1. Define strategic competitiveness and above-average returns. What is the relationship between strategic competitiveness and returns on investment?
2. Hypercompetition is a characteristic of the 21st-century competitive landscape. Define hypercompetition and identify its primary drivers. How can organizations survive in a hypercompetitive environment?
3. Describe the industrial organization (I/O) model of above-average returns. What are its main assumptions? What is the key to success according to the I/O model?
4. Describe and discuss the resource-based model of above-average returns.
5. What are a firm's vision and mission? What is the value to the firm of having a specified vision and mission?
6. Describe an organization's various stakeholders and their different interests. Under what condition can the firm most easily satisfy all stakeholders? If the firm cannot satisfy all stakeholders, which ones must it satisfy in order to survive?
7. Who are the firm's strategic leaders? How do strategic leaders predict the profit outcomes of different strategic decisions?
8. Explain the relationship of the strategic management process to organizational ethics.
9. Explain why it is important for organizations to analyze and understand the external environment.
10. Identify and describe the three major parts of the external environment. What is the purpose of the firm's collecting information about these aspects of its environment?
11. Describe and discuss the four activities of the external environmental analysis process.
12. Describe the six segments of the general environment.
13. Identify the five forces that underlie the five forces model of competition. Explain briefly how they affect industry profit potential.
14. Describe the factors that raise the competitive nature of an industry's rivalry.
15. What are high exit barriers and how do they affect the competition within an industry?
16. What is a firm's strategic group? What effect does the strategic group have on the firm?
17. What do firms need to know about their competitors? What legal and ethical intelligence gathering techniques can be used to obtain this information?
18. Describe the importance of internal analysis to the strategic success of the firm.
19. What are the differences between tangible and intangible resources? Which category of resources is more valuable to the firm?
20. Define capabilities and how they affect the firm's strategic success.
21. Describe the four specific criteria that managers can use to decide which of their firm's capabilities have the potential to create a sustainable competitive advantage.
22. Describe a value chain analysis. How does a value chain analysis help a firm gain competitive advantage?
23. Why is it important to prevent core competencies from becoming core rigidities?
24. Define strategy and business-level strategy. What is the difference between these two concepts?
25. When a firm chooses a business-level strategy, it must answer the questions "Who? What? and How?" What are these questions and why are they important?
26. Discuss how a cost leadership strategy can allow a firm to earn above-average returns in spite of strong competitive forces. Address each of the five competitive forces.
27. Describe the risks of a differentiation strategy.
28. How do focused differentiation and focused cost-leadership strategies differ from their non-focused counterparts?
29. Describe the additional risks undertaken by firms pursuing a focus strategy.
30. Describe the advantages of integrating cost leadership and differentiation strategies.
31. What are the risks of an integrated cost leadership/differentiation strategy?
32. What is market commonality? What is resource similarity? How are these concepts combined to identify the level of competition between two firms?
33. Define awareness, motivation and ability in reference to competitive behavior.
34. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a first mover, second mover, and late mover?
4. What factors contribute to the likelihood of a response to a competitive action?
5. Name and describe the two types of competitive actions.
6. Define slow-cycle, fast-cycle and standard cycle markets.
6
1. Differentiate between corporate-level and business-level strategies and give examples of each.
2. What are the five categories of businesses based on level of diversification?
3. Describe the primary reasons a firm pursues increased diversification.
4. Describe how diversified firms can use activity sharing and transfer of core competencies to create value.
5. What are the two ways that an unrelated diversification strategy can create value?
6. What is the effect of a firm's low performance on the pursuit of diversification?
7. What are the managerial motives to diversify?
7
1. Why have acquisitions been a popular strategy in recent years?
2. Identify and explain the seven reasons firms engage in an acquisition strategy.
3. Describe the seven problems in achieving a successful acquisition.
4. Describe how an acquisition program can result in managerial time and energy absorption.
5. What are the attributes of a successful acquisition program?
6. What is restructuring and what are its common forms?
7. What are the differences between downscoping and downsizing?
8. What is an LBO and what have been the results of such activities?
9. What are the results of the three forms of restructuring?