As defined in this course, a policy is

 a broad guideline for making decisions that links the formulation of strategy with its
implementation

The term used to describe new products, services, methods, and organizational approaches that allow
ousinesses to achieve extraordinary returns is

 innovation

The monitoring, evaluating, and disseminating of information from the external and internal
environments to key people within the corporation is referred to as

 environmental scanning

The S in SWOT stands for strengths

When an organization is evaluating its strategic position, which is not one of the strategic questions that
an organization generally may ask itself?

 If the evaluation is negative, what specific actions should management take?

The integrated internationalization of markets and corporations is called

 Globalization

Research suggests that strategic management evolves through four sequential phases in corporations.
The first phase is

 externally oriented planning

In the final phase of strategic management, strategic information is available to

 people throughout the organization

The time horizon involved with regard to basic financial planning is usually

 three to five years

Decisions and actions that determi the long-run performance of a corporation. Which one of the follow
is not one of the basic elements of strategic management process?

 statistical process control

The type of strategy, which describes a company's overall direction in terms of its general attitude
toward growth and the management of its various businesses is

 corporate

Strategic management is that set of managerial decisions and actions that determine the long-run
performance of a corporation. Which one of the following is not one of the basic elements of the
strategic management process?

 statistical process control

The task environment

 includes those elements or groups within an organization's industry

The type of strategy, which emphasizes the improvement of the competitive position of a corporation's
products or services in a particular industry or market segment served by a business unit is

 business

A difference between basic financial planning and forecast-based planning is

 forecast-based planning incorporates environmental data and extrapolates current trends

The type of strategy, which achieves corporate and business unit objectives and strategies by
maximizing resource productivity is
  business

A large business has three levels in its hierarchy of strategy:

 Corporate - Business – Functional

Strategic planning within a small organization

 may be informal and irregular

The variables structure, culture, and resources pertain to the

 internal environment

The T in SWOT stands for

 threats

The Strategic Management Model presents the following process for strategy formulation:

 Mission - Objectives – Strategies Policies

The currency used to integrate the monetary systems of the European Union (EU) is called the

 Euro

Which one of the following is included in the firm's societal environment?

 Governments

The process by which strategies and policies are put into action through the

development of programs, budgets, and procedures is

  strategy implementation

The emphasis of strategic management is on

 long-term performance

Strategic planning in a multidivisional corporation

 should be a formalized and sophisticated system

In a survey of 50 corporations, which of the following was rated as one of the three top benefits of
strategic management?

 clearer sense of strategic vision for the firm

The ability of a corporation to shift from one dominant strategy to another is called

 strategic flexibility.

The corporate mission is best described by which one of the following?

 the purpose or reason for the corporation's existence

Top-down planning that emphasizes formal strategy formulation and leaves the implementation issues
to lower management levels is known as

 forecast-based planning

Those critical strengths and weaknesses that are likely to determine if a firm will be able to take
advantage of opportunities while avoiding threats are called

 SWOT
The rate at which others can duplicate a firm's underlying resources, capabilities, or core competencies
is called

 Imitability

According to Barney's VRIO framework, the firm's exploitation of a competency pertains to

 Organization

Which of the following statements is not true concerning a corporate reputation?

 Research shows no positive elationship between corporate

The ability of competitors to use duplicated resources and capabilities to imitate the other firm's success
is called

 Replicability

Which one of the following best describes a conglomerate structure?

 This is appropriate for a large corporation with many product lines in several unrelated
industries

A winemaker in California finds it difficult to duplicate a French winery's key resources of land and
climate. This is an example of

 Replicability

Which of the following best describes a simple structure?

 This is most appropriate for small, entrepreneur-dominated companies with one or two
product lines that operate in a small niche market, with employees acting as jack-of-all trades.

Suggests that unit production costs decline by some fixed percent each time the total accumulated
volume of production in units doubles
  The experience curve

When examining the corporate value chain of a particular product or service, which one of the following
is not one of the primary activities that usually occur?

 auditing and accounting

The particular combination of product, place, promotion, and price is called

 marketing mix

The breadth of an organization's culture or the extent to which units throughout an organization share a
common culture is also known as

 cultural integration

Which of the following is not a responsibility of a research and development manager?

 taking the design and operationalizing the plan into mass production

A graph showing time plotted against the dollar sales of a product as it moves from introduction through
growth and maturity to decline is called the

 product life cycle.

An example of the promotion variable of the marketing mix is

 advertising

A corporation's ability to exploit its resources is referred to as its

 core competencies
A linked set of value-creating activities beginning with basic materials provided by suppliers and ending
with distributors getting the final product into the hands of the ultimate consumer is called a

 value chain

The displacement of one technology by another, as shown by two S-shaped curves on a graph, is
referred to as

 technological discontinuity

Is more valuable because it can provide companies with a sustainable competitive advantage that is
harder for competitors to imitate.

