All Flashcards
What are the 4 things Strategy is concerned with?
1) Long term Direction
2) The environment
3) The resources it has
4) The return it makes to Shareholders
What are Mintzbergs 5 Ps of Strategy?
1) Plan
2) Ploy
3) Pattern
4) Position
5) Perspecitve
What are the 3 levels of strategy?
1) Corporate strategy
2) Business strategy
3) Functional (operational) strategy
What 3 things does strategic management involve?
1) Decisions about the scope of a businesses activities
2) Long term direction
3) Allocation of resources
What are the 4 key stages to the rational approach to strategic planning?
1) Strategic analysis
2) Strategic Choice
3) Implementation of chosen strategies
4) Review and Control
What is bounded rationality?
The idea that managers do the best they can within the limits of their circumstances, knowledge and experience
What are the 2 disadvantages of Formal Strategic Planning?
1) Bounded rationality
2) Prescriptive solutions for the long term
How does the emergent approach address the 2 problems of formal strategic planning?
1) Accepting the final goal is unclear
2) Adapting to human needs
3) Evolving continously
What are the 3 stages of the emergent approach?
1) Strategic analysis
2) Strategic choice and implementation
3) review and control
What are the 7 key characteristics of Strategic Decision as per Johnson and Scholes?
1) They concern the scope of the businesses activities
2) They match a businesses activities to its capabilities and the environment in which it operates
3) They revolve around the allocation of resources
4) They set off a chain of lesser operational decisions
5) Based on the values and expectations of senior management
6) They dictate the long term direction the business takes
7) They lead to change in the business
What are the 2 fundamental views of strategic planning?
1) Positioning based view
2) Resource based view
What 4 models relate to the external analysis?
1) PESTEL
2) Industry life cycle
3) Porters 5 forces
4) Competitor analysis
What 6 models relate to the internal analysis?
1) Resource Audit
2) Distinctive Competencies
3) Value Chain
4) Supply Chain
5) Product life cycle
6) BCG Matrix
What model/technique relates to the corporate appraisal stage?
The SWOT Technique
What are the 5 stages of Strategic analysis?
1) External Analysis
2) Internal Analysis
3) Corporate Appraisal
4) Missions, goals and objectives
5) Gap analysis
What helps with strategic options generation?
1) Resource Based Strategies
2) Positioning based Strategies (Porters Generic and Ansoff)
What does strategic options generation involve?
Coming up with new ideas on how to compete
What are the 4 stages of Strategic planning?
1) Strategic Analysis
2) Strategic Choice
3) Strategic Implementation
4) Review and Control
What are the 3 parts of Strategic Choice?
1) Strategic options generation
2) Strategic options evaluation
3) Strategy Selection
What are the 3 types of strategy that a business will end up with after undertaking strategic choice?
1) Competitive Strategy (how it will compete)
2) Product market Strategy (where it will compete)
3) Institutional Strategy (method of growth)
What are the 3 types of environment?
1) Physical
2) General (PESTEL)
3) Task (e.g. competitors, suppliers and customers.)
What are the 4 S’s used to describe a static environment?
1) Static (slow environmental change)
2) Single (product/market)
3) Simple (technology)
4) Safe
What are the 4 Ds of a Dynamic environment?
1) Dynamic (fast environmental change)
2) Diverse (many products/ many markets)
3) Difficult (due to the above)
4) Dangerous (ignoring the environment can be this)
What are the 6 constituent parts of PESTEL?
1) Political
2) Economic
3) Social
4) technology
5) Ecology
6) Legal
What are the 4 stages of the industry life cycle?
1) Introduction
2) Growth
3) Maturity
4) Decline
What are the 4 types of competitor?
1) Brand Competitor
2) Industry Competitor
3) Generic Competitor (completely different product)
4) Form Competitor (e.g matches vs lighter)
What are the 4 competitor reaction profiles?
1) Laid back
2) Tiger
3) Selective
4) Stochastic
What is a position (resource) audit?
Part of the planning process which examines the current state of the entity. The 9m model are the relevant factors.
What are the 4 support activities in the supply chain?
1) Firm infrastructure (planning, finance and QC)
2) Technology Development
3) Human resource management
4) Procurement (resource input acquisition)
What are the 5 primary activities in the value chain?
1) Inbound Logistics
2) Operations
3) Outbound Logistics
4) Marketing and Sales
5) Service
What do linkages, in relation to the value chain do?
