Management Test 2
What type of planning would be used to create the festivities necessary to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of a furniture manufacturing company?
A single-use plan
____ is the emotional reaction that can occur when disagreements become personal rather than professional.
A-type conflict
Which of the following is a component of a creative work environment that encourages creativity?
Absence of organizational impediments
____ is used to assess how well managers and their families are likely to adjust to foreign cultures.
Adaptability screening
An industry-level strategy that is best suited to changes in the organization's external environment is a(n)_____ strategy.
Adaptive
The _____ is a portfolio strategy that managers use to categorize their corporation's businesses by growth rate and relative market share. This strategy helps them to decide how to invest corporate funds.
BCG matrix
ϖ According to Michael Porter, five industry forces determine an industry's overall attractiveness and potential for long-term profitability. Which of the following is one of those forces Porter identified?
Bargaining power of suppliers
Touchstone Hardware was a popular company that specialized in making floppy disks. At the start of the 21st century, when people began switching to CDs and DVDs to store their information, it was brought to the notice of senior managers that the company needed to switch its focus to the new storage devices. However, managers did not feel it was important to switch. They dismissed CDs and DVDs as just a passing phase. At this point, which stage of organizational decline is the company in?
Blinded stage
The managers of a transport company are planning how much money should be allocated to each of its units. They want to cut down unnecessary expenses and put the savings into developing the company. In this context, the managers are formulating a(n) _____.
Budget
How can companies foster the generation of new ideas?
By building a creative work environment
Mark was the person who was in charge of the plan to reinvent Supernova Automobiles. He played a major role in making a shift to building solar-powered automobiles from making regular fuel-powered cars. Mark was a(n) ____.
Change agent
According to Kurt Lewin, during the _____ stage of managing organizational change, workers and managers alter their behavior and work practices.
Change intervention
According to Michael Porter, which of the following is one of the five industry forces that determine an industry's overall attractiveness and potential for long-term profitability?
Character of the rivalry
_____ is the measure of the intensity of competitive behavior between companies in an industry.
Character of the rivalry
Which of the following methods for managing resistance to change should only be used as a last resort or under crisis conditions?
Coercion
Aries Inc. is a large a computer manufacturer which has been in the market for several years. Many other companies have started manufacturing compact, portable gadgets to keep up with the new technological developments. Aries, however, has been reluctant to adopt these changes because it thinks that its products are already popular. Which of the following concepts is illustrated in the scenario?
Competitive inertia
The _____ approach to managing innovation assumes that innovation is a predictable process made up of a series of steps and that reducing the time it takes to complete those steps can speed up innovation.
Compression
CLM is a big cable company. The company has recently declared bankruptcy and needs to engage in restructuring in order to give it more flexibility and allow it to raise capital. Since it has identified the need for strategic change, what would be the organization's next step in this strategy-making process?
Conducting a situation analysis
A firm using a(n) _____ strategy to prevent or reduce political risks will lobby foreign governments or international trade agencies to change laws, regulations, or trade barriers that hurt its business in that country.
Control
What are the strategies that can be used to minimize or adapt to the political risk inherent in global business?
Control, avoidance, and cooperation strategies
A(n) _____ is an agreement in which a foreign business owner pays a company a fee for the right to conduct that business in his or her country.
Cooperative contract
In any organization, the _____ are the less visible, internal decision-making routines, problem-solving processes, and organizational cultures that determine how efficiently inputs can be turned into outputs.
Core capabilities
_____ means producing a product or service of acceptable quality at consistently lower production charges than competitors so that the firm can offer the product or service at the lowest price in the industry.
Cost leadership
The primary disadvantage of wholly owned business is the _____.
Cost of building new operations
Levio is a company that makes mobile apps and has decided to become a market leader in the field. Levio can encourage the development of a culture where workers perceive that new ideas are welcomed by offering challenging work and supervisory encouragement. In other words, the company can create a(n) ____.
Creative work environment
A technology _____ begins with the birth of a new technology and ends when that technology reaches its limits and dies as it is replaced by a newer, substantially better technology.
