Corporate Strategy
Question Bank
Course Introduction
Corporate Strategy is a comprehensive course that explores how organizations develop, implement, and evaluate strategies to achieve long-term competitive advantage and organizational success. Students will examine the frameworks and analytical tools used by senior management to make high-level decisions regarding diversification, mergers and acquisitions, alliances, global expansion, and resource allocation. Through case studies and real-world examples, the course emphasizes the importance of aligning corporate strategy with company mission, stakeholder interests, and changing market dynamics, equipping students with the skills needed to navigate complex business environments and drive sustainable growth.
Recommended Textbook
Crafting and Executing Strategy 19th Edition by Arthur
A. Thompson
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12 Chapters
1405 Verified Questions
1405 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: What Is Strategy and Why Is It Important
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70 Verified Questions
70 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) A company's realized strategy evolves from one version to the next due to:
A) changing management direction because of understanding several appealing strategy alternatives.
B) the proactive efforts of company managers to improve the current strategy,a need to respond to changing customer requirements and expectations,and a need to react to fresh strategic maneuvers on the part of rival firms.
C) ongoing turnover in the managerial and executive ranks (new managers often decide to shift to a different strategy).
D) pressures from shareholders to boost profit margins and pay higher dividends.
E) the importance of keeping the company's business model fresh and up-to-date.
Answer: B
Q2) A winning strategy must pass which three tests?
A) The Dominant Market Test,the Sustainable Advantage Test,and the Profit Test.
B) The Fit Test,the Competitive Advantage Test,and the Performance Test.
C) The Sustainable Advantage Test,the Fit Test,and the Profit Test.
D) The Performance Test,the Dominant Market Test,and the Fit Test.
E) The Fit Test,the Sustainable Advantage Test,and the Dominant Market Test.
Answer: B
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Page 3
Chapter
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110 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) 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.
Answer: B
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: No Answer
Q3) A well-conceived strategic vision helps prepare a company for the future.True or false? Explain and justify your answer.
Answer: No Answer
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4
Chapter 3: Evaluating a Companys External Environment
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143 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Identify at least three benefits of constructing a strategic group map.
Answer: No Answer
Q2) Explain the meaning and significance of each of the following and their relationship to one another?
a.driving forces
b.strategic group mapping
c.key success factors
Answer: No Answer
Q3) In which of the following instances are industry members NOT subject to stronger competitive pressures from substitute products?
A) The costs to buyers of switching over to the substitutes are low.
B) Buyers are dubious about using substitutes.
C) The quality and performance of the substitutes is well-matched to what buyers need to meet their requirements.
D) Buyer brand loyalty is weak.
E) Substitutes are readily available at competitive prices.
Answer: B
Q4) Identify and briefly describe five common barriers to entering an industry.
Answer: No Answer
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Chapter 4: Evaluating a Companys Resources,
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171 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following does NOT represent a potential core competence?
A) Skills in manufacturing a high-quality product at a low cost
B) Know-how in creating and operating systems for cost-efficient supply chain management
C) The capability to fill customer orders accurately and swiftly
D) Having a wider product line than rivals
E) The capability to speed new or next-generation products to the marketplace
Q2) Identifying the strategic issues and problems that merit front-burner managerial attention:
A) is accomplished solely by analyzing the company's internal working environment.
B) helps set management's agenda for taking actions to improve the company's performance and business outlook.
C) is done solely by evaluating the company's own internal situation-its resources and competitive position-to help come up with a "worry list" of "how to ," "whether to ," and "what to do about "
D) is done solely as a basis for drawing conclusions about whether to stick with a company's present strategy or to modify it.
E) None of these.
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Chapter 5: The Five Generic Competitive Strategies: Which
One to Employ
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109 Verified Questions
109 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Success in achieving a low-cost edge over rivals comes from:
A) strong efforts to be a leader in manufacturing process innovation.
B) communicating the product's ability to serve the customer's every need.
C) employing an aggressive offense to gain market share or a conservative defense to D) protecting its market position.
E) out-managing rivals in finding ways to perform value chain activities faster,more accurately,and more cost efficiently.
Q2) 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.
Q3) What are the five generic competitive strategies? Briefly describe each one and identify the type of competitive advantage that each strategy is aimed at achieving.
Q4) Describe the two basic cost-reducing approaches a company can take to become a low-cost provider in its industry.
Q5) Explain how the keys to sustaining a broad differentiation strategy differ from the keys to sustaining a best-cost producer strategy.
Q6) What are the pros and cons of a broad differentiation strategy?
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Chapter 6: Strengthening a Companys Competitive
Position: Strategic Moves, Timing, and Scope of Operations
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100 Verified Questions
100 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) When firms are involved in a mix of in-house and outsourced activity in any given stage of the vertical chain,it is called:
A) tapered integration.
B) partial integration.
C) full integration.
D) forward integration.
E) backward integration.
Q2) Once a company has decided to employ a particular generic competitive strategy,then it must make such additional strategic choices,such as:
A) whether to focus on building competitive advantages.
B) whether to employ the element of surprise as opposed to doing what rivals expect and are prepared for.
C) whether to display a strong bias for swift,decisive,and overwhelming actions to overpower rivals.
D) whether to create and deploy company resources to cause rivals to defend themselves.
E) All of these.
Q3) What are the general strategic objectives of merger and acquisition strategies?
Q4) Identify and explain at least two drawbacks to forming a strategic alliance.
