer.

The person or group responsible for assessing readiness, choosing options and coordinating the change. The type of agent should fit the circumstances; there is no single template.

How an organisation deliberately moves from where it is to where it wants to be. The hardest part is usually the human side: whether people understand, accept and actually change their behaviour.

The degree to which individuals and the organisation understand the need for change and have the capacity to carry it out. It is often skipped when teams rush into implementation.

The person affected by a change who has to accept it and adapt. Distinct from the implementer, who runs the programme day to day.

A fairly new executive role leading the sustainability shift, with tasks and reporting lines that are often unclear.

A model that keeps materials in use instead of discarding them.

Customers order online and collect in store, linking the digital and physical channels and creating chances to sell more on the spot.

High-tax investors prefer low-dividend stocks and low-tax investors prefer dividends; each firm attracts its own group.

Goods that are excludable but partly non-rival among members, such as a car-sharing membership.

The psychological tension felt when beliefs and actions conflict. People relieve it by changing the action or rationalising the belief, and beliefs shift for real only when the person has genuine choice.

The mental effort needed to choose; good personalisation reduces it by offering fewer, more relevant options.

Trusting someone's competence and reliability differs from trusting out of bond and shared values; the latter lets task debate avoid rupture.

Each person has reason to do what leaves everyone worse off (for example accept longer hours), so shared rules are needed.

Some readers cannot tell certain colours apart, so colour should not be the only way a chart separates data.

Sales change at stores open long enough, stripped of new-store effects; can be split into transactions and average ticket.

A situation in which a resource is valuable but many rivals also hold it, so it helps the firm survive rather than pull ahead. It is a normal VRIO result, not a failure.

Capabilities and assets beyond the technology itself, such as manufacturing, distribution, service and brand, needed to turn an innovation into profit. Whoever controls them can capture more value than the inventor.

The steady yearly growth rate that takes the start value to the end value.

A range of values the data and model consider plausible for the true parameter; a wide range means a weaker conclusion.

Seeking and favouring evidence that supports an existing view while discounting the opposite.

Judges actions by net outcomes. Utilitarianism is the best-known form: maximise aggregate welfare, weighting everyone equally.

Keeping the same tone and promise across ads, website and store so customers do not meet contradictions.

Creating useful, relevant content about customers' problems to attract the right audience and position the brand as a trusted source.

Curating the best set of information a model sees at inference: system instructions, tools, external data, message history.

Information flows follow the norms of a context; using it elsewhere for another purpose breaches privacy even after original consent.

Automatic protection for original expression once fixed in a medium; ideas are not protected.

Organisational behaviour that creates favourable conditions for business through ties with governments, other firms and non-profits; also the ability to win over external stakeholders.

A firm's duty to the people and environment its activity affects, beyond profit and minimum legal compliance.

Two variables moving together does not mean one causes the other: a common cause, chance or reverse direction may explain it.

The real damage if a wrong output is used; measure it before deciding to delegate to AI.

A survey of over 23,000 managers and staff in 13 countries found the US, UK, Australia and Canada clustered (mostly with India), while Japan and Italy formed a separate, distinct group.

The link between leadership and employee engagement is not the same in every country. Li and colleagues pooled studies by country in a meta-analysis, so a style should not be assumed to work identically everywhere.

The process by which innovators keep reshaping the economy from within, replacing the old with the new.

A government gradually changing rules, permits or taxes to shift benefits away from a foreign investor without outright seizure.

Comparing models by level of analysis, sequence, strengths and limits, then choosing a combination that fits the context; different from simply listing each model.

The idea of fixing the new state is doubted when the environment changes continuously, and because the three-step model may not have been stated by Lewin in the form usually taught.

Raising small sums from many people; four forms: equity, reward, donation, loan.

Three ad metrics: click-through rate, cost per click, and revenue earned per unit of ad spend.

An image of a visible tip (artefacts, behaviour, procedures) and a larger hidden part (values, basic assumptions, the psychological contract). The hidden part determines the resistance met when changing culture.

An environment where employees can contribute ideas, learn, and trust their leaders. It is linked to willingness to try new technology.

Current assets (with or without stock) divided by current liabilities, gauging ability to pay what is due.

A chatbot variant that stores instructions, documents and capabilities for a recurring task.

Total marketing and sales spend in a period divided by the number of new customers won in that period.

The sequence of touchpoints from first awareness to after purchase, each stage with its own data signals and marketing actions.

The expected profit a customer generates over the whole relationship, discounted to today's value.

The point in the material flow that the real order reaches; upstream of it runs on forecasts.

A research-based, fictional profile of a representative customer used to design the offer. It is a composite, not a real person.

Strategy and systems that gather customer data so communication can be personalised, purchase history tracked and relationships sustained.

The ability to keep customers coming back; low defection is usually what makes recurring revenue and lasting profit possible.

Retention is customers who keep buying or paying; churn is customers who leave. Recurring-fee models live or die by retention.

Customers configure the product or service themselves; unlike personalisation, the user holds the controls.

Choosing actions on analysed evidence rather than opinion, in a loop of asking, analysing, communicating and refining.

Using behaviour, preference and demographic data to make and optimise marketing decisions, aiming for better targeting, engagement and return.

A bare number is data; with a reference point and context it is information; combined across sources and time to support decisions it becomes knowledge.

The share of a graphic's ink that shows data rather than decoration; the higher, the cleaner and more honest the chart.

The share of ink carrying real data should be high; the lie factor gauges how far the graphic exaggerates the data.

The more personal data a firm collects, the greater its legal and ethical duties; GDPR is the EU and UK data-protection regime.

Data can be missing whole records or single fields, or carry distorted values; deal with this before analysis.

Cross-checking results with several sources, methods or viewpoints so a decision does not rest on one flawed source.

Weakening the interdependence between two countries or blocs in trade, technology and value chains.

An agentic mode that searches many web sources and writes a report; sources still need checking.

A phase in which global economic connectedness plateaus or falls. One study says the data cannot yet confirm it, though the pattern resembles earlier waves.

Realised strategy is usually a mix: part deliberately intended by management, part emerging from situations and politics inside the organisation.