Cycle
Which of the following is the final step in establishing a devil's advocacy program?
Decide whether to use, change, or not use an originally proposed solution.
____ is the process of choosing a solution from available alternatives.
Decision-making
WindWings is a company that manufactures and markets flutes, a product with a steady demand rate. It is so successful at what it does that the company controls 85 percent of the world's flute industry. In terms of the adaptive strategies, WindWings would most likely be categorized as a(n) _____.
Defender
ACST University is well known for the wide array of courses it offers. It offers courses in fine arts, humanities, science, and management. The university has dedicated divisions for each stream. In management terms, the university uses _____ to manage the different disciplines.
Departmentalization
ϖ Which of the following is a characteristic of discontinuous change?
Design competition
In _____, the old technology and several different new technologies fight to establish a new technological standard or dominant design.
Design completion
Before TREX Mobiles launched its latest smartphone, it built a prototype of the phone and tested its performance repeatedly, improving the model each time. This process is called _____.
Design iteration
ϖ The manager of a car manufacturing company in the U.S. wants to set up factories in three other countries by the end of the year. After he has set this goal, which of the following is the next step he should take in order to achieve this goal?
Develop commitment toward the goal
_____ is the rivalry between two companies that offer similar products and services, acknowledge each other as rivals, and act and react to each other's strategic actions.
Direct competition
Stellar Mobiles was a popular mobile phone brand. However, when its competitors began switching to smartphones, Stellar realized that it too needed to change in order to survive in the market, and it quickly started developing smartphones. In other words, Stellar Mobiles entered the _____ stage of the technology cycle.
Discontinuous change
When an automobile manufacturer learned that it took longer than any other manufacturer to assemble a vehicle, it purchased newer, more flexible manufacturing systems to replace its older ones. Which stage of the technology cycle is illustrated in the scenario?
Discontinuous change
Which of the following is the first step in management by objectives?
Discussing possible goals
Mathew, a manager at Happylyfe Inc., has set a long-term goal of becoming a global figure for holiday packages within the next five years. In this context, Mathew has set a(n) _____.
Distal goal
_____ is a strategy for reducing risk by buying a variety of items so that the failure of one stock or one business does not doom the entire portfolio.
Diversification
ϖ During the latter half of the last decade, flat-screen television sets were gradually replaced by LED television sets; the LED televisions became the new market standard. The latter is an example of a _____.
Dominant design
The most important factor in an attractive business climate is the _____.
Easy access to growing markets
Caleb wants to increase the efficiency of his coffee plant. He is trying to decide which option is better: installing new equipment or servicing the old ones. In the context of the decision-making concept, Caleb is _____.
Evaluating each alternative
_____ is fear of what others will think of your ideas.
Evaluation apprehension
Which of the following is NOT one of the rules for effective brainstorming?
Evaluation of ideas is encouraged
The _____ approach to innovation asserts that the key to fast product innovation is to use intuition, flexible options, and hands-on experience to reduce uncertainty and accelerate learning and understanding.
Experiential
_____ occurs when a company sells domestically produced products to customers in foreign countries.
Exporting
Which of the following represents the correct sequence of the phase model of globalization?
Exporting; cooperative contracts; strategic alliances; wholly owned affiliates
According to Kurt Lewin, managing organizational change is a simple process that requires organizational dialogue, change intervention, and reformatting.
False
An analysis of an organization's external environment begins with an assessment of the company's distinctive competencies and core capabilities.
False
An attractive business climate is defined by only one dimension: it minimizes the political risk to a company
False
An organization's purpose must regularly change to adapt to changes in the environment over time.
False
Bargaining power of buyers tends to be higher when a company sells a popular product to multiple buyers than when a company is dependent on just a few high-volume buyers.
False
Companies that succeed are often constantly re-examining strategies or competitive practices that have been successful in the past in order to ascertain their probable future success.
False
Fully functional change occurs when incremental improvements are made to a dominant technological design. In a fully functional change, the improved version of the technology is fully backward compatible with the older version.
False
Global new ventures bring a product or service to market in one foreign market at a time.
