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| Chapter 1 3. What aspects of strategy formulation do you think requires the most time? Why? 4. Why is strategy implementation often considered the most difficult stage in the strategic-management process? 5. Why is it so important to integrate intuition and analysis in strategic management? 7. Discuss relationships amount objectives, strategies, and polices. 9. Discuss the importance of feedback in the strategic-management model. 14. Would strategic-management concepts and techniques benefit foreign businesses as much as domestic firms? Justify your answer. Chapter 2 1. Compare and contrast vision statements with mission statements in terms of composition and importance. 4. Explain why a mission statement should not include strategies and objectives. 6. Explain the principal value of a vision and a mission statement. 7. Why is it important for a mission statement to be reconciliatory? 8. In your opinion, what are the three most important components that should be included when writing a mission statement? Why? 9. How would the mission statement for a for-profit and a nonprofit organization differ? 10. Write a vision and mission statement for an organization of your choice. 11. Who are the major stakeholders of the bank that you do business with locally? What are the major claims of those stakeholders? Chapter 3 1. Explain how to conduct an external strategic-management audit. 2. Discuss the following statement: Major opportunities and threats usually result from an interaction among key environmental trends rather than from a single external event or factor. 5. Use Porter�s Five-Forces Model to evaluate competitiveness within the U.S. banking industry. 7. How does the external audit affect other components of the strategic-management process? 11. Give some advantages and disadvantages of cooperative versus competitive strategies. 14. Explain how information technology affects strategies of the organization where you worked most recently. 17. Discuss the ethics of gathering competitive intelligence. Chapter 4 1. Explain why prioritizing the relative importance of strengths and weakness in an IFE Matrix is an important strategic-management activity. 4. How could a strategist�s attitude toward social responsibility affect a firm�s strategy? What is your attitude toward social responsibility? 5. Which of the three basic functions of finance/accounting do you feel is most important in a small electronics manufacturing concern? Justify your position. 6. Do you think aggregate R&D expenditures for American firms will increase or decrease next year? Why? 7. Explain how you would motivate mangers and employees to implement a major new strategy. 11. If a firm has zero debt in its capital structure, is that always an organizational strength? Why or why not? 16. Do you think cultural products affect strategy formulation, implementation, or evaluation the most? Why? Chapter 5 1. How does strategy formulation differ for a small versus a large organization? How does it differ for a for-profit versus a nonprofit organization? 2. Give recent examples of market penetration, market development, and product development. 4. Give recent examples of concentric diversification, horizontal diversification, and conglomerate diversification. 8. What are the major advantages and disadvantages of an integrative strategy? 11. Consumers can purchase tennis shoes, food, cars, boats, and insurance on the Internet. Are there any products today that cannot be purchased online? What is the implication for traditional retailers? 13. Does the United States lead in small business startups globally? 14. Visit the CheckMATE Strategic Planning software Web site at www.checkmateplan.com, and discuss the benefits offered. Chapter 6 1. How would application of the strategy-formulation framework differ from a small to a large organization? 5. Explain the steps involved in developing a QSPM. 7. What do you think is the appropriate role of a board of directors in strategic management? Why? 8. Discuss the limitations of various strategy-formulation analytical techniques. 9. Explain why cultural factors should be an important consideration in analyzing and choosing among alternative strategies. 10. How are the TOWS Matrix, SPACE Matrix, BCG Matrix, IE Matrix, and Grand Strategy Matrix similar? How are they different? 11. How would for-profit and nonprofit organizations differ in their applications of the strategy-formulation framework? 12. Calculate the Relative Market Share Position of the Budget rental car company based on section C of Table 6-4 data. Chapter 7 1. Allocating resources can be a political and an ad hoc activity in firms that do not use strategic management. Why is this true? Does adopting strategic management ensure easy resource allocation? Why? 2. Compare strategy formulation with strategy implementation in terms of each being an art or science. 3. Describe the relationship between annual objectives and policies. 7. Describe several reasons why conflict may occur during objective-setting activities. 8. In your opinion, what approaches to conflict resolution would be best for resolving a disagreement between a personnel manger and a sales manger over the firing of a particular salesperson? Why? 10. Explain why organizational structure is so important in strategy implementation. 11. In your opinion, how many separate divisions could an organization reasonably have without using an SBU-type organizational structure? Why? 13. What are the advantages and disadvantages of decentralizing the wage and salary functions of an organization? How could this be accomplished? Chapter 8 1. Suppose your company has just acquired a firm that produces battery-operated lawn mowers, and strategists want to implement a market-penetration strategy. How would you segment the market for this product? Justify your answer. 2. Explain how you would estimate the total worth of a business. 3. Diagram and label clearly a product-positioning map that includes six fast-food restaurant chains. 4. Explain why EPS/EBIT analysis is a central strategy-implementation technique. 5. How would the R&D role in strategy implementation differ in small versus large organizations? 6. Discuss the limitations of EPS/EBIT analysis. 7. Explain how marketing, finance/accounting, R&D, and management information systems managers� involvement in strategy formulation can enhance strategy implementation. 8. Consider the following statements: �Retained earnings on the balance sheet are not monies available to finance strategy implementation.� Is it true or false? Explain. 9. Explain why pro forma financial statement analysis is considered both a strategy-formulation and a strategy-implementation tool. 13. What effect is e-commerce having on firms� efforts to segment markets? Chapter 9 1. Why has strategy evaluation become so important in business today? 2. BellSouth Services is considering putting divisional EEF and IFE matrices online for continual updating. How would this affect strategy evaluation? 5. Under what conditions are corrective actions not required in the strategy-evaluation process? 6. Identify types of organizations that may need to evaluate strategy more frequently than others. Justify your choices. 8. Identify some key financial ratios that would be important in evaluating a bank�s strategy. 10. Strategy evaluation allows an organization to take a proactive stance toward shaping its own future. Discuss the meaning of this statement. |
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