Oakland Athletics Over the Past Decade, Professional Baseball Has Evolved into an into an Increasingly

Oakland Athletics
Over the past decade, professional baseball has evolved into an increasingly dysfunctional, sharply divided game of big-time haves and small-time have-nots. A few big market teams like the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers leverage huge television contracts to acquire top talent at top salaries. Clubs in smaller cities with meager budgets make do with what's left. This trend has not proven true for the Oakland Athletics. From 2000 to
2006, the A's finished first in their division 5 times and second 2 times, all the while spending about one­third of the money as the Yankees on player payroll. The team's success as a small­market team is credited to its general manager Billy Beane. Billy Beane is a man who knows how to do more with less. He relentlessly exploits market mismatches by mining data his rivals ignore and by scooping up assets that others have undervalued, an approach made famous in Michael Lewis' Moneyball. He realizes that every player must be evaluated according to his long- term economic impact on the team. People who work with Beane describe him as "monomaniacal, ardent, and controlling."
-Refer to Oakland Athletics. Other teams have an average payroll of $85 million. Beane's payroll for the Athletics is only $33 million. His ability to be frugal and yet build a successful team is in large part due to his ability to set goals, give directions, and assign tasks. In other words, Beane excels in ______.

A) consideration
B) creating instrumentality
C) using decision rules
D) initiating structure
E) participative management