False
If retrenchment works, it is typically followed by a stability strategy.
False
Industry-level strategy is a corporate strategy that addresses the question "How should we compete against a particular firm in our industry?"
False
It appears that all companies follow the phase model of globalization when entering foreign markets.
False
Management by objectives is a two-step process in which managers and their employees discuss possible goals and then meet regularly to review progress toward the accomplishment of those goals.
False
Most companies compete directly with all the firms in their industry.
False
Multinational companies typically have no difficulty determining the correct balance between global consistency and local adaptation.
False
Nearly all technology cycles follow a bell-shaped pattern of innovation.
False
One of the disadvantages of global joint ventures is that, like licensing and franchising, they help companies avoid tariff and nontariff barriers to entry.
False
Organizational innovation is defined as "doing things differently" inside an organization.
False
Reactors follow the consistent strategy of anticipating and reacting to potential external opportunities and threats prior to their occurrence.
False
Regional trading is defined as a method of investment in which a company builds a new business or buys an existing business in a foreign country.
False
Resistance to change usually results from organizational factors: such as the absence of promotion guidelines, bonuses, and praise
False
Resistance to change usually results from organizational factors: such as the absence of promotion guidelines, bonuses, and praise.
False
Specialized jobs are generally inefficient
False
Standing plans deal with unique, one-time-only events.
False
Technology cycles for low-tech products follow the typical U-curve pattern cycle of innovation.
False
The General Electric Workout is a special kind of activity-oriented change.
False
The only kinds of adaptive strategies are defending, analyzing, and reacting.
False
The phase model of globalization is one in which a company makes the transition from a domestic company to a global company in three sequential phases. The three phases are exporting, wholly owned subsidiaries, and strategic alliances.
False
The six steps in the rational decision-making process are as follows: (1) frame the problem, (2) identify decision criteria, (3) weight the criteria, (4) generate alternative courses of action, (5) evaluate each alternative, and (6) compute the optimal decision.
False
What works well when managing innovation after technological discontinuities also works well when managing innovation during periods of incremental change.
False
When companies are performing above or better than their strategic reference points, top management is more likely to choose a daring, risk-taking strategy.
False
When conducting global business, companies should attempt to identify the two types of political risk, which are political uncertainty and economic uncertainty.
False
S.M.A.R.T. goals are Specific, Meaningful, Active, Reachable, and Timely.
False;
The purpose of action plans is to leave commitments open by maintaining a cushion of resources, such as extra time, people, money, or production capacity, that can be used to address and adapt to unanticipated changes, problems, or opportunities.
False;
A particular society emphasizes the importance of relationship in its culture. They take good care of the weak people in their society and value modesty. In this context, this society has a(n) _____ culture.
Feminine
According to Hofstede's research on cultural dimensions, _____ cultures emphasize the importance of relationships, modesty, caring for the weak, and quality of life.
Feminine
_____ strategies typically work in market niches that competitors have overlooked or have difficulty serving.
Focus
Protectionism is the use of trade barriers to protect local companies and their workers from _____.
Foreign competition
For an initial fee and royalties, Lemmongrass Inc. has licensed its entire business to an organization called Powersurge, located in another country. It has provided this organization with training and marketing assistance to successfully run the business. In this context, Powersurge is a(n) _____.
Franchisee
Which of the following is a component of a creative work environment?
Freedom
Which of the following is an accepted method for tracking progress toward goal achievement?
Gathering and providing performance feedback
The acronym GATT stands for the _____.
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
Which of the following is the first step in establishing a devil's advocacy program?
Generate a potential solution
Backward compatibility is an important consideration for software users who are using an accounting program to facilitate their tax preparation and who want to use a newer version that has greater capacity. Therefore, many software manufacturers engage in _____.
Generational change
Which of the following is an example of a common approach to corporate-level strategy?
Grand strategies
The purpose of a _____ strategy is to increase profits, revenues, market share, or the number of places (stores, offices, locations) in which the company does business.
Growth
Over the long run, the best way for a company to sustain competitive advantage is to create _____ year after year.
Innovation stream
Which of the following is an advantage of planning?