 Tacit knowledge

The primary task of the operations manager is to

 develop and operate a system that will produce the required number of products or services
with a certain quality, at a given cost, within an allotted time

What are the two distinct attributes of corporate culture?

 differentiation and integration

When a company takes apart a competitor's product in order to find out how it works, this process is
known as

 reverse engineering

The PRIMARY task of the manager of information systems is to

 design and manage the flow of information in a corporation to improve productivity and
decision- making.
When a company determines that a competency provides a competitive advantage, Barney refers to this
issue as

 rarenesS

Strategic managers must be concerned with human resource management because

 the best strategies are meaningless if employees do not have the skills to carry them out or if
jobs cannot be designed to accommodate the available workers

Which one of the following best describes a divisional structure?

 Work is divided into subunits on the basis of such functions as manufacturing, marketing,
finance, and human resources.

When scientists concentrate on quality control and the development of design specifications and
improved production equipment, it is referred to as

 engineering R&D

Knowledge that is not easily communicated because it is deeply rooted in employee experience or in a
corporation's culture is called

 tacit knowledge

The mix in the workplace of people from different races, cultures, and backgrounds is referred to as

 diversity.

When a company's core competencies are superior to those of competitors, these are known as

 core competencies

Which of the following is not one of the four question areas Barney proposes in his VRIO framework
used to evaluate a firm's key resources?
  Durability

In order to move more quickly through a product's development stage and have people from each
discipline get involved in projects early on, companies are using

 cross-functional work teams.

Knowledge that can be easily articulated and communicated is known as

 explicit knowledge

FedEx's application of information technology to all its operations is an example of

 core competencies

Through market research, corporations are able to practice with various products or services so that
managers can discover what niches to seek, which new types of products to develop, and how to ensure
that a company's many products do not directly compete with one another

 market segmentation.

Which of the following is not a primary activity of the value chain?

 Installation

Which of the following describes a typical functional structure?

 Employees tend to be specialists in the business functions important to that industry such as
manufacturing, marketing, finance, and human resources

Which of the following is not a support activity of the value chain?

 marketing and sales

Which one of the following is not descriptive of a corporation's culture?

 Corporate cultures are only temporary and can be easily changed.

The process of taking a new technology from the laboratory to the marketplace is called

 technology transfer

Which one is not an element in the primary activities of a value chain?

 Procurement

Corporate culture fulfills several important functions in an organization which are:

 All is correct

The speed with which other firms can understand the relationship of resources and capabilities
supporting a successful firm's strategy is called

 Imitability

What is the attribute of corporate culture that is the degree to which members of a unit accept the
norms, values, or other culture content associated with the unit?

 Integration

Which of the following is not one of the major outsourcing errors that should be avoided?

 micromanaging the outsourced activity to maintain control

A flexible manufacturing system is

 a grouping of parts into

The concept of was taken one step further in JIT II, in which vendor sales representatives usually have
desks next to the purchasing company's factory floor, attend production status meetings, visit the R&D
lab, and analyze the purchasing company's sales forecasts.

 sole sourcing

The purchasing strategy in which two suppliers are the sole suppliers of different parts, but are also the
backup suppliers for each other's parts is

 parallel sourcing

The key to outsourcing is to purchase from the outside only those activities that

 are not key to the company's _ distinctive competence.

 provide the company competitive advantage.

According to a recent survey by Deloitte Consulting, the most popular outsourced activity was

 finance

When Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever take a successful product that they marketed in one part of the
world and market it elsewhere, they are following a market development strategy.

 TRUE

The key to outsourcing is to purchase from the outside only those activities

 are not key to the company's distinctive competence.

The orientation of the functional strategy is dictated by its parent business unit's strategy

 TRUE

The use of the Internet to market goods directly to the customer allows a company to use dynamic
pricing
  TRUE

The evaluation of alternative strategies and selection of the best alternative is referred to as

 strategic choice.

A large software manufacturer attempts to lock in customers by making it difficult for them to substitute
their software with one from another company. The strategy used by the company is referred to as

 switching costs strategy

Which of the following is NOT a goal of financial strategies?

 Institute a new product development plan to generate profit gain market share.

Continuous improvement is an operations concept developed by Deming and perfected by firms in

 Japan

The type of strategy used to influence a corporation's key stakeholders in order to increase their support
of corporate activities is

 political strategy

Once the best strategic alternative is selected, the broad guidelines for its implementation are then
defined by

 policies

Which of the following is not true of risk?

 Managers who own a significant amount of stock in their firms are less likely to engage in risk-
taking actions.
When a company determines how and where a product or service is to be manufactured, the level of
vertical integration in the production process, the deployment of physical resources, and relationships
with suppliers, the company is developing its strategy.

