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Business Strategy And Competition

Please answer the below questions.
1

1. Define strategic competitiveness and above-average returns. What is the relationship between strategic competitiveness and returns on investment?

2. Hypercompetition is a characteristic of the 21st-century competitive landscape. Define hypercompetition and identify its primary drivers. How can organizations survive in a hypercompetitive environment?

3. Describe the industrial organization (I/O) model of above-average returns. What are its main assumptions? What is the key to success according to the I/O model?

4. Describe and discuss the resource-based model of above-average returns.

5. What are a firm's vision and mission? What is the value to the firm of having a specified vision and mission?

6. Describe an organization's various stakeholders and their different interests. Under what condition can the firm most easily satisfy all stakeholders? If the firm cannot satisfy all stakeholders, which ones must it satisfy in order to survive?

7. Who are the firm's strategic leaders? How do strategic leaders predict the profit outcomes of different strategic decisions?

8. Explain the relationship of the strategic management process to organizational ethics.

2

1. Explain why it is important for organizations to analyze and understand the external environment.

2. Identify and describe the three major parts of the external environment. What is the purpose of the firm's collecting information about these aspects of its environment?

3. Describe and discuss the four activities of the external environmental analysis process.

4. Describe the six segments of the general environment.

5. Identify the five forces that underlie the five forces model of competition. Explain briefly how they affect industry profit potential.

6. Describe the factors that raise the competitive nature of an industry's rivalry.

7. What are high exit barriers and how do they affect the competition within an industry?

8. What is a firm's strategic group? What effect does the strategic group have on the firm?

9. What do firms need to know about their competitors? What legal and ethical intelligence gathering techniques can be used to obtain this information?

3

1. Describe the importance of internal analysis to the strategic success of the firm.

2. What are the differences between tangible and intangible resources? Which category of resources is more valuable to the firm?

3. Define capabilities and how they affect the firm's strategic success.

4. Describe the four specific criteria that managers can use to decide which of their firm's capabilities have the potential to create a sustainable competitive advantage.

5. Describe a value chain analysis. How does a value chain analysis help a firm gain competitive advantage?

6. Why is it important to prevent core competencies from becoming core rigidities?

4

1. Define strategy and business-level strategy. What is the difference between these two concepts?

2. When a firm chooses a business-level strategy, it must answer the questions "Who? What? and How?" What are these questions and why are they important?

3. Discuss how a cost leadership strategy can allow a firm to earn above-average returns in spite of strong competitive forces. Address each of the five competitive forces.

4. Describe the risks of a differentiation strategy.

5. How do focused differentiation and focused cost-leadership strategies differ from their non-focused counterparts?

6. Describe the additional risks undertaken by firms pursuing a focus strategy.

7. Describe the advantages of integrating cost leadership and differentiation strategies.

8. What are the risks of an integrated cost leadership/differentiation strategy?

5

1. What is market commonality? What is resource similarity? How are these concepts combined to identify the level of competition between two firms?

2. Define awareness, motivation and ability in reference to competitive behavior.

3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a first mover, second mover, and late mover?

4. What factors contribute to the likelihood of a response to a competitive action?

5. Name and describe the two types of competitive actions.

6. Define slow-cycle, fast-cycle and standard cycle markets.

6

1. Differentiate between corporate-level and business-level strategies and give examples of each.

2. What are the five categories of businesses based on level of diversification?

3. Describe the primary reasons a firm pursues increased diversification.

4. Describe how diversified firms can use activity sharing and transfer of core competencies to create value.

5. What are the two ways that an unrelated diversification strategy can create value?

6. What is the effect of a firm's low performance on the pursuit of diversification?

7. What are the managerial motives to diversify?

7

1. Why have acquisitions been a popular strategy in recent years?

2. Identify and explain the seven reasons firms engage in an acquisition strategy.

3. Describe the seven problems in achieving a successful acquisition.

4. Describe how an acquisition program can result in managerial time and energy absorption.

5. What are the attributes of a successful acquisition program?

6. What is restructuring and what are its common forms?

7. What are the differences between downscoping and downsizing?

8. What is an LBO and what have been the results of such activities?

9. What are the results of the three forms of restructuring?

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NOTE: In my OWN words; however, in cases of quotations, they were sourced from Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization by Hitt, Ireland, Hoskisson, Rowe and Sheppard

Business Strategy And Competition

Please answer the below questions.
1

1. Define strategic competitiveness and above-average returns. What is the relationship between strategic competitiveness and returns on investment?
Strategic competitiveness is the state that a company realizes whenever a value-creating strategy is formulated and successfully implemented
Above-average returns on the other hand is the excess returns an investor demands from an investment over and above that of the returns from other assets with similar risks.