It encourages people to work harder for extended periods.
Which of the following is true of global business?
It is the buying and selling of goods and services by people from different countries.
A technology can become a dominant design if:
It solves a practical problem
Robert Mondavi Wineries entered into an agreement with Baron Philippe de Rothschild, owner of Boreaux's First Growth chateau, to produce a top quality wine in California. The two companies working together to create a new product is an example of _____.
Joint venture
Which of the following is NOT a step in the management by objectives (MBO) process?
Jointly develop operational plans
A technology cycle occurs whenever there are major advances or changes in the _____ in a field or discipline.
Knowledge, tools, and techniques
In the context of organizational development interventions, the purpose of _____ interventions is to change the character and performance of an organization, business unit, or department.
Large-system
Sodima is a French cooperative that owns the name, the trade secrets, and the patents of Yoplait yogurt. General Mills pays Sodima for the right to sell Yoplait yogurt in the United States. This is an example of _____.
Licensing
Who among the following is responsible for developing operational plans?
Lower-level managers
The last step in effective planning is to _____.
Maintain flexibility in planning
Which of the following is a commonly used method for increasing goal commitment?
Making goals public
Which of the following is a characteristic of the inaction stage of organizational decline?
Managers wrongly assume that they can easily correct the problems, so they don't feel the situation is urgent.
_____ is the degree to which two companies have overlapping products, services, or customers in multiple ventures.
Market commonality
Merissa, a famous dress designer, wants to launch a new collection. She wants the best material available for her dresses and does not want to settle for anything lesser. In this context, Merissa is _____.
Maximizing
Which of the following is NOT one of the basic methods for managing resistance to change?
Micromanagement
ϖ Who among the following is responsible for the creation of tactical plans?
Middle managers
Formal project review points used to assess progress and performance are called _____.
Milestones
Which of the following is an aspect of the experiential approach to learning?
Multifunctional teams
Triston is a company owned by a single owner with headquarters in Switzerland and manufacturing plants in 90 other nations. Triston is an example of a(n) _____.
Multinational corporation
_____ is the set of shared values and beliefs that affects the perceptions, decisions, and behavior of the people from a particular country.
National culture
_____ plans are the day-to-day plans for producing or delivering the organization's products and services.
Operational
Omega Corp. has a goal of increasing its production and reducing overhead costs. To achieve this goal, the company has developed four alternate action plans. The idea is to monitor how these plans work and then invest more in the one that shows maximum results. This kind of planning that allows for flexibility is known as _____.
Option-based planning
When companies don't anticipate, recognize, neutralize, or adapt to the internal or external pressures that threaten their survival, it results in _____.
Organizational decline
_____ is defined as a philosophy and collection of planned change interventions designed to improve an organization's long-term health and performance.
Organizational development
Which of the following is NOT one of the components of creative work environments?
Organizational impediments
Parkline is a popular brand of formal wear. The company decided on a new marketing strategy that actually involved its target audience participating in the campaign. This included an online virtual reality game that was highly popular among the audience, bringing the brand mass attention. Following this, their sales skyrocketed. This is an example of _____.
Organizational innovation
Which of the following is NOT one of the five industry forces that determine an industry's overall attractiveness and potential for long-term profitability?
Organizational synergy
Most companies have used the _____ to successfully enter foreign markets.
Phase model of globalization
_____ is choosing a goal and developing a method or strategy to achieve a goal.
Planning
____ are types of standing plans.
Policies and procedures
Many companies in Dansland retracted their businesses as the government passed a new law requiring the companies to pay double the tax for conducting business in Dansland. This is a _____ that the companies doing business in Dansland have faced.
Policy uncertainty
Stardust Inc. is expanding its global operations into South Fordland in spite of the terrorist activities in the country. As Stardust Inc. expands into South Fordland, it must deal with _____.
Political uncertainty
Tugstinia is one of only two countries in the world that produces a mineral required in the manufacturing of cellular phones. Several mining companies recently moved their operations out of the region due to a civil war resulting from a change in rulers. This is an example of how can influence global business.
