The contention that ethical standards should reflect the collective views of multiple
societies in establishing a set of universal ethical principles (that are widely recognized
as laying legitimacy to ethical boundaries on actions and behavior in all situations) and
in allowing inclusion of a set of prevailing customary actions of local cultures or groups
(with their traditions and shared values), that further prescribe to what represents
ethically permissible behavior and what does not, constitutes the basic principles of:
A. the school of ethical relativism.
B. the school of ethical universalism.
C. integrated social contracts theory.
D. corporate social responsibility.
E. the triple bottom line.
A work environment where the culture is in sync with the chosen strategy and is
conducive to good strategy execution is considered a valuable managerial ally because:
A. there is much less risk of embarrassing ethical violations.
B. it provides company personnel with clear guidance regarding “how we do things
around here” and produces significant peer pressure from co-workers to conform to
culturally acceptable norms.
C. there is reduced need to incorporate negative motivational practices and
punitive-type incentives into the reward structure and in the company’s approach to
people management.
D. there is reduced need to employ benchmarking, best practice programs,
reengineering, Six Sigma, and TQM to achieve competitive advantage.E. the culture
can be readily incorporated into the company’s strategic vision and facilitate the
achievement of stretch objectives.
The paramount aim in building a management team should be to:
A. select people who are committed to decentralizing decision making and empowering
employees.
B. assemble a critical mass of talented managers who can function as agents of change,
work well together as a team, and produce organizational results that are dramatically
better than what one or two star managers acting individually can achieve.
C. choose managers experienced in controlling costs and flattening the organization
structure.
D. select people who have similar management styles, leadership approaches, business
philosophies, and personalities.
E. choose managers who believe in having a strong corporate culture and deeply
ingrained core values.
Which of the following is a disadvantage of a centralized organizational structure?
A. Lengthening response times and discouraging lower-level managers and
rank-and-file employees from exercising initiative
B. Losing top-level management control
C. Putting too much decision-making authority in the hands of lower-level company
personnel
D. Making it hard to fix accountability when things do not go well and putting the
organization at risk when bad decisions are made
E. Impeding cross-unit coordination and the capture of strategic fits
Organizing a company’s work effort to promote successful strategy execution involves:
A. deciding how much to spend on training managers and employees.
B. deciding which value chain activities to perform in-house and which to outsource,
and making internally performed strategy-critical value chain activities the main
building blocks in the organization structure.
C. choosing an organization structure that is a tight fit with the corporate culture.
D. hiring an inexpensive yet capable management team.
E. instituting a compensation structure that reduces employee turnover and thus
stabilizes the makeup of work teams.
Which of the following is NOT a strategically beneficial reason why a company may
enter into strategic partnerships or cooperative arrangements with key suppliers,
distributors, or makers of complementary products?
A. To improve access to new markets
B. To expedite the development of promising new technologies or products
C. To enable greater opportunities for employee advancement
D. To improve supply chain efficiency
E. To overcome disadvantages of small production volumes that limit scale economies
and low production costs
To use location to build competitive advantage, a company that operates transnationally
or globally must:
A. employ either an export strategy or a franchising strategy.
B. scatter its production plants across many countries in different parts of the world so
as to minimize transportation costs.
C. consider whether to concentrate each activity it performs in a few select countries or
disperse performance of the activity to many nations and consider in which countries to
locate particular activities.
D. locate production plants in those countries having suppliers that can supply all the
necessary raw materials and components so as to avoid inbound shipping costs.
E. concentrate all of its value chain activities in the one country that has the best
combination of low wage rates, low shipping costs, and low tax rates on profits.
Define and briefly explain what is meant by each of the following terms.
a) strategic vision
b) stretch objectives
c) strategic objective
d) balanced scorecard
e) strategic intent
What is the name of the process for developing new businesses as an outgrowth of a
company’s established business operations?
A. Corporate venturing
B. Value chain integration
C. Resource capability process
D. Diversification activity capabilities
E. Business launch
The competitive pressures from substitute products tend to be stronger when:
A. good substitutes are readily available.
B. there are fewer number of substitute products.
C. substitutes have lower performance features.
D. buyers incur high costs in switching to substitutes.
E. substitutes are priced above the market.
Which of the following statements about implementing and executing a new strategy is
true?
A. Executing strategy calls for essentially the same kinds of creative management talent
and innovative thinking as does crafting strategy.
B. Executing strategy is chiefly a financially driven process aimed at squeezing the
most profit out of conducting daily operations.
C. Executing strategy is a job for a company’s whole management team, not just a few
senior managers.
D. Executing strategy depends heavily on the caliber of a CEO’s business vision,
industry and competitive analysis skills, and entrepreneurial creativity.
E. Executing strategy tends to be a simpler, quicker management task to perform as
compared to crafting a winning strategy.
What is the primary target market for a best cost-provider?
A. Value hunting buyers
B. Price-conscious buyers
C. Best-price driven buyers
D. Value-conscious buyers
E. Brand-conscious buyer
A corporate culture founded on ethical business principles and socially approved
values:
A. virtually guarantees that a company will be (or soon become) the acknowledged
industry leader because of the ethical and socially approved manner in which its
business is being conducted.
B. doesn’t necessarily impact a company’s long-term strategic success favorably or
unfavorably.
C. does more to detract from a company’s chances for strategic success and market
leadership than to help it.
D. is a positive force underlying a company’s long-term financial success and reduces
the likelihood of lapses in ethical and socially approved behavior that can damage the
company’s reputation.
E. is seldom more than window-dressing and is generally regarded by customers,
suppliers, employees, shareholders, and society at large as nothing more than good
public relations.
The competitive power of a company’s resource strength is NOT measured by which
one of the following tests?
A. Is the resource rare and something rivals lack?
B. Is the resource strength something that a company has internally rather than in
collaborative arrangements with outsiders?
C. Is the resource strength easily trumped by the substitute resources/capabilities of
rivals?
D. Is the resource strength hard to copy?
E. Is the resource strength competitively valuable, having the potential to contribute to a
competitive advantage?
To create a strategy-supportive system of rewards and incentives, a company must:
A. reward people for accomplishing results, not just for dutifully performing assigned
tasks.
B. focus jobholders’ attention and energy on what to do as opposed to what to achieve.
C. demand jobholders’ 100 percent attendance since it guarantees results.
D. hold jobholders’ responsible for their function and not burden them with being
accountable.E. incorporate negative motivational elements to assure results.