Subject - Strategic Management

Strategic Management

Question 1: Describe the benefits of Good Strategic Planning? Define and give examples of key terms of Strategic Management?

Question 2: Explain the concept of SBU in a Multi Business Organization. Identify the Three levels of Strategy-Corporate, Business and Functional. How do Goals and Objectives vary at each Level?

Question 3: What should be the key Traits of a CEO? What are the forces that design the Strategic Management Systems?

Question 4: Discuss the various grand strategies at the Corporate Level i.e. Stability, Growth and Retrenchment.

Question 5: Discuss the following Factors affecting Strategic Choices in brief:

•Nature of environment –stable?
•Firm’s internal realities
•Ambition of CEO / owners
•Company culture
•Firm’s capacity to execute the strategy.
•Resource allocation

6. Question: Explain the concept of Porter’s five forces Model used for Industry Analysis? What are the major factors that become barriers to entry in the New Industry?

Question 7: What used to be national markets with local companies competing for business has become a global market with everyone competing for everyone’s business everywhere. Explain the 3 generic strategies by Porter for Competitive advantage in the light of above statement.

Question 8: What do you understand by the term Business Portfolio? How do BCG and GE matrix help a multi-business organization analyze its current business portfolio and decide which businesses should receive more or less investment.

Case study

Haier and there
Q .1 the company foresee continued growth and expansion in the coming few years globally driven by its operations in India and hopes to realign India’s strengths and world class market capabilities to deliver services to its customers. Conduct the swot analysis of hairer‘s foray in to Indian market in light of facts given in the narration.