Political uncertainty
What are the two types of political risk that affect companies conducting global business?
Political uncertainty and policy uncertainty
Susan is a manager at a grocery store. Every morning when she enters the store, there are a series of steps that should be taken by her. She has to switch on all the lights, switch on the air conditioner, check if any product is expired, and check if the cash registers are working. In this context, Susan is following a(n) _____.
Procedure
____ are standing plans that indicate the specific steps that should be taken in response to a particular event.
Procedures
ϖ In case of a fire, most organizations have a series of actions that must take place beginning with notifying the fire department and include evacuating buildings. In this context, which of the following types of standing plans is used by the organizations?
Procedures
Which of the following is a disadvantage of face-to-face brainstorming that is overcome by electronic brainstorming
Production blocking
_____ occurs when you have an idea but have to wait to share it because someone else is already presenting an idea to the group.
Production blocking
Because of slowing sales, Ace Glue started promoting innovative uses for its all-purpose glue. By searching for new market opportunities, the manufacturer of Ace Glue is using which type of adaptive strategy?
Prospecting
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) _____.
Protected intellectual property
A cosmetics company that is considering entering the South American market would be especially interested in the discretionary income within that region. In this context, which of the following is a determining factor in its global strategy?
Purchasing power
_____ are companies that have a small share of a fast-growing market.
Question marks
Which of the following is a trend that has allowed companies to skip the phase model when going global?
Quick, reliable air travel
To protect its farmers, Japan put limitations on the amount of mushrooms and leeks that could be imported from China. This limitation is an example of a(n) _____.
Quota
A _____ resource is a resource that is not controlled or possessed by many competing firms.
Rare
In an attempt to stop declining profitability, Quint Cement Co., a construction material manufacturer, stopped manufacturing other kinds of cement products and concentrated on special anti corrosion cement. If Quint Cement Co. is successful in making the needed changes, it will more than likely implement a _____ strategy.
Recovery
The second step in a retrenchment strategy is _____.
Recovery
The customers of a restaurant are requested to rate the service of the waiters on a sheet of paper. The rate of each waiter is then compared to the rates of the all the other waiters. This is the method of _____ comparisons.
Relative
One method of weighing decision criteria uses ____, which is a process where each decision is compared directly to every other criterion.
Relative comparisons
Managing global joint ventures can be difficult because they:
Represent a merging of four cultures
In the context of managing change, _____ forces support the status quo.
Resistance
______ are the assets, capabilities, processes, information, and knowledge that an organization uses to improve its effectiveness and efficiency, to create and sustain competitive advantage, and to fulfill a need or solve a problem.
Resources
In an attempt to stop declining profitability, Chimos Inc., a chemical company, removed petrochemical products from its production and concentrated on specialty chemicals, a less capital-intensive, less cyclical business. What type of a grand strategy was Chimos Inc. using?
Retrenchment
Significant cost reductions, layoffs of employees, closing of poorly performing stores, offices, or manufacturing plants, or closing or selling entire lines of products or services would be characteristic of a _____ strategy.
Retrenchment
The purpose of a _____ strategy is to turn around very poor company performance by shrinking the size or scope of the business.
Retrenchment
In the context of the strategic reference point theory, the _____ strategy aims to protect an existing competitive advantage.
Risk-avoiding
____ occurs when managers choose an alternative that is good enough, rather than the best possible alternative
Satisficing
Which of the following is one of the sources of resistance to change?
Self-interest
Due to an earthquake, the servers of an online shopping company were affected and the internet was down. The managers of the company had to formulate and carry out a procedure so that businesses could run normally while the servers were being fixed. To overcome this unexpected problem, the mangers devised a(n) _____.
Single-use plan
____ are a type of operational plan.
Single-use plans
A _____ is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in an organization's internal environment and the opportunities and threats in its external environment.
Situation analysis
Companies often choose a _____ strategy when their external environment doesn't change much or after they have struggled with periods of explosive growth.
Stability
Groupthink occurs in
Standing committees whose members are under no pressure to agree
The ____ is a type of operational plan that saves managers time because it is created once and then used repeatedly to handle frequently recurring events.
