Chapter 3 MIS 352
All organizations have bedrock, unquestioned assumptions that define their goals and products.
TRUE
Routines are also called standard operating procedures.
TRUE
Which of the following is a support activity in a firm's value chain?
Technology
All of the following are competitive forces in Porter's model except:
disruptive technologies.
All of the following statements are true about information technology's impact on business firms except:
it helps firms expand in size.
Along with capital, ________ is the primary production input that the organization uses to create products and services.
labor
The four major competitive strategies are:
low-cost leadership, product differentiation, focus on market niche, and customer and supplier intimacy.
The divergent viewpoints about how resources, rewards, and punishments should be distributed, and the struggles resulting from these differences are known as organizational:
politics
Under Mintzberg's classification of organizational structure, knowledge-based organizations fall under the category of:
professional bureaucracies.
Walmart's continuous replenishment system allows it to do all of the following except:
provide mass customization.
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.
Which of the following statements about the technical view of organizations is not true?
It emphasizes group relationships, values and structures.
Amazon's use of the Internet as a platform to sell books more efficiently than traditional bookstores illustrates which of the following strategies?
Low-cost leadership
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.
Which of the following is not a major feature of organizations that impacts the use of information systems?
Agency costs
Which of the following statements about organizations is not true?
An informal group can be considered to be an organization.
Which of the following would a company employ to measure and compare its business processes to similar processes of other companies within their industry?
Benchmarking
Which of the following statements about business processes is not true?
Business processes are typically unaffected by changes in information systems.
Which model is used to describe the interaction of external forces that affect an organization's strategy and ability to compete?
Competitive forces model
A machine bureaucracy is a knowledge-based organization where goods and services depend on the expertise and knowledge of professionals.
FALSE
Which of the following statements about disruptive technologies is not true?
Firms that invent disruptive technologies as first movers always become market leaders.
Which of the following is an example of a divisionalized bureaucracy?
Fortune 500 firm
Which of the following represent the primary activities of a firm?
Inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, sales and marketing, and service
Which of the following marketplace forces would be of least concern to a manufacturer of deep-sea oil rigs?
New market entrants
All of the following are IT-enabled products and services providing competitive advantage except:
Nike's use of celebrities to market their products.
Which of the following substitute products would be of most concern for a cable TV distributor?
On-demand Internet television
Which of the following industries has the lowest barrier to entry?
Small retailer
As discussed in the chapter opening case, which of the following statements about Starbucks is not true?
Starbucks is planning to sell coffee, branded mugs, and espresso machines on its website.
Which of the following is a competitive force challenging the publishing industry?
Substitute products or services
Hilton Hotels uses its OnQ system for which of the following purposes?
To estimate each guest's profitability and give additional privileges to profitable customers
Which of the following is not a true statement about value webs?
Value webs are inflexible and cannot adapt quickly to changes in supply and demand.
Which of the following technologies disrupted the traditional publishing industry?
World Wide Web
Walmart's continuous replenishment system is an example of a firm using information systems to:
achieve low-cost leadership.
The most successful solutions or methods for achieving a business objective are called:
best practices.
Information systems can be used at the industry level to achieve strategic advantage by:
building industrywide, IT-supported consortia and symposia.
The interaction between information technology and organizations is influenced:
by many factors, including structure, politics, culture, and environment.
The value chain model:
highlights specific activities in the business where competitive strategies can best be applied.
In environmental scanning, a firm may use information systems to:
identify external events that may affect it.
In network economics, the value of a commercial software vendor's software products:
increases as more people use them.
Mintzberg classifies a large bureaucracy existing in a slowly changing environment that produces standard products and is dominated by centralized management as a(n) ________ bureaucracy.
machine
The Internet increases 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.
According to the ________ definition of organizations, an organization is seen as a means by which capital and labor are transformed by the organization into outputs to the environment.
microeconomic
A firm can exercise greater control over its suppliers by having:
more suppliers.