A panel of experts answers over several anonymous rounds, each seeing the previous round's summary.

Rightness depends on respect for people’s rights, dignity and autonomy, not on outcomes.

Employees depend on employers more than the reverse, so consent to monitoring is hard to call fully voluntary.

The more deeply a change reaches into personal identity, from structures and tasks through relationships to personality and life direction, the higher the potential resistance.

The claim that someone deserves a reward just for who they are or what they did. Scanlon argues pre-institutional desert plays no role in justifying large economic gaps.

Design capacity is the ideal maximum; effective capacity allows for downtime and changeovers. Utilisation compares output with design, efficiency with effective.

Economic inequality is allowed only if it leaves the worst off better than any feasible alternative. Not a minimum floor, not aggregate benefit.

Creating new ventures or transforming existing ones through digital technology or novel uses of it.

The leadership capabilities needed by an organisation that is digitalising. Cortellazzo and colleagues reviewed leadership in a digitalised world; Müller and colleagues proposed a contingency approach to digital-transformation leadership competencies.

Reaching foreign customers through websites, a virtual instead of physical presence.

Using digital technologies, data and channels to promote brands and interact with customers, increasingly with automation and AI.

A digital record of a product, read via QR code or data carrier, holding origin, composition and repair information; the EU is rolling it out by product group.

A state's effort to control its own digital infrastructure, data and technology and reduce outside dependence.

The maker sells to customers itself, bypassing dealers or distributors, to own the relationship and the customer data.

The question of whether polluting industries move to countries with weaker environmental standards. A 1992 study found these industries took a growing share of some developing countries' exports, but not mainly because of environmental policy.

A personality tendency that makes a person more or less ready to accept change, measured by Oreg's scale: routine seeking, emotional reaction, cognitive rigidity and short-term focus. It does not determine behaviour towards each specific initiative.

An innovation that starts in a low-end or niche segment with something simpler or cheaper, then moves up and displaces incumbents.

Spreading capital across imperfectly correlated assets to cut risk without necessarily cutting expected return.

Selling or separating a business unit to focus resources on the rest or to release capital. A demerger into a standalone company is one route; sale to another owner is another.

A dividend rise or cut conveys management's private view of future cash flow.

System 1 is fast and automatic; System 2 is slow and deliberate. Rushed hiring decisions amplify System 1.

Due diligence is the careful check of a target before purchase; integration is the merging of people, systems and culture afterwards. Value is often lost in integration rather than at signing.

A limited duty to help others protect their rights at reasonable cost, without sacrificing one’s own rights.

A firm's ability to integrate, build and reconfigure internal and external competences to respond to fast-changing environments. They concern how capability is renewed, not the capability a firm already has.

The ability to integrate, build and reconfigure internal and external competences to cope with fast-changing environments.

Grouping customers with machine learning so that clusters evolve in real time rather than staying fixed.

Designing product and packaging to cut environmental impact across the life cycle.

The order size that minimises ordering plus holding cost under steady demand.

Building market success through environmental innovation, driven by personal initiative rather than management systems.

Starting from the means in hand and choosing feasible outcomes, rather than fixing a goal first.

Scale cuts cost in normal times; adding spare capacity and flexibility for abnormal times usually gives up some of that efficiency.

A customer-led model using sales data to cut stock and forecast risk.

The set of portfolios with the highest expected return at each risk level; portfolios beneath it are dominated.

A chain built for low cost: high utilisation, minimal stock, low-cost suppliers; fits predictable demand.

Leadership carried out through information technology, where the technology shapes how leaders influence and how others receive the message. Avolio and colleagues proposed the concept in 2000 and updated it in 2014.

Sending targeted messages to nurture leads, retain customers and promote offers, with personalisation, segmentation and tracking.

Relying too heavily on one close network can block new information and lower performance.

The ability to perceive, understand and manage one's own and others' emotions. Salovey and Mayer (1990) proposed it as an ability; Joseph and Newman (2010) integrated the models and showed how components relate to job performance.

ADKAR groups its first three steps (awareness, desire, knowledge) into an enablement zone and the last two (ability, reinforcement) into an engagement zone.

The share of people reached who respond with likes, comments, shares or clicks.

Proactive, innovative marketing with few resources, relying on relationships and word of mouth.

Spotting, seizing and exploiting the opportunities that change creates, through new ways of doing things.

The decision to enter a foreign market through exporting, licensing, franchising, a joint venture or a wholly owned subsidiary, balancing control, capital commitment, speed and risk.

Four continuous tasks: scan for signals, monitor specific trends, forecast their consequences, and assess timing and effect on the firm.

Buying materials online: lower transaction cost, but a bias towards price and thin relationships.

Extra return investors demand for holding equities over a risk-free asset; hard to estimate and contested.

Environmental, social and governance criteria used to assess firms. A causal link to profit is still disputed.

Building environmental, social and governance factors into decisions by exclusion, integration or targeted impact.

Tying part of executives' pay to environmental, social and governance targets. Cohen and colleagues document the trend across countries; Li and colleagues (2024) find that in China it can accompany greenwashing.

A choice not to be optimised like an ordinary cost, because crossing it damages the credibility of the whole strategy.

The European Union regulation laying down harmonised rules for AI; relevant to firms serving the EU.

The probability-weighted average of outcomes; only as reliable as its probabilities.

One party takes unfair advantage of another’s vulnerability, who accepts only for lack of alternatives. A mutually beneficial deal can still be exploitative.

Forecasting with weights that decay with age; Holt–Winters adds trend and seasonality.

Producing at home and selling abroad; cheap to start but exposed to duties and logistics costs.

A cost or benefit falling on a third party outside the transaction, so price ignores the social cost.

A log of each AI mistake: the ask, the answer, why it failed, how it was caught, and the cost if missed.

People of equal ability and willingness should have equal prospects regardless of social origin. Requires real access, not formal permission.

A substitute variable that looks objective but misses the thing you need to measure, and pulls attention to itself.

A scientific claim must allow a test that could show it false; claims that cannot be measured resist checking.