 Operations

Reduction in production cost results in

 increased profitability

Purchasing a product or service from an outside contractor that had been previously provided internally
is called

 outsourcing

When Intel opened four small-scale research facilities adjacent to universities to promote the cross-
pollination of ideas, they were using which approach to R&D?

 open innovation

A company that pioneers an innovation is called a

 technological leader.

If a company wishes to be a technological follower and also pursue a differentiation strategy, the
appropriate R&D strategy would be to

 adapt the product or delivery system more closely to buyer needs by learning from the
leader's experience

When Dell Computer's customers use the Internet to design their own computers, this demonstrates
which manufacturing strategy?

 mass customization
Which one of the following is not one of the questions that management should raise in their attempt to
assess the importance to the corporation of stakeholders' concerns?

 What are the stakeholders likely to if they don't get what they want?

The automobile (car) industry is currently experimenting with the strategy of mass customization in
which pre-assembled sub- assemblies are delivered as they are needed to a company's assembly line
workers

 TRUE

An important consideration in the selection of a strategy is the ability of each alternative to satisfy
agreed-upon objectives with the least resources and the fewest negatives. The competitive advantages
developed earlier using is an excellent place to start.

 the VRIO (valuable, rare, imitable, organized) framework

The type of marketing strategy in which a company captures a larger share of an existing market for
current products through market saturation or market penetration or develops new markets for current
products is called

 market development

According to the text, which of the following is not one of the reasons why innovations seem to occur
more often in small firms rather than in large, established corporations?

 Small firms are completely ignorant of risk management.

The technique used to help strategic managers choose among alternative choices by defining the task
environment, developing a set of various forecasts, and using pro forma financial statements is called

 industry scenarios.

When a company spends a large amount of money on trade promotion in order to gain or hold shelf
space in retail outlets, a company is using a strategy.
  Push

The pricing, advertising, branding, selling, and distributing of a product is referred to as a(n) strategy

 Marketing

Penetration pricing attempts to hasten market development and offers the pioneer the opportunity to
use the experience curve to gain market share with a low price and dominate the industry

 TRUE

When the Kellogg Company changed to a push strategy, they spent more money on consumer
advertising designed to build brand awareness so that shoppers will ask for the products

 TRUE

If a company wishes to be a technological leader and also maintain a cost advantage, the appropriate
R&D strategy would be to

 create low-cost ways of performing value activities.

A financial strategy examines the financial implications of corporate and business-level strategic options
and identifies the best financial course of action

 TRUE

A product development strategy deals with pricing, selling, and distributing a product

 TRUE

Three trends are evident in logistics: outsourcing, the use of the Internet, and

 logistical partnerships
Locking in customers by making it difficult or expensive for customers to move to another product is
called establishing high

 switching costs

When a company deals with obtaining raw materials, parts, and supplies needed to perform the
operations function, the company is developing its strategy.

 Purchasing

The reconfiguring of people, processes, units, and technology to give customers exactly what they want
and when they want it is known as

 mass customization.

Companies such as Georgia-Pacific, Marriott, and Union Carbide view the as an important way to
differentiate themselves from the competition, to add value, and to reduce costs

 logistics function

If there is little fit between a strategic alternative under consideration and the corporate culture, which
of the following is one of management's options to consider?

 Try to change the culture to fit the strategy.

The flow of products into and out of the manufacturing process is a factor when developing a(n) strategy

 Logistics

Avon is an example of a company that demonstrated having a diverse workforce

 can be a competitive advantage

The strategy that deals with product research, process innovation and improvement is known as a(n)
strategy.
  R&D (research & development)

The purchasing strategy used by an automobile manufacturer when it orders seats for a specific car
model from several vendors is

 multiple sourcing

When Smith & Wesson puts its name on others' products, like men's cologne, it is using which marketing
strategy?

 brand extension

The key to outsourcing is to purchase from outside only those activities that are not key to the
company's distinctive competencies

 TRUE

The top factors in a successful seemed to be a spirit of partnership, a well-designed agreement, joint
governance, and consistent communication

 outsourcing relationship

The use of 3-D printing demonstrates which manufacturing strategy?

 mass customization

Which type of pricing attempts to hasten market development and offers the pioneer the opportunity to
utilize the experience curve to gain market share with a low price and dominate the industry?

 penetration pricing

Which strategy is developed to pull together the various activities and competencies of each
department so that corporate and business unit performance improves and resource productivity is
maximized?
  functional strategy

Multi-national corporations use sophisticated intranets to allow employees to practice follow-the- sun
management, in which project team members living in one country can pass their work to team
members in another country in which the workday is just beginning

 TRUE

Which of the following statements is TRUE of business process designs?

 Most process designs require people to work in new ways.

