Chapter 2 Flashcards
Name business pressures
Market pressures :
- Globalization
- Changing nature of the workforce
- Powerful customers
Technology pressures:
- Information overload
- Technological innovation and obsolescence
- Rapid development of both new and substitute products and services
- Difficulties in managing data for decision making
- Vast stores of data, information, and knowledge
Societal/political/legal pressures:
- Social responsibility
- Compliance with government regulations
- Protection against terrorist attacks
- Ethical issues
What does globalization entail?
- It increases competition
- Industries have moved their operations to countries with low labour costs
- The integration and interdependence of economic, social, cultural, and ecological facets of life, made possible by rapid advances in IT
What does changing nature of the workforce entail?
- Diversified workforce ⟶ aided by IT (ex: working from home)
- IT ⟶ easing integration of employees into traditional workforce
What do powerful customer entail?
- Customers know more about the products/services, the prices, etc. so they have higher expectations
- Customer intimacy ⟶ firms try to learn as much as they can about their customers to better anticipate and address their needs ⟶ maximizing the customer experience
What does social responsibility entail?
- Giving money to charities
- Green IT and lowering carbon management ⟶ organizations work to do their part in preserving the environment (right)
What does compliance with government regulations entail?
- IT provides necessary controls/info for compliance
- Organizations need to respect their regulations even if they feel like they’re expensive constraints on their activities
- Government deregulation = increase in competition
What does protection against terrorist attack entails?
- Use IT to detect, identify and protect against terrorist attacks ⟶ security systems and identifying patterns of behaviour associated with terrorist activities
- Biometric programs ⟶ collection of fingerprints, photos, iris/retina scanners that tie into gov databases and watchlists
What do ethical issues entail?
- Need to know right from wrong
- Need to be able to get positive employees’ morale and not destroy company’s image
What are the organizational responses?
- E-business/e-commerce
- Customer focus
- Make-to-order/mass customization
- Strategic systems
What do strategic systems entail?
- Provide competitive advantage ⟶ helps control the market and make larger-than-normal profits ⟶ organizations can better negotiate with suppliers and can prevent competitor from entering the market
- They can be essential (if they don’t work, the business doesn’t work ⟶ ex: Amazon)
What does customer focus entail?
- Provide excellent customer service ⟶ attracting/retaining customers
What does make-to-order/mass customization entail?
- Producing customized products/services
- Consumer segmentation ⟶ standard specifications for different customer groups ⟶ ex: small, medium, large, x-large
- Configured mass customization ⟶ customer can customized on a range of components ⟶ ex: choosing the colour of your car and the interior, etc.
- Mass customization = make-to-order on a larger scale
What is the point of Porter’s Competitive Forces Model?
- Can tell an organization how to be more competitive which, in turn, reduces the organization’s margin
- Organizations uses this model to develop strategies to increase their competitive advantage/edge
What’s a competitive strategy
- A statement that identify an organization’s approach in the face of competition and the plans/policies necessary to carry out the organization’s goals
- Achieving desired outcome when competitors work to prevent the organization from reaching their goal
What’s SIS and what does it do?
Strategic information system ⟶ helps organization implement strategic goals ⟶ increases productivity/performance ⟶ gives competitive advantage
What are the 5 forces of Porter’s Competitive Forces Models?
- Threat of new entrants
- Bargaining power of buyers
- Threat of substitute products/services
- Bargaining power of suppliers
- Rivalry among existing competitors
What does threat of new entrants do?
- When there’s new entrants ⟶ lowers the price organization can charge
- To combat it, organizations can put barriers to entry
What are barriers to entry?
- Supply-side economies of scale
- Demand-side economies of scale
- Capital requirements
- High fixed costs
- Restrictive government policy
- Unequal access to distribution channels
- Learning/experience curves
- Incumbency advantages independent of size