Strategic Analysis and Decision Making
Final Exam Questions
Course Introduction
Strategic Analysis and Decision Making explores the frameworks and tools used by organizations to evaluate their competitive environments and make informed, long-term decisions. Students learn to conduct internal and external analyses, assess industry trends, recognize opportunities and threats, and leverage organizational strengths. The course covers decision-making processes under uncertainty, stakeholder analysis, and the application of analytical models such as SWOT, PESTEL, and Porters Five Forces. Emphasis is placed on both qualitative and quantitative techniques to solve complex business problems and to formulate actionable strategies that drive organizational success in dynamic environments.
Recommended Textbook
Strategic Management Concepts and Cases Competitiveness 12th Edition by Michael A. Hitt
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13 Chapters
1670 Verified Questions
1670 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: Strategic Management and Strategic Competitiveness
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133 Verified Questions
133 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/3850
Sample Questions
Q1) ______ innovation is a term used to describe how rapidly and consistently new, information-intensive technologies replace older ones.
A) Perpetual
B) Disruptive
C) Global
D) Diffusion
Answer: A
Q2) An effective vision statement must specify the industry in which a company will operate.
A)True
B)False Answer: False
Q3) The goal of strategy implementation is to develop a permanent competitive advantage.
A)True
B)False Answer: False
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Page 3
Chapter 2: The External Environment: Opportunities,
Threats, Industry Competition, and Competitor Analysis
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138 Verified Questions
138 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) A general environmental analysis can be expected to produce all of the following EXCEPT:
A) objective answers.
B) recognition of environmental trends.
C) identification of organizational opportunities.
D) identification of organizational threats.
Answer: A
Q2) Competitor analysis is focused on the factors and conditions influencing an industry's profitability potential.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) The competitor analysis is the final part of the external environment analysis and focuses on each company against which a firm directly competes (for example, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, Home Depot and Lowe's, and Airbus and Boeing).
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 3: The Internal Organization: Resources, Capabilities, Core Competencies, and Competitive Advantages
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133 Verified Questions
133 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Capabilities may be costly to imitate if firms have unique and valuable organizational cultures, are causally ambiguous, and socially complex.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) Compared to tangible resources, intangible resources are an inferior source of core competencies.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) Government agencies are known for having so many layers and rules that decisions are made slowly and inefficiently. In this case the ______ resource is a detriment to taxpayers using and paying for the bureaucracy.
A) financial
B) organizational
C) physical
D) technological
Answer: B
Page 5
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Chapter 4: Business-Level Strategy
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131 Verified Questions
131 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) All of the following are considered generic business-level strategies EXCEPT:
A) product diversification.
B) cost leadership.
C) focused differentiation.
D) integrated cost leadership/differentiation.
Q2) The hazard of getting "stuck in the middle" applies to firms using any business strategy.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Discuss how a cost leadership strategy can allow a firm to earn above-average returns in spite of strong competitive forces. Address each of the five competitive forces.
Q4) The ________dimension of relationships with customers is particularly important for social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
A) reach
B) richness
C) affiliation
D) social
Q5) Describe the risks of a differentiation strategy.
Q6) What are the risks of an integrated cost leadership/differentiation strategy?
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Competitive Rivalry and Competitive Dynamics
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107 Verified Questions
107 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Competition between candy makers (e.g., Hershey, Mars, Cadbury, Nestle, and Godiva) where firms package design (including package downsizing) and ease of availability is characteristic of a(n):
A) slow-cycle market
B) standard-cycle market.
C) fast-cycle market.
D) intermediate-cycle market.
Q2) What is market commonality? What is resource similarity? How are these concepts combined to identify the level of competition between two firms?
Q3) A firm is likely to respond to an attack by a competitor in all of the following situations EXCEPT when:
A) the attack is by a price predator.
B) the attack makes the firm's market position less defensible.
C) the attack damages the firm's ability to use its capabilities.
D) the attack improves the competitor's market position.
Q4) Walmart's aggressive pricing strategy is a strategic action that plays a major role in how it competes.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 6: Corporate-Level Strategy
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140 Verified Questions
140 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company once made only chewing gum. When Wrigley bought Life Savers (a line of candy mints) and Altoids (a line of breath mints) from Kraft, chewing gum then constituted less than 95 percent of revenues. Thus, Wrigley:
A) was moving away from its traditional single-business strategy toward a dominant strategy.
B) was moving away from its traditional dominant strategy toward a related linked strategy.
C) became a conglomerate since Life Savers and Altoids are unrelated businesses. D) probably planned to restructure these companies and sell them off.
Q2) Operational relatedness is created by ___________ of ___________.
A) sharing; core competencies
B) sharing; activities
C) transferring; core competencies
D) transferring; activities
Q3) What are the five categories of businesses based on level of diversification?
Q4) Synergy exists when the value created by business units working together exceeds the value that those same units create working independently.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 7: Merger and Acquisition Strategies
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131 Verified Questions
131 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is NOT an attribute of a successful acquisition?
