Crafting and executing strategy-Thompson , Strickland, Gamble, Peterae,Janes & Sutton CH10
1 Management's handling of the strategy implementation/execution process can be considered successful
A) so long as a company is profitable.
B) if and when the company meets or beats its performance targets and shows good progress in achieving its strategic vision for the company.
C) once the company's management team convinces a majority of company personnel that the company is headed in the right direction.
D) if management is able to put the strategy in place within 6 months.
E) once a capable top management team has been hired, employees have been appropriately empowered, and effective training programs for company personnel have been put in place.
2 Which of the following is not one of the principal managerial components associated with implementing and executing strategy?
A) Building an organization with the competencies, capabilities, and resource strengths needed to carry out the strategy successfully.
B) Allocating sufficient budgetary resources to the strategy execution process.
C) Reducing the layers of management to a bare minimum and making sure employees are empowered
D) Adopting best practices and pushing for continuous improvement in how value chain activities are performed
E) Instilling a corporate culture that promotes good strategy execution
3 The three organization-building actions paramount in the task of trying to execute a company's strategy are
A) delegating authority to down-the-line managers and doing a good job of empowering employees, deciding which value chain activities to outsource, and choosing an organization chart that suits the strategy.
B) persuasively communicating the case for organizational change to down-the-line managers and employees, using organization structures based on empowered teams, and selecting the right people to staff the organization.
C) staffing the organization, building and strengthening core competitive and competitive capabilities, and structuring the organization and work effort.
D) de-layering management hierarchies, deciding which competencies and capabilities to build, and deciding which value chain activities to outsource.
E) avoiding business process fragmentation, deciding which value chain activities to outsource, and allocating sufficient time and resources to employee training.
4 The overriding aim in building a management team should be to
A) assemble a critical mass of talented managers who can function as agents of change, work well together as a team, and produce organizational results that are dramatically better than what a few star managers acting individually can achieve.
B) select people who are charismatic and good communicators.
C) choose managers who have substantial experience in the industry.
D) assemble a team of people who believe in the same leadership approaches and use the same approaches to people management.
E) choose managers who have the same core values and ethical standards.
5 Employee training and retraining
A) tend to be strategically important in organizational efforts to create organizational capabilities but are less useful in trying to help teach employees skills-based competencies.
B) are often a valuable and necessary strategy-implementing and strategy-executing element but cannot be relied upon to help teach empowered employees how to do their jobs better.
C) come into play primarily when core business processes are fragmented across several functional areas and departments and training is needed to teach employees how to overcome the fragmentation through better cross-department collaboration and cooperation.
D) merit high-priority on management's strategy-implementing agenda when a firm revises its strategy in ways that call for new skills or different know-how, operating methods, and competitive capabilities and also become a key activity in businesses where technical know-how is changing so rapidly that a company loses its ability to compete unless its skilled people have cutting-edge knowledge and expertise.
E) becomes particularly significant in a company's organization-building effort if it opts to decentralize decision-making and empower its employees-empowered employees have to be trained to make the decisions.
6 Which one of the following is not part of organizing the work effort in ways that promote successful strategy execution?
A) Making internally performed strategy-critical value chain activities the main building blocks in the organization structure
B) Deciding which value chain activities to perform internally and which to outsource
C) Determining how much authority to centralize at the top and how much to delegate to down-the-line managers and employees
D) Forming a special department or work unit to lead the company's effort to capture strategic and resource fits
E) Providing for cross-unit coordination and the necessary collaboration with suppliers and strategic allies
7 Which of the following statements are right about matching the type of organizational structure to strategy execution requirements?
A) The type of organizational structure that is most suitable for a given firm will depend on the firm's size and complexity as well as strategy.
B) As firms grow and their needs for organizational structure evolve, their structural form is likely to evolve.
C) The four basic types are the simple structure, the functional structure, the multidivisional structure, and the matrix structure.
D) Organizational structures can be classified into a limited number of standard types.
E) All of these.
8 Which one of the following falsely describes a centralized approach to decision-making?
A) Decisions on most matters of importance should be pushed to managers up the line who have the experience, expertise, and judgment to decide what is the wisest or best course of action.
B) Hierarchical command-and-control structures speed an organization's responses to changing conditions because top-level managers are in a position to quickly review the situation and make a final decision.
C) Tight control by a few senior managers makes it easy to fix accountability when things do not go well.
D) There is an assumption that frontline personnel have neither the time nor the inclination to direct and properly control the work they are performing, and that they lack the knowledge and judgment to make wise decisions about how best to do their work.
E) Top management operates on the belief that strict enforcement of detailed procedures backed by rigorous managerial oversight is the most reliable way to keep the daily execution of strategy on track.
9 The basic tenets of a decentralized organizational structure include the thesis that
A) a company that draws on the combined intellectual capital of all its people can outperform a command-and-control company.
B) lower-level managers and personnel seldom have the expertise and wisdom to decide what is the wisest and best course of action; hence, tight management control from the top makes the most sense.
C) decision-making authority should be put in the hands of the people closest to and most familiar with the situation, and these people should be trained to exercise good judgment.
D) most company personnel have neither the time nor the inclination to direct and properly control they work they are performing.
E) a company that draws on the combined intellectual capital of all its people can outperform a command-and-control company and decision-making authority should be put in the hands of the people closest to and most familiar with the situation, and these people should be trained to exercise good judgment.
10 One of the big challenges of organizing and managing a work environment where employees are empowered to make decisions in their area of responsibility is
A) how to exercise control over the actions and decisions of empowered employees so that the business is not put at risk while trying to capture the benefits of employee empowerment.
B) how to avoid high levels of stress and anxiety among empowered employees (since they are held accountable for their decisions). those individuals that are given greater levels of authority and responsibility motivate and challenge those senior managers who no longer have a heavy decision-making load.
C) how many employees to empower.
D) how to identify and weed out those empowered employees who prove to be poor decision-makers.
E) keeping lower-level managers and employees properly trained in how to make good decisions.