A firm whose decisions are shaped by a family across generations, usually through controlling ownership.

Biased system outputs fed back as data, entrenching the injustice further.

Putting a few sample input-output pairs in the prompt so the model imitates the pattern.

The legal and moral duty of an agent (manager) to act in the interests of the principal (owner).

Banks, funds and insurers pool money, transform maturity and cut the cost of screening borrowers.

Using technology to improve financial services: payments, lending, insurance, compliance, wealth management.

A firm's vertical and horizontal relationships with other organisations, a channel to information and resources.

The benefit of entering a market before rivals, often temporary if rivals catch up.

With perfect capital markets a firm takes every positive-NPV project regardless of each shareholder's consumption preferences.

Using the average to describe individuals when almost no one matches it.

A budget restated at actual activity so variances compare like with like.

The combination of ability and willingness to take responsibility for a task. It is the basis for choosing a leadership style in the situational model.

The long-run capacity of a food system, at several levels, to keep food sufficient, appropriate and accessible to all despite shocks.

Averaging several models is usually more accurate and stable than any single one.

Three forecast-error measures: mean absolute error, root mean squared error, mean absolute percentage error; MAPE breaks when actuals are near zero.

Investment that gives control over a business operation in another country.

The same problem framed differently leads to different choices.

Letting independent operators use your brand, model and systems in return for fees or royalties.

Operating cash flow minus capital expenditure; cash available for debt, dividends or retention.

Basic features are free to attract many users, then a fraction convert to paid plans with premium features.

Estimating intrinsic value from statements, macroeconomics and industry, expecting price to converge to it.

Systems that learn patterns from large data and create new content such as text, images, audio and code.

The idea that international firms are responsible for improving local people’s welfare beyond direct working conditions.

The framework of institutions, rules and norms enabling collective action among states and international actors; not a world government.

The process by which trade, technology and investment bind economies closer together. It can be read as long-distance links growing relative to local ones.

How large buyers' standards and certification shape power and coordination among producers, intermediaries and processors.

The GLOBE project studied 62 societies and described culture on nine dimensions, along with which leadership styles are seen as effective in each. Use it to think about regional differences, not to label individuals.

GLOBE's grouping of countries with similar cultural scores into ten clusters, for example Anglo or Confucian Asia. A quick comparison tool, not a substitute for analysing each organisation.

People judge position on a common scale more accurately than length, angle, area or colour; choose the chart type accordingly.

The observation that countries with higher income inequality show lower intergenerational mobility.

The firm sets up a subsidiary abroad and builds operations from scratch: more control, but heavy in capital and time.

Building environmental requirements into purchase specs and supplier evaluation, including second tier.

Building environmental aims into design, sourcing, production, distribution, use and take-back.

Presenting a firm or fund as greener or higher in ESG than it is. The information gap between seller and buyer makes it easy.

Vague or unsubstantiated environmental claims destroy trust; CMA guidance (UK) says claims must be truthful, clear and backed by evidence.

The tendency of a cohesive group to put agreement ahead of realistic appraisal, so alternatives and dissent are set aside. Janis described it through foreign-policy decisions.

The belief that ability can grow through effort, strategy and feedback, as opposed to the belief that ability is fixed. Dweck popularised the idea; evidence of its effect in organisations still needs careful appraisal.

Revenue and score can rise sharply while profit falls because expansion costs stack up together.

A technical or procedural limit that keeps AI within its permitted scope, such as a separate screening step.

A group with enough power, expertise, credibility and connections to lead a change; one person alone is not enough. In a very small organisation the group may shrink to a few people.

Fluent model output that is false or unsupported by any source.

In the 7-S model, strategy, structure and systems are easy to identify and adjust; skills, staff, style and shared values are harder to observe and harder to change.

Designing the environment around an agent (tools, constraints, documentation, feedback loops) so it works reliably within limits.

Two routes lead to changed behaviour: thinking differently through data and argument, or feeling differently through vivid experience. The second often produces stronger change.

Using financial contracts to offset swings in exchange rates, interest rates or commodity prices.

An organisation that works in high-risk settings yet has few serious failures, thanks to constant attention to small signs of error. Weick and colleagues describe five processes that make up 'collective mindfulness'.

Designing for people to check, correct or approve at decision points before AI output takes effect.

A model in which expectations of a new technology spike, collapse, then settle with real productivity.

Individual-level, real-time personalisation made possible by big data and AI giving a full view of each customer.

Automatic, unintended judgements that skew how we assess others; it becomes discrimination when it produces unfair treatment.

Some fairness metrics cannot all be satisfied at once except in trivial cases, so choosing a metric is a value judgement.

Three rhythms of change: many small steps in sequence; long stable periods broken by large jumps; or constant adjustment inside everyday work. They are situational models, not three theories that exclude one another.

Divide each value by the base-year value and multiply by 100 to compare series in different units.

Starts from net profit, adds back depreciation and adjusts for working capital changes to reach operating cash flow.

Whether identity comes mainly from personal traits or from the groups one belongs to. In collectivist settings, team influence amplifies both support and resistance.

A way of reading income inequality through unequal opportunities. The paper asks how multinationals affect it directly and through state policy.

Partnering with people who have an audience and credibility so their trust supports a brand; results depend on how credible the content is.

A middleman who collects produce, extends credit and hauls in fragmented farm chains.

One side knows more about quality or risk and can exploit the other, for example through misleading advertising.

On Heath’s view, honest advertising that reduces information gaps is acceptable; advertising that only wins share without information is unproductive competition.

A GLOBE dimension measuring pride, loyalty and cohesion towards one's organisation or family. A change may be seen as a threat to teammates.

Inherent resilience is how a chain performs in normal times; adaptive resilience is how it adjusts when conditions turn abnormal.

A company's first sale of shares to the public, followed by listing on an exchange.

Innovation is doing existing things in a new way and need not be scientifically new; invention produces ideas, innovation puts them to use.

Regional bodies learning from or copying institutions elsewhere. ASEAN adopted some EU-style institutions, selectively, in line with its views on sovereignty.

Markets generate efficiency; the state redistributes. Managers are responsible for not exploiting market failures, not for redistribution.

