Evaluating a Company’s Resources, Capabilities, and Competitiveness – CH4
Your Results:
The answer for each question is indicated by a  .

1    
Which one of the following is not helpful in identifying the components of a single-business company’s strategy?
    A)
Initiatives to build competitive advantage
    B)
Efforts to expand or narrow geographic coverage
    C)
The company’s resource strengths and weaknesses
    D)
The company’s key functional strategies
    E)
Efforts to build competitively valuable partnerships and strategic alliances with other enterprises within its industry
    

 
2    
SWOT analysis
    A)
provides the basis for crafting a strategy that capitalizes on the company’s strengths, overcomes its weaknesses, aims squarely at capturing the company’s best opportunities, and defends against competitive and environmental threats
    B)
provides a quick overview of where on the scale from “alarmingly weak” to “exceptionally strong” the attractiveness of the company’s overall business situation ranks.
    C)
helps provide a basis for matching the company’s strategy to its internal resource capabilities and its external opportunities and threats.
    D)
helps identify a company’s core competencies and competitive capabilities and the seriousness of its resource weaknesses and competitive deficiencies.
    E)
All of these.
    

 
3    
A core competence
    A)
is a more durable company resource than a “distinctive competence.”
    B)
usually resides in a company’s technology and physical assets (state-of-the-art plants and equipment, attractive real estate locations, modern distribution facilities, and so on) whereas a company competence usually resides in a company’s human assets.
    C)
may evolve into a distinctive competence, giving the company superiority over rivals in performing an important value chain activity
    D)
is usually tied closely to the caliber of a company’s manufacturing capability and/or its proprietary technology and know-how.
    E)
is better suited to helping a company defend against external threats than in pursuing external market opportunities.
    

 
4    
Which of the following analytical tools are particularly useful for determining whether a company’s prices and costs are competitive?
    A)
SWOT analysis, strategy assessment, activity-based costing analysis, and key success factor analysis.
    B)
Best practices analysis, and value chain analysis.
    C)
Value chain analysis and benchmarking.
    D)
Competitive position assessment, competitive strength assessment, strategic group mapping, SWOT analysis, and value chain analysis.
    E)
SWOT analysis, best practices analysis, activity-based costing analysis, and competitive strength assessment.
    

 
5    
A company’s value chain consists of
    A)
the activities a company performs in converting its resource weaknesses into resource strengths.
    B)
the collection of activities it performs in the course of designing, producing, marketing, delivering, and supporting its product or service and delivering value to customers.
    C)
those activities a company performs that represent “best practices”—only best practice activities are capable of delivering value to customers and thus qualify to be part of a company’s value chain.
    D)
the activities that a company performs in developing a distinctive competence.
    E)
the activities that represent a company’s competencies, core competencies, distinctive competencies, and competitive capabilities—it is these activities that underpin a company’s efforts to create value for customers and shareholders.
    

 
6    
Benchmarking
    A)
is inherently unethical if it involves companies that are direct competitors because it involves gathering competitively sensitive information about the operations and costs of rivals.
    B)
is not a valid tool for measuring the cost-effectiveness of an activity unless it is restricted to companies in the same industry.
    C)
is a potent tool for improving a company’s own internal activities that is based on learning how other companies perform them and borrowing “best practices”.
    D)
loses much of its managerial usefulness if it is done with the aid of third-party organizations who insist on protecting the confidentiality of individual company data; moreover, benchmarking is not used very often by companies because of “borderline” ethical considerations and because most of the time the information and data used in doing benchmarking studies has turned out to be unreliable and untrustworthy.
    E)
entails calculating the costs of performing each of the primary and related support activities in a company’s value chain.
    

 
7    
A company’s cost competitiveness is largely a function of
    A)
whether it does a good enough job of benchmarking its value chain activities against the value chains of competitors so that it knows exactly how low to drive its costs to be cost-competitive.
    B)
how efficiently it manages its overall value chain activities relative to how efficiently competitors manage theirs.
    C)
whether it does a better job of building its resource strengths more cost effectively than rivals.
    D)
whether it possesses more core competencies and competitive capabilities than rivals.
    E)
how closely its internally-performed activities are linked to the activities performed by suppliers and to the activities performed by forward channel allies.
    

 
8    
For a company to translate performance of value chain activities into competitive advantage, it
    A)
must be more cost efficient in how it performs value chain activities or better able to manage activities that add customer value.
    B)
has to develop more core competencies than rivals by focusing primarily on R&D and market research.
    C)
must be more adept than rivals in using benchmarking and activity-based costing.
    D)
has to position itself in the strategic group where profit margins are highest.
    E)
must adopt more best practices than rival firms.
    

