Exam Review Flashcards
What is strategy?
- a set of goal-directed actions a firm takes to gain & sustain superior performance relative to competitors
- where, how, and what to compete with
- it is a pattern/plan that integrates an organization’s major goals, policies, and action sequences into a cohesive whole
– The outcome of the strategic management process.
What is the strategic management process?
- lays the foundation for sustainable competitive advantage.
When setting the strategy process, strategic leaders rely on what three approaches?
- strategic planning
- scenario planning
- strategy as planned emergence
If a company wants to gain competitive advantage in a competitive industry, what should it do?
- firm must provide EITHER
1. goods or services consumers value more highly than those of its competitors
2. OR goods or services similar to the competitors’ at a lower price
What’s the first step in gaining a competitive advantage?
- strategic leaders have a strong influence in setting an organization’s vision, mission, and values
– Part 1 of AFI framework: Analyzing
What are strategic commitments?
- firm actions that are costly, long term oriented, and difficult to reverse which back up the firm’s strategy.
– if firms make strategic commitments to compete in a industry, rivalry among competitors is likely to be more intense
What is a product oriented vision statement?
- defines a business in terms of a good or service provided
What is a customer oriented vision statement?
- defines a business in terms of providing solutions to customer needs
Why is it better for firms to keep their vision statements customer oriented rather than product oriented?
a company can more easily adapt to changing environments
What is the advantage of a product oriented vision statement?
- forces managers to take a more myopic (short sighted) view of the competitive landscape
- can be an advantage to ‘unify’ a team and improve organizational effectiveness for product development short term
How do strong ethical values benefit a firm?
- ethical standards and norms underlay the vision statement and provide stability to strategy, thus laying the groundwork for long-term success
– once the company is pursuing its vision and mission in its quest for competitive advantage, they serve as guard rails to keep the company on track
What is strategic leadership?
- executives’ use of power and influence to direct the activities of others when pursuing an organization’s goals
– their support of the vision leads to competitive advantage
What are the 5 levels of the leadership pyramid?
- executive
- effective leader
- competent manager
- contributing team member
- highly capable individual
What’s a level 5 manager?
executive
What’s the difference between corporate & business strategy?
- Corporate: where to compete as to industry / markets / geography
- Business: how to compete. Three generic business strategies are available: 1. cost leadership, 2. differentiation, 3. value innovation
What is corporate strategy?
- involves decisions that senior management makes and the actions it takes in the quest for competitive advantage
– it concerns the scope of the firm, which determines the boundaries of the firm along the industry value chain, products and services, and geography
What are the functions of general managers in strategic business units?
- they must answer business strategy questions relating to how to compete in order to achieve superior performance
– must manage and align the firm’s different functional areas for competitive advantage
What are the different types of strategies? (application)
- intended
- unrealized
- bottom-up
- realized
What is intended strategy?
- a top-down strategic plan, the outcome of a rational and structured, top-down strategic plan
What is unrealized strategy?
- the result of unpredictable events
What is bottom-up strategy?
- describes any unplanned strategic initiative bubbling up from deep within the organization
What is realized strategy?
- generally formulated through a combination of its top-down strategic intentions and bottom-up emergent strategy
What does a good stakeholder strategy look like?
- an integrative approach to managing a diverse set of stakeholders effectively to gain and sustain competitive advantage
What are the 5 stages of stakeholder impact analysis?
- identify stakeholders
- identify stakeholders’ interests
- identify opportunities and threats
- identify social responsibilities
- address stakeholder concerns
What are the different kinds of responsibilities of a firm? (economic responsibility)
- gain & sustain a competitive advantage
- investors expect an adequate return for their risk capital
- creditors expect the firm to repay its debt
- consumers expect safe products and services at appropriate prices & quality
- suppliers expect to be paid in full and on time
- governments expect the firm to pay taxes and manage natural resources such as air and water under decent stewardship
What are some of the external forces in a firm’s task environment?
- ones that managers do have some influences over, such as the composition of their strategic groups (a set of close rivals) or the structure of the industry
What is the PESTEL framework for the external environment?
- Political
- Economic
- Sociocultural
- Technological
- Ecological
- Legal
Political (PESTEL analysis)
- the processes and actions of government bodies that can influence the decisions and behavior of firms
Economic (PESTEL analysis)
- external environment are largely macroeconomic, affecting economy wide phenomena
Sociocultural (PESTEL analysis)
- capture a society’s cultures, norms, and values
Technological (PESTEL analysis)
- capture the application of knowledge to create new processes and products
Ecological (PESTEL analysis)
- broad environmental issues such as natural environment, global warming, and sustainable economic growth
Legal (PESTEL analysis)
- the official outcomes of political processes as manifested in laws, mandates, regulations, and courts
How is the task environment different from the general environment?
- both are external factors, but managers have some influence over a task environment, and they do not in a general environment
Economies of scale are cost advantages that accrue to firms with _____?
larger output
- because they can spread fixed costs over more units, employ technology more efficiently, benefit from a more specialized division of labor, and demand better terms from their suppliers
What are Porter’s 5 forces?
- threat of entry
- power of suppliers
- power of buyers
- threat of substitutes
- rivalry among existing competitors
How are cumulative learning and experience effects of a company most likely to affect the 5 forces?
- threat of new entrants will be low
What are the drawbacks of the 5 forces model?
- only a point-in-time snapshot of a moving target (static model, NOT dynamic)
- one cannot determine the changing speed of an industry or the rate of innovation
- must repeat analysis over time to create a more accurate picture of their industry
- must also consider industry dynamics
- What is true of strategic groups?
- the set of companies that pursue a similar strategy within a specific industry
What are the differences between tangible and intangible resources?
- Tangible: physical attributes (land, capital, labor, buildings) and can be bought on the open market; physical attributes and can be sold on an open market
- Intangible: no physical attributes (culture, knowledge, reputation) and cannot be bought on the open market
What are the different types of resource characteristics?
- resource heterogeneity
- resource immobility
- resource substitution
- costly-to-imitate resource
What is resource heterogeneity?
- bundle of resources and capabilities that differ across firms
What is resource immobility?
- resources tend to be “sticky” and don’t move easily from firm to firm
What is resource substitution?
- unable to develop or buy at a REASONABLE price
What is costly-to-imitate resource?
- one of the 4 key criteria in the VRIO framework
- resource is costly to imitate if firms that do not possess the resource are unable to develop or buy the resource at a comparable cost
What are high entry barriers? What do they look like?
factors that can prevent or impede newcomers into a market or industry sector, and so limit competition. These can include high start-up costs, regulatory hurdles, or other obstacles that prevent new competitors from easily entering a business sector.
- economies of sale
- network effects
- customer switching costs
- capital requirements
- advantages independent of size
- government policy
- credible threat of retaliation
What is resource-based view of competition?
- a model that sees certain types of resources as key to superior firm performance
What is perfect competition?
- a perfectly competitive industry is fragmented and has many small firms, a commodity product, ease of entry, and little / no ability for each individual firm to raise its prices
How are the assumptions of the resource-based view different from perfect competition?
- in perfect competition, all firms have access to the same resources and capabilities, ensuring that one firm’s advantage will be short-lived
- when resources are freely available and mobile, competitors can quickly acquire the same resources that the current market leader utilizes
What are the different components of the resource-based view? - VRIO framework
- valuable
- rare
- costly to imitate
- firm must be organized to capture the value of the resource