BUSS1000 Flashcards
What is a megatrend?
a large transformative process with global reach, broad scope and a fundamental and dramatic impact
Name six examples of Megatrends
- Evolving Communities
- Rapid Urbanization
- Empowered Individuals
- Economic Power Shift
- Resource Security
- Impactful Technology
Define a ‘wicked problem’
a complex social and policy problem resistant to resolution
Name seven examples of wicked problems
- Water and food shortages
- Youth unemployment
- Population Growth
- Poverty
- Climate Change
- Inequality
- Global Security
Name five characteristics of ‘wicked problems’
- Involves many stakeholders
- Issues roots are complex and tangled
- Problem is difficult to address; constantly changes
- Challenge has no precedent
- There is nothing to indicate the right answer to the problem
Name three limitations of solving wicked problems`
- Complex and big
- People and organisations work to solve problems
- Manifestation of bigger social trends
Mission Statement
The overall goal of a business
Vision Statement
What a company hopes to achieve in the future
Company Values (rules of engagement)
Principles that help you to decide what is right and wrong
Organisational Culture
types of attitudes and agreed ways of working
Four Perspectives of Business Philosophy
- Profit Maximization
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Creating Shared Value
- Social Entrepreneurship
Three key ways of engaging in creating shared value
- Driving mutually beneficial change
- Reconceiving products and markets
- Local Cluster Development - (supporting industries related to your own, improves supplier network)
Strength and weaknesses of CSV
Strength: elevates social goals to a strategic level
Weakness: ignores tensions between social and economic goals
Three key factors of social enterprise
- Sociality
- Innovation
- Market orientation
What are the layers of the business environment? (x4)
- The organisation
- Competitors or market
- Industry or sector
- The macro-environment
2 Core parts of the value chain
- Primary Activities - inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing/sales and service
- Support Activities - firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development and procurement
Critique of Value chain
- makes organisation seem linear
- can’t distinguish between generic and distinct goods
- harder to translate to smaller organisations
Resource Based View
certain assets with certain characteristics will lead to sustainable competitive advantage
VRIN
- Value -> allow the firm to exploit opportunities
- Rare -> possessed by few
- Imperfectly Imitable -> other firms cannot obtain
- Non Substitutable -> no equivalent resource
Critiques of VRIN
- Fails to acknowledge that these resources do not exist in isolation
- Does not address creation of resource
SWOT
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Critiques of SWOT
oversimiplification
Limitations of analysis: people
- human error
- often a judgement call
PESTLE
- Political
- Economic
- Social
- Technological
- Legal
- Environmental
Purpose of PESTLE
focuses on long term, allows for shocks such as flood or drought, bound within a context.
Helps identify key drivers of change, to construct possible futures
Limitations of PESTLE
- not industry analysis
- not internal analysis
- some shocks are hard to anticipate
Porter’s Fiver Forces
- Threat of new entry
- Supplier Power
- Buyer Power
- Threat of substitution
- Competitive Rivalry
Limitations of Porter’s Five Forces
- difficult to define ‘right industry’
- absence of non-market actors
- does not explain new ways of competing
Porter’s Generic Strategies
- Overall Cost Leadership
- Differentiation
- Focus
Strategic Diamond
- Arenas (Where will i be active?)
- Vehicles (How will i get there?)
- Differentiation (How will we win?)
- Staging (Sequence of moves?)
- Economic Logic (How will we obtain our returns?)
Limitations of Strategic Diamond
- produces only a snapshot
- Can lead to excessive rigidity
- Industry dependent
What is a business Process
a structured network of activities supported by resources and information that interact to achieve some business goal
What is an Activity System
the network of all business processes
Characteristics (x4) of a well-designed business process and outcomes
- Complete
- Minimal
- Well Structured
- Embedded
Outcome: increased effectiveness (quality) and efficiency (cost)
Problem solving teams
Groups of five to 12 employees from the same department who meet for a few hours each week to discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency and the work environment
Self-managed work teams
Groups of 10 to 15 people who take on the responsibilities of their former supervisors
Cross-functional teams
Employees from about the same hierarchical level,
but from different work areas, who come together
to accomplish a task
Virtual Teams
Teams can use technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal.
Tuckman’s Model
- Forming: Lots of excitement and enthusiasm. Goals and plans established.
- Storming: Tensions and frustrations will emerge as goals and plans aren’t all met.
- Norming: Begin to resolve discrepancies and problems.
- Performing: Some satisfaction as group is working together
- Adjourning: Mixed emotions, excited about being nearly done but nervous about product. Productivity can actually go down here.
5 Conflict Styles
- Competing
- Accommodating
- Avoiding
- Collaborating
- Compromising
Types of Sustainable Investing
- Integrated: systematic and explicit inclusion of ESG factors in investment decision making
– Screening: avoiding sectors e.g. gambling, tobacco, alcohol, fossil fuels
– Sustainability themed:clean energy, green tech
– Impact/community investing: targeted investments aimed at solving social and environmental problems
– Corporate advocacy and shareholder action: shareholder power to directly influence corporate behaviour
Strategic view of sustainability (x4)
- Eco Efficiency: Enhance resource productivity
- Beyond compliance leadership: inform customers of initiative
- Eco-Branding: Creation of niche through ecology orientated products and services
- Environmental Cost Leadership: Build customer switching cost to (eventually) leverage change in
regulations
Triple Bottom Line
- People
- Planet
- Profit
What is greenwashing?
making people believe that your company is doing more to protect the environment than it actually is
Critiques of greenwashing
- Makes organisations seem misleading
Artificial Intelligence
ability of a machine to perform cognitive functions we associate with human minds
Machine Learning
detect patterns and learn how to make predictions and recommendations by processing data and experiences
Types of Analytics
- Descriptive
- Predictive
- Prescriptive
Types of Machine Learning
- Supervised learning
- Unsupervised Learning
- Reinforcement Learning
