CBA 469: Business Policy Exam 1 (Study Guide)

A positive relationship between vision statements and firm performance is more likely to exist under certain circumstances:

- The visions are customer-oriented. - Internal stakeholders are invested in defining the vision. - Organizational structures such as compensation systems align with the firm's vision statement.

What strategy is not:

1. grandiose statements are not strategy 2. a failure to face a competitive challenge is not strategy. 3. operational effectiveness, competitive benchmarking, or other tactical tools are not strategy.

Diagnosis:

A ______________________ of the competitive advantage. This element is accomplished through analysis of the firm's external and internal environments.

Competitive Advantage:

A firm that achieves superior performance relative to other competitors in the same industry or the industry average.

Sustainable Competitive Advantage:

A firm that is able to outperform its competitors or the industry average over a prolonged period

Strategy:

A set of goal-directed actions a firm takes to gain and sustain superior performance relative to competitors.

This a strategy that can improve performance and result in competitive advantage. Is a model that links strategy analysis, strategy formulation, and strategy implementation, which together helps managers plan and implement

AFI strategy framework

Strategic Intent:

Basing actions on its vision, a firm will build the necessary resources and capabilities through continuous organizational learning, including learning from failure, to translate into reality what begins as a stretch goal

To assess competitive advantage, we compare firm performance to a ___________

Benchmark

Vision:

Captures an organization's aspiration and spells out what it ultimately wants to accomplish.

A firm that achieves superior performance relative to other firms in the same industry or the industry average has a(n)

Competitive advantage

Strategic commitments are actions that are

Costly, long-term oriented, and difficult to reverse.

Economies of Scale:

Decreases in cost per item as output increases

Customer-Oriented Vision:

Defines a business in terms of providing solutions to customer needs.

Good Strategy consist of 3 elements:

Diagnosis, Guiding Policy, Set of Coherent Actions

Strategy Framework

Embodies this view of strategic management

Competitive Disadvantage:

If a firm underperforms its rivals or the industry average

Strategy

Is a set of goal-directed actions a firm takes to gain and sustain superior performance relative to competitors.

Strategic commitments are actions that are:

Long-term Oriented.

To achieve superior performance, companies compete for resources:

New ventures: financial and human capital, Existing companies: profitable growth, Charities: donations, Universities: the best students and professors, Sports teams: championships, Celebrities: media attention

Benchmark:

Performance of other firms in the same industry or an industry average. strategic positioning

without commitment and involvement from top managers, any statement of values remains merely a _________.

Public Relations Exercise

Competitive Advantage is always _____, not ____.

Relative; Not Absolute

To achieve superior performance, companies compete for _____________

Resources

Competitive Parity:

Should two or more firms perform at the same level

In a firm, ________ frames a guiding policy to address the competitive challenge.

Strategy Formulation

Which of the following stages in the AFI strategy framework involves designing a business, corporate, and global state?

Strategy Formulation

Organizational Design:

Structure, Culture, and Control

Corporate governance and business ethics strategy is the art and science of ____ and _____.

Success and Failure

Strategic Management

The integrative management field that combines analysis, formulation, and implementation in the quest for competitive advantage.

Visionary companies are able to outperform their competitors because

They provide more aspirational visions.

Which of the following statements about product-oriented visions is true?

They tend to force managers to take a myopic view of the competitive landscape.

Guiding Policy:

To address the competitive challenge. this element is accomplished through strategy formulation, resulting in the firm's corporate, business, and functional strategies.

strategy is about creating superior value, while containing the cost to create it or by offering similar value at lower costs. managers achieve these combinations of value and cost through strategic positioning requires ___

Trade-Offs

The key to successful strategy is to combine a set of activities to stake out a ______ within an industry.

Unique Strategic Position

Set of Coherent Actions:

Used to implement the firm's guiding policy. This element is accomplished through strategy implementation.

What commitments do we make, and what guardrails do we put up in place, to act both legally and ethically as we pursue our vision and mission?

Values

The first step to gain and sustain a competitive advantage is to define an organization's ____, ____, and ____.

Vision, Mission, and Values

When do employees fail to adopt the organizational values of a firm?

When the top managers in the firm are merely paying lip service to the firm's stated values

Trade-Offs:

a balance achieved between two desirable but incompatible features; a compromise.

Good Strategy:

enables a firm to achieve superior performance relative to its competitors.

During strategy implementation, managers primarily focus on deciding the

type of corporate governance that is most effective and ways in which it can put the formulated strategy into practice