Mqm 385 Test 2

Front 1

Ethical principles in business

Back 1

Are not materially different from ethical principles in general

Front 2

The contentions that (1) many of the same standards of what's ethical and what's unethical resonate with peoples of most societies regardless of local traditions and cultural norms and (2) to the extent there is common moral agreement about right and wrong actions, common ethical standards can be used to judge the conduct of personnel at companies operating in a variety of country markets and cultural circumstances are defining beliefs of

Back 2

The school of ethical universalism

Front 3

Paying bribes and kickbacks to grease business transactions

Back 3

Is one of the thorniest ethical problems that multinational companies face because paying bribes is normal and customary in some countries and ethically or legally forbidden in others

Front 4

According to integrated social contracts theory, the ethical standards a company should try to uphold

Back 4

Are governed both by (1) a limited number of universal ethical principles that are widely recognized as putting legitimate ethical boundaries on actions and behavior in all situations and (2) the circumstances of local cultures, traditions and shared values that further prescribe what constitutes ethically permissible behavior and what does not—but universal norms always take precedence over local ethical norms

Front 5

The three categories of managers that stand out with regard to the beliefs and commitments they have to ethical and moral principles in business affairs are:

Back 5

Moral managers, amoral managers and immoral managers

Front 6

An unintentionally amoral manager is one who

Back 6

Holds firmly to the view that anything goes, so long as actions and behaviors are not clearly ruled out by prevailing legal and regulatory requirements

Front 7

The major drivers of unethical managerial behavior include

Back 7

Ethically corrupt corporate cultures and overzealous or obsessive pursuit of wealth accumulation, power, status and other selfish interests

Front 8

The compliance approach to dealing with or managing ethical conduct

Back 8

Is favored at companies whose managers (1) lean toward being somewhat amoral but recognize the value of having ethically upstanding reputations or (2) are moral and see strong compliance methods as the best way to impose and enforce ethical rules and high ethical standards

Front 9

The notion of social responsibility as it applies to businesses concerns

Back 9

A company's duty to operate in an honorable manner, provide good working conditions for employees, be a good steward of the environment and actively work to better the quality of life in the local communities where it operates and in society at large

Front 10

In judging how far a company should go in pursuing social responsibility initiatives, it is fair to say that

Back 10

There is no simple or widely accepted standard for judging when a company has or has not gone far enough in fulfilling its citizenship responsibilities

Front 11

Executing strategy

Back 11

All of these

Front 12

What makes the managerial task of executing strategy so challenging and demanding is

Back 12

The demanding people-management skills required, the resistance to change that has to be overcome and the perseverance necessary to get a variety of initiatives launched and kept moving along

Front 13

The principal managerial components of the strategy execution process include which of the following?

Back 13

Instituting policies and procedures that facilitate rather than impede strategy execution and tying rewards to the achievement of strategic and financial targets and to good strategy execution

Front 14

In devising an action agenda to implement and execute a new or different strategy, the place for managers to start is with

Back 14

A probing assessment of what the organization must do differently and better to carry out the strategy successfully—then they should consider precisely how to make the necessary internal changes as rapidly as possible

Front 15

The capability-building process

Back 15

Requires first developing the ability to do something, however imperfectly or inefficiently; second, translating this ability into a competence and/or capability by learning to do the activity consistently well and at an acceptable cost; and then continuing to polish and refine its know-how in an effort further improve its performance, ideally striving to match or beat rivals in performing the activity

Front 16

Building organizational competencies and capabilities

Back 16

Involves a multi-stage process that is hard for rivals to replicate and that occurs over a period of months and years

Front 17

A key to transforming a company's core competencies and competitive capabilities into competitive advantage hinges on

Back 17

Building competitively valuable competencies and capabilities that (1) are very difficult or costly for rivals to emulate, (2) push a company closer to true operating excellence and (3) give a company an edge over rivals in the marketplace

Front 18

Outsourcing critics contend that shifting responsibility for performing value-chain activities to outside specialists