A multinational faces two pressures: cut cost through scale and standardisation, or adapt to local markets.

Seeking a solution that serves both sides' real interests rather than haggling over positions.

Property rights over intangibles such as ideas, inventions, signs and information; territorial in scope.

Changing intentions produces only a moderate change in behaviour, so a self-reported "high priority" does not prove action.

Interest is tax-deductible, so debt lowers tax; the gain is offset by financial-distress costs.

The way a conglomerate allocates capital across units in place of the external market. Stein showed it can steer funds to the best units; Scharfstein and Stein showed the downside, as divisional managers compete for rents and invest inefficiently.

Policies and procedures that keep reporting reliable, assets safe, operations efficient and the firm compliant.

The discount rate that sets NPV to zero; intuitive as a percentage but can have several solutions when cash flows change sign repeatedly.

Discovering, enacting, evaluating and exploiting opportunities across borders to create future goods and services.

A firm that seeks advantage from using resources and selling outputs in several countries from its start.

Products pass through introduction, growth, maturity and decline; Vernon used it to explain shifts in investment and trade.

Overlapping identities can produce a distinct disadvantage that is not the sum of each factor taken alone.

Entrepreneurial behaviour inside an existing organisation: creating new businesses or renewing strategy.

An invention is a new idea or technology; innovation happens only when it is applied and earns a commercial result.

Annual sales divided by average inventory; higher means less capital tied up but more risk of stock-outs.

A document recording return goals, risk appetite, horizon, liquidity needs and legal and tax constraints.

Self-interested market participants, coordinated by prices, unintentionally promote the general good.

Using character recognition to turn paper or image invoices into bookable data.

A diagram that splits a large problem into smaller branches so each leaf becomes a hypothesis you can test with data.

Refining the result over several turns instead of aiming for perfection in one shot.

AI is strong at some tasks and unexpectedly weak at similar-looking ones; users must know which side a task falls on.

The part of a fund's return above what CAPM predicts for its beta; positive suggests manager value added.

The equipment stops at once on a problem so no more defective product is made.

The whole group answers for repayment. It replaces collateral but is criticised for free-riding and for attracting riskier borrowers.

Two parties set up a new shared organisation to share costs, risks and expertise.

A situation where the state fails to achieve equality; the counterpart of market failure, adding duties for managers.

Each step makes only the kind and quantity the next step needs, when it needs it.

The psychological tendency to believe people get what they deserve, leading us to underestimate real injustice.

Situations where even the probability distribution is unknown, unlike risk, which can be estimated and insured.

A model trained on very large text collections to predict what comes next; the core of today's chatbots.

Emergence is being seen as a leader by the group; effectiveness is guiding the group to its goals; the two need not coincide.

The ability to learn quickly from experience and apply the lessons to new situations, even without a formula. Bouland-van Dam and colleagues developed and validated a scale for the concept.

Management copes with complexity to create order and consistency; leadership copes with change through vision and support. One person often needs both roles.

The first steps of the sales process: finding people who might buy, then actively building relationships with the promising ones.

"Soft" measures such as staff education or sustainability score signal next period's profit.

Ranking prospects by likelihood to convert so sales can prioritise.

Match chain strategy to the market: lean for predictable demand, agile for volatile demand, and a mix of both in different parts of the chain.

Designing the value stream to remove all waste, including time, and keep a level schedule.

A firm gains capabilities through exposure to demanding customers and technologies abroad.

The claim that authoritarian rule promotes faster growth than democracy. Sen finds no convincing general evidence.

How variables are classed (nominal, ordinal, interval/ratio), which decides the valid statistics.

A prior principle must be met before the next is considered and cannot be traded for economic gain.

Costs incurred only because a firm operates abroad: distance, unfamiliarity, missing relationships and unequal treatment. Zaheer argued firms can reduce the liability by replicating home-office routines or by mimicking local rivals.

The risk that a multinational leans almost entirely on a local partner, lacks ties to other stakeholders and is slow to notice and answer hostility.

Customers pay a recurring fee to use a product, usually software, for a defined period.

The tacit approval of governments, communities and society that lets a business operate steadily.

Letting a foreign partner produce under your intellectual property for fees, at the price of less control.

The ratio of the effect shown in the graphic to the effect in the data; close to 1 means the graphic is honest.

A few dozen stocks remove most specific risk but not market risk; correlations also rise in crises.

A system that orchestrates models and tools along code paths fixed in advance.

Weighting a loss above an equal gain, so managers shun risks with positive expected value.

A points or benefits scheme that encourages repeat purchase and captures customer behaviour data.

Regulation tied to the risk of the whole system, for example capital requirements that rise with systemic risk, rather than to each institution's health alone.

The choice to produce in-house or buy, based on total cost and strategic factors.

An authorised person bypasses a control, a common reason control systems fail.

Mintzberg observed that managers' real work is fragmented, fast and interactive, unlike the image of a calm planner. He grouped the work into interpersonal, informational and decisional roles.

Penetration sells more of the existing product in the existing market; market development takes the existing product to new customers or regions. Both carry less risk than diversification because the firm knows either the product or the customer.

Leaving a market that cannot carry its fixed costs is a resource-allocation decision, not necessarily a strategic retreat.

A competitive market fails to reach a Pareto-efficient outcome because of weak competition, asymmetric information, externalities or public goods.

How far market pressure actually rewards responsible firms. Vogel finds the scope narrow, mainly for brands selling to affluent consumers.

Software that runs repetitive marketing tasks such as email flows, posting, lead nurturing and behaviour-triggered messages.

The set of marketing levers: product, price, place, promotion; for services add people, process and physical evidence.

Dividing a broad market into groups of customers who share characteristics and are likely to respond alike to a marketing programme.

A society where everything carries a price and market thinking spreads into areas once governed by non-market norms. The question is where markets should stop.

A detailed schedule of how many of each end item and when, over the coming weeks to months.

Turns the finished-goods schedule into component and material needs, offset by lead time and stock.

Average absolute gap between forecast and actual in percent; easy to read but distorted when actuals are near zero.

