BUS 3: QUIZ #5-------CHAPTER 4 pgs. 116-137

Core competencies are derived from the combination of

key strategic resources and a firm's capabilities

Shippity and ShipING Inc. are two competing firms in the same industry. Shippity's tangible assets are valued at $15 billion and its intangible assets are valued at $35 billion. ShipING Inc.'s tangible assets are valued at $5 billion and its intangible assets are valued at $45 billion. What can be concluded from this information?

It is likely that ShipING Inc. is better enabled than Shippity to gain and sustain a competitive advantage.

Amazon.com's network of distribution centers allow it to drastically reduce its delivery times compared to other online retailers. These distribution centers are examples of Amazon's

tangible resources.

Which of the following will most likely be considered as an airlines core competency?

the airline's ability to make its fleet more fuel efficient than their competitors

The management of a company is assessing the value of all the tangible resources the company owns. Which of the following will be included in this assessment?

the punch presses that produce parts

Cartzy Inc., Cartific Inc., and Clustercart Inc., are three consumer-product retailing companies. Their products consist primarily of day-to-day items that are easy to imitate and sell. All three companies use the same resources and capabilities in the production and distribution of their products. Judging from the market conditions described in this scenario, which of the following statements is true?

Any advantage that one firm has will be short-lived.

Organizational and managerial skills that find their expression in a company's structure, routines, and culture are referred to as

capabilities.

Crocs Shoes was unable to sustain its competitive advantage over their rivals because its key strategic resource was

not costly to imitate by competitors.

Firms that can employ and establish _________________, are more likely to protect their competitive advantage from being copied and/or eroding away.

isolating mechanisms

Chips & Motherboards Inc., a leading hard drive manufacturer, recently filed for bankruptcy. While most of Chips & Motherboards Inc.'s competitors were shifting away from physical data storage devices toward online cloud storage services, Chips & Motherboards Inc. invested most of its retained earnings in the effort to improve its hard drives. Once the hard-drive market drastically declined, Chips & Motherboards Inc. was unable to capitalize on the new technology. Which of the following does this scenario best illustrate?

path dependence

CarTsar Inc. is a manufacturer of automobile parts, which it sells to retail auto supply stores. Its core competencies include superior design and engineering capabilities, as well as a highly integrated and efficient supply chain. To sustain its competitive advantage, CarTsar should first

upgrade its engineering department and improve its supply chain.

Competitors have found it extremely difficult to imitate Gene Electronics Inc.'s valuable resources, capabilities, or competencies. This is primarily because the source for the company's success has been unclear. The competitors are uncertain if Gene Electronics Inc.'s success is due to its strong leadership, the skills of its research and development team, or the timing of the company's product introductions. Gene Electronics Inc. has been protected from losing its competitive advantage as a result of

causal ambiguity.

When company managers formulate strategy decisions resulting from their internal analysis, they are primarily making decisions about how to

obtain and allocate critical and scarce resources.

Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines both compete as point-to-point airlines, but they draw upon different resource bundles. This example best illustrates which of the following assumptions regarding the resource-based view?

resource heterogeneity

STRIKEBYTE Inc. is a software company that has built and acquired numerous assets over the years. According to the resource-based view of a firm, which of the following assets of STRIKEBYTE Inc. will best enable it to gain and sustain a competitive advantage?

the expertise acquired by the employees in the company