Standing plan
AlphaWheels Inc. sell a range high-end bikes. Two-thirds of its profits come from the sale of these bikes. The bikes have a large share of a fast-growing market. According to the BCG matrix, the range of high-end bikes would be classified as a(n) _____.
Star
ϖ _____ is a discrepancy between a company's intended strategy and the strategic actions managers take when actually implementing that strategy.
Strategic dissonance
_____ are the targets that managers use to measure whether their firm has developed the core competencies that it needs to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
Strategic reference points
Which of the following should be a key issue for a company once it decides to go global?
Strike the right balance between global consistency and local adaptation
_____ are long-term, low-interest loans, cash grants, and tax deductions used to develop and protect companies in special industrie
Subsidies
_____ plans specify how a company will use resources, budgets, and people to accomplish specific goals within its mission.
Tactical
Management by objectives (MBO) is a management technique often used to develop and carry out .
Tactical plan
In 2000, the United States imposed a tax on all steel imports in an effort to protect about 5,000 jobs. This tax is an example of a(n) _____.
Tariff
According to the S.M.A.R.T. guidelines, goals should be ____.
Task oriented; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.
Feldman Films is a company associated with photography. The development of the digital camera forced Feldman Films into the innovation stream because the new imaging process was a(n) _____.
Technological discontinuity
In terms of innovation streams, what occurred when customers purchased flat-screen computer monitors to replace the older, bulkier monitors?
Technological substitution
_____ occurs when customers purchase new technologies to replace older technologies.
Technological substitution * Technological substitution occurs when customers purchase new technologies to replace older technologies.
_____ is defined as the knowledge, tools, and techniques used to transform inputs into outputs.
Technology
ϖ Which of the following is an example of core capabilities of an organization?
The organization's skills in maintaining large inventories effectively
Which of the following conditions must be met if a firm's resources are to be used to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage?
The resources must be rare
Which of the following statements is true about tactical plans?
They direct behavior and efforts for six to two years.
ϖ The _____ is a measure of the degree to which barriers to entry make it easy or difficult for new companies to get started in an industry.
Threat of new entrants
Souzia, a small tropical country, boycotted the products of an international clothing store because the company manufactures and exports some of its goods from Argonia, the country with which Souzia has long standing political problems. This boycott is an example of _____.
Trade barrier
A focus strategy entails using either a cost leadership or a differentiation approach to producing a good or service.
True
Approximately one-third of multinational companies enter foreign markets through wholly owned affiliates.
True
Based on the research evidence, related diversification appears to be a better strategy for portfolio management than unrelated diversification.
True
Both proximal and distal goals are used to provide additional motivation and rewards for employees.
True
Companies that want to sustain a competitive advantage must understand and protect themselves from the strategic threats of innovation.
True
Corporate-level strategy is the overall organizational strategy that addresses the question "What business or businesses are we in or should we be in?"
True
Creating and executing a plan is one of the most important tasks of a manager.
True
Declaring victory too soon is one of the mistakes managers often make in the refreezing stage of change.
True
Direct foreign investment is an increasingly important and common method of conducting global business.
True
Dominant designs emerge because they solve a practical problem, because of the negotiations of independent standards bodies, or because of critical mass.
True
For planning to be effective, workers need a specific, challenging goal as well as regular feedback to track their progress.
True
From a competitive standpoint, resource similarity means that the strategic actions your company takes could probably be matched by your direct competitors.
True
Global business is defined as the buying and selling of goods and services by people from different countries.
True
Global joint ventures can be difficult to manage because they represent a merging of four cultures.
True
Groupthink is more likely to occur in a highly cohesive group that is insulated from others and has no established procedure for systematically defining problems and exploring alternatives.
True
If companies focus too much on local adaptation, they run the risk of losing the cost effectiveness and productivity that result from using standardized rules and procedures throughout the world
True
In a multinational company, managers at company headquarters value global consistency as it simplifies decision making.
True
Multinational corporations are corporations that own businesses in two or more countries.