A) The acquiring firm has a large amount of financial slack.
B) The acquired and acquiring firms have complementary assets and/or resources.
C) Innovation and R&D investments continue as part of the firm's strategy.
D) Investments in advertising and image building are made quickly.
Q2) ____ typically result(s) in the acquiring firm being able to prevent valuable human resources in the acquired firm from leaving.
A) Financial slack
B) Private synergy
C) Friendly acquisitions
D) High compensation
Q3) When a firm becomes highly diversified through acquisitions, managers often focus on financial controls rather than strategic controls.
A)True
B)False
Q4) An advantage of using horizontal, vertical, or related acquisitions is that they are not subject to regulatory review.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 8: International Strategy
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129 Verified Questions
129 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The means of entry into international markets that offers the greatest control is:
A) licensing.
B) acquisitions.
C) joint ventures.
D) greenfield ventures.
Q2) _________ is the set of costs associated with unfamiliar operating environments; economic, administrative and cultural differences; and the challenges of coordination over distances.
A) Transnational risk
B) Regionalization
C) Liability of foreignness
D) International risk
Q3) An increase in the value of the U.S. dollar is an example of an economic risk in that it can reduce the value of U.S. multinational firms' international assets and earnings in other countries.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What are the three basic benefits of international strategies?
Q5) Identify and describe the major risks of international diversification.
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Chapter 9: Cooperative Strategy
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123 Verified Questions
123 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) A strategic alliance in which the partners own different percentages of the new company they have formed is called a(n):
A) equity strategic alliance.
B) joint venture.
C) nonequity strategic alliance.
D) cooperative arrangement.
Q2) The primary responsibility of the franchisor, such as McDonald's or Hilton International is to:
A) learn about the brand and technology from the franchisee.
B) test the franchisee for potential future acquisition.
C) transfer to the franchisee knowledge and skills needed to compete at the local level.
D) provide feedback to the franchisee regarding how the franchisor could become more effective and efficient.
Q3) Acquisitions are the most common cooperative strategy used in standard-cycle markets.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Identify and define the two different types of network strategies.
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11
Chapter 10: Corporate Governance
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142 Verified Questions
142 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) In the United States, the members of the Board of Directors are a firm's key stakeholders and a company's legal owners.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Ownership concentration is determined by both:
A) the number of stockholders and the parties they represent.
B) the number of stockholders and total percentage of shares they own.
C) the number of outside directors and the parties they represent.
D) the number of outside directors and total percentage of shares they own.
Q3) The ownership of major blocks of stock by institutional investors have resulted in all of the following EXCEPT:
A) making CEOs more accountable for their performance.
B) challenges to the decisions of Boards.
C) focusing attention on ineffective Boards of Directors.
D) a direct effect on firm performance.
Q4) A top-level manager's reputation is a dependable predictor of his/her future behavior.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 11: Organizational Structure and Controls
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136 Verified Questions
136 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Specialization refers to the extent to which authority for decision making is retained at higher managerial levels.
A)True
B)False
Q2) One reason why a long-tenured top-level manager may hesitate to conclude the firm's structure is a problem is that doing so:
A) indicates to competitors that the firm is vulnerable to a hostile takeover.
B) will only lead to inefficiencies.
C) requires that the firm undertake a multi-year restructuring period that will delay retirement.
D) suggests that the firm's previous choices were not the best ones.
Q3) Successfully implementing a cost leadership strategy requires:
A) freedom from constraining rules.
B) centralization of authority.
C) communication between functional silos.
D) sharing of competencies among divisions.
Q4) Organizational structures must be both stable and flexible.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 12: Strategic Leadership
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118 Verified Questions
118 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The CEO of YorkMark, Inc., has an exceptional amount of power in the organization. It is likely the Board of Directors is composed of sympathetic outside members and insiders who report to the CEO.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Internal labor markets consist of the career opportunities for managers within the firm for which they currently work.
A)True
B)False
Q3) A CEO gains power from all of the following circumstances EXCEPT:
A) when many of the outside directors are appointed by the CEO.
B) when the CEO is also the chairman of the Board.
C) when tenure of the top management team is shorter than the tenure of the Board.
D) the fact that inside Board members report to the CEO.
Q4) The most critical ability of a strategic leader is the ability to attract and then manage human capital.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 13: Strategic Entrepreneurship
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109 Verified Questions
109 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the importance of international entrepreneurship?
Q2) A key risk of acquisitions is that a firm may substitute an ability to buy innovations for an ability to produce innovations internally.
A)True
B)False
Q3) ____ involves internally developed incremental and novel innovations that result from deliberate efforts.
A) Internal corporate venturing
B) Autonomous strategic behaviors
C) Bottom-up strategic behaviors
D) Product championing
Q4) Research has shown that internationally diversified firms are generally more innovative.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Invention is defined as the adoption of a similar innovation by different firms.
A)True
B)False
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