Challenging a struggling rival can do all of the following EXCEPT:
A. sap the rival’s financial strength and competitive position.
B. weaken the rival’s resolve.
C. accelerate the rival’s exit from the market.
D. threaten the rival’s overall survival in the market.
E. strengthen the rival’s loyal following.
Which of the following does NOT describe an unhealthy company culture?
A. Insular and inwardly-focused
B. Change-resistant
C. Unethical and greed-driven
D. Politicized
E. Hyper-adaptive
A think-global, act-global strategic theme puts emphasis on:
A. executing a global domination strategy that focuses the company’s resource strengths
on entry strategies across all country boundaries.
B. ensuring that value chain activities are defined by country-specific attributes to
capitalize on economies of scale.
C. building a global brand name and aggressively pursuing opportunities to transfer
ideas, products, and capabilities from one country to another.
D. elevating resources and capabilities developed on a country-by-country basis so as to
capitalize on a country’s uniqueness.
E. implementing mass-customization techniques that can address local preferences
efficiently.
A hallmark of a strong-culture company is:
A. strictly enforced policies and procedures.
B. a strongly entrenched competitive strategy.
C. the dominating presence of certain deeply rooted values and norms of behavior that
are widely shared.
D. decentralized decision-making and empowered employees.
E. a deep commitment to benchmarking, best practices, and operating excellence.
Codes of ethics and statements of core values:
A. are the single most effective measure of enforcing ethical behavior and cultural
norms, provided they are written down and every employee is given a copy.
B. serve as yardsticks for gauging the appropriateness of particular actions, decisions,
and behaviors.
C. serve as the best benchmarks for judging whether the corporate culture is deeply
ingrained, planted and accepted or not.
D. need to be personally written and presented by the CEO to reinforce the company
values and convictions so that employees will take it seriously.
E. serve to give top-priority emphasis to every employee in training programs a
company conducts.
Outsourcing strategies can offer such advantages as:
A. increasing a company’s ability to strongly differentiate its product and be successful
with either a broad differentiation strategy or a focused differentiation strategy.
B. obtaining higher quality and/or cheaper components or services, improving a
company’s ability to innovate, and reducing its risk exposure.
C. speeding a company’s entry into foreign markets.
D. permitting greater use of strategic alliances and collaborative partnerships.
E. giving a firm more direct control over the costs of value chain activities.
Implementing and executing a company’s strategy:
A. is primarily the job of the company’s board of directors since they direct the actions
and policies of the top senior executives in executing the strategy.
B. is a task for every manager and the whole management team, but ultimate
responsibility for success or failure falls upon the top senior executives, especially the
chief executive officer of the company.
C. is primarily a responsibility of all company personnel because all personnel are
active participants in the strategy execution process and their actions have a huge
impact on the ultimate outcome.
D. should be delegated to a chief strategy implementer appointed by the chief executive
officer.
E. is primarily a task for middle and lower-level managers because it is they who have
responsibility for pushing the needed changes all the way down to the lowest levels of
the organization.
Outsourcing value chain activities has such strategy executing advantages as:
A. less internal bureaucracy, speedier decision making, and quicker responses to
changing market conditions.
B. facilitating the empowerment of employees (because there are fewer things to do
internally).
C. promoting a total quality management culture.
D. reducing the need to establish a strongly implanted corporate culture.E. reducing the
strategic importance of building valuable core competencies.
Which of the following is NOT a good candidate for divestiture in a corporate
restructuring effort?
A. Business units that lack strategic fit with the businesses to be retained
B. Weak performers
C. Businesses in unattractive industries
D. Businesses that are cash hogs or that lack other types of resource fit
E. Businesses compatible with the company’s revised diversification strategy
The company with the highest rating on a given measure has an implied competitive
edge on that specific measure, with the size of its edge:
A. providing the company with an overall net competitive score that is reduced by the
weighted measure.
B. signaling a weak position and competitive disadvantage.
C. reflecting the difference between its weighted rating and rivals’ weighted ratings.
D. reflecting an area of potential improvement in order to achieve a sustainable
competitive advantage.E. requiring reevaluation of the weighted measure.
Which of the following factors does NOT necessarily drive unethical managerial
behavior?
A. The pervasiveness of immoral and amoral businesspeople
B. Overzealous pursuit of personal gain, wealth, and other selfish interests
C. A company culture that puts the profitability and good business performance ahead
of ethical behavior
D. Heavy pressures on company managers to meet or beat earnings targets
E. Executive compensation independent of company performance
Six Sigma programs:
A. utilize advanced statistical methods to improve quality by reducing defects and
variability in the performance of business processes.
B. consist of a disciplined, statistics-based system aimed at producing not more than 2.5
defects per million iterations for a manufacturing or assembly process.
C. are based on three principles: (1) all work is a statistically controllable process; (2)
no well-controlled process allows variability; and (3) defect-free work requires tight
statistical controls.
D. suggest that all activities can be controlled, employee empowerment is the best
control tool, and 100 percent control is possible.E. radically redesign and streamline
how an activity is performed.
Which of the following can aid industries in identifying key success factors?
A. Global distribution capabilities
B. Crucial product attributes and service characteristics
C. Low distribution costs
D. Accurate filling of buyer orders
E. Short delivery time capability
To take advantage of cross-business value chain relationships and strategic fit and turn
them into a competitive advantage requires that companies determine whether there are
opportunities to strengthen the business, which includes such tasks as all of the
following, EXCEPT:
A. the transferring of valuable resources and capabilities from one business to another.
B. combining related value chain activities of different businesses to achieve lower
costs.
C. forcing cultural independence, operating diversity, and sophisticated analytical
responsibility on the businesses to ensure compatibility with the corporate overhead
identity.
D. sharing the use of powerful and well-respected brand names across multiple
businesses.
E. encouraging knowledge-sharing and collaborative activity among the businesses.
Which of the following is the best example of a well-stated strategic objective?
A. Increase revenues by more than the industry average.
B. Be among the top five companies in the industry in customer service.
C. Overtake key competitors on product performance or quality within three years.
D. Improve manufacturing performance by 5 percent within 12 months.
E. Obtain 150 new customers during the current fiscal year.
Identify and briefly discuss the three facets of building an organization capable of
proficient strategy execution.
What are the distinctive features of a focused differentiation strategy? How is it
different from a broad differentiation strategy?
What are the merits of outsourcing the performance of certain value chain activities as
opposed to performing them in-house? Under what circumstances does outsourcing
make good strategic sense?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the beliefs and tenets underlying the school
of ethical relativism?
What strategy would you recommend for a small-sized company entering a highly
segmented market, each segment with a complex set of needs and spending power?
What is the difference between a mission statement and a strategic vision?
What are the advantages and benefits of using an industry attractive-business strength
matrix to evaluate a diversified company’s lineup of businesses?
A well-establisher retail house offers lower-priced commodities to powerful buyers at
widespread locations and has loyal suppliers that supply mass goods to the retailer.
With fewer ways to achieve differentiation in the market, most other rivals offer similar
products but lack sufficient funding to compete against the retail house. Which strategy
has the house employed? Explain your answer.