management ch 5

All of the following are among the potential pitfalls of planningexcept :

Planning reduces the emphasis on taking necessary action to solve problems.

Which of the following three statements about choosing strategic alternatives is false?

Strategic Reference Point Theory is deterministic, since specific environmental conditions will cause managers to choose risk-averse or risk-seeking strategies for their companies.

In response to the economic downturn of 2009 and consumer demand for cheaper merchandise, fashion houses sent more commercial and fewer artistic looks down the runway in September 2009 than ever before. In this case, fashion houses pursued a ______ strategy.

adaptive

Which of the following statements about concertive control is false ?

all of the above

Which of the following is NOT a common type of budget?

asset budgets

During the 2010 holiday season, Wal-Mart began selling on wal-mart.com hardcover books on the bestseller lists at a low price of $9.95, thereby significantly undercutting prices offered by Amazon.com. In terms of the strategic moves of direct competition, Wal-Mart action is a(n):

attack

All of the following are basic parts of a situational analysis,except :

choose strategic alternatives

Groups generally do a much better job than individuals at all but which of the following steps in the decision making process?

choosing optimal solutions

Kraft foods makes some of the best-selling food brands around, such as Oreo cookies, Lunchables, and Velveeta. But Kraft hasn't introduced a successful new brand since DiGiorno pizza in 1998. In strategic terms, Kraft appears to be suffering from:

competitive inertia

Autonomous work groups, with their emphasis on ________ control, can lead to significantly more stress among workers as they feel pressured into conforming to expectations.

concertive

When Virginia-based AES took over the electrical system in Cameroon, the state-owned utility company was broke, milked dry by the government and some of its own employees who had had created their own mini-empires by reselling power they siphoned from the decrepit system. Jean-David Bile was brought in to run the company. He found that it wasn't possible to institute controls over employees selling company-owned equipment because of cultural differences. This is an example of:

cybernetic feasibility

Which of the following correctly represents the steps in the rational decision making process in order from first to last?

define the problem, identify decision criteria, weight the criteria, generate alternative courses of action, evaluate each alternative, compute the optimal decision

In the S-curve pattern of innovation, discontinuous change is followed by:

dominant design

One of the best ways for average managers to track the financial performance of an organization in any given year is through the use of:

economic value added (EVA)

Which of the following techniques is likely to produce the most number of ideas?

electronic brainstorming

The ________ approach is used to manage innovation in highly uncertain environments during periods of discontinuous change.

experiential

Virginia Dare is a primary producer of vanilla, tea, coffee, and cocoa extracts as well as an almost unlimited array of fruit, citrus, berry, dairy, brown, sweet, and nut flavors. At the heart of every Virginia Dare flavor is the spirit of innovation. It is continually developing and testing new product prototypes. From this information, you know that Virginia Dare uses the _____ approach to innovation.

experiential

A dominant design emerges because it is the best technology.

false

A-type conflict can improve group decision making, while c-type conflict tends to hinder effective group decision making.

false

According to John Kotter's analysis of the errors managers make when leading change, the first and potentially most serious of the errors in the unfreezing stage is lacking a vision.

false

Assessing the need for strategic change is rather easy because there is a great deal of certainty in business environments.

false

Because budgets are set once a year, they are best described as single-use plans.

false

Creativity is not important for organizational innovation.

false

Effective planning does not require a systematic integration of the efforts of managers at different levels in the organization.

false

Innovation streams occurs when companies want to introduce a new product line.

false

Tactical plans are the responsibility of upper management.

false

Technology cycles typically follow a W-curve pattern of innovation.

false

The S-curve pattern of innovation is characterized by rapid initial progress.

false

The balanced scorecard approach to control emphasizes the measurement of organizational performance in two areas: finances and internal operations.

false

The basic control process begins with a comparison of actual performance to desired performance.

false

The relationship between diversification and risk resembles a normal curve.

false

The two major approaches of corporate-level strategies are portfolio strategy and diversification.

false

There are five parts to the compression approach to innovation: design iterations, testing, milestones, multifunctional teams, and powerful leaders.

false

When competing directly against your competitors, a "full-attack" always strategy works best because it prevents harsh retaliatory responses.

false

The constructive approach to innovation requires the use of milestones

fase

Which of the following control methods informs managers about performance problems after they occur?

feedback

The term __________ refers to a psychological state of effortlessness

flow

Which of the following is not one of the grand strategies?