A grouping rule: the groups do not overlap, and together they cover the whole problem.

A recurring fee in exchange for exclusive, often community-based, benefits that build loyalty through perks.

Treating someone solely as an instrument for your own ends. Using people as means is acceptable if they are also respected as ends.

Very small loans to low-income borrowers, often women, usually secured by a group guarantee instead of collateral.

The lowest pay sufficient to attract, retain and motivate a CEO to maximise firm value. Anything above it buys no extra performance.

The smallest platform version able to test the model with both sides of the market.

The distance between what an organisation declares and what its budgets, decisions and behaviour show. A wide gap erodes the mission's credibility and signals that control mechanisms do not serve the stated direction.

A mission states why the organisation exists and whom it serves; a vision describes the future it wants. Collins and Porras split vision into core values and bold goals; Campbell and Yeung tie mission to everyday behaviour.

A list of AI errors that could cost money if the product were used for real, attached to each AI-made product.

An open standard for connecting AI applications to external tools and data sources.

Once insured or guaranteed against loss, a party takes more risk because it does not bear all the consequences, for example expecting a bailout.

Natural talent, social origin and luck are not chosen or deserved, so they cannot alone justify large gaps in outcomes.

Averaging neighbouring points to smooth short-term swings and reveal the trend.

Time zones from frozen to open that limit how freely the plan can change.

Spares, tools and consumables used to run operations that do not become the product.

The demand that managers owe duties to several groups at once. Heath warns it can excuse managers from accountability.

Testing several versions of an ad, email or page to see which performs better, using a control group to isolate the real effect.

The shared mental programming that distinguishes national groups, sitting alongside professional, religious, regional and family cultures. It shapes how change is received.

Expressing risk as counts out of 100 or 1,000, easier to grasp than conditional probabilities.

The branch of AI that analyses text such as reviews and posts to understand customers' opinions and emotions.

A cost created by one party's activity but borne by others, such as pollution or risk that spreads through the financial system.

Future cash flows discounted at the cost of capital, minus the initial outlay; a positive value adds wealth for shareholders.

A platform becomes more valuable as more users join.

Applying neuroscience and psychology to see how the brain responds to ads, packaging and messages; the evidence is still debated.

A tool for building apps or flows by drag and drop without writing code.

How a firm manages its social, political and legal setting, for example through lobbying, to improve performance.

The process of making one group’s experience and capacities the standard by which everyone is judged.

The default assumption of no difference or relationship; a test looks for evidence strong enough to reject it.

When one large firm invests abroad, rivals gain reason to follow into the same country.

Customers move freely between digital and physical channels in one buying journey; the brand must keep messaging, data and service consistent.

Cash actually generated by core operations; divided by net profit it shows whether profit turns into cash.

The expected return on an alternative of equal risk; the hurdle a project must beat, not the loan rate.

Optimists say culture can be changed, pessimists say it cannot, and realists say only parts can. There is no consensus, so managers must choose according to circumstances.

The process by which an organisation moves from its present state to a future one in order to work better, usually because competitors, technology or markets have shifted and standing still is no longer safe.

The set of attitudes, values, beliefs, norms and habits that distinguish one organisation from another, in short "how we do things here". It is learned, shared and fairly durable.

The organisation's capacity to learn from experience and adapt. Burnes counts it alongside structure, culture, managerial behaviour and power as one of five determinants of change.

The hypothetical situation in which parties choose principles of justice; the veil of ignorance is its information condition.

Looking at how similar ventures turned out rather than only at your own plan.

Forecast ranges narrower than the forecaster's real accuracy warrants.

The tendency to overrate one's own ability and forecasts, especially after a success.

The same political principle endorsed by people with different moral views, each for their own reasons.

The set of unspoken assumptions at the centre of the cultural web. Stories, symbols, rituals, power structures, control systems and structures all work to keep it in place.

A view that treats two opposing demands, such as efficiency and innovation, as needed together rather than a choice. Miron-Spektor and colleagues locate paradox at the micro level, in how people think about the problem.

A state where no one can be made better off without making someone worse off.

Pooled evidence suggests that involving employees and leading participatively helps change succeed, although the effect depends on the type of change and the context.

Directive leaders decide and assign clearly; participative leaders invite the team to deliberate. Post and colleagues tested simulated crisis teams: directive was faster and more accurate on a familiar task, participative more accurate on an unfamiliar one.

A time-limited exclusive right to an invention, letting the holder stop others making, using or selling it.

Periods needed for cumulative cash flow to repay the outlay; simple and liquidity-minded but blind to time value and later cash.

The share of profit paid to shareholders; above 100% means more paid than earned that year.

Buying ads on search or social platforms by keyword and audience, paying only when someone clicks.

Measures strength and direction of a linear relationship between two quantitative variables, from −1 to +1; says nothing about cause.

Firms prefer internal funds, then debt, and equity last, because information gaps make equity costly.

Lending directly between individuals on online platforms, bypassing banks.

Setting a low price at entry to win customers and share quickly.

Perception surveys capture respondents' beliefs; field evidence shows weak agreement with objective outcomes, so cross-check.

Performance and morale usually fall before they improve. Managers need to price in this cost and prepare stakeholders' expectations.

The system tailors messages, recommendations and experiences to each person using data on their preferences and behaviour.

AI that senses and acts in the physical world, such as robots and automated warehouses.

Goods in transit between locations: still stock although in no warehouse.

Planned change follows predefined steps set from the top; emergent change forms gradually through learning, trial and adjustment. In practice the two usually coexist, so the choice depends on the situation.

The tendency to underestimate your own time and cost though similar projects usually overrun.

A business that connects two user groups, such as riders and drivers, unlike an operator that runs its own assets and staff.

Platforms owned and governed by workers or users as an alternative to venture-backed platforms.

Returning weights to target on a schedule or when drift passes a threshold, forcing purchases of what fell and sales of what rose.

The place a brand occupies in customers' minds relative to competitors. It is something you do to the mind of the buyer, not to the product.

A short statement of who the brand is for, what it is, how it differs from rivals and why that is believable. It guides all messaging.