Back 18

Can hollow out a company's knowledge base and capabilities, leaving it at the mercy of outsider suppliers and short of the resource strengths to be a master of its own destiny

Front 19

Delegating greater authority to subordinate managers and employees

Back 19

Creates a more horizontal or flatter organization structure with fewer management layers and usually acts to shorten organizational response times

Front 20

The organizational characteristics of many of today's companies include

Back 20

All of these

Front 21

The guidelines for designing an incentive compensation system that will help drive successful strategy execution include

Back 21

Making the payoff for meeting or beating performance targets a major, not minor, piece of the total compensation package

Front 22

From the standpoint of promoting successful strategy execution, it is important that the firm's motivation and reward system

Back 22

Accentuate positive rewards but also carry the risk of punishment for poor performance

Front 23

To build a total quality culture and achieve full value from the use of TQM or Six Sigma initiatives, managers can take such action steps as

Back 23

Signaling unequivocal and unyielding commitment to total quality and operating excellence; setting measurable objectives for quality and continuous improvement; screening out job applicants who don't have the right aptitudes or attitudes for quality-based performance; instituting employee training programs; and using online systems to give employees immediate access to best practice information and experiences

Front 24

The Six Sigma process of define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) is

Back 24

An improvement system for existing processes falling below specification and needing incremental improvement—the DMAIC process is a particularly good vehicle for improving performance when there are wide variations in how well an activity is performed

Front 25

Six Sigma processes

Back 25

Can be used for both improving existing business processes and for developing new processes or products

Front 26

Total quality management (TQM) programs

Back 26

Entail creating a corporate culture bent on continuously improving the performance of every task and every value-chain activity

Front 27

Which of the following is not a tool that managers can use to promote operating excellence and further the cause of good strategy execution?

Back 27

Strategic resource training

Front 28

Business process reengineering is a tool for

Back 28

Pulling the pieces of strategy-critical activities out of different departments and unifying their performance in a single department or cross-functional work group that has charge over the whole process and can be held accountable for performing the activity in a better, cheaper and/or more strategy-supportive fashion

Front 29

Prescribing new policies and operating procedures can aid the task of implementing strategy

Back 29

By helping align the actions and behavior company personnel with the requirements for good strategy execution, placing limits on independent action, helping overcome resistance to change, helping enforce consistency in how things are done in scattered geographic units and promoting the creation of a work climate that facilitates good strategy execution

Front 30

Managers charged with implementing and executing strategy need to be deeply involved in the budgeting and resource allocation process because

Back 30

Both A and B

Front 31

A company is said to be an international competitor when

Back 31

It competes in a select few foreign markets (and perhaps has only modest ambitions to enter additional country markets)

Front 32

One of the biggest strategic challenges to competing in the international arena include

Back 32

Whether to offer a mostly standardized product worldwide or whether to customize the company's offerings in each different country market to more precisely match the tastes and preferences of local buyers

Front 33

A U.S. manufacturer that exports goods made at its U.S. plants for shipment to foreign markets

Back 33

Becomes more competitive in foreign markets when the U.S. dollar declines in value against the currencies of the countries to which it is exporting

Front 34

The defining characteristic of multicountry competition is

Back 34

A market situation where there's considerable cross-country variation in market conditions and in the companies that are contending for leadership—with the result that the market contest among rivals in one country is not closely connected to the market contests in other countries

Front 35

The generic strategic options for competing in foreign markets include

Back 35

All of the above

Front 36

The advantages of using an export strategy to build a customer base in foreign markets include

Back 36

Minimizing risk and capital requirements

Front 37

A "think global, act global" approach to strategy-making is preferable to a "think local, act local" approach when

Back 37

Country-to-country differences are small enough to be accommodated with the framework of a mostly uniform global strategy

Front 38

The essential difference between a "think global, act global" and a "think global, act local" approach to strategy-making is that

Back 38

The "think global, act local" approach gives local managers more latitude to make minor strategy variations where necessary to better satisfy local buyers and to better match local market conditions

