Business Policy & Strategic Management

SECTION – A

Qus.1.Describe the benefits of Good Strategic Planning? Define and give examples of key terms of Strategic Management?

Qus.2 Explain the concept of SBU in a Multi Business Organization. Identify the Three levels of Strategy-Corporate, Business and Functional. How do Goals and Objectives vary at each Level?
Ans.2. 

Qus.3. What should be the key Traits of a CEO? What are the forces that design the Strategic Management Systems?

Question 4: Discuss the various grand strategies at the Corporate Level i.e. Stability, Growth and Retrenchment. 

Qus.4. Discuss the various grand strategies at the Corporate Level i.e. Stability, Growth and Retrenchment.

Qus.5. Explain the concept of Porter’s five forces Model used for Industry Analysis? What are the major factors that become barriers to entry in the New Industry?

Qus.6. What used to be national markets with local companies competing for business has become a global market with everyone competing for everyone's business everywhere. Explain the 3 generic strategies by Porter for Competitive advantage in the light of above statement.
Ans.6. 
Qus. 7. What do you understand by the term Business Portfolio? How do BCG and GE matrix help a multi-business organization analyze its current business portfolio and decide which businesses should receive more or less investment. 
Ans.7. 
Qus.8. Discuss the following Factors affecting Strategic Choices in brief:
•Nature of environment –stable?
•Firm’s internal realities
•Ambition of CEO / owners
•Company culture
•Firm’s capacity to execute the strategy.
•Resource allocation
Ans.8. 
b) Firm’s internal realities
Ans. b) 

c) Ambition of CEO / owners
Ans. c) 

d)Company culture
Ans. d) 

e)Firm’s capacity to execute the strategy.
Ans. e) 

f)Resource allocation
Ans. f) 

Assignment B

Case Study

Question:
1. The Company foresees continued growth and expansion in the coming few years globally driven by its operations in India and hopes to realign India’s strengths and world-class market capabilities to deliver services to its customers. Conduct the SWOT Analysis of Haier‘s foray in to Indian market in light of facts given in the narration.
Ans. 1. 

Assignment C
Objective Questions

Which approach to the study of leadership emphasizes the role of situational factors and how these moderate the relationship between leader traits or leadership behaviors and leadership effectiveness? 

Leader-oriented approach. 

Contingency approach. 

Transactional approach. 

Transformational approach 

Porter has designed a framework to help understand why certain countries achieve global competitive advantage in certain industries. It also helps internationalizing firms to make location decisions. The framework is called: 

Porter's value chain 

Porter's Five Forces 

Porter's Generic Strategies 

Porter's Diamond 

It is generally agreed that the role of strategy is to: 

Make best use of resources 

Make profits for the organization 

Make the best products and services 

Achieve competitive advantage 

Kay (1993) sees the strategy of an organization as matching internal capabilities with: 

Its external relationships 

Its customer needs 

The industry life cycle 

The external environment 

An organization's external environment consists of the general or macro environment and: 

The internal environment 

The competitive environment 

The specific environment 

The micro-environment 

The term 'corporate strategy' concerns strategy and strategic decisions 

In the private sector only. 

Developed by the senior management in an organization. 

In certain types of organizations. 

At all levels in an organization. 

A key characteristic of strategic decisions is: 

They are normally definite decisions about the future of the organization. 

They identify specific areas of strategic interest for the management of an organization. 

They result in better organizational performance. 

They are likely to be concerned with, or affect, the long-term direction of an organization. 

It is possible to identify different levels of strategy in an organization, these are: 

Corporate and functional. 

Corporate and Business 

Strategic and tactical. 

Corporate; strategic business unit; operational. 

An organisation's mission can be defined as: 

The overriding purpose in line with the values or expectations of stakeholders. 

The overriding purpose regardless of the values or expectations of stakeholders. 

The organisation's business plan. 

The desired future state of the organisation. 

Strategic choices require an understanding of: 

The business environment, the competition and the strategic capability of the organisation. 

The key drivers of change. 

The organisational strengths and weaknesses. 

The underlying bases for future strategy at business unit and corporate levels; the options for developing strategy in terms of directions and methods of development. 