Keeping the product generic until real demand is known before finishing it, trading for lower stock.

Change happens within networks of alliances and interests; strategy is also the outcome of managers' debate and choice, not only of rational analysis.

How far a society accepts and treats as normal an unequal distribution of power. It affects whether employees wait for instruction or act on their own.

Colour, size, position and similar cues the eye notices before conscious attention, so they can steer the viewer.

Systems trained on labelled data to classify, detect or forecast, such as spam filters and credit scoring.

Change evaluation must start early: before (baseline and goals), during (milestone checks and course correction) and after (overall results). Measurement should be designed when the intervention is built.

Developing countries lose manufacturing jobs at much lower income levels than rich countries once did, narrowing the industrialisation path.

Imagine the project has already failed and explain why, surfacing risks ordinary foresight misses.

Owners and managers are separate, so interests can diverge and owners cannot perfectly monitor managers.

Each person’s privacy depends on others’ behaviour, so individual consent is not enough and group coordination is needed.

Procedural fairness applies the same rules to everyone; substantive fairness intervenes in outcomes. In an unjust society, procedure alone can preserve injustice.

The view that strategy and change emerge from political debate, personal values and managers' reading of context, not only from rational planning.

Three directions of innovation: improve the product, improve how it is made to cut cost, and improve how the firm is organised and managed.

A chart showing how each segment adds or subtracts on the way from a start point to the final result.

Projected income, balance sheet and cash flow statements kept consistent by the accounting identity.

Splitting a task into sequential steps where each output feeds the next, with optional checks.

Writing and structuring instructions so a model returns accurate, usable output; usually an iterative process.

Rawls’s preferred regime: spread productive assets and human capital widely from the outset, rather than only redistributing income afterwards.

Nine groups of characteristics UK law protects from discrimination: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation.

A seemingly neutral feature correlated with a protected attribute, so using it still causes indirect discrimination.

The perceived gap in culture, language and institutions between home and target market; firms tend to enter close ones first.

The implicit two-way expectations between employee and organisation about effort, job security and fair treatment. When one side feels it has been breached, resistance appears.

A shared belief that the team is safe for raising risks, asking questions or admitting mistakes without punishment. Frazier and colleagues' meta-analysis links it to learning and performance; O'Donovan and McAuliffe reviewed interventions to improve it.

Personal data may be collected only for specified, explicit purposes and not reused for incompatible ones.

How unusual the observed data are under the statistical model (including H0); not the probability that H0 is true.

A model designed to reason through several internal steps before answering, trading speed for accuracy.

Judging likelihood by how easily events come to mind, not by real frequency.

A model does not know events after its training cut-off, so it answers with outdated or invented content.

An algorithm that suggests products or content from a user's behaviour and from people similar to them.

Instead of building from project-specific assumptions, start from the actual outcome distribution of similar projects.

A practitioner pausing to examine what they did and why, in order to do it better next time.

Estimating how the target relates to its drivers to explain why outcomes vary.

A regulator acting for the regulated industry or a political group rather than the public interest.

Two businesses are related if they share technology, production or distribution traits, which makes it easier to share resources.

A selling approach that prioritises long-term relationships and continuing proof of value over one-off transactions.

"2.7 times" is relative; pair it with the absolute levels to see the real gap.

Accumulating wealth by capturing a larger share rather than enlarging the pie. Stiglitz argues much top income comes from it.

A document sent to several suppliers describing the item so they can bid.

The gap between actual and predicted values; residual plots reveal non-linearity or changing variance.

The view that resistance comes not only from employees but from conflicting goals within the organisational system. It is closer to Lewin's original idea than the common individualised reading.

Resources are what a firm owns or controls, such as plants, brands and patents. Capabilities are the ability to combine them to get things done. Advantage often rests on hard-to-see capabilities rather than easily bought assets.

Investing that weighs ESG and ethical factors. It is both a financial product and a way of engaging companies to improve their social and environmental record.

A chain built for speed and flexibility: spare capacity and stock, flexible suppliers; fits unpredictable demand.

A fixed recurring fee for ongoing access to professional services, common in law, consulting and marketing.

The model retrieves relevant passages first and then generates an answer based on them.

The arrow may run the other way: a more profitable firm can afford diversity programmes, not necessarily the reverse.

Instead of “good conduct leads to profit”, profitable firms may simply afford good conduct. Correlational studies often cannot rule this out.

Taking products or packaging back after use for reuse, recycling or recovery.

A disruption at one node spreads upstream and downstream through the supply network, causing damage well beyond the point of impact.

Firms use algorithms and contract classification to move risk (demand swings, losses, vehicle costs) onto workers.

Swapping an uncertain, possibly large loss for a small certain premium by pooling many insureds' risks.

Many organisations use AI without showing benefit through metrics that have a baseline.

A forecast refreshed on a fixed cycle that always looks a set number of periods ahead instead of waiting for next year's budget.

The share of outcome variation the model explains; a high value does not prove the model right or causal.

Choose the rule that would maximise welfare if everyone followed it, rather than calculating case by case.

Rules demand compliance with specific law; principles ask firms to disclose compliance and explain any departure.

A variable already near its target, so more spending adds little; move resources to the new bottleneck.

One action can advance one goal while hurting another; look both ways instead of picking SDGs by appeal.

Using SDG language to build a good image without matching action or results.

Improving a site and its content to rank higher in search results for target keywords, through technical work, content and links.

With several market failures present, fixing one in isolation need not improve overall efficiency.

The four common ways to cut a market: demographic, geographic, psychographic (lifestyle, personality) and behavioural (usage, loyalty).

Splitting sensitive steps (record, approve, reconcile) among different people so none controls a whole process.

A sample tilted towards a subset of the population, including self-selection, so it misrepresents the whole.

A shared recognition that action is needed now, grounded in market reality, competition or opportunity. Without it, the later steps tend to lack supporters.

Changing assumptions one at a time, or applying a severe but plausible shock, to see how results move.

Using language processing to classify the tone of comments and reviews as positive, negative or neutral.

Overproduction, waiting, transport, over-processing, excess stock, unnecessary motion, defects.

