International exam 6
Victor Luis is the chief executive officer of:
3M (USA)
In addition to "selling" their vision, top management at both Whirlpool and GE face the formidable task of building:
A cadre of globally oriented managers
New entrants to an industry bring all of the following except:
A desire to compete
Which of the following does not contribute to the establishment of an international division?
A lack of desire by management to scan the globe for opportunities and threats
Which global company has dissolved its matrix structure in order to achieve "greater speed and efficiency by further focusing and flattening the organization"?
ABB
In developing countries, globalization opponents accuse companies of:
All of these
Concepts such as "assembler value chains" and "downstream value chains" are associated with:
Lean production
Taiwan's Acer prospered by following founder Stan Shih's strategy of approaching the world computer market from the periphery. By the time Acer was ready to target the United States in earnest, it was already the number PC brand in key countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. This is an example of which component of competitive innovation?
Loose bricks
Satya Nadella is the chief executive officer of:
Microsoft (USA)
Organizations, in order to be globally successful, must be viewed as a portfolio of:
competencies
Which of the following does not describe the Toyota Production System (TPS)?
fixed setup time
Which of the following is not identified by Porter as one of the five forces that explains competition in an industry?
Bargaining power of competitors
The advantages that a regional management center can offer include all of the following except:
Considerable cost saving.
Porter's four generic strategies for achieving competitive advantage are:
Cost leadership, product differentiation, cost focus, focused differentiation
As a company's initial international business involvement becomes too much for single manager or export department to handle, the next step is typically to establish a:
International division structure
Intel's loose brick was:
It's narrow focus on complex microprocessors for PC's
Primary stakeholders include all of the following except:
Media
Rugman and D'Cruz flagship model is evident in the strategies of all but one of the following businesses:
Microsoft
Suppose you are a sales representative for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in Japan. You are trying to convince Toshiba to buy your company's super fast Opteron microprocessor for its new laptop computer. Toshiba's representative seems interested; but eventually does not actually place an order. Confidentiality, the representative tells you that he is afraid that intel will withhold shipments of its Pentium 4 if he does business with AMD. Thinking about Intel's role in this scenario, which of the following elements of the five forces model is evident here?
Barriers to entry
The key to maintaining competitive advantage, according to W. Edwards Deming is:
Being committed to constant improvement
Which of the following statements is incorrect regarding Benetton Group?
Benotton's business model is suited for emerging markets
Which of the following is not one of the four arenas in which dynamic strategic interactions are played out in hyper competitive industries?
Buyer and supplier power
Walmart refuses to stick CDs bearing parental advisory stickers for explicit lyrics or violent imagery. Recording artists who want their recording available at Walmart have the option of altering lyrics and song titles or deleting offensive tracks. Likewise, artists are sometimes asked to change album cover art if Walmart deems it offensive. Considering the elements of the five forces model this is an example of:
Buyer power
In a socially responsible firm, employees performs all of the following except:
Develop their own core ideologies
Secondary stakeholders include all of the following except:
Employees
Rebecca Van Dyck is the chief marketing officer of:
Facebook (United States)
According to Michael Porter's research on the competitive advantage of nations, human, physical, knowledge, capita, and infrastructure resources are all components of a country's
Factor conditions
In today's dynamic global competitive environment, organizations needs to develop new forms of:
Flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness
Germany's Mittelstand companies have been extremely successful pursuing:
Focused differentiation
Which of the following is not an element of Rugman and D'Cruz's flagship model?
Focused differentiation
A nation's banking system, health care system, transportation system, and communications system, as well as the availability and cost of using these systems are considered as ___________ resources available for competitive advantage of a business
Infrastructure
Which global marketing expert recommends an organization design based on a "global superstructure" that views the world in terms of 30 regions?
Kenichi Ohmae
Factors which determine suppliers' ability to gain leverage over industry firms include all of the following except:
Large numbers and relatively few in number.
Caterpillar's attention was focused elsewhere when Komatsu made its first international entry into the Eastern European Market. based on the strategic intent Framework, this is an example of:
Loose bricks
Intel's focus on designing complex, expensive microprocessors for PCs enabled competitors to develop cheaper chip sets for non-PC electronics devices. In the strategic intent model of competitive advantage, this is an example of:
Loose bricks
Organizations vary in terms of the size and potential of targeted global markets and local management competence in different country markets. Considering different factors and facts related to the constellation of pressures, which of the following statements is not accurate?