In Porter's Five Forces, the 'threat of new entrants' relates to: 

Substitutes 

Switching costs 

Buyer power 

Barriers to entry 

Brandenburg and Nalebuff added a sixth force to Porter's Five Forces. It is known as: 

Seller power 

Complementors 

Substitutes 

Government regulation 

Barriers to entry into an industry are likely to be high if: 

Switching costs are low 

Differentiation is low 

Access to distribution channels is high 

Requirement for economies of scale is high 

Buyer power is high if: 

They have little information 

The buyer requires a high quality product for their own production 

Differentiation is low 
Switching costs are low 

Competitive rivalry will be high if: 

There are a few strong players in the industry 

There is a high degree of differentiation 

The industry is in its infancy 

The industry is fragmented 

A strategic group can be defined as: 

A group of key resources and competences that are necessary to achieve competitive advantage 

A group of customers that have similar characteristics 

An industry recipe 

A group of firms in an industry following the same or a similar strategy 

The key activities in the strategic management process are: 

Analysis, formulation, review 

Analysis, implementation, review 

Formulation, analysis, implementation 

Analysis, formulation, implementation 

Strategy analysis is also referred to as: 

Strategy diagnosis 

Rational analysis 

Situation analysis 

SWOT analysis 

Strategy formulation takes place at two levels. These are: 

Conscious and sub-conscious 

Implicit and explicit 

Values and operational 

Corporate and business 

The Policies of an organization derive from its: 

Purpose 

Vision 

Objectives 

Strategy 

The statement of an organization's aspirations can be found in the organization's: 

Policies 

Mission 

Strategy 

Vision 

A substitute product or service is: 

A new entrant into the industry 

A competitor's product or service 

A less attractive way of meeting the same need 

An alternative way of meeting the same need 

Cross-functional teams are: 

The representative voice of senior management. 

A small group of specialists who collaborate on a task force. 

A small group of people who come together to resolve business unit issues. 
A small group of people from different departments who are mutually accountable to a common set of performance goals. 

The business unit strategy has three major components: 

business mission, department mission, and daily plans 

competencies, abilities, and problem statements 

marketing, advertising and pricing objectives 

mission, business unit goals, and competencies 

Disney is in the business of: 

Building theme parks. 

Designing new imaginative characters. 

Making money. 

Creating entertainment, fun and fantasy. 

A useful framework used to assess a company's investments/divisions is called: 

corporate insight analysis 

company productivity analysis 

SBU knowledge analysis 

business portfolio analysis 

Cash cows are SBU's that typically generate: 

large awareness levels but few sales 

paper losses in the long run 

problems for product managers 

large amounts of cash 

Business unit competencies should be distinctive enough to provide 

clear understanding of who you want to lead the company 

opportunity to compete on a productivity basis 

additional strategic mission 

competitive advantage 

TQM is a strategy that is designed to change the quality of a product to satisfy customer needs by using the concept of 

reverse brainstorming 

brainstorming 

product life cycle analysis 

benchmarking 

Firms may view growth opportunities in these terms: 

New markets, and current and new products 

New markets and new products 

Current markets and current products 

Current and new markets, and current and new products 

The strategic marketing process is how an organization allocates its marketing mix resources to reach its: 

target markets 

area of expertise 

competition 

stated business ideas 

An effective short-hand summary of the situation analysis is a: 

SWOT analysis 

SBU analysis 

BCG analysis 

Competition analysis 

In the strategic marketing process, once you get results you go into the: 

control phase 

marketing plan 

planning phase 

marketing program 

Ansoff had four market-product strategies to expand sales. They included 

market penetration, (2) product development, (3) market development and:

diversification 

current customer retention 

distribution enhancement 

product simplification 

Aggregating prospective buyers into groups is called: 

market segmentation 

BCG matrix analysis 

grouping 

market categorization 

One key to effective implementation is setting: 

schedule of events 

milestones 

good managers in motion 

goals 

When actual performance results are better than what the plan called for, managers should: 

Find creative ways to exploit the situation. 

Issue more stock options to employees. 

Increase prices. 

Ignore it. 

Value for shareholders of a firm is measured by: 

stock performance and profitability 

sales revenue 

satisfactory employee targets 

profitable year-end balance sheet 

The _____ for PepsiCo is "We believe our commercial success depends upon offering quality and value to our consumers and customers; providing products that are safe, wholesome, economically efficient and environmentally sound; and providing a fair return to our investors while adhering to the highest standards of quality." 
mission 

organizational code of conduct 

functional code 

benefits statement 

A firm can acknowledge the critical importance of its _____, by having explicit goals that state its intention to improve work conditions by adding more lighting and providing the workers with more and better safety equipment. 
employee welfare 

market share 

sales revenue 

satisfaction