They connect the activities of the value chain
What is a star (BCG)?
High market growth and high market share
What is a Question mark (BCG)?
Low market share, but high market growth
What is a dog (BCG)?
Low market share and Low market growth
What is a cash cow (BCG)?
High market share, but low market growth
In relation to BCG, what does HOLD mean?
Maintain the market position
In relation to BCG, what does HARVEST mean?
Take maximum earning in the short term at the expense of long term development
In relation to BCG, what does DIVEST mean?
Release resources for use elsewhere
In relation to BCG, what does BUILD mean?
Invest to build market share
What model deals with Stakeholder analysis?
Mendelow’s Power/Interest Matrix
What are Porters 4 Generic competitive strategies?
1) Cost leadership
2) Differentiation
3) Cost-focus
4) Differentiation focus
What are the 4 parts of Ansoffs Matrix?
1) Market Penetration
2) Product development
3) Market Development
4) Diversification
In Ansoff, a new product in a new market requires…
Diversification
In Ansoff, a new product in a current market requires…
Product development
In Ansoff, a current product in an existing market requires…
Market penetration
In Ansoff, an existing product in a new market requires…
Market development
What are Johnson and Scholes 3 criteria for a strategy?
1) Suitability (does it fit the firms operational circumstances)
2) Feasibility (can they actually do it?)
3) Acceptability (to stakeholders)
What are the 8 qualities of Good Information?
1) Accurate
2) Complete
3) Cost beneficial
4) User targeted
5) Relevant
6) Authoratative
7) Timely
8) Easy to use
What is the difference between data and information?
Information is data that is processed.
What are the 6 Criteria for effective information processing?
1) Complete
2) Accurate
3) Timely
4) Inalterability
5) Verifiability
6) Assessability
What is upside risk?
The risk that something will go right
What is the downside risk?
The risk that something will go wrong
What is pure risk?
Describes the possibility that something will go wrong
What is speculative risk?
Describes the possibility that something will go better than expected
What is risk appetite?
The extent to which a business is prepared to take on risks to achieve its objectives
What are the 3 types of attitude to risk?
1) A risk averse attitide
2) Risk Neutral
3) Risk seeking
Risk can be categorized in 2 fundamental ways. What are they?
Business and non business risk
What does business risk consist of?
1) Strategy
2) Enterprise
3) Product
4) Economic
5) technology
6) Property
What does financial risk consist of?
Credit and Market risk
What does operational risk consist of?
1) Process
2) People
3) Systems
4) Legal
5) Event risk
What is the difference between operational and business risks?
Operational risks face ALL businesses, whilst business risks are specific to that business.
What is risk exposure?
Exposure is the measure of the way in which a business is faced by risks.
What is risk volatility?
Volatility is how the factor to which a business is exposed is likely to alter.
What is risk impact?
Impact (or consequence) refers to measures of the amount of the loss if the
undesired outcome occurs.
What is risk probability?
Probability (or likelihood) means how likely it is that a particular outcome will
occur.
What is the formula for gross risk?
Gross risk = probability x impact.
What is risk management?
The identification, analysis and economic control of risks which threaten the assets or earning capacity of a business.
What are the 4 stages of the risk management process?
1) Awareness and identification
2) Analysis (assessment and measurement)
3) Response and control
4) Monitoring and reporting
What are the 4 responses to risk?
1) Avoidance
2) Reduction
3) Sharing
4) Acceptance
If you have a low risk impact and a low probability…
Accept the risk
If you have a high risk impact and a low probability…
Reduce the risk
If you have a low risk impact and a high probability…
Share the risk
If you have a high risk impact and a high probability…
Avoid the risk
What are the 3 main types of crisis?
1) Financial crisis (e.g. liquidity)
2) Public relations crisis
3) Strategic crisis (e.g. changes in the business environment)
In a disaster recovery plan, what is a standby procedure?
Some operations can be performed while normal
services are disrupted.
In a disaster recovery plan, what is a recovery procedure?
Once the cause of the breakdown has been discovered or
corrected.
In a disaster recovery plan, what is a personnel management procedure?
Policies to ensure that the recovery and standby procedures are implemented
properly.
Which type of company does not have perpetual succession?
Sole Trader
What is the difference between a joint venture and a strategic alliance?
A strategic alliance is informal
What are the limits of financial statements?
1) Conventionalised representation
2) Backward looking
3) Omission of non financial information
What is the difference between Information systems and Information technology?
