Question

Which of the following is not a common element of successful strategies?

Clear, consistent and long-term goals

Profound understanding of the natural environment

Objective appraisal of resources

Effective implementation

2. Patagonia’s mission statement of ‘Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis’ can be used as an example of which of the following reasons why firms need strategy:

Strategy as a decision support

Strategy as a target

Strategy as altruism

Strategy as competition

3. Disney’s decision to buy Lucasfilm in 2012 was taken at which level of strategy?

Corporate

Business

Operational

Functional

4. In Carroll’s pyramid of corporate social responsibility, _____ are the foundational building block i.e. bottom of the pyramid.

economic responsibilities

ethical responsibilities

philanthropic responsibilities

legal responsibilities

5. You go to see the new Star Wars movie (‘The Force Awaken’s) and after 10 minutes you realize that it is ‘Star Trek’ you like and in actuality you strongly dislike Star Wars. You decide to ‘suffer through’ the movie as you have paid $20 instead of leaving. What decision making bias have you just fallen into?

Myopia

Sunk Costs

Framing of the decision

Information availability

6. On the 16 of December last year the Fed decided to raise short-term interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis. If you were carrying out a macro environmental analysis, which section would it fit best into?

Political/ Legal

Economic

Sociocultural

Threat

7. Which of the following industries has the highest threat of substitutes in a Porter’s Five Forces analysis?

Construction industry

Long haul aviation industry

Energy industry

Soft drinks industry

8. The primary objective of Porter's five forces model is to:

Replace a firm's competitive advantage with competitive parity.

Understand the profit potential of different industries.

Reduce the gap between the value of a firm's product and its cost of production.

Break down a firm's value chain activities into primary and support.

9. Which of the following concepts illustrates the difficulty that firms have when moving from one strategic group to another?

Resource Heterogeneity

Causal Resource Accumulation

Mobility Barriers

Industry Heterogeneity

10. Which of the following is notan activity in a value chain analysis?

Firm infrastructure

Internal logistics

Marketing & sales

Procurement

11. Which of the following competitive strategies does Aldi pursue:

Differentiation

Diversification

Focus Cost Leadership

Integrated cost leadership/ differentiation

12.ebay is successful in part due to the fact that so many of us are users and have accounts. This is an example of __________ i.e. the value of a product to an individual customer depends on the number of other users of that product.

Network externality

Structural Ambidexterity

Experience goods

Nominal architecture

13. In a VRIO analysis. The ‘O’ stands for which of the following:

Operational

Overhead

Organized

Optional

14. Prahalad & Hamel (1990) define core competences as activities that ‘make a disproportionate contribution to ultimate customer ________ , or to the efficiency with which the __________  is derived, and provide a basis for entering new markets.’

Effectiveness

Rareness

Resources

Value

15. Many of Ryanair’s airports are outside the city center of the destination city. This cost reduction mechanism would fit best in which of the following cost drivers?

Residual Efficiency

Input Costs

Economies of Learning

None of the above

Answer 1

1) Effective implementation

It is not an element and there must be effective implementation of rest of the three items for successful strategies

2) Strategy as altruism

The organization's mission statement focuses on wellbeing of others and environment so it is disinterested practice to help others

3) Corporate

The decisions to purchase and sell business units are a corporate level strategies

4) Economic responsibilities

The bottom of the pyramid is economic responsibility of being profitable