Staff using unapproved AI tools on their own, creating security and data risks for the organisation.

Institutions that do bank-like work, mostly short-term funding, outside the traditional banking rulebook.

A firm uses cash to purchase its own shares; more flexible than dividends because it creates no recurring commitment.

The idea that firms can create social benefit within how they earn profit; read it alongside critiques of easy win-win claims.

The view that management's main duty is to increase owners' profit within the law.

Managers’ professional duty is to raise profit for owners within the law and ethical custom; social goals belong to democratic government.

The goal of choosing projects that raise the market value of equity; clearer than 'maximise profit'.

Using “sharing” language to disguise an ordinary profit-driven model that pushes risk onto workers.

Excess return over the risk-free rate divided by total volatility; higher means more return per unit of risk.

A visible improvement achieved early and credited to the people who made it. It sustains momentum and reduces the risk of the effort stalling and sliding back.

A threshold fixed beforehand (often 5%) for rejecting H0; stricter when mistakes are costly.

Predicts an outcome from one variable with a straight line; the slope is the outcome's change per unit of the predictor.

A relationship between two variables appears, disappears or reverses when split by subgroup.

One technology, port, region or supplier whose failure stops the whole chain.

Using one supplier for an item: deep relationship and good terms, but dependence risk.

A standard procedure written as instructions the AI invokes at the right moment, like a business SOP.

A small or medium-sized firm; thresholds vary by country.

A compact, domain-specific model that is cheaper to run than a large one.

A row or grid of near-identical small charts that lets readers compare groups or periods without clutter.

A firm that tackles a social problem; investors recover only their capital and surplus is reinvested.

The actual and potential resources embedded in the network of relationships of a person or unit.

A commercial organisation with market revenue pursuing a social aim, unlike a purely non-profit.

Entrepreneurship in which the social mission is central and profit is a means, not the end.

Other people's opinions, reviews and behaviour shape buying; eWOM is any positive or negative online comment about a brand.

A new solution, often a recombination of existing elements, meeting needs the market and state neglect.

Monitoring online comments and reviews to gauge perception of a brand.

Building presence and community on social platforms through engaging content, paid ads and two-way interaction.

Using platforms such as LinkedIn to find, reach and build relationships with buyers in a personal way, rather than cold calling.

Non-financial value owners feel, such as family name, attachment and standing, which shapes decisions.

Change in which technology, processes, roles, decision rights and culture shift at the same time, so it cannot be managed as a one-off software installation.

Letting customers decide at their own pace, supported by reviews, testimonials and customer stories rather than pressure.

Cloud-hosted software accessed over the internet and paid for by subscription, with nothing to install or host.

A tool that answers from the documents you upload and cites the passage; it reduces errors but does not eliminate them.

An approach centred on data residency, national security and compliance with local rules.

One company coordinating design, contracted production, distribution and retail to link customer feedback straight to production.

The global network splitting along technical, policy or commercial lines, often along national or bloc boundaries.

Telling audiences when a post is sponsored; research shows disclosure makes viewers recognise the persuasive intent.

Managers must balance the rights and interests of every group affected by the firm, not shareholders alone.

Measures dispersion of returns around the mean; treats upside and downside alike, so it ignores loss aversion.

A term without one agreed definition, covering many forms of state involvement: state-owned firms, sovereign funds and state–business ties.

A series whose statistical properties stay steady over time; many forecasting models need it, often achieved by differencing.

A pull to keep things as they are, because acting brings responsibility and regret.

Managers may be intrinsically motivated to serve the organisation, so tight monitoring may be unnecessary.

The ability to sense change early, redeploy resources quickly and reach collective commitment at the top without win-lose politics. Doz and Kosonen see these three (sensitivity, resource fluidity, collective commitment) as the core.

A long-term relationship sharing risk, reward and resources between buyer and supplier.

The time from recognising an issue to choosing an option. Shepherd and colleagues studied how speed relates to decision quality across several environments; faster is not always better, and results depend on context.

Strategy answers three questions: where we stand (context), where we want to go (vision, content) and which actions get us there (process).

Strategy is the long-run direction and the allocation of resources to win; tactics are short-run moves that serve it; operations are the repeated daily work. Calling every decision 'strategy' blurs accountability.

A strong culture supports consistent action but can make an organisation slow to adapt to some kinds of change, and may suit only certain stages of development.

The strong-state view holds that development needs a state insulated from interest groups and internally cohesive. A study of the car industry in Southeast and East Asia argues for a broader institutionalist approach.

Neutral-looking rules or mechanisms that reproduce group inequalities without anyone intending discrimination.

Combining several services in one plan to raise perceived value and reduce churn.

Customers pay a recurring fee for continuous access to a product or service, giving predictable revenue and longer relationships.

Choosing to justify earlier decisions though the money already spent no longer matters.

The ratio of purchase price plus non-conformance cost to purchase price; closer to 1 is better.

First-tier suppliers deliver directly to the firm, second-tier suppliers deliver to them, and so on back to raw materials. Risk often hides in deeper tiers.

Coordinating goods, information and money flows across suppliers, makers, distributors and retailers to cut cost while meeting the service level customers need.

The capacity of a chain to prepare for unexpected events, respond to disruption and recover while keeping operations at the desired level.

Looking only at what survived selection (planes that returned) and ignoring what vanished, so conclusions skew.

Leadership that ties organisational decisions to long-run environmental and social impact. Sajjad, Eweje and Raziq synthesised the literature and proposed an integrative framework for the idea.

Meeting present needs without reducing the ability of future generations to meet theirs.

Seventeen global goals adopted by UN member states in 2015 as a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity, without an enforcement mechanism.

The fastest sales growth a firm can self-fund: ROE times the retention ratio.

Managing a chain to balance its economic, environmental and social dimensions, not cost alone.

Implementing a value-creating strategy that current and potential rivals cannot duplicate, with the advantage lasting after they try to copy it. 'Sustained' refers to not being imitated, not to calendar time.

Improvements along dimensions that mainstream customers already value.

A model's tendency to tailor answers to what the user seems to believe rather than to the truth.