Information systems is software, whilst Technology is hardware
What are the 7 types of Information Systems?
1) Transaction processing system (TPS)
2) Management information system (MIS)
3) Executive support system (ESS)
4) Decision support system (DSS)
5) Expert system
6) Knowledge work systems (KWS)
7) Office automation systems (OAS)
Its staff regularly use Word Processing software to help productivity.
Office automation system
Customers can fill out an online form that asks detailed questions depending on the make, model and age of their car. This allows them to create a report on the
car’s safety and estimated value.
Expert System
When a customer buys a product from DA the details of what they’ve bought and how much it cost are captured in the invoicing system.
Transaction processing system (TPS)
Board members can examine yearly sales by product line in a dashboard of high level graphs and figures
Executive support system (ESS)
Staff use video-conferencing software to help share knowledge when they’re on the road.
Knowledge work systems (KWS)
Middle management can see monthly sales by location and product using the
reporting software.
Management information system (MIS)
Finance uses spreadsheets to model what will happen to cash flows if sales
decrease by 10%.
Decision support system (DSS)
What are the 6 qualities of a secure information system?
1) Availability
2) Confidentiality
3) Integrity
4) Authenticity
5) Non-repudiation
6) Authorisation
What are the 6 controls for security information?
1) Prevention
2) Detection
3) Deterrance
4) Recovery procedures
5) Correction procedures
6) Threat avoidance
What is Data verification, as an integrity control?
Data verification involves ensuring data entered matches source
documents.
What is Data validation, as an integrity control?
Data validation involves ensuring that data entered is not incomplete or
unreasonable
What are the 5 checks for data validation?
1) Check digits
2) Control totals (Does the number of documents entered total match the number of documents the user has?)
3) Hash totals
4) Range Checks
5) Limit Checks
What is a logical access system?
Use of passwords
What are the 4 finance functions?
1) Recording financial transactions
2) Management accounting:
3) Financial reporting
4) Treasury management
What are the 2 fundamental qualitative characteristics of financial statements?
1) Relevance
2) Faithfulness of representation
What are the 4 types of information?
1) Planning Information
2) Operational information
3) Tactical information
4) Strategic information
What does planning information do?
it helps people involved in the planning process
What does operational information do?
It helps people carry out their day to day activities (e.g. how many operatives needed on one shift)
What does tactical information do?
It helps people deal with short term issues and opportunities
What does strategic information do?
Supports major long term decision making
What 6 things are management accounting responsible for?
1) Cost accounting
2) Budgeting
3) Management decision making
4) Performance measurement
5) Capital budgeting and decision making
6) Pricing
What 6 things are treasury management responsible for?
1) Cash budgets
2) Long term finance decisions
3) Managing Financial risk
4) Raising Investment finance
5) Managing of cash (includes FX)
6) Management of working capital
What 3 things are financial reporting responsible for?
1) Preparation of financial statements
2) Tax
3) Provision of information to external regulators
What 3 things do NFPs use to measure performance?
1) Economy (reduction of costs)
2) Effectiveness (measure of achievement)
3) Efficiency ( effective and minimum cost)
What is a critical success factor?
The products/features that are particularly valued by customers and thus what the firm needs to really excel at
What are the performance standards that are used to measure the achievement of the CSF?
Key Performance Indicators
Who issues the sustainability reporting guidelines?
The Global Reporting Initiative
What 3 categories does a GRI report have?
Economic, Social and Environmental
What are the 4 categories of a balanced scorecard?
1) Customer (how do they see us?)
2) Internal business processes (what are we good at?)
3) Innovation and learning (long term success factors)
4) FInancial
What are the 6 types of money market financial instruments?
1) Treasury Bills
2) Deposits
3) Certificates of deposits
4) Gilts
5) Bonds
6) Commerical Paper
What is the difference between equity and debt?
Equity is from shareholders, debt is from loans
In terms of risk and return, what do debt holders face?
Debt holders face lower risk, but lower returns.
In terms of risk and return, what do equity holders face?
Equity holders face higher risk, but higher returns.
What is working capital?
Working capital are all the current assets and liabilities that are used for trading (e.g. inventories)
What is the aggressive method of financing current assets?
Short term finance (e.g. overdrafts) being used to pay for all of the fluctuating current assets and some of the permanent assets.
What is the defensive method of financing current assets?
Short term finance only covers a small part of the fluctuating current assets. Long term finance covers all of the permanent assets and some of the fluctuating assets.