Corporate Strategy
Final Exam Questions
Course Introduction
Corporate Strategy explores the frameworks, tools, and analytical techniques used by business leaders to create, sustain, and renew competitive advantage at the corporate level. The course examines how organizations make decisions regarding the scope of their operations, including diversification, mergers and acquisitions, alliances, and international expansion. Students will analyze real-world case studies to understand how corporations align their resources, structure, and culture in response to complex external environments, stakeholder expectations, and evolving market dynamics. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on formulating strategic direction, implementing change, and measuring outcomes in order to drive long-term organizational success.
Recommended Textbook
Crafting and Executing Strategy Concepts and Cases 18th Edition by Arthur Thompson
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12 Chapters
1133 Verified Questions
1133 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: What Is Strategy and Why Is It Important
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60 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is not something a company's strategy is concerned with?
A) Management's choices about how to attract and please customers
B) How quickly and closely to copy the strategies being used by successful rival companies
C) Management's choices about how to grow the business
D) Management's choices about how to compete successfully
E) Management's action plan for conducting operations and improving the company's financial and market performance
Answer: B
Q2) A winning strategy is one that
A) results in a company becoming the dominant market leader.
B) produces exceptionally high levels of customer satisfaction and is both ethical and highly profitable.
C) fits the company's internal and external situations, builds sustainable competitive advantage, and improves company performance.
D) is ethical, socially responsible, and profitable.
E) builds shareholder value, passes the completeness test, and passes the customer satisfaction test.
Answer: C
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3
Chapter 2: Charting a Companys Direction: Vision and Mission, Objectives,
and Strategy
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Sample Questions
Q1) Strategic intent refers to a situation where a company
A) commits to using a particular business model to make money.
B) decides to adopt a particular strategy.
C) relentlessly pursues an ambitious strategic objective, concentrating the full force of its resources and competitive actions on achieving that objective.
D) commits to pursuing stretch strategic objectives.
E) changes its long-term direction and decides to pursue a newly-adopted strategic vision.
Answer: C
Q2) An organization's strategic plan consists of the actions which management plans to take in the near future.True or false? Explain and justify your answer.
Answer: Answer will vary
Q3) A well-conceived strategic vision helps prepare a company for the future.True or false? Explain and justify your answer.
Answer: Answer will vary
Q4) Why does an organization need both financial and strategic objectives?
Answer: Answer will vary
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Chapter 3: Evaluating a Companys External Environment
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128 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Identify and briefly explain any three of the factors that influence the bargaining strength and leverage of suppliers.
Answer: Answer will vary
Q2) Identify three conditions that tend to make potential entry a strong competitive force.
Answer: Answer will vary
Q3) Identify five factors that tend to weaken the intensity of competitive rivalry among an industry's member firms.
Answer: Answer will vary
Q4) Identify and briefly explain any three factors that weaken the competitive pressures stemming from the threat that new firms will enter the industry.
Answer: Answer will vary
Q5) Identify and briefly explain any two of the factors that influence the strength of competition from substitute products.
Answer: Answer will vary
Q6) Identify and briefly discuss any three of the factors that influence the bargaining strength and leverage of buyers.
Answer: Answer will vary
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Chapter 4: Evaluating a Companys Resources, Capabilities, and Competitiveness
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131 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Identify at least 5 indicators of whether a company's present strategy is working well.
Q2) Which of the following best describes the market opportunities that tend to be most relevant to a particular company?
A) Those market opportunities that provide avenues for taking market share away from close rivals and enhance a company's image as a leader in product innovation and product quality.
B) Those market opportunities that offer the company a chance to raise entry barriers.
C) Those market opportunities that help promote greater diversification of revenues and profits.
D) Those market opportunities that match up well with the firm's financial resources and competitive capabilities, offer the best growth and profitability, and present the most potential for competitive advantage.
E) Those market opportunities that help correct a company's biggest weaknesses and competitive deficiencies.
Q3) A distinctive competence represents competitively superior resource strength.True or false? Explain your answer.
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Chapter 5: The Five Generic Competitive Strategies: Which
One to Employ
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Sample Questions
Q1) A broad differentiation strategy improves profitability when A) it is focused on product innovation.
B) differentiating enhances product performance.
C) the differentiating features appeal to sophisticated and prestigious buyers.
D) the extra price the product commands exceeds the added costs of achieving the differentiation.
E) the differentiator charges a price that is only fractionally higher than the industry's low-cost provider.
Q2) One of the big dangers in crafting a competitive strategy is that managers,torn between the pros and cons of the various generic strategies,will opt for "stuck in the middle" strategies that represent compromises between lower costs and greater differentiation and between broad and narrow market appeal.True or false? Explain your answer.
Q3) Describe the strategy of striving to be the industry's overall low cost provider.What does a company have to do to achieve low-cost provider status?
Q4) What are the distinctive features of a focused low-cost strategy? How does it differ from a low-cost leadership strategy?
Q5) What are the keys to sustaining a focused low-cost strategy?
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Chapter 6: Strengthening a Companys Competitive
Position: Strategic Moves, timing, and Scope of Operation
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Sample Questions
Q1) Entering into strategic alliances and collaborative partnerships can be competitively valuable because
A) working closely with outsiders is essential in developing new technologies and new products in virtually every industry.
B) cooperative arrangements with other companies are very helpful in racing against rivals to build a strong global presence and/or racing to seize opportunities on the frontiers of advancing technology.
C) they represent highly effective ways to achieve low-cost leadership and capture first-mover advantages.
D) they are a powerful way for companies to build loyalty and goodwill among customers with diverse needs and expectations.
