Which of the following is NOT pertinent in identifying a company’s present strategy?
A. The key functional strategies (R&D, supply chain management, production, sales
and marketing, HR, and finance) a company is employing
B. Management’s planned, proactive moves to outcompete rivals (via better product
design, improved quality or service, wider product lines, and so on)
C. The company’s mission, strategic objectives, and financial objectives
D. Moves to respond and react to changing conditions in the macro-environment and in
industry and competitive conditions
E. The strategic role of its collaborative partnerships and strategic alliances with others
Ethical principles as they apply to the conduct of personnel and business decisions:
A. deal chiefly with standards a company has about what is right and wrong insofar as
the conduct of its business is concerned and about what behaviors are expected of
company personnel.
B. deal chiefly with the behaviors that a company’s board of directors expects of all
company personnel in both their conduct on the job and off the job.
C. involve the rules a company’s top management and board of directors make about
“what is right” and “what is wrong.”
D. deal primarily with the company’s duty to comply with legal requirements and
conform to ethical norms of society, in general.
E. are generally less stringent than the ethical principles for society at large because it is
well understood that businesses should not be expected to operate any differently than
what the law requires of them.
Excellent execution of an excellent strategy is:
A. the best test of managerial excellence and the best recipe for making a company a
standout performer.
B. a solid indication that managers are maximizing profits and looking out for the best
interests of shareholders.
C. the best test of whether a company is a “true” industry leader.
D. the best evidence that managers have a emerging business model.
E. the best test of whether a company enjoys sustainable competitive advantage.
Which of the following is NOT one of the benefits of outsourcing value chain activities
presently performed in-house?
A. Streamlines company operations in ways that improve organizational flexibility and
cuts the time it takes to get new products into the marketplace
B. Allows a company to concentrate on its core business, leverage its key resources, and
do even better what it already does best
C. Helps the company assemble diverse kinds of expertise speedily and efficiently
D. Enables a company to gain better access to end users and better market visibility
E. Improves a company’s ability to innovate
Having good competitive intelligence about rivals’ strategies and moves to improve
their situation is important because:
A. it identifies who the industry’s current market share leaders are.
B. it allows a company to anticipate what moves rivals are likely to make next and to
craft its own strategic moves with some confidence.
C. it helps identify which rival is in which strategic group.
D. it enables company managers to determine which rival has the worst strategy and
how to avoid making the same strategy mistakes.
E. it enables more accurate predictions about how long it will take a particular rival to
copy most of what the strategy leader is doing.
Which of the following exemplifies one of the most widely used methods of gauging
how well a company is executing its strategy?
A. Merrill & Company has a disconnected organizational arrangement whereby pieces
of an activity are performed in different functional departments.
B. Oceania identifies agents of change who are convinced about sticking to the old
ways of doing things.
C. Honwell narrates success stories of rival brands to convince its personnel about
traditional wisdom.
D. Fizz-Cola judges the efficiency of internal operations by benchmarking them against
best-in-industry performers.
E. Motorola develops the data to measure how poorly rival brands perform against the
best-practice standards across industry.
The defining characteristic of a well-conceived strategic vision is:
A. what it says about the company’s future strategic course-“the direction we are headed
and what our future product-market-customer focus will be.”
B. that it not stretch the company’s resources too thin across different products,
technologies, and geographic markets.
C. clarity and specificity about “who we are, what we do, and why we are here.”
D. that it be flexible and operate in the mainstream.
E. that it be within the realm of what the company can reasonably expect to achieve
within four years.
To obtain maximum benefits from benchmarking, best practices, reengineering, TQM,
and Six Sigma programs aimed at facilitating better strategy execution, managers need
to:
A. start with a clear idea of what specific outcomes really matter, such as a Six Sigma
defect rate or superior customer satisfaction, and then build a total quality culture that is
genuinely committed to achieving these outcomes.
B. have annual contests to see which part of the company is making the greatest strides
in approaching operating excellence.
C. strive for 100 percent control over the variability in how each and every value chain
activity is performed.
D. have at least 50 percent of company personnel earn “green belts” in Six Sigma
techniques.
E. build core competencies in TQM, Six Sigma, benchmarking, best practices adoption,
and business process reengineering.
Key “functional” strategies of a company include all of the following EXCEPT:
A. R&D, technology, and product design strategies.
B. production and information technology and supply chain management strategies.
C. human resource and finance strategies.
D. sales, marketing, and distribution strategies.
E. alliance and partnerships as well as merger and acquisition growth strategies.
Which of the following is NOT an option for remedying a cost disadvantage associated
with activities performed by forward channel allies (wholesale distributors and retail
dealers)?
A. Changing to a more economical distribution strategy such as putting more emphasis
on cheaper distribution channels (perhaps direct sales via the Internet) or perhaps
integrating forward into company-owned retail outlets
B. Enhancing differentiation through activities such as cooperative advertising at the
forward end of the value chain
C. Pressuring distributors/dealers and other forward-channel allies to reduce their costs
and markups
D. Insisting on across-the-board cost cuts in all value chain activities-those performed
by suppliers, those performed in-house, and those performed by distributors/dealers
E. Collaborating with forward channel allies to identify win€win opportunities to
reduce costs
In formulating an action agenda to implement and execute a new or different strategy,
the place for managers to begin is with:
A. the task of revising and enhancing the company’s core competencies.
B. choosing which leadership style to employ in trying to carry out the strategy
successfully.
C. evaluating whether existing policies and procedures are adequately
strategy-supportive.
D. allocating more resources to strategy-critical parts of the business.
E. a probing assessment of what the organization must do differently and better to carry
out the strategy successfully.
Adopting a set of ‘stretch” financial and ‘stretch” strategic objectives:
A. pushes the company to strive for lesser but adequate profitability levels, because the
stretch objectives are considered unattainable.
B. is a widely held method for creating a ‘scorecard” for monitoring company
performance.
C. helps convert the mission statement into meaningful company values.
D. challenges company personnel to execute the strategy with greater enthusiasm,
proficiency, and understanding.
E. is an effective tool for pushing the company to perform at its full potential and
deliver the best possible results.
The market opportunities most relevant to a particular company are those that:
A. offer the best prospects for growth and profitability.
B. provide a strong defense against threats to the company’s profitability.
C. embrace the most potential for product innovation.
D. provide avenues for taking market share away from close rivals.
E. hold the most potential to reduce costs.
What is meant by the term ‘stretch objectives”? Is it important that companies establish
stretch objectives? Why or why not?
Identify and briefly explain any three factors that lead to strong bargaining power on the
part of suppliers.
Identify and briefly explain any three factors that lead to weak bargaining power on the
part of buyers.
Draw the five forces model of competition and briefly describe the relevance of each of
the five forces in determining the overall strength of competitive pressures a company
faces. Which of the five competitive forces is typically the strongest?
What type of competitive advantage does a best-cost provider strategy aim at
achieving? Explain what a company has to do to achieve this advantage.
What are the five integrated tasks of the strategy-making, strategy-executing process,
and what does each one involve?
Focusing jobholders’ attention and energy on what to do as opposed to what to achieve
makes the work environment results-oriented. True or false? Explain your answer.
Which is more important to a company’s future financial performance-the achievement
of strategic objectives or the achievement of financial objectives? Why?