No two organizations arrive at precisely the same organizational pattern
Which of the following does not belong in a list of mass production in an automobile company such as Ford?
Outsourcing from supplier specialists
The town of impruneta in the Italian province of Florence, is a source of high-quality terracotta; the high iron content of the area's clay means that the finished pieces can withstand temperatures as low as -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Many artisan pieces are rolled by hand, including those imported in the United States by Seibert & Rice. This is an example of ____________ resources available for competitive advantage of a business
Physical
Boeing has reorganized it's commercial transport design and manufacturing engineers from functional lines into a matrix organization. This new design is expected to have all of the following benefits except:
Provide customer contacts
A company with headquarters in Europe and operational units in Canada, the United States, and Mexico would be well advised to consider establishing a(n):
Regional management center
According to Michael Porter's research on competitive advantage of nations, Switzerland's large synthetic dye industry and the success of the Swiss pharmaceuticals can be explained in terms of:
Related and supporting industries
All of the following statements regarding Starbucks are true except:
Shareholders consider Starbucks' stock to be risky investments
Which one of the following companies has a woman as the global chief marketing officer in the United States?
Starbucks
An important leadership task involves articulating all of the following points except:
Status
Canon introduced the first full-color copiers and the first copiers with "connectivity" —the ability to print images from such sources as video camcorders and computers. This Canon example shows how an innovative marketing strategy—with fresh approaches to product, pricing, distribution, and selling—leads to overall competitive advantage in the marketplace. This strategy can be classified under:
Changing the rules
When company management decides that it is unwilling to follow the "conventional wisdom" and instead finds a new way to gain competitive advantage, it might be said to be:
Changing the rules of engagement
Management experts often use terms like ____________ to describe an organization in which autonomous business units operate with their own agendas and a minimum of horizontal interdependence
Chimneys
Hershey rolled out a new line of condensed-milk candies, named Yo-man, specifically targeting the premium candy segment in:
China
Building layers of advantage is one of the elements of Hamel and prahalad's framework for:
Competitive innovation
Many firms have gained competitive advantage by disadvantaging rivals through:
Competitive innovation
In the shipbuilding industry; Polish and Chinese shipyards offer simple, standard vessel types at low prices that reflect low production costs. This represents generic strategy related to:
Cost focus
The issue of sustainability is central to this strategy concept:
Cost focus
According to strategy expert Richard D'Aveni, the actions taken by Swatch in the global watch industry illustrate hypercompetitive dynamic maneuvering in which arena?
Cost/quality
In the global watch industry, the success of the Swatch brand resulted in a manufacturing renaissance for Switzerland. In the strategic framework known as hypercompetition, Swatch's success is an example of interactions in which arena?
Cost/quality
India's Tata Group participates in a variety of industries. Which one of the following statements is incorrect?
Tata Group's Taj Hotels acquires Ritz Carlton in Boston and sold it at a loss
The leading country in the "worlds most competitive countries" is
The United States
Rugman and D'Cruz have developed an alternative framework to Porter's five forces model. The framework, based on business networks, is called:
The flagship model
The characteristics of home demand for a firm's products or services include all of the following except:
The size of the competitors' share of the home demand
The ability to speak foreign languages is one difference between managers born and raised in the United States and those born and raised elsewhere. Which of the following is true and reflects this statement?
There are 200 million Chinese children studying english
Which of the following is the best organization structure for global marketing?
There is no single "best" structure.
Barnes & Nobel entered the online book market as a response to the threat posed by amazon.com. This approach represents which aspect of the porter's five forces model?
Threat of new entrants
According to the hypercompetition model of competitive advantage, which of the following allows the firm to create an entirely new product or market?
Timing advantage
The automobile industry has become fiercely competitive on a global basis. The initial success of foreign automakers in the United States was due to all of the following reasons except:
U.S. manufacturers did not realize drivers' preferences.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and other Japanese companies manufacture airplanes under license to U.S. firms and also work as subcontractors for aircraft parts and systems. This type of effort is known as:
collaborating
Nike came under fire from critics who alleged poor working conditions in the factories that make the company's athletic shoes. This is an example of the demand for:
corporate social responsibility
Employee ability is emphasized in a lean production environment. Before being hired, people seeking jobs with Toyota participate in the Day of Work, an assessment test to determine who has the right mix of qualities. These qualities include all of the following except:
decision making
Maytag has been called "the Rolls-Royce of washers and dryers." Maytag markets Neptune, a high-tech machine, at a substantially higher than regular washer prices. This is an example of:
differentiation
In contrast to the lean producers, U.S. mass producers typically maintain operations that involve all of the following except:
employee teamwork
Hundreds of small companies such as Martin-Logan and Mark Levinson compete in the high-end audiophile segment of the consumer electronics industry. If analyzed in terms of Porter's generic strategies framework, such companies might be said to be pursuing competitive advantage via:
focused differentiation
Which of the following generic strategies best captures the way Harley-Davidson has achieved competitive advantage in the global motorcycle industry?