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Strategies for Competing in International Markets
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139 Verified Questions
139 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) For a company to create a home country advantage and become competitively strong in a foreign market,it should base its strategy around which of the following factors?
A) The proximity of suppliers,end users,and complementary industries.
B) Different styles of management and organization and the degree of local rivalry.
C) The availability and relative prices of inputs.
D) Demand conditions in the industry's home market,including size and growth potential and the nature of domestic buyers' needs and wants.
E) The level of rivalry existing in the foreign market.
Q2) Under what circumstances is it advantageous for a company competing in foreign markets to concentrate its value chain activities in a select few locations?
Q3) Briefly identify the special features of competing in foreign markets.
Q4) What are the strategic options (identify and briefly describe)for tailoring a company's strategy to compete in emerging country markets?
Q5) Explain how exchange rate fluctuations pose a risk to manufacturing companies that rely upon an export strategy to compete in foreign markets
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Chapter 8: Corporate Strategy: Diversification and the Multibusiness Company
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174 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Strategies to restructure a diversified company's business lineup involve:
A) revamping the value chains of each of a diversified company's businesses.
B) focusing on restoring the profitability of its money-losing businesses and thereby improving the company's overall profitability.
C) revamping the strategies of its different businesses,especially those that are performing poorly.
D) divesting low-performing businesses that do not fit and acquiring new ones where opportunities are more promising to put a new face on the company's business makeup.
E) broadening the scope of diversification to include a larger number of smaller and more diverse businesses.
Q2) Which is the better approach to diversification-a strategy of related diversification or a strategy of unrelated diversification? Explain and support your answer.
Q3) What is meant by the term resource fit as it applies to evaluating a diversified company's business lineup?
Q4) Under what circumstances might an already diversified company choose to enter additional businesses and broaden its diversification base?
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Page 10
Chapter 9: Ethics, corporate Social Responsibility,
Environmental Sustainability, and Strategy
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90 Verified Questions
90 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Notions of right and wrong,fair and unfair,moral and immoral,ethical and unethical: A) vary enormously from religion to religion and country to country across the world. B) are present in all societies and cultures,and in organizations and individuals,with some of the most important concepts of what is right and what is wrong (for example,being truthful)resonating with people of most cultures,and are thus universal. C) ultimately depend on the circumstances-nothing is really black or white when it comes to ethical standards.
D) are governed mainly by the thinking and writings of religious clerics at the School of Morally Correct Thinking and Behavior in Geneva,Switzerland. E) ultimately depend on a person's own values and beliefs.
Q2) Explain the difference between ethical universalism and integrated social contracts theory.Which school of thought do you think is most valid? Explain the reasons for your answer.
Q3) What are the differences between the school of ethical universalism and the school of ethical relativism?
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Chapter 10: Building an Organization Capable of Good
Strategy Execution: People, Capabilities, and Structure
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105 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The traits of the capability building process involve which of the following?
A) Evolving changes in customer needs and competitive conditions that often require tweaking and adjusting a company's portfolio of competencies and intellectual capital to keep its capabilities freshly honed and on the cutting edge.
B) Normally,a core competence or capability that emerges incrementally out of company efforts either to bolster skills that contributed to earlier successes or to respond to customer problems,new technological and market opportunities,and the competitive maneuverings of rivals.
C) Core competencies or capabilities that are most often bundles of skills and know-how that grow out of the combined efforts of cross-functional work groups and departments performing complementary activities at different locations in a firm's value chain.
D) The key to leveraging a core competence into a distinctive competence (or transforming a capability into a competitively superior capability),which concerns concentrating more effort and talent than rivals on deepening and strengthening a competence or capability so as to achieve the dominance needed for competitive advantage.
E) All of these.
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Page 12
Chapter 11: Managing Internal Operations: Actions That Promote
Good Strategy Execution
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88 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) While Six Sigma programs often improve the efficiency of many operating activities and processes,there is evidence that innovation can be stifled by Six Sigma programs.True or false? Explain.
Q2) What three principles underlie the statistical thinking of Six Sigma quality control programs?
Q3) A no-pressure/no-adverse-consequences work environment does not necessarily lead to:
A) superior strategy execution or operating excellence.
B) satisfactory outcomes because there is always a cadre of ambitious people who relish the challenge.
C) workforce morale issues.
D) establishing more positive than negative motivational reward elements.
E) None of these,because it depends on the organization's motivational approaches.
Q4) Identify at least five guidelines for creating an incentive compensation system that will help drive successful strategy execution.
Q5) Explain what Six Sigma quality control programs are all about and how their use can contribute to a company's strategy execution effort.
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Chapter 12: Corporate Culture and Leadership: Keys to Good Strategy Execution
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106 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which one of the following is something to look for in identifying a company's culture?
A) The atmosphere,spirit and character that pervades the work climate and the values,business principles,and ethical standards that management preaches and practices.
B) The track record in meeting or beating its financial and strategic performance targets.
C) The intensity and make-up of the company's value chain.
D) The strategic intent and competitive strategy inherent within the company's efforts for successful strategy execution.
E) The resource strengths,core competencies,and competitive capabilities that permeate the organization.
Q2) The corporate strategy process does NOT entail
A) crafting,implementing and executing plans.
B) fine-tuning and adjusting corporate vision and objectives.
C) a continuous process of crafting and executing strategy to fit changing circumstances.
D) recycling the linked stages of executing strategy.
E) None of these.
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