While ultimate responsibility for implementing and executing strategy falls upon the
shoulders of senior executives:
A. top-level managers still have to rely on the active support and cooperation of middle
and lower-level managers in pushing needed changes in functional areas and operating
units.
B. the pivotal and most decisive strategy-implementing actions are carried out by
frontline supervisors who have the day-to-day responsibility of seeing that key activities
are done properly.
C. it is a company’s employees who most determine whether the drive for good strategy
execution will succeed or fail.
D. the success or failure of the implementation/execution effort hinges chiefly on doing
an effective job of empowering employees to make day-to-day operating decisions that
support good strategy execution.
E. the success or failure of the implementation/execution effort hinges chiefly on a
company’s reward system and whether its policies and procedures are
strategy-supportive.
The primary role of a functional strategy is to:
A. unify the company’s various operating-level strategies.
B. specify how to build and strengthen the skills, expertise, and competencies needed to
execute operating-level strategies successfully.
C. support and add power to the corporate-level strategy.
D. create compatible degrees of strategic intent among a company’s different business
functions.
E. determine how to support particular activities in ways that support the overall
business strategy and competitive approach.
A company must do all of the following to match structure to strategy EXCEPT:
A. choose a basic organizational design and modify it to fit the company’s particular
business.
B. supplement the design structure with coordinating mechanisms.
C. institute networking and communication arrangements to support strategy execution.
D. set up “ideal” organizational arrangements despite having to disturb existing
relationships.
E. knit the efforts of outsourced groups together.
One of the things that can be gleaned from a strategic group map of industry rivals is:
A. which rivals have been in business longer and thus have greater access to experience
curve effects.
B. which rivals have newer manufacturing facilities and thus have achieved greater
product quality.
C. which strategic groups have the highest profit margins and the highest customer
switching costs and thus represent key operating characteristics.
D. that some strategic groups are more favorably positioned than others because they
confront weaker competitive forces and/or because they are more favorably impacted
by industry driving forces.
E. which strategic groups are currently being shunned by customers because of high
prices and relatively low product quality.
Strategic alliances are:
A. the cheapest means of developing new technologies and getting new products to
market quickly.
B. collaborative formal arrangements where two or more companies join forces and
agree to work cooperatively toward some strategically relevant objective.
C. a proven means of reducing the costs of performing value chain activities.
D. best used to insulate a company from the impact of the five competitive forces.
E. the best way to help insulate a firm from the adverse impacts of industry driving
forces.
Striving to be socially responsible entails touching such bases as:
A. what actions to take to moderate workforce diversity and make the company a great
place to work.
B. whether to shrink charitable contributions and trim down the time commitment of
company personnel to community service endeavors to increase earnings.
C. what, if any, actions to take to protect or enhance the environment (beyond what is
legally required).
D. exerting conscious efforts to ensure that all elements of the company’s strategy are
executed diligently.
E. prioritizing stock repurchases over dividends.
Which of the following statements regarding multidomestic competition is false?
A. Buyers in different countries are attracted to different product attributes.
B. The benefits from global integration and standardization are high.
C. Industry conditions and competitive forces in each national market differ in
important respects.
D. The mix of competitors in each country market varies from country to country.
E. Winning in one country market does not necessarily signal the ability to fare well in
other countries.
Cost-efficient management of a company’s overall value chain activities requires that
management:
A. ferret out cost-saving opportunities in every part of the value chain.
B. undertake an operations functionality redesign.
C. establish sales productivity and operating practices guidelines.
D. re-create rivals’ assembly plant structuration savings.
E. pursue a differentiation strategy that can be easily copied.
Perhaps the most important benefit of a vivid, engaging, and convincing strategic vision
is:
A. helping gain managerial consensus on what resources must be developed to
successfully achieve strategic objectives.
B. uniting company personnel behind managerial efforts to get the company moving in
the intended direction.
C. helping justify the company’s mission of making a profit.
D. helping company personnel understand the logic of the company’s business model.
E. keeping company personnel well-informed.
A company’s environmental sustainability strategy consists of its deliberate actions to:
A. shelter the environmental impacts from the company’s resources and competitive
capabilities.
B. provide for the defense of natural resources usage within cross-border commitments.
C. moderate assurance for ecological support systems for future generations.
D. guard against ultimate endangerment of the business.
E. operate the business in a manner that promotes the longevity of sustainability effects.
A useful guideline in designing strategy-facilitating policies and operating procedures
is:
A. to prescribe enough policies to give organizational members clear direction in
implementing strategy and to place reasonable boundaries on their actions. This then
empowers them to act within these boundaries in pursuit of company goals.
B. that strictly enforced policies work better than loosely enforced policies.
C. that more policies/procedures work better than fewer policies/procedures, and that
strict enforcement always beats lax enforcement.
D. to let individuals act in an empowered and self-directed way, subject only to the
constraint that their actions and behavior be ethical and in step with the corporate
culture.E. to prescribe enough policies and procedures that little is left to chance in
performing value chain activities, and employees should have no leeway to do things in
a manner that deviates from the company’s best-practices standard.
Which of the prime examples of strategic fit opportunities below are NOT related
business activities?
A. Transferring specialized expertise, technological know-how, or other valuable
resources and capabilities from one business’s value chain to another’s
B. Cost sharing between businesses by combining their related value chain activities
into a single operation
C. Overhauling and streamlining the operations of the business by refocusing value
chain activities toward businesses that can provide a superior job of parenting
D. Exploiting common use of a well-known brand name
E. Sharing other resources (besides brands) that support corresponding value chain
activities across businesses