Review Questions
Review Questions
Review Questions
4. How important do you feel “being adept at adapting” is for business firms?
Explain.
5. Compare the opossum and turtle to the woolly mammoth and saber-toothed
tiger in terms of being adept at adapting. What can we learn from the opossum
and turtle?
6. As cited in the chapter, Edward Deming, a famous businessman, once said, “In
God we trust. All others bring data.” What did Deming mean in terms of
developing a strategic plan?
9. Your university has fierce competitors. List three external opportunities and
three external threats that face your university.
10. List three internal strengths and three internal weaknesses that characterize
your university.
11. List reasons why objectives are essential for organizational success.
15. What is a “retreat,” and why do firms take the time and spend the money to
have these?
16. Discuss the notion of strategic planning being more formal versus informal
in an organiza- tion. On a 1 to 10 scale from formal to informal, what number
best represents your view of the most effective approach? Why?
18. List what you feel are the five most important lessons for business that can
be garnered from The Art of War book.
19. What is the fundamental difference between business strategy and military
strategy in terms of basic assumptions?
20. Explain why the strategic management class is often called a “capstone
course.”
21. What aspect of strategy formulation do you think requires the most time?
Why?
22. Why is strategy implementation often considered the most difficult stage in
the strategic- management process?
26. Why do you think some chief executive officers fail to use a strategic-
management approach to decision making?
28. How can strategists best ensure that strategies will be effectively
implemented?
29. Give an example of a recent political development that changed the overall
strategy of an organization.
30. Who are the major competitors of your college or university? What are
their strengths and weaknesses? What are their strategies? How successful are
these institutions compared to your college? 31. Would strategic-management
concepts and techniques benefit foreign businesses as much as domestic firms?
Justify your answer.
32. What do you believe are some potential pitfalls or risks in using a strategic-
management approach to decision making?
33. In your opinion, what is the single major benefit of using a strategic-
management approach to decision making? Justify your answer.
35. Why is it important for all business majors to study strategic management
since most students will never become a chief executive officer nor even a top
manager in a large company?
37. List four financial and four nonfinancial benefits of a firm engaging in
strategic planning.
38. Why is it that a firm can normally sustain a competitive advantage for only a
limited period of time? 39. Why it is not adequate to simply obtain competitive
advantage?
2. If your company does not have a vision or mission statement, describe a good
process for developing these documents.
3. Explain how developing a mission statement can help resolve divergent views
among managers in a firm.
4. Drucker says the most important time to seriously reexamine the firm’s
vision/mission is when the firm is very successful. Why is this?
10. Do local service stations need to have written vision and mission
statements? Why or why not?
11. Why do you think organizations that have a comprehensive mission tend to
be high perform- ers? Does having a comprehensive mission cause high
performance?
12. Explain why a mission statement should not include strategies and
objectives.
13. What is your college or university’s self-concept? How would you state that
in a mission statement? 14. Explain the principal value of a vision and a mission
statement.
16. In your opinion, what are the three most important components that
should be included when writing a mission statement? Why?
18. Write a vision and mission statement for an organization of your choice.
19. Conduct a search on the Internet with the keywords vision statement and
mission statement. Find various company vision and mission statements, and
evaluate the documents. Write a one-page single-spaced report on your
findings.
20. Who are the major stakeholders of the bank that you do business with
locally? What are the major claims of those stakeholders?
23. How often do you think a firm’s vision and mission statements should be
changed?