Ultimate responsibility for seeing that a strategy is executed successfully primarily falls
upon the shoulders of:
A. a company’s chief executive officer, its chief operating officer, and the heads of
major units (business divisions, functional departments, and key operating units).
B. first-line supervisors who have the day-to-day responsibility of seeing that key value
chain activities are done properly.
C. the company’s board of directors because board members are the final authority in
overseeing and conducting daily operations.
D. a company’s whole management team-each manager is responsible for attending to
what needs to be done in his/her respective area of authority and thus should be held
accountable for the strategy’s success or failure.E. all company personnel because all
employees are active participants in the strategy execution process and the caliber of
their actions have a huge impact on the ultimate outcome.
In which of the following steps does updating the company’s capabilities to match
changing market conditions and customer expectations take place?
A. Staffing the organization
B. Recruiting and retaining talented employees
C. Acquiring, developing, and strengthening key resources and capabilities
D. Organizing value chain activities and business processes
E. Structuring the organization and work effort
Which of the following statements regarding a company’s social responsibility and
sustainability strategy is FALSE?
A. A company is not demonstrating an adequate degree of social responsibility or
endeavoring to be a model corporate citizen unless it spends 5 percent (or more) of
pretax profits on social responsibility initiatives.
B. Social responsibility strategies that have the effect of both providing valuable social
benefits and fulfilling customer needs in a superior fashion can lead to competitive
advantage.
C. A few companies have integrated social responsibility and/or environmental
sustainability objectives into their missions and overall performance targets. They view
social performance and environmental metrics as an essential component of judging the
company’s overall future performance.
D. Unless a company’s social responsibility initiatives become part of the way it
operates its business every day, the initiatives are unlikely to be fully effective.E. While
the strategies and actions of all socially responsible companies have sameness in the
sense of drawing on the same categories of socially responsible behavior, each
company’s version of being socially responsible is unique.
The intensity of rivalry among competing sellers does NOT depend on whether:
A. the industry has more than two strong driving forces and whether the industry has
more than two diverse and capable strategic groups.
B. competitors are diverse in terms of long-term directions, objectives, strategies, and
countries of origin.
C. strong companies outside the industry have acquired weak firms in the industry and
are launching aggressive moves to transform the acquired companies into strong market
contenders.
D. one or two rivals have particularly powerful and successful strategies to grow the
business, attract and retain buyers, and develop a sustained competitive advantage.E.
industry conditions attract industry members to use price cuts or other competitive
weapons to boost total sales volume and market share.
Which of the following is NOT the result of a well-conceived and communicated
strategic vision?
A. Senior executives solidify their own view of the firm’s long-term direction.
B. The risk of rudderless decision-making is minimized.
C. Organizational members support the changes internally that will help make the
vision a reality.
D. The vision assists the organization in preparing for the future.E. Stockholders protest
that the business is rudderless.
What can happen when international rivals compete against one another in
multiple-country markets?
A. It could create attractive industries that would have otherwise badly deteriorated.
B. It could produce a business lineup consisting of too many slow-growth, declining,
low-margin, or competitively weak businesses.
C. It could create a greater diversity in the types of value chain activities between each
business.
D. It could initiate a deterrence effect that encourages mutual restraint in taking
aggressive action against one another due to the fear of a retaliatory response that might
escalate the battle into a cross-border competitive war.
E. It could increase shareholder interests by concentrating corporate resources on
foreign business activities to contend for market leadership.
Which of the following is true of the school of ethical universalism?
A. There are ethical principles that set forth the traits and behaviors considered virtuous
and that a good person is supposed to believe in and display.
B. They are ethical principles embodied in international law that all societies and
countries are obliged practice.
C. All societies and countries apply essentially the very same set of universally defined
ethical principles of right and wrong in judging the ethical correctness of business
behavior.
D. It is mandatory that the standards of what’s ethical and what’s unethical be applied
universally to all businesses in all countries irrespective of local business traditions and
local business norms.
E. The standards of what constitutes ethical and unethical behavior in business
situations are partly universal, but in the main are governed by local business norms.
Experience indicates that strategic alliances:
A. are generally successful.
B. work well in cooperatively developing new technologies and new products but
seldom work well in promoting greater supply chain efficiency.
C. work best when they are aimed at achieving a mutually beneficial competitive
advantage for the allies.
D. can suffer culture clash and integration problems due to different management styles
and business practices.
E. are rarely useful in helping a company win the race for global industry leadership.
A company’s strategic plan:
A. details key objectives and the strategy for achieving them.
B. lays out its future direction and business purpose, performance targets and strategy.
C. identifies the company’s strategy and management’s specific, detailed plans for
implementation.
D. consists of a company’s strategic vision, strategic objectives, strategic intent, and
strategy.