2. Hypercompetition is a characteristic of the 21st-century competitive landscape. Define hypercompetition and identify its primary drivers. How can organizations survive in a hypercompetitive environment?
Hypercompetition is considered one of the 21st century values and it is a situation wherein there exists very strong competition among players within a rapidly changing market, and barriers for entry are virtually non-existent. Hence, maintaining a competitive advantage for a considerable time is almost impossible.

3. Describe the industrial organization (I/O) model of above-average returns. What are its main assumptions? What is the key to success according to the I/O model?
According to the industrial organization mode of achieving superior returns, the external environment of a company exerts a dominant influence on its strategic decisions, actions and performance. It's main assumptions include 1) pressures and constraints imposed by a firm's external environment, 2) similarities in strategically relevant resources controlled by most players within an industry, and 3) strategically relevant resources are highly mobile. Lastly, the key to success therefore is understanding this environment and being able to adapt to changes fast.

4. Describe and discuss the resource-based model of above-average returns.
The resource-based model states that the unique resources and capabilities of a firm drives its strategic actions. These resources and capabilities have to be exploited in line with opportunities presented by the firm's external environment for the firm to be successful.

5. What are a firm's vision and mission? What is the value to the firm of having a specified vision and mission?
A company's vision and mission states its fundamental purpose and values. Having a specified vision and mission means that the firm has clear directions.

6. Describe an organization's various stakeholders and their different interests. Under what condition can the firm most easily satisfy all stakeholders? If the firm cannot satisfy all stakeholders, which ones must it satisfy in order to survive?
Capital Market Stakeholders - returns on their investment
Product Market Stakeholders - value for their money
Organizational Stakeholders - fairness in compensation
When the company outperforms its competitors, then it can easily satisfy all stakeholders; however, if it can't satisfy all, then it must first satisfy its product market stakeholders. If it can't satisfy this group, then the company will not survive for long

7. Who are the firm's strategic leaders? How do strategic leaders predict the profit outcomes of different strategic decisions?
The firm's strategic leaders are those who have actual authority to make decisions and allocate resources. Strategic leaders predict the profit outcomes of different strategic decisions to assessing the complex global competitive environment of the firm. Specifically, strategic leaders:
• Define the profit pool's boundaries.
• 2. Estimate the pool's overall size.
• 3. Estimate the size of the value chain.
• Reconcile the calculations.

8. Explain the relationship of the strategic management process to organizational ethics.
The company's organizational ethics, in a way, bounds the strategic management process within certain boundaries. This means that organizational ethics dictate what a company can and can't do.

2

1. Explain why it is important for organizations to analyze and understand the external environment.
Analyzing and understanding the firm's external environment is important in that it allows it to review the appropriateness of its strategic actions and performance vis-à-vis with what is happening in its environment.

2. Identify and describe the three major parts of the external environment. What is the purpose of the firm's collecting information about these aspects of its environment?
Deterministic - regulatory, legal and market structures are in place
Probabilistic - areas where the firm has the ability to increase the probability of its success
Random - uncontrollable and uncertain elements from which the firm can might need to protect itself from
Collecting information about these aspects of its environment allows the firm to identify the most profitable way of deploying its resources.

3. Describe and discuss the four activities of the external environmental analysis process.
Scanning - Identifying early signals of environmental changes and trends
Monitoring - Ongoing observations of environmental changes and trends
Forecasting - Developing projections of anticipated outcomes based on monitored changes and trends
Assessing - Determining the timing & importance of environmental changes and trends for firms' strategies & their management

4. Describe the six segments of the general environment.
Demographic -describes the firm's market based on population size, age, income and other demographic characteristics
Sociocultural - pertains to how the socio-cultural values of the market affects its behavior
Political/legal ...

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