True
One of the advantages of a virtual organization is the fact that it allows member companies to share costs.
True
Planning can greatly improve organizational and individual performance.
True
Planning can impede change, create a false sense of certainty, and lead to the detachment of planners.
True
Portfolio strategy is a corporate-level strategy that minimizes risk by diversifying investment among various businesses or product lines.
True
Specialized jobs are characterized by simple, easy-to-learn steps; low variety; and high repetition.
True
Strategic dissonance is a discrepancy between management's intended strategy and the strategy actually implemented by the managers
True
Tactical plans and objectives are used to direct behavior, efforts, and attention over the next six months to two years.
True
Technological discontinuities are followed by discontinuous change, which is characterized by technological substitution and design competition.
True
Technological innovation not only makes it possible to duplicate the benefits obtained from a company's distinctive advantage but also quickly creates an opportunity to turn a company's competitive advantage into a competitive disadvantage.
True
The criteria for choosing an office/manufacturing location are different from the criteria for entering a foreign market.
True
The evidence clearly shows that how well an expatriate's spouse and family adjust to the foreign culture is the most important factor in determining the success or failure of an international assignment.
True
The purpose of the Maastricht Treaty of Europe was to create the European Union with one common currency, the euro, for its members.
True
The term decision making is used to refer to the process of choosing a solution from available alternatives.
True
The threat of substitute products or services is a measure of the ease with which customers can find substitutes for an industry's goods or services
True
The three kinds of standing plans are policies, procedures, and rules and regulations.
True
The three positioning strategies are cost leadership, differentiation, and focus.
True
The typical S-curve pattern of innovation indicates that both early and late in the technology cycle, increased effort (i.e., money, research and development) brings only small improvements in technological performance.
True
There are four conditions that must be met if a firm's resources are to be used to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The resources must be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and nonsubstitutable.
True
Two factors that help companies determine the growth potential of foreign markets are the purchasing power of the consumers and types of foreign competitors already in the market.
True
The biggest disadvantage associated with licensing is that the licensor gives up control over the quality of the good or service sold by the foreign licensee.
True *
The three kinds of operational plans are single-use plans, standing plans, and budgets.
True-
Samantha's, a chain of coffeehouses, also markets a line of compilation CDs and other non-coffee items. The making and marketing of the CDs and other non-coffee products would be an example of _____.
Unrelated diversification
When Klonorox Corporation, a manufacturer of bleach and bleach-based cleaning products, acquired Masterssauce brand steak sauce; it was an example of _____.
Unrelated diversification
Clive Motor Company solely owns and operates manufacturing plants in Brazil, Chile, Germany and India. Which of the following methods for conducting global business has Clive Motor Company used in this example?
Wholly owned affiliate
The trade agreement that represented the most significant change to the regulations governing global trade during the 1990s was the _____.
World trade organization
The use of _____ in planning produces a false sense of certainty and is often cited as one of the major pitfalls of planning.
assumptions
In the typical S-curve pattern of innovation, increased effort (i.e., money, research and development) brings only small improvements in technological performance _____.
at both the beginning and end of the cycle
A company's purpose statement _____.
is enduring and inspirational
The primary disadvantage of customer departmentalization is:
it leads to duplication of resources.
ϖ An organization that has increased the number of different tasks that a worker performs within one particular job has engaged in _____.
job enlargement
The job design approach associated with _____ involves increasing the number of different tasks that a worker performs within one particular job and gives workers the authority and control to make meaningful decisions about their work.
job enrichment
German chip manufacturer, Infineon AG, has joined with Motorola Inc. and Agere Systems Inc. to establish a new company in order to develop and license chip designs for cellphones. These three companies have created a _____.
joint venture
Under conditions of _____, a competitive attack by a rival is more likely to produce sustained competitive advantage.
low resource similarity
Resource similarity and _____ are factors that determine the extent to which firms will be in direct competition with each other.
market commonality
Two factors determine the extent to which firms will be in direct competition with each other
market commonality and resource similarity.
