Which of the following is NOT one of the five typical sources of competitive pressures?
A. The power and influence of industry driving forces
B. The bargaining power of suppliers and seller€supplier collaboration
C. The threat of new entrants into the market
D. The attempts of companies in other industries to win customers over to their own
substitute products
E. The market maneuvering and jockeying for buyer patronage that goes on among rival
sellers in the industry
The strategic options to improve a diversified company’s overall performance do NOT
include which of the following categories of actions?
A. Broadening the company’s business scope by making new acquisitions in new
industries
B. Increasing dividend payments to shareholders and/or repurchasing shares of the
company’s stock
C. Restructuring the company’s business lineup with a combination of divestitures and
acquisitions to put a whole new face on the company’s business makeup
D. Pursuing multinational diversification and striving to globalize the operations of
several of the company’s business units
E. Divesting weak-performing businesses and retrenching to a narrower base of
business operations
Total quality management (TQM):
A. entails creating a total quality culture that strives for continuously improving the
performance of every value chain activity and is driven by a philosophy of managing a
set of business practices: 100 percent accuracy in performing tasks (zero defects),
involvement and empowerment of employees at all levels, team-based work design,
benchmarking, and total customer satisfaction.
B. is a valuable tool for helping company managers identify what the best practice is for
performing a particular activity at a high level of quality.
C. works best when used in conjunction with Six Sigma quality control techniques.
D. is an excellent tool for reengineering business processes and making quantum gains
in the efficiency and effectiveness with which the processes are performed.
E. is a philosophy of doing things that aims at mistake-free management of a company’s
entire business.
One of the most telling signs of whether a company’s market position is strong or
precarious is:
A. whether its product is strongly or weakly differentiated from rivals.
B. whether its prices and costs are competitive with those of key rivals.
C. whether it has a lower stock price than key rivals.
D. the opinions of buyers regarding which seller has the best product quality and
customer service.E. whether it is in a bigger or smaller strategic group than its closest
rivals.
The nine-cell industry attractiveness competitive strength matrix:
A. is useful for helping decide which businesses should have high, average, and low
priorities in deploying corporate resources.
B. indicates which businesses are cash hogs and which are cash cows.
C. pinpoints what strategies are most appropriate for businesses positioned in the three
top cells of the matrix, but is less clear about the best strategies for businesses
positioned in the bottom six cells.
D. identifies which sister businesses have the greatest strategic fit.
E. identifies which sister businesses have the highest level of resource fit.
Two analytical tools useful in determining whether a company’s prices and costs are
competitive are:
A. SWOT analysis and key success factor analysis.
B. SWOT analysis and benchmarking.
C. value chain analysis and benchmarking.
D. competitive position assessment and competitive strength assessment.
E. driving forces analysis and SWOT analysis.
Which of the following is NOT a typical reason that many outsourcing alliances prove
unstable or break apart?
A. Anticipated gains may fail to materialize due to an overly optimistic view of the
synergies.
B. Anticipated gains may fail to materialize due to a poor fit in terms of the
combination of resources and capabilities.
C. A partner can gain access to a company’s proprietary knowledge base, technologies,
or trade secrets.
D. The partners may disagree over how to divide the profits gained from joint
collaboration.
E. There is a risk of becoming dependent on other companies.
Which of the following principal aspects should be included in managing the strategy
execution process?
A. Describing the strategic course that will help the company prepare for the future
B. Organizing the company along the lines of best practice
C. Surveying employees on how they think costs can be reduced and how employee
morale and job satisfaction can be improved
D. Exerting the external leadership needed to drive stabilization
E. Tying rewards and incentives directly to profit
When an organization is referred to as a line and staff structure or a flat structure, it is
normally considered:
A. a simple structure.
B. a functional structure.
C. a matrix structure.
D. a multidivisional structure.E. a departmental structure.
A diversified company has a parenting advantage when it:
A. is more able than other companies to boost the combined performance of its
individual businesses through its high-level guidance, general oversight, and other
corporate-level contributions.
B. is more able than other companies to create positive collaboration within its portfolio
for different specialty groups and geographic locations.
C. results in supporting short-term economic shareholder value.
D. manages a set of fundamentally similar business operations inside fundamentally
similar industries and environments.
E. avoids acquiring undervalued companies and thus reduces risks.
Which of the following is NOT a frequently used strategic approach to set a company
apart from rivals and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage?