Launch Cars, a car manufacturing company, has patented its breakthrough technology that reduces
pollutant emissions by half. The company is now an active supporter of anti-pollution laws that are likely
to diminish the profitability of many other auto makers. Launch Cars is attempting to

 raise barriers to market entry

Which of the following is an example of an industry in which companies manufacture and sell the same
products, with only minor adjustments made for individual countries around the world?

 tires

A table which summarizes the key success factors within a particular industry is called a(n)

 SFAS Table

According to Porter's model, a low force can enable the company to earn greater profits and can be
regarded as a(n)

 advantage.

The five forces that affect the level of competition in an industry are:
  the threat of entry; the power of buyers; the power of suppliers; the threat of substitutes; and
competitive rivalry

The action of developing new products before competitors do at improving product quality or at
improving manufacturing processes to reduce costs.

 Research and development

Political variables have a significant effect on:

 strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation

Industry analysis is primarily concerned with a corporation's

 task environment.
 economic environment

The corporation's task environment

 includes those elements or groups within an organization's industry

What is the key outcome from PESTEL analysis?

 Identification of the drivers for change

Which societal force includes demographic trends?

 sociocultural forces

Intel was able to gain a significant cost advantage over its competitors in the production and sale of
microprocessors because of

 economies of scale.
According to Porter's model, a strong or high force is likely to reduce profits and can be regarded as a(n)

 threat

When strategic managers have a willingness to reject unfamiliar as well as negative information it is
referred to as

 strategic myopia.

Which is the largest age group of the current generations in all developed countries?

 Baby Boomers

Which of the following is not descriptive of a high level of bargaining power of suppliers?

 Substitutes are readily available.

.......identifies a firm's major competitors and their particular strengths and weaknesses in relation to a
sample firm's strategic position.

 Competitive Profile Matrix

Which of the following is not an element of the organization's task environment?

 technological developments

Porter describes the threat of new entrants. Which of the following is not descriptive of the "threat of
new entrants"?

 does not impact industry attractiveness

"Identifying and evaluating key social, political, economic, technological and competitive trends and
events". Which of the followings best describes this statement?

 Performing an external audit

The origin of competitive advantage lies in the ability to

 identify and respond to environmental change well in advance of competition.

The combination of the degree of complexity and the degree of change existing in an organization's
external environment is/ are called

 environmental uncertainty.

A formal program of gathering information on a company's competitors is referred to as

 competitive intelligence.

..... is/are the source of a firm's......, which is/are the source of the firm's......

 Core competencies, resources, competitive advantage

Which barrier to entry do corporations such as P&G use to force new entrants to spend heavily to
overcome existing customer loyalty?

 product differentiation

In the EFAS Table, the indicator of how well a particular company is responding to current and expected
factors in its external environment is characterized by the

 total weighted score.

One ground rule necessary for effective brainstorming is

 propose ideas without mentally screening them.

Internal analysis enables a firm to determine what the firm

  can do

Strategic-management audit is known as:

 Strategy evaluation

What is a set of business units or firms that 'pursue similar strategies with similar resources’?

 strategic group

Which barrier to entry was demonstrated by Microsoft's development of the first widely adopted
operating system (MS-DOS) for the IBM-type personal computer that gave it a significant competitive
advantage over potential competitors?

 access to distribution channels

A company with significant assets and activities in multiple countries is known as a(n)

 multi-national corporation.

According to Porter, the corporation is most concerned with

 the intensity of competition within its industry.

Which of the following are signs of weakness in a company's competitive position?

 A declining market share, poor prod quality and few sales in the market
 Lower revenues and profit margin a narrow product line than the market leader

A sugar company that is worried that consumers may buy artificial sweetener instead of sugar is
concerned about the

 threat of substitute products.

Those variables that can affect significantly the overall competitive positions of companies within any
particular industry are known as

 key success factors.

The technique recommended by the text to organize an analysis of external strategic factors is called

 SFAS

nd the strategic capability of an organization relative to its competitors

 the strategic capability of an organization relative to its competitors.

The purpose of a SWOT analysis is to analyze:

 the business environment and the strategic capability of an organization relative to its
competitors.
 external and internal environments

All of the following are technological breakthroughs already having a significant impact on many
industries ЕХСЕРТ

 growing health consciousness.

When General Motors considers making its own automotive parts, Delphi Automotive Supply Company
would be concerned with the

 bargaining power of suppliers.

Which type of international industry manufactures and sells the same products with only minor
adjustments made for individual countries around the world?

 multi-domestic industry

Which barrier to entry uses cost advantages associated with large size?
  economies of scale

Which of the following is not a major force in the societal environment?

 labor forces

Which of the following is not descriptive of external environmental scanning?

 used to identify major stockholders

.......is not part of an external audit.

 Studying the political environment

Which environment was generally perceived by business people to be something to exploit, not
conserve, until the twentieth century?

 the natural environment