Exam 2

Question 1

What are the benefits and costs of planning, pitfalls of planning?

Answer 1

Benefits include intensified effort, direction, persistence, and task strategies. Pitfalls include impeding change, creating a false sense of certainty, and detachment of planners from implementation.

Question 2

Describe the steps involved in making a plan that works.

Answer 2

Set SMART goals, develop commitment, create action plans, track progress, and maintain flexibility.

Question 3

What are S.M.A.R.T. goals?

Answer 3

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

Question 4

What are proximal and distal goals? Which type of goals is more effective?

Answer 4

Proximal goals are short-term and help motivate ongoing effort; distal goals are long-term. Proximal goals are generally more effective for motivation.

Question 5

How can companies build flexibility into their plans?

Answer 5

They can use options-based planning and maintain slack resources like extra time and money.

Question 6

How do companies use plans at all levels of management?

Answer 6

Top managers use strategic plans, middle managers use tactical plans, and lower-level managers use operational plans.

Question 7

Describe the steps in rational decision making.

Answer 7

Define the problem, identify decision criteria, weight the criteria, generate alternatives, evaluate alternatives, and compute the optimal decision.

Question 8

What are the advantages and disadvantages of group decision making?

Answer 8

Advantages include better problem definition and more ideas; disadvantages include groupthink, time consumption, and dominance by strong-willed members.

Question 9

Explain the two types of conflict

Answer 9

C-type (cognitive) focuses on problem-related differences; A-type (affective) focuses on personal issues and leads to hostility.

Question 10

What are the 3 ways of creating C-type conflict

Answer 10

Devil’s advocacy, nominal group technique, and Delphi technique.

Question 11

What is rational decision making and explain the six steps to the rational decision making process:

Answer 11

It is a logical process to make optimal decisions, involving problem definition, criteria identification, weighting, generating alternatives, evaluating them, and choosing the best.

Question 12

Identify the components of a sustainable competitive advantage.

Answer 12

Resources must be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and nonsubstitutable.

Question 13

Outline steps of the strategy-making process.

Answer 13

Assess the need for change, conduct a situational analysis, and choose strategic alternatives.

Question 14

What is a corporate-level strategy? Describe the major approaches to corporate-level strategy.

Answer 14

It addresses ‘what business are we in’ and includes portfolio strategy and BCG matrix.

Question 15

What are the elements of the BCG matrix? Describe

Answer 15

Stars (high growth/high share), Cash Cows (low growth/high share), Question Marks (high growth/low share), Dogs (low growth/low share).

Question 16

Identify three grand strategies, and give examples of each.

Answer 16

Growth (e.g., mergers), stability (e.g., improving current services), and retrenchment (e.g., closing stores).

Question 17

What is an industry-level strategy? What tools can companies use to develop successful industry-level strategies?

Answer 17

Answers the question ““How should we compete in this
industry?”. Using tools like Porter’s Five Forces.

Question 18

What are Porter’s five industry forces, and how do they affect a company’s strategy?

Answer 18

They are buyer power, supplier power, threat of substitutes, threat of new entrants, and rivalry among competitors, all shaping industry attractiveness.

Question 19

What is a firm-level strategy? Describe

Answer 19

Answers the question ““How should we compete against a
particular firm?” through strategic moves.

Question 20

What are the basic elements of direct competition? Describe Strategic Moves of Direct Competition?

Answer 20

They include market commonality and resource similarity; moves include attacks and responses.

Question 21

What is the relationship between technology cycles and the S-curve pattern of innovation?

Answer 21

Technology cycles follow an S-curve: slow start, rapid improvement, and then slow progress as technology matures.

Question 22

Explain why innovation matters to companies.

Answer 22

Innovation leads to competitive advantage and prevents organizational decline.

Question 23

How can companies establish creative work environments?

Answer 23

They encourage risk-taking, provide freedom, reduce impediments, and support diverse and collaborative teams.

Question 24

Compare the experiential approach to managing innovation with the compression approach.

Answer 24

Experiential uses iteration and hands-on learning for discontinuous change; compression focuses on planning and speed for incremental improvements.

Question 25

How do change forces work to bring about change? How do resistance forces work against change forces?

Answer 25

Change forces drive organizational transformation; resistance forces maintain the status quo.

Question 26

How can companies manage resistance to change?

Answer 26

Through education, participation, support, negotiation, and sometimes coercion.

Question 27

What mistakes do managers commonly make when leading change?

Answer 27

They fail to create urgency, under-communicate the vision, don’t plan short-term wins, and declare victory too soon.

Question 28

Compare an organizational structure and an organizational process.

Answer 28

Structure is about configuration of roles and authority; process is about how work transforms inputs into outputs.

Question 29

What five methods have traditionally been used to departmentalize work and workers? Give one advantage and one disadvantage of each.

Answer 29

Functional (specialization, hard cross department communication), product (faster decision making, duplication), customer (focus on customer needs, duplication of resources), geographic (better response to different markets, duplication of resources), matrix (efficiently manage large, complex tasks, confusion of bosses)

Question 30

How do managers generally describe organizational authority?

Answer 30

Authority flows down through the chain of command, including line and staff authority.

Question 31

When delegating work, what is the relationship between responsibility, authority, and accountability?

Answer 31

Managers give authority and responsibility but hold subordinates accountable for outcomes.

Question 32

Why do companies use job specialization? How can specialized jobs be modified to eliminate the boredom and low job satisfaction associated with them?

Answer 32

Specialization increases efficiency but can be boring; job rotation, enlargement, and enrichment help reduce monotony.

Question 33

What is the main concern of the job characteristics model?

Answer 33

Its concern is internal motivation derived from meaningful and autonomous work with feedback.

Question 34

What differentiates a mechanistic organization from an organic organization?

Answer 34

Mechanistic has rigid roles and centralized authority; organic has flexible roles and decentralized authority.

Question 35

How do companies use reengineering to redesign organizational processes?

Answer 35

They rethink and radically redesign workflows to improve performance across cost, quality, speed, and service.

Question 36

What are the differences between modular and virtual organizations? What are their advantages and disadvantages?

Answer 36

Modular outsources parts and is flexible but risks control loss; virtual shares resources across firms and is agile but complex to manage.