E. summarizes the company’s strategic vision, a strategy, and a business model.
A linked and closely integrated set of competitive assets centered around one or more
cross-functional capabilities is termed:
A. organizational assets.
B. a resource bundle.
C. a resource capability.
D. functional method compilation.
E. an integrated asset advantage.
Which of the following is NOT one of the leadership roles that senior managers have to
play in pushing for good strategy execution and operating excellence?
A. Learning the obstacles in the path of good execution and clearing the way for
progress
B. Being out in the field, seeing how well operations are going
C. Being out front personally, leading the execution process and driving the pace of
progress
D. Weeding out managers who are consistently in the ranks of the lowest performers
(the bottom 10 percent) and who are not enthusiastic about the strategy or how it is
being executed
E. Delegating authority to middle and lower-level managers and creating a sense of
empowerment among employees to move the implementation process forward
In analyzing the strength of competition among rival firms, an important consideration
is:
A. the potential for buyers to exercise strong bargaining power.
B. the diversity of competitors in terms of long-term direction, objectives, strategies,
and countries of origin.
C. the number of firms pursuing differentiation strategies versus the number pursuing
low-cost leadership strategies and focus strategies.
D. the extent to which some rivals have more than two competitively valuable
competencies or capabilities.
E. whether the industry is characterized by a strong learning/experience curve and
whether the industry is composed of many or few strategic groups.
A company’s values or core values concern:
A. whether and to what extent it intends to operate in an ethical and socially responsible
manner.
B. how aggressively it will seek to maximize profits and enforce high ethical standards.
C. the beliefs and operating principles built into the company’s “balanced scorecard” for
measuring performance.
D. the beliefs, traits, and behavioural norms that company personnel are expected to
display in conducting the company’s business and pursuing its strategic vision and
mission.
E. the beliefs, principles, and ethical standards that are incorporated into the company’s
strategic intent and business model.
The better-off test for evaluating whether a particular diversification move is likely to
generate added value for shareholders involves assessing whether the move will:
A. make the company better off because it will produce a greater number of core
competencies.
B. make the company better off by improving its balance sheet strength and credit
rating.
C. make the company better off by spreading shareholder risks across a greater number
of businesses and industries.
D. produce a synergistic outcome such that the company’s different businesses perform
better together than apart and the whole ends up being greater than the sum of the parts.
E. help each business earn exactly what they were earning before coming under the
same corporate umbrella.
Profit sanctuaries are country markets or geographic regions where:
A. a company can rank the competitive advantage opportunities in each industry.
B. a company possesses good strategic fit with other businesses and identifies the value
chain where this fit occurs.
C. a company derives substantial profits because of its protected market position or
unassailable competitive advantage.
D. a company creates substantial investment strategies because it is losing competitive
advantage over competitors.
E. a company invests its dividends in expanding its foreign market presence.
When is a think-local, act-local approach to strategy making appropriate?
A. When the need for local responsiveness is minimal and when potential efficiency
gains from standardization is unrestricted by cross-country opportunities
B. When the local manager is intellectually savvy
C. When the local market provides strong opportunity for growth and profitability
D. When the need for local responsiveness is high due to significant cross-country
differences in demographic, cultural, and market conditions and where benefits from
standardization is limited
E. When the need for centralized decision making is relevant due to various
macroeconomic and market conditions
Each of the five generic strategies positions the company differently, EXCEPT when it
concerns:
A. its market and competitive environment.
B. establishing a central theme for how the company will endeavor to outcompete
rivals.
C. having resources and capabilities that rivals have trouble duplicating.
D. defining differences in terms of product line and production emphasis.
E. defining differences in terms of marketing emphasis and the means of maintaining
strategy.
When trying to change a problem culture, management should undertake such steps as:
A. selecting a team of key employees to lead the culture change effort and design a plan
for cultural change.
B. identifying facets of the present culture that are supportive of good strategy
execution and which ones are not and then specifying what new actions, behaviors, and
work practices are needed in the new culture to improve performance.
C. drawing up an action plan to change the present culture and then persuading
company personnel why this plan of action is good and will be successful.
D. conducting an employee survey to determine the organization’s cultural norms and
what company personnel like and dislike about the current culture.E. employing a
consultant with expertise in culture change and following his or her advice on how to
proceed.
Changing a problem culture to create better alignment with strategy generally does
NOT involve:
A. replacing old-culture managers with new-breed managers.
B. designing compensation incentives that boost the pay of teams and individuals who
display the desired cultural behaviors and hit change-resisters in the pocketbook.
C. altering the company’s financial objectives.
D. using company gatherings and ceremonial occasions to praise individuals and groups
that display the desired new cultural traits and behaviors.
E. both symbolic and substantive actions by executives to implant new cultural
behaviors.