Front 39

To use location to build competitive advantage, a company that operates multinationally or globally must

Back 39

Consider (1) whether to concentrate each activity it performs in a few select countries or disperse performance of the activity to many nations and (2) in which countries to locate particular activities

Front 40

The classic reason why companies choose to locate a particular value chain activity in a particular country is

Back 40

Low cost

Front 41

The most important drivers shaping a company's most appealing strategic options fall into two broad categories:

Back 41

The nature of industry and competitive conditions and the firm's own resource strengths and weaknesses, competitive capabilities, opportunities and threats and market position

Front 42

To be successful in emerging industries, companies usually have to fashion a strategy that includes such strategic elements as

Back 42

Pushing hard to perfect the technology, improve product quality and develop additional attractive performance features

Front 43

A company competing in a rapid-growth industry

Back 43

Needs a strategy predicated on growing faster than the market average, so that it can boost its market share and improve its competitive standing vis-à-vis rivals

Front 44

The transition to a slower-growth, maturing industry environment tends to result in

Back 44

Growing buyer sophistication and more head-to-head competition for market share

Front 45

In a maturing market where the rates of growth are on the decline, rival firms can often improve their competitive position in the marketplace by

Back 45

Pruning marginal products and models, improving value chain efficiency, trimming costs, emphasizing cost reduction, acquiring rival firms at bargain prices, building new or more flexible competitive capabilities and expanding internationally

Front 46

A slow-exit type of end-game strategy involves

Back 46

A gradual phasing down of operations coupled with an objective of generating the greatest possible harvest of cash from the business for as long as possible

Front 47

Competitive success in fast-changing or high velocity markets tends to hinge on a company's ability to

Back 47

Improvise, experiment, adapt, reinvent and regenerate as market and competitive conditions shift rapidly and sometimes unpredictably

Front 48

Runner-up firms or second-tier firms often have to overcome such obstacles as

Back 48

Less money to spend on mass media advertising, difficulty in gaining customer recognition, less access to scale economies and limited funds for capital expansion or making acquisitions

Front 49

The overriding objective of a harvesting strategy is to

Back 49

Maximize short-term cash flows from operations

Front 50

Which of the following is not among the ten commandments for crafting successful business strategies?

Back 50

Always pursue full vertical integration so as to have full command of the industry value chain

Front 51

Diversification merits strong consideration whenever a single-business company

Back 51

Is faced with diminishing market opportunities and stagnating sales in its principal business

Front 52

The three tests for judging whether a particular diversification move can create value for shareholders are

Back 52

The attractiveness test, the cost-of-entry test and the better-off test

Front 53

The cost-of-entry test for evaluating whether diversification into a particular industry is likely to build shareholder value involves

Back 53

Considering whether a company's costs to enter the target industry are low enough to preserve attractive profitability or so high that the potentials for good profitability and return on investment are eroded

Front 54

A company can best accomplish diversification into new industries by

Back 54

Acquiring a company already operating in the target industry, creating a new subsidiary internally to compete in the target industry or forming a joint venture with another company to enter the target industry

Front 55

A joint venture is an attractive way for a company to enter a new industry when

Back 55

A firm is missing some essential skills or capabilities or resources and needs a partner to supply the missing expertise and competencies or fill the resource gaps

Front 56

A company pursuing a related diversification strategy would likely address the issue of what additional industries/businesses to diversify into by

Back 56

Identifying an attractive industry whose value chain has good strategic fit with one or more of the firm's present businesses

Front 57

The best place to look for cross-business strategic fits is

Back 57

Anywhere along the respective value chains of related businesses—no one place is best

Front 58

Different businesses are said to be "unrelated" when

Back 58

There is an absence of competitively valuable strategic fits between their respective value chains

Front 59

Which of the following is the best example of unrelated diversification?

Back 59

An electrical equipment manufacturer acquiring an athletic footwear company

Front 60

A "cash hog" type of business

Back 60

Is one that generates cash flows that are too small to fully fund its operations and growth