HW 3

According to agency theory, the firm is viewed as a(n)

"nexus of contracts" among self-interested individuals.

Which of the following best illustrates the use of information systems to focus on market niche?

A department store creating specialized products for preferred customers.

An organization is a

A, B, and C

An example of a keystone firm within a business ecosystem is

Apple and software application writers in the mobile platform ecosystem.

________ technologies radically change the business landscape and environment.

Disruptive

An example of a divisionalized bureaucracy is a

Fortune 500 firm.

You are consulting for a cosmetics distributor who is interested in determining the benefits it could achieve from implementing new information systems. What will you advise as the first step?

Perform a strategic systems analysis.

________ is a competitive strategy for creating brand loyalty by developing new and unique products and services that are not easily duplicated by competitors.

Product differentiation

All of the following are IT-enabled products and services providing competitive advantage except

Walmart's RetailLink system.

Walmart's continuous replenishment system allows it to

achieve low-cost leadership.

An activity businesses perform to measure and compare business processes to similar processes of other companies within their industry is

benchmarking.

What are the most successful solutions or methods for achieving a business objective?

best practices

How are information systems used at the industry level to achieve strategic advantage?

by building industry-wide, IT-supported consortia and symposia

How do information systems enhance core competencies?

by encouraging the sharing of knowledge across business units

The interaction between information systems and organizations is influenced

by two main microeconomic forces: capital and labor.

A(n) ________ is an activity at which a firm excels as a world-class leader.

core competency

All of the following are competitive forces except

external environment.

In environmental scanning, a firm may use information systems to

identify external events that may affect it.

Which of the following represent the primary activities of a firm?

inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, sales and marketing, and service

The four major competitive strategies are

low-cost leadership, product differentiation, focus on market niche, and customer and supplier intimacy.

Amazon's use of the Internet as a platform to sell books more efficiently than traditional bookstores illustrates a use of information services for

low-cost leadership.

The Internet raises the bargaining power of customers by

making information available to everyone.

Firms use a ________ strategy to provide a specialized product or service for a narrow target market better than competitors.

market niche

The ability to offer individually tailored products or services using the same production resources as bulk production is known as

mass customization.

A firm can exercise greater control over its suppliers by having

more suppliers.

Which of the following industries has a low barrier to entry?

restaurant

The parts of an organization's infrastructure, human resources, technology, and procurement that make the delivery of the firm's products or services possible are known as ________ activities.

support

The expenses incurred by a customer or company in lost time and resources when changing from one supplier or system to a competing supplier or system are known as

switching costs.

When two organizations pool markets and expertise that result in lower costs and generate profits, it is referred to as creating

synergies.

According to research on organizational resistance, the four components that must be changed in an organization in order to successfully implement a new information system are

tasks, technology, people, and structure.

When a firm buys on the marketplace what it cannot make itself, the costs incurred are referred to as

transaction costs.

A virtual company

uses networks to link people, assets, and ideas.

The ________ model highlights the primary or support activities that add a margin of value to a firm's products or services where information systems can best be applied to achieve a competitive advantage.

value chain

A collection of independent firms that use information technology to coordinate their value chains to produce a product or service for a market collectively is called a(n)

value web.

Walmart's attempts to increase its online presence is an example of a firm using information systems to

achieve low-cost leadership.

Nike's forays into information technology represent an effort to

achieve product differentiation.

Along with capital, ________ is the primary production input that the organization uses to create products and services.

labor

As discussed in the chapter opening case, which of the four generic strategies did T.J. Maxx employ to combat the competition offered by Target, Kohls, Walmart, Macy's and pure online stores likeRue LaLa and Gilt Groupe?

market niche focus

An organization is seen as a means by which primary production factors are transformed into outputs consumed by the environment according to the ________ definition of organizations.

microeconomic

A manufacturer of deep-sea oil rigs may be least concerned about this marketplace force.

new market entrants

The divergent viewpoints about how resources, rewards, and punishments should be distributed, and the struggles resulting from these differences are known as

politics.

Under Mintzberg's classification of organizational structure, the knowledge-based organization where goods and services depend on the expertise and knowledge of professionals falls under the category of

professional bureaucracies.

Business processes are collections of

routines.

Network economics

sees the cost of adding new members as inconsequential.

A competitive force challenging the publishing industry is

substitute products or services.

Which of the following is one of the support activities in a firm's value chain?

technology

An example of synergy in business is

Bank of America acquiring Countrywide Financial to reach a large pool of new customers.

All of the following industries have been disrupted by the Internet except

clothing.

Which model is used to describe the interaction of external forces that affect an organization's strategy and ability to compete?

competitive forces model

The value chain model

highlights specific activities in the business where competitive strategies can best be applied.

All of the following are considered disruptive technologies except

instant messaging.

All of the following statements are true about information technology's impact on business firms except

it helps firms expand in size.

Mintzberg classifies a large bureaucracy existing in a slowly changing environment that produces standard products and is dominated by centralized management as a ________ bureaucracy.

machine

A substitute product of most concern for a cable TV distributor is

satellite TV.

Sociotechnical changes affecting a firm adopting new information systems requiring organizational change can be considered

strategic transitions.

Which of the following is not a major feature of organizations that impacts the use of information systems?

agency costs

The more any given resource is applied to production, the lower the marginal gain in output, until a point is reached where the additional inputs produce no additional output. This is referred to as

the law of diminishing returns.

A(n) ________ is a collection of independent firms that use information technology to coordinate their value chains to collectively produce a product or service for a market.

value web

Why does Amazon.com need to worry about competitors in online shopping?

Internet technologies are universal, and therefore usable by all companies.

How does the technical view of organizations fall short of understanding the full impacts of information systems in a firm?

It sees the inputs and outputs, labor and capital, as being infinitely malleable.