focus

Making smaller but simultaneous investments in multiple plans is a way for a company to:

maintain flexibility

__________ control guides workers' behaviors and decisions through a company's shared values and beliefs.

nomative

The first step of organizational decline is:

not faulty action, crisis, inaction

The _____ method of control uses observable measures of employee behavior to assess performance.

objective

Lower level managers are most likely to be involved in the development and implementation of ______plans.

operational

Maintaining slack resources is a characteristic of _____ planning.

options-based

A creative work environment requires which three kinds of encouragement?

organizational, supervisory, work group

In terms of the BCG matrix, Amazon's Kindle would best be described as:

question mark

The factors that help managers determine whether control is possible (or worthwhile) are:

regulation costs and cybernetic feasibility

If when making a decision, you compare each of your decision criteria to every other criteria, you are using _____comparisons.

relative

In June 2009, General Motors filed for bankruptcy and began the process of shedding brands like Pontiac and Saturn. Factories closed and employees were laid off throughout the organization, as the company tried to turn around very poor performance. GM was implementing a _____ strategy.

retrenchment

Goal commitment can be increased by which of the following?

setting goals collectively

WhenWineseller magazine moves its office to a new location, company managers will likely use a ______ plan.

single use

The plan that takes the longest to unfold is a:

strategical

Which of the following is not a method for achieving control in organizations?

subjective

An innovation stream begins with a(n) ________:

technological discontinuity

_____ occurred when DVDs replaced video cassettes in the home-entertainment industry.

technological discontiuity

When Toshiba stopped selling HD-DVD players because of the dominance of Blu-Ray, __________ occurred.

technological lockout

_____ occurred when James purchased a Nintendo Wii to replace his Gamecube.

technological substitution

Wal-Mart buys approximately 30 percent of all toothpaste, shampoo, and paper towels made by suppliers and, in general, is the largest single buyer in the history of retailing. Considering this fact in light of Porter's Five Industry forces, you can assume that:

the bargaining power of buyers is high

Which of the following conditions must be met if a firm's resources are to be used to create a sustainable competitive advantage?

the resources must be valuable, rare imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable

A common organizational development intervention used for small systems is team building.

true

A company faces significantly increased costs when it has to replace old customers with new ones.

true

A major pitfall of planning is that it can impede change or flexibility

true

Benchmarking involves looking at the performance of other companies and determining their standards.

true

Concertive controls are based on beliefs that are shaped and negotiated by work groups.

true

Concertive controls take a long time to establish.

true

During the 2010 holiday season, Wal-Mart announced that it would sell bestselling hardcover books for $9.95. This prompted Amazon and Target to lower their prices for bestselling hardcover books to meet-and then beat-Wal-Mart's. Wal-Mart's move is best described as an attack.

true

Economic value added (EVA) is the amount by which profits exceed the cost of capital in a given year.

true

Efforts to change organizations often fail if they are activity-oriented.

true

Five industry forces-character of rivalry, threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of substitute products or services and the bargaining power of buyers-determine an industry's overall attractiveness and potential for long-term profitability.

true

Many years ago, Procter & Gamble had operating companies in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, cleaning supplies, and snack food. On the surface, it would seem that P & G was practicing unrelated diversification.

true

One way to help ensure high levels of goal commitment among employees is to set goals participatively.

true

The dimension of market commonality and resource similarity are crucially important to the understanding and managing firm-level strategies

true

The highest level of waste minimization is waste prevention and reduction.

true

The key idea behind the rational decision making model is that its use should ideally enable managers to choose the best possible solution that will provide the greatest potential benefit to their organization.

true

The major difference between the rational and bounded rationality approaches to decision making lies in the assumptions that form the basis for each model

true

The most successful way to use the portfolio approach to organizational strategy is to reduce risk through related diversification.

true

To determine whether control is worthwhile, managers need to assess regulation costs and cybernetic feasibility.

true

Under the bureaucratic control method managers influence employee behavior by rewarding or punishing employees for compliance or non-compliance.

true

When it was released, Apple's iPad was best described as a question mark on the BCG Matrix.

true

Wineseller magazine regularly receives requests by clubs of wine enthusiasts looking for donations of multiple copies to their members. Because the magazine is just starting out, it needs a way to control the amount of free copies it distributes.Wineseller needs to implement standing plan about donations.

true