A. Striving to be the industry’s low-cost provider, thereby aiming for a cost-based
competitive advantage
B. Outcompeting rivals on the basis of differentiating features such as higher quality,
wider product selection, added performance, better service, more attractive styling,
technological superiority, or unusually good value for the money
C. Focusing on a broad buyer segment and offering buyers a very low cost and highly
customized attributes that meet their specialized needs better than rivals’ products
D. Focusing on a narrow market niche and winning a competitive edge by doing a
better job than rivals of satisfying the needs and tastes of buyers comprising the niche
E. Developing a cost advantage based on offering more value for the money
A company’s operating budget must:
A. be strategy-driven in order to amply fund the performance of key value chain
activities.
B. be risk-averse, so as not to run the risk of inadvertently creating barriers to building
the needed competencies and capabilities.
C. be employee-driven to gain commitment to strengthening the company’s core
competencies and competitive capabilities.
D. trim costs of key value chain activities to achieve cost efficiency in new strategic
initiatives.
E. follow traditional and time-tested methods of budgeting to support rapid adjustments
in strategy.
A vertical integration strategy can expand the firm’s range of activities:
A. backward into sources of supply and/or forward toward end users.
B. backward into other industry business-lines and/or forward to suppliers of raw
materials.
C. to enable the supply chain the opportunity for expansion.
D. to complement the industry’s horizontal value chain line of profitability.
E. to establish full integration by participating in a tapered integration (without the
outsourced and in-house activities).
A global strategy is one in which a company performs all of the following tasks,
EXCEPT:
A. employs the same basic competitive approach in all countries where it operates.
B. sells much of the same products everywhere.
C. strives to build global brands.
D. coordinates its actions worldwide with strong headquarters control represents a
think-global, act-global approach.
E. uses local brand names to cater to a country’s specific needs.
A luxury bathtub manufacturer offered scented bubble bath foams and massage coupons
as a gimmick when their bathtubs did not sell. Their bubble foam became famous
among some women and led to a line of exclusive bath products for women. They
established shops in various regional locations and roped in celebrities to market their
products to enhance sales. Now its products are sold through retail outlets and online
sites throughout the world. Which of the following is accurate?
A. Offering scented bubble bath foams and massage coupons was an emergent strategy.
B. Creating a sub-brand that offered exclusive bath products for women was an
emergent strategy.
C. Establishing shops in regional locations was an emergent strategy.
D. Roping in celebrities to market their products was an emergent strategy.
E. Creating a worldwide presence through retail outlets and online sites was an
emergent strategy.
A company’s strategy needs to be ethical because:
A. of the dangers that top management will get embarrassed if the company’s unethical
behavior is publicly exposed.
B. it is good business and in the best interest of shareholders.
C. everyone is an ethics watchdog and somebody is sure to blow the whistle on the
company’s unethical behavior.
D. of the inevitable risks of getting caught and prosecuted by governmental authorities
if an unethical strategy is used.
E. unethical strategies boost long-termism in corporate culture.
The Six Sigma process of define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) is:
A. an improvement system for existing processes falling below specification and
needing incremental improvement.
B. an improvement system used to develop new processes or products at 100 percent
defect-free levels.
C. a system of statistical procedures for achieving 100 percent control over how a task
is performed.
D. an improvement system used to develop new processes or products at Six Sigma
levels.
E. a system of statistical procedures for eliminating 100 percent of the variability in
how a task is performed.
Firms generally leverage the expertise of their talent pool in building capabilities by:
A. updating existing capabilities.
B. establishing a new arsenal of resource capabilities by phasing out existing
capabilities.
C. refreshing existing capabilities.
D. augmenting or recombining well-established capabilities with existing resources.
E. building resource capabilities from scratch so it is easy and less time-consuming.
Which of the following is NOT a typical host government requirement that affects the
operations of foreign companies?
A. Establishing local content requirement on goods made inside their borders by foreign
companies
B. Having rules and policies that protect local companies from foreign competition
C. Placing restrictions on exports to ensure adequate local supplies
D. Requiring foreign companies to use vertical integration to support operations of local
companies
E. Imposing burdensome tax structures and regulatory requirements upon foreign
companies doing business within their borders
Business process reengineering is a tool for:
A. expediting the redesign of existing products and shortening the design-to-market
cycle.
B. radically redesigning and streamlining how an activity (workflow) is performed, by
pulling the pieces of strategy-critical activities out of different departments and unifying
their performance in a single department or cross-functional work group.
C. instituting total quality management.
D. making the most effective use of Six Sigma techniques.
E. the rapid redesign of an organization’s structure so as to quickly create organizational
competencies and capabilities.