Combined value exceeding the sum of separate parts, often used to justify acquisitions. Ansoff stressed that synergy should be traced to a specific source; vague claims are easily overstated.

Two modes of thought, fast intuitive and slow deliberate; used to contrast ordinary chatbots with reasoning models.

Market-wide risk such as interest rates or recession; cannot be diversified away; measured by beta.

The danger that a common shock or one institution's failure spreads through the whole system. Rules that look at each bank alone can miss it.

Seeing a problem as a web of causes, feedback loops and delays rather than a straight line of cause and effect.

After segmenting, a firm either concentrates on one segment or serves several with different offers, depending on resources and objectives.

Disagreement about ideas can improve decisions; personal friction destroys cohesion.

Reading price and volume patterns on the premise that information is already in prices.

The widely repeated claim that about 70% of change programmes fail. Many texts repeat it, but its empirical basis is doubtful, so read the critical literature before using it as fact.

The oft-cited figure that words carry only 7% of a message. Mehrabian studied attitude when words conflict with facial expression or tone, not presentations in general, so applying it to every situation is wrong.

An outside firm that runs transport, warehousing or inbound/outbound flows for you.

Observations recorded in time order, usually at regular intervals (monthly sales, CPI).

Splitting a series into trend, cycle, season and noise to see what repeats.

Money received now is worth more than the same sum later because it can earn a return.

The expectation that the state will rescue a financial firm that is too large or too connected, creating an implicit guarantee that distorts risk-taking.

A fallback plan for lost logins, exhausted quota, region changes or interface changes.

A model's ability to call external functions such as search, queries or email, and read the results.

The ability to trace each batch back to its source; a precondition for certification and early fraud detection.

A trade bloc can create new internal trade but also divert purchases from efficient outsiders to less efficient insiders.

A sign that distinguishes one firm's goods or services; in the UK it must be registered for protection.

When many people share a scarce common resource and each pursues private gain, the resource is exhausted. Rules or collective action are needed.

Traits are relatively stable tendencies (such as extraversion or conscientiousness); skills are capabilities that can be learnt and practised. Stogdill's review found traits alone insufficient; DeRue and colleagues showed traits and behaviours both explain leadership effectiveness.

Leadership built on exchange: rewarding agreed standards and intervening on deviation. It fits when direction is clear and consistent execution matters; the risk is rigidity.

Costs of searching, bargaining and policing when buying through the market instead of producing in-house.

Transformational leaders inspire people to create positive change; transactional leaders use reward and punishment to secure performance. Organisation-wide culture change needs the first, small task changes may use the second.

A neural-network design using attention so each token weighs all others in context; the base of large language models.

The condition that starts an automation, such as a new form entry, a schedule or an email.

A supply chain that stays ahead needs three qualities together: agility, adaptability and aligned interests among the parties.

The idea of measuring success on financial, social and environmental lines. Norman and MacDonald argue its sound part is not new and its new part is not sound.

A 1950 proposal: if an interrogator cannot tell machine from human in conversation, the machine counts as thinking in a behavioural sense.

Communication that does more than announce: it has a feedback channel to hear concerns and adjust. Misunderstanding of a change is often a communication failure, not an employee failure.

How far a society relies on rules, rituals and procedures to reduce unpredictability. It relates to how risk is perceived during change.

The distinctive promise of value a brand makes to its target customers; the output of good positioning.

A value is universal because people anywhere may have reason to value it, not because everyone already agrees.

The argument that Aristotle's and Confucius's ethics share a basic structure, so Eastern and Western ethics need not be incommensurable.

Firm-specific risk, such as a recall or weak management, which holding many assets can reduce.

Upselling invites customers to a higher tier; cross-selling offers complementary products.

From one firm's view, upstream is what suppliers do to deliver inputs; downstream is what customers do to carry the product on to the end user.

Customers pay only for what they actually use; suits light or irregular users.

Photos, videos and reviews that customers create and share themselves, often encouraged and reposted by the brand.

Agreement counts morally only if it is free, informed and made with real alternatives. Lacking one condition weakens it.

Self-reported scores may reflect personality and question wording, not only workplace events.

Making AI act in line with human values. The challenge is fair principles amid moral disagreement, not finding the “true” theory.

The maximum expected loss over a horizon at a given confidence level; not a coherent measure because it can violate subadditivity.

A thought device: choose principles of justice without knowing your background, wealth, gender or talents, forcing impartial reasoning.

A professionally managed equity pool investing in high-growth firms and aiming for an exit.

A firm performing upstream (supplier-side) or downstream (customer-side) stages of the value chain itself instead of buying them. The benefit is control; the cost is capital and lost flexibility.

A model combining agility, resilience and sustainability so a chain survives and adapts through both shocks and long-run change.

Building software by describing what you want and letting AI write the code, focusing on intent rather than syntax.

Using emotional, story-led, easily shared video to spread awareness quickly without buying every view.

A computer-generated character that exists only online yet has followers and brand deals like a human influencer.

Short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Bennett and Lemoine suggest telling the four apart because each needs a different response, rather than lumping them into 'a chaotic world'.

Rich countries sending waste and hazardous materials to poorer ones, shifting the health and environmental burden to weaker communities.

An address that receives data from another system the moment an event occurs, starting an automation.

Average stock divided by weekly sales: how long stock lasts.

Market-weighted average of the cost of equity and after-tax cost of debt; the discount rate for projects of average firm risk.

Scoring options on weighted criteria, then varying weights or scores to see whether the ranking reverses.

A safe route for staff to report misconduct or control breaches.

The parent owns the foreign unit outright: maximum control but heavy capital.

How central work is in people's lives; it varies by country and shapes how motivation and staffing are designed.

Using software to connect apps and run repeated steps when a trigger fires.

Current assets minus current liabilities; the capacity to meet day-to-day obligations.

Everything between raw material and finished goods: being worked on, moving, or queuing at a station.

A contract with no guaranteed minimum hours; workers often lack protections such as unfair-dismissal cover or parental leave.

Asking for a task with an instruction only, no examples.

A complete picture of one customer assembled from many data streams: web, purchases, social media, devices.