1. Which approach to the study of leadership emphasizes the role of situational factors and how these moderate the relationship between leader traits or leadership behaviors and leadership effectiveness?
a) Leader-oriented approach.
b) Contingency approach.
c) Transactional approach.
d) Transformational approach
2. Porter has designed a framework to help understand why certain countries achieve global competitive advantage in certain industries. It also helps internationalizing firms to make location decisions. The framework is called:
a) Porter’s value chain
b) Porter’s Five Forces
c) Porter’s Generic Strategies
d) Porter’s Diamond
3. It is generally agreed that the role of strategy is to:
a) Make best use of resources
b) Make profits for the organization
c) Make the best products and services
d) Achieve competitive advantage
4. Kay (1993) sees the strategy of an organization as matching internal capabilities with:
a) Its external relationships
b) Its customer needs
c) The industry life cycle
d) The external environment
5. An organization’s external environment consists of the general or macro environment and:
a) The internal environment
b) The competitive environment
c) The specific environment
d) The micro-environment
6. The term ‘corporate strategy’ concerns strategy and strategic decisions
a) In the private sector only.
b) Developed by the senior management in an organization.
c) In certain types of organizations.
d) At all levels in an organization.
7. A key characteristic of strategic decisions is:
a) They are normally definite decisions about the future of the organization.
b) They identify specific areas of strategic interest for the management of an organization.
c) They result in better organizational performance.
d) They are likely to be concerned with, or affect, the long-term direction of an organization.
8. It is possible to identify different levels of strategy in an organization, these are:
a) Corporate and functional.
b) Corporate and Business
c) Strategic and tactical.
d) Corporate; strategic business unit; operational.
9. An organisation’s mission can be defined as:
a) The overriding purpose in line with the values or expectations of stakeholders.
b) The overriding purpose regardless of the values or expectations of stakeholders.
c) The organisation’s business plan.
d) The desired future state of the organisation.
10. Strategic choices require an understanding of:
a) The business environment, the competition and the strategic capability of the organisation.
b) The key drivers of change.
c) The organisational strengths and weaknesses.
d) The underlying bases for future strategy at business unit and corporate levels; the options for developing strategy in terms of directions and methods of development.
11. In Porter’s Five Forces, the ‘threat of new entrants’ relates to:
a) Substitutes
b) Switching costs
c) Buyer power
d) Barriers to entry
12. Brandenburg and Nalebuff added a sixth force to Porter’s Five Forces. It is known as:
a) Seller power
b) Complementors
c) Substitutes
d) Government regulation
13. Barriers to entry into an industry are likely to be high if:
a) Switching costs are low
b) Differentiation is low
c) Access to distribution channels is high
d) Requirement for economies of scale is high
14. Buyer power is high if:
a) They have little information
b) The buyer requires a high quality product for their own production
c) Differentiation is low
d) Switching costs are low
15. Competitive rivalry will be high if:
a) There are a few strong players in the industry
b) There is a high degree of differentiation
c) The industry is in its infancy
d) The industry is fragmented
16. A strategic group can be defined as:
a) A group of key resources and competences that are necessary to achieve competitive advantage
b) A group of customers that have similar characteristics
c) An industry recipe
d) A group of firms in an industry following the same or a similar strategy
17. The key activities in the strategic management process are:
a) Analysis, formulation, review
b) Analysis, implementation, review
c) Formulation, analysis, implementation
d) Analysis, formulation, implementation
18. Strategy analysis is also referred to as:
a) Strategy diagnosis
b) Rational analysis
c) Situation analysis
d) SWOT analysis
19. Strategy formulation takes place at two levels. These are:
a) Conscious and sub-conscious
b) Implicit and explicit
c) Values and operational
d) Corporate and business
20. The Policies of an organization derive from its:
a) Purpose
b) Vision
c) Objectives
d) Strategy
21. The statement of an organization’s aspirations can be found in the organization’s:
a) Policies
b) Mission
c) Strategy
d) Vision
22. A substitute product or service is:
a) A new entrant into the industry
b) A competitor’s product or service
c) A less attractive way of meeting the same need
d) An alternative way of meeting the same need
23. Cross-functional teams are:
a) The representative voice of senior management.
b) A small group of specialists who collaborate on a task force.
c) A small group of people who come together to resolve business unit issues.
d) A small group of people from different departments who are mutually accountable to a common set of performance goals.
24. The business unit strategy has three major components:
a) business mission, department mission, and daily plans
b) competencies, abilities, and problem statements
c) marketing, advertising and pricing objectives
d) mission, business unit goals, and competencies
25. Disney is in the business of:
a) Building theme parks.
b) Designing new imaginative characters.
c) Making money.
d) Creating entertainment, fun and fantasy.
26. A useful framework used to assess a company’s investments/divisions is called:
a) corporate insight analysis
b) company productivity analysis
c) SBU knowledge analysis
d) business portfolio analysis
27. Cash cows are SBU’s that typically generate:
a) large awareness levels but few sales
b) paper losses in the long run
c) problems for product managers
d) large amounts of cash
28. Business unit competencies should be distinctive enough to provide
a) clear understanding of who you want to lead the company
b) opportunity to compete on a productivity basis
c) additional strategic mission
d) competitive advantage
29. TQM is a strategy that is designed to change the quality of a product to satisfy customer needs by using the concept of
a) reverse brainstorming
b) brainstorming
c) product life cycle analysis
d) benchmarking
30. Firms may view growth opportunities in these terms:
a) New markets, and current and new products
b) New markets and new products
c) Current markets and current products
d) Current and new markets, and current and new products
31. The strategic marketing process is how an organization allocates its marketing mix resources to reach its:
a) target markets
b) area of expertise
c) competition
d) stated business ideas
32. An effective short-hand summary of the situation analysis is a:
a) SWOT analysis
b) SBU analysis
c) BCG analysis
d) Competition analysis
33. In the strategic marketing process, once you get results you go into the:
a) control phase
b) marketing plan
c) planning phase
d) marketing program
34. Ansoff had four market-product strategies to expand sales. They included
(1) market penetration, (2) product development, (3) market development and:
a) diversification
b) current customer retention
c) distribution enhancement
d) product simplification
35. Aggregating prospective buyers into groups is called:
a) market segmentation
b) BCG matrix analysis
c) grouping
d) market categorization
36. One key to effective implementation is setting:
a) schedule of events
b) milestones
c) good managers in motion
d) goals
37. When actual performance results are better than what the plan called for, managers should:
a) Find creative ways to exploit the situation.
b) Issue more stock options to employees.
c) Increase prices.
d) Ignore it.
38. Value for shareholders of a firm is measured by:
a) stock performance and profitability
b) sales revenue
c) satisfactory employee targets
d) profitable year-end balance sheet
39. The _____ for PepsiCo is “We believe our commercial success depends upon offering quality and value to our consumers and customers; providing products that are safe, wholesome, economically efficient and environmentally sound; and providing a fair return to our investors while adhering to the highest standards of quality.”
a) mission
b) organizational code of conduct
c) functional code
d) benefits statement
40. A firm can acknowledge the critical importance of its _____, by having explicit goals that state its intention to improve work conditions by adding more lighting and providing the workers with more and better safety equipment.
a) employee welfare
b) market share
c) sales revenue
d) satisfaction


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