The primary advantage of _____ is the fact that it allows companies to manage large, complex tasks efficiently by avoiding duplication.
matrix departmentalization
A _____ is a nontax method of increasing the cost or reducing the volume of imported goods.
nontariff barrier
Budgets are a type of ____ plans.
operational
_____ planning allows companies to maintain flexibility by making small simultaneous investments in many alternative plans.
options-based
Creativity was needed to improve efficiency without raising costs at an automobile maker. Over the last few years, the company has successfully implemented a creative engineering program that allows its plants to produce more than one type of car from the same assembly line. This successful change to a flexible manufacturing system is an example of ____.
organizational innovation
To increase its customer base, Alpha LLC. has decided to sell its products in two new states. Alpha LLC. is performing the _____ function of management.
planning
A(n) ____ is a standing plan that indicates the general course of action that should be taken in response to a particular event or situation.
policy
A ____ exists when there is a gap between a desired state (what managers want) and an existing state (the situation that the managers are facing).
problem
The manager of a packaging and shipping company has set a short-term goal of increasing the customer base by 5% in the next two months. In this context, the manager has set a _____.
proximal goal
Top management is responsible for developing ____.
strategic plans
A(n) _____ is a direct tax on imported goods.
tariff
The two general kinds of trade barriers are _____.
tariff barriers and nontariff barriers
The phases of a technology cycle within an innovation stream begins with:
technological discontinuity.
The strategy-making process begins with:
the assessment of the need for strategic change
One of the important conditions that a firm must meet in order to gain a sustainable competitive advantage with its capital is:
the firm's resources must be imperfectly imitable
According to Michael Porter, _____ is one of the five industry forces that determine an industry's overall attractiveness and potential for long-term profitability.
threat of new entrants
Encouraging worker participation in goal setting, making goals public, and getting top management's support are all recommended ways to increase goal commitment in a company.
true;
Which of the following is one of the three steps in the basic process of managing organizational change outlined by Kurt Lewin?
unfreezing
A key feature of a _____ is that its composition is always changing.
virtual organization
A(n) _____ can be best defined as an organization that is part of a network in which many companies share skills, costs, capabilities, markets, and customers to collectively solve customer problems or provide specific products or services.
virtual organization
_____ is the most important factor in determining the success or failure of an international assignment.
willingness of an expatriate's spouse and family to adjust to a foreign culture
Hofstede's research has shown that there are _____.
five consistent dimensions of cultural differences across countries
Which of the following is true about planning
gives direction to managerial efforts
A multinational company that acts with _____ has offices, manufacturing plants, and distribution facilities in different countries that are run based on the same rules, guidelines, policies, and procedures.
global consistency
A(n) _____ strategy is a broad corporate-level strategic plan used to achieve strategic goals and guide the strategic alternatives that managers of individual businesses or subunits may use.
grand
For options-based planning to work, the organization must _____.
have slack resources
Which of the following is a pitfall of planning?
impede change & slow needed adaptation
Which of the following statements about resistance to change is true?
caused by misunderstanding and distrust.
A(n) ____ is the individual who is formally in charge of guiding a change effort.
change agent
Organizations can achieve a _____ by using their resources to provide greater value for customers than competitors can.
competitive advantage
An organization is experiencing _____ when it is reluctant to change strategies or competitive practices that have been successful in the past.
competitive inertia
Which of the following is a drawback of planning?
detachment of planners.
During the last decade, there was an increase in sales in CDs, DVDs, pen drives, and portable hard discs, as people sought to replace their obsolete floppy discs. In terms of the technology cycle, this is an example of _____.
discontinuous change
In the _____ stage of organizational decline, a new CEO may be brought in to oversee the closing of stores, offices, and manufacturing facilities, the final layoff of managers and employees, and the sale of assets.
dissolution
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT):
eliminated tariffs in ten specific industries.
After Malta was permitted to join the European Union (EU), the other countries of the EU removed all taxes on the import of goods manufactured in Malta. Malta was preparing to become part of a(n) ____.
regional trading zone
A(n) _____ is a committee within a company that analyzes the company's own weaknesses to determine how competitors could exploit them for competitive advantage.
shadow-strategy task force