Review Sheet for Business Strategy Exam 2

Chapters 6, 8-13 Thompson/Strickland

 

Your exam will include up to 60 multiple choice items selected from the following list of questions and 10-20  fill in the blanks/short answer (as identified below). Notice some of the fill in the blank will be a review from Exam 1. I’ve chosen to not test you on Chapter 7 – yeah!

 

Chapter 6

While we did not cover Chapter 6 in class, please be prepared for the following 3 questions.

1.     What are the four major reasons companies opt to expand into global markets

2.      A company is considered a(n) ____________ company if it competes in a few foreign markets; a company is considered a(n) ______________ if it competes on most continents.

3.      Countries where the business risks are considerable, but the opportunities for growth are huge are called what?

 

Chapter  9

1.      Which one of the following is not one of the elements of crafting corporate strategy for a diversified company?

2.      The conditions that make diversification attractive for a company include

3.      The big risk of concentrating on a single business is

4.      An example of a post-diversification strategy to strengthen a companies position

5.      Diversification acts to build shareholder value when

6.      The three tests for judging the merits of a particular diversification move are

7.      A company that wants to diversify into new industries can achieve diversification by what means

8.      A joint venture is an attractive way to gain access to a new industry when

9.      Generally, internal entry into a new business is more attractive than acquiring an existing firm in the targeted industry when

10.  The most popular strategy for entering new businesses and accomplishing diversification is

11.  One strategic fit-based approach to related diversification would be to

12.  Which one of the following is not a source of cost-saving and/or collaborative sharing opportunities associated with operating and market related strategic fit?

13.  Which of the following best illustrates an economy of scope?

14.  Which of the following best illustrates unrelated diversification?

15.  One of the chief advantages of unrelated diversification is that it

16.  Unrelated diversification has appeal when

17.  Divestiture is an attractive corporate strategy option

18.  Which of the following is normally not an alternative for improving the performance of a diversified company's business portfolio?

19.  Retrenchment strategies in diversified companies typically entail

20.  The sources of a competitive advantage for a diversified multinational corporation include – see Chapter 6 for this.

21.  Be able to choose the best example of related diversification.

22.  What are the three ways to diversify?

 

Chapter 10

23.  Be able to identify industry attractiveness factors used to assess a diversified company’s business portfolio

24.  The chief purpose of measuring each industry’s attractiveness relative to the others is to

25.  Know the steps to calculating quantitative attractiveness ratings for the industries represented in a diversified company’s business portfolio

26.  Assessments of how a diversified company's subsidiaries compare in competitive strength should be based on such factors as

27.  Using relative market share to assess a business’s competitive strength is analytically superior to simple percentage measures of market share because relative market share

28.  A weighted competitive strength assessment is generally analytically superior to an unweighted rating scale because

29.  Plotting a diversified company’s business units on a nine-cell industry attractiveness-business strength grid is a useful tool for

30.  The industry attractiveness/business strength matrix can be described as

31.  Determining the extent to which there are competitively valuable value chain match-ups among a diversified company’s business subsidiaries is an integral part of which kind of “test”

32.  Differences between “cash-cow” business , a "cash hog" business and a "star" business

33.  In which of the following cases does divesting some business units seem to be most relevant?

 

Chap 11

34.  The strategy implementer's overriding objective is to

35.  Which of the following is not one of the principal strategy-implementing tasks?

36.  From a strategy-implementing perspective, building a capable organization should aim at

37.  Which of the following is not one of the traits of core competencies?

38.  Centralizing authority for some activities at the corporate level in a diversified enterprise has merit when

39.  While crafting strategy is primarily a market-driven activity, implementing strategy is primarily a _______________ driven activity revolving around the management of ___________ and business _____________.

40.  Delegating greater authority to subordinate managers and employees has what effect

41.  The strategic disadvantages of a functional organization structure include

42.  Which one of the following is not an advantage of a functional/process organization structure?

 

Chapter 12

43.  From a strategy-implementing perspective, budget allocations should primarily be based on

44.  Which one of the following is not a benefit of prescribing policies and operating procedures to aid management’s task of implementing strategy?

45.  The big difference between reengineering and continuous improvement programs like TQM is that

46.  Which of the following is not an example of a support system for assisting better strategy implementation and execution?

47.  The management task of linking the reward system tightly to the needs of strategy involves

48.  What is the most important aspect of developing a strategy-supportive reward structure?

49.  Management's most powerful strategy-implementing tool is

50.  Some caution needs to be exercised in using performance-based compensation systems because – (read entire section on performance-based compensation system for this answer).