focused differentiation
The universal concerns for global companies established by the United Nations Global Compact consist of the following three dimensions:
human rights, labor, and the environment.
According to Prahalad and Hamel, a core competence has all of the following characteristics except:
it is easy for competitors to imitate.
In the terminology of the strategic intent framework for competitive advantage, a firm that establishes advantages in a number of different areas has:
layers of advantage.
When managers at Matsushita realized that cost advantages in TV production were often fleeting, they added quality and reliability advantages, thus establishing:
layers of advantage.
An approach to competitive advantage that exploits weaknesses in competitors' narrow-focus strategies is called a ___________ strategy.
loose bricks
Which of the following is not identified by porter as one of the possible types of barriers to entry in an industry?
loose bricks
The differences between lean producers and US mass producers is in the way they deal with all of the following groups except:
managers
The organization design in which an employee reports to both a country manager and a functional manager is a(n):
matrix structure
Which form of organization design is capable of integrating geographic knowledge, product knowledge, functional competencies, and customer knowledge?
matrix structure
Which of the following assumptions does not belong in a list of characteristics of lean production?
maximize backwards integration
Intel achieved success by using the "Intel Inside" advertising campaign and logo that appears on many brands of PCs. This is an example of a barrier to entry classified as:
product differentiation
Having established that the matrix organizational structure is appropriate, management can expect to integrate the following competency on a worldwide basis:
product knowledge and know-how
A company with headquarters in the United States and operational units in the Netherlands, France, Italy, and Spain would be well advised to consider establishing a(n):
regional management center.
The key to successful matrix management is ensuring that managers are able to
resolve conflicts and achieve integration.
Under the geographical and product division structures, for the company with French origins, France is:
simply another geographic market
When Brazilian Carlos Ghosn was installed as chief executive, he introduced two new words into Nissan's lexicon:
speed and commitment.
One of the potential drawbacks of a regional management center is that:
the cost can be prohibitive.
According to porter, the nature of the interaction between potential industry entrants, buyers, substitute products, suppliers, and rival firms determines
the industry's profit potential in terms of long-run return on invested capital.
Several factors can create intense rivalry among firms. These factors include all of the following factors except:
upward pressure on prices and profitability.
According to david whitwam, former CEO of Whirlpool, one must create an organization whose people are:
Adept at exchanging ideas, processes, and symptoms
Chance events play a role in shaping the competitive environment. Chance events are occurrences which include all but one of the following:
Annual business meeting
Sony's Bly-ray DVD format has gained widespread acceptance. Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, and other Japanese manufacturers are all experiencing __________ sales of traditional electronics products
Declining
Building layers of advantage, searching for loose bricks, changing the rules of competitive engagement, and collaborating are elements of the competitive advantage framework developed by:
Hamel and Prahalad
Del Vecchio, the Italian entrepreneur's business principles include all but one of the following:
Hiring qualified personnel
The _______________ framework was developed by Professor Richard D'Aveni to describe a business environment in which no form of competitive advantage can be sustained for long because of escalating and accelerating competitive forces
Hypercompetition
Tong Nam, CEO of LG, recently stipulated that English would be required throughout the company. His reasons for this action included all of the following statements except:
Impede information sharing
Which one of the following statements is incorrect regarding matrix organizational structure?
In a matrix organization, managers rely on higher authorities for decisions.
Lessons that are learned from Starbucks' company's cooperation with NGOs include all of the following except:
appreciate the value of the NGOs dependence.
In the tech world, about 90% of the world's nearly one billion PCs run on Microsoft's operating systems and 80% use Intel's microprocessors. This represents which aspect of the Porter's five forces model?
bargaining power of suppliers
The rivalry between Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, Compaq, and Apple forces all the players to undertake all of the following except:
change the rules of engagement