E) they are quite effective in helping a company transfer the risks of threatening external developments to other companies.
Q2) What are the three principal advantages of strategic alliances over vertical integration or mergers/acquisitions?
Q3) What are the strategic advantages of a backward vertical integration strategy?
Q4) What are the strategic disadvantages of a forward vertical integration strategy?
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Chapter 7: Strategies for Competing in International Markets
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which one of the following is not a reason why a company decides to enter foreign markets?
A) To spread business risk across a wider geographic market base
B) To capitalize on company competencies and capabilities
C) To achieve lower costs and enhance the firm's competitiveness
D) To gain economic incentives offered by governments of developing countries wishing to expand industry and job creation
E) To gain access to more buyers for the company's products/services
Q2) Identify and explain the significance of each of the following terms and concepts:
a)multidomestic strategy
b)global strategy
c)export strategy
d)licensing strategy
e)franchising strategy
Q3) Under what circumstances is it advantageous for a company competing in foreign markets to concentrate its value chain activities in a select few locations?
Q4) Briefly identify the special features of competing in foreign markets.
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Chapter 8: Corporate Strategy: Diversification and the
Multibusiness Company
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Sample Questions
Q1) The essential requirement for different businesses to be "related" is that
A) their value chains possess competitively valuable cross-business relationships.
B) the products of the different businesses are bought by much the same types of buyers.
C) the products of the different businesses are sold in the same types of retail stores.
D) the businesses have several key suppliers in common.
E) the production methods that they employ both entail economies of scale.
Q2) With an unrelated diversification strategy,the types of companies that make particularly attractive acquisition targets are
A) struggling companies with good turnaround potential, undervalued companies that can be acquired at a bargain price, and companies that have bright growth prospects but are short on investment capital.
B) companies offering the biggest potential to reduce labor costs.
C) cash cow businesses with excellent financial fit.
D) companies that are market leaders in their respective industries.
E) companies that are employing the same basic type of competitive strategy as the parent corporation's existing businesses.
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Page 10
Chapter 9: Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility,
Environmental Sustainability, and Strategy
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is not generally on a company's menu of actions to consider in crafting a strategy of social responsibility?
A) Actions to ensure that the company's strategy is ethical and that ethical principles will be observed in operating the business
B) Making charitable contributions, donating money and the time of company personnel to community service endeavors, supporting various worthy organizational causes, and reaching out to make a difference in the lives of the disadvantaged
C) Actions to look out exclusively for the best interests of shareholders
D) Actions to protect or enhance the environment (apart from what is required by governmental authorities)
E) Actions to create a work environment that enhances employee well-being and makes the company a great place to work
Q2) Explain how environmental sustainability strategies go about improving a company's "Triple-P" performance-people,planet,and profit.Why is it important for strategy-makers to find points of intersection between society and the company's ability to execute value chain activities or better serve customer needs?
Q3) What is the difference between ethics and business ethics?
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Chapter 10: Building an Organization Capable of Good
Strategy Execution: People, Capabilities, and Structure
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Sample Questions
Q1) Larger firms with more complex organizational structures are
A) less decentralized in their decision making than smaller firms.
B) more decentralized in their decision making than smaller firms.
C) less decentralized in their decision making than larger firms.
D) more decentralized in their decision making than larger firms.
E) do not decentralize due to their operating size.
Q2) Outsourcing value chain activities to strategic partners can yield such advantages as
A) quick creation of distinctive competencies, enhanced product quality, and better customer service.
B) lower costs, less internal bureaucracy, speedier decision-making, more flexibility, and heightened strategic focus.
C) lower cost adoption of best practices.
D) reduced need to empower employees and rely on team-based organizational arrangements.
E) facilitating the capture of cross-functional strategic fits and resource fits.
Q3) Identify and discuss the basic tenets,the chief advantages,and the chief disadvantages of decentralized organizational structures.
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Chapter 11: Managing Internal Operations: Actions That Promote
Good Strategy Execution
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Sample Questions
Q1) Six Sigma processes
A) are based on three principles: (1) all work is a statistically controllable process; (2) no well-controlled process allows variability; and (3) defect-free work requires tight statistical controls.
B) can be used for both improving existing business processes and for developing new processes or products.
C) can be used for improving products or business processes but not for developing new products or new processes.
D) consists of a disciplined, statistics-based system aimed at producing not more than 10 defects per million iterations for a manufacturing or assembly process.
E) can be used for developing new products or new business processes but not for improving existing products or business processes.
Q2) Give three examples of support systems that a company can install to support the execution of its strategy.
Q3) Identify at least 5 guidelines for creating an incentive compensation system that will help drive successful strategy execution.
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Chapter 12: Corporate Culture and Leadership: Keys to Good Strategy Execution
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Sample Questions
Q1) Give two examples of "symbolic" culture-changing actions and two examples of "substantive" culture-changing actions.
Q2) Which of the following is the best test of good strategic leadership?
A) Whether the company has a good strategy and business model
B) Whether the enterprise is meeting or beating its performance targets
C) Whether the strategy is being completely executed
D) All of these
E) None of these
Q3) Which of the following is not one of the positive impacts that a company's stated values and ethical standards have on its corporate culture?
A) Communicating the company's good intentions
B) Validating the integrity and above-board nature of the company's business principles and operating methods
C) Steering company personnel toward both doing things right and doing the right thing
D) Establishing a corporate conscience
E) None of these.
Q4) What are the five traits of unhealthy cultures?
Q5) How can one tell whether a company has a strong or a weak corporate culture?
Page 14
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