 
9    
The measure of internal cash flow estimates the cash a company’s business is generating _____________________________.
    A)
after payment of operating expenses, and interest
    B)
before payment of operating expenses, interest, and taxes
    C)
after payment of operating expenses, interest, taxes, dividends, and desirable reinvestments in the business
    D)
before payment of interest and taxes.
    E)
after payment of operating expenses, interest, and taxes
    

 
10    
Which one of the following is not something that can be learned from doing a competitive strength assessment?
    A)
How does the company rank relative to competitors on each of the important factors that determine market success
    B)
Whether a company utilizes best practices in performing its value chain activities
    C)
Which of the rated companies is competitively strongest and what size competitive advantage it enjoys
    D)
Whether a company has a net competitive advantage or is a net competitive disadvantage relative to key rivals (with the size of the advantage/disadvantage being indicated by the differences among the companies’ competitive strength scores)
    E)
Which rival company is competitively weakest and the areas where it is most vulnerable to competitive attack—when a company has important competitive strengths in areas where one or more rivals are weak, it makes sense to consider offensive moves to exploit rivals’ competitive weaknesses
    

1. Tech, Inc., sells its brand-name computer equipment directly to its franchised retailers. Depending on how existing franchisees do, Tech may limit the number of franchisees in a given area to reduce intrabrand competition. Tech’s restriction on the number of dealers likely is
A) a per se violation of the Sherman Act.
B) exempt from the antitrust laws.
C) subject to continuing review by the appropriate federal agency.
D) subject to the rule of reason.

2. Francis owns a small motel in Sugarloaf Key. She notices by means of public advertising that her competitors in Big Pine Key and Ramrod Key have extended by two weeks their “winter season” and thus their winter season higher rates. Francis also notices the “no vacancy” signs at her competitors’ motels. So, Francis decides to extend the winter season at her motel too. Francis has engaged:
A) Illegal horizontal price-fixing by means of an express agreement.
B) Illegal horizontal price-fixing by means of an implied agreement
C) Legal action by means of the doctrine of Conscious Parallelism
D) Legal action since anti-trust law does not apply to small motels, only large ones and hotels.

3. General Construction contracts to build a store for Home Stores for $1 million. In mid-project, Home repudiates the contract, and General stops working. General incurred costs of $600,000 and would have made a profit of $100,000. General’s measure of damages likely is
A) $1 million.
B) $700,000.
C) $100,000.
D) nothing.

4. The four shareholders of Delta, Inc., want to prevent each other from selling the shares to third parties without first being given the opportunity to buy them. The shareholders can provide for this in
A) a buy-sell agreement that includes a “take-along” clause.
B) a buy-sell agreement that includes a right of first refusal.
C) a key-person clause that specifies who can sell what to whom.
D) none of the above.

1. Refer to the following table showing a monopolist’s demand schedule:
Price Quantity
$50 300
40 600
20 800
10 1,000
What is marginal revenue for a price decrease from $50 to $40?
a. $9,000
b. $24,000
c. $30
d. $20

2. The market demand for a monopoly firm is estimated to be:
Qd = 100,000 – 500P +2M + 5,000PR
where Qd is is quantity demanded, P is price, M is income, and PR is the price of a related good. The manager has forecasted the values of M and PR will be $50,000 and $20, respectively, in 2012. The marginal cost function is estimated to be MC = 500 + 0.006Q. Total fixed cost in 2012 is expected to be $4 million.
The profit-maximizing price for 2012 is
a. $580.
b. $400.
c. $80.
d. $20.

3. The market demand for a monopoly firm is estimated to be:
Qd = 100,000 – 500P +2M + 5,000PR
where Qd is is quantity demanded, P is price, M is income, and PR is the price of a related good. The manager has forecasted the values of M and PR will be $50,000 and $20, respectively, in 2012. The marginal cost function is estimated to be MC = 500 + 0.006Q. Total fixed cost in 2012 is expected to be $4 million. 
For 2012, the inverse demand function is
a. P = 600 − 0.001Q.
b. P = 300 − 0.002Q.
c. P = 600 − 0.004Q.
d. P = 600 – 0.002Q.

4. When a firm’s demand curve is tangent to its average total cost curve, the
a. firm must be operating at its efficient scale.
b. firm’s economic profit is zero.
c. firm must be incurring economic losses.
d. firm must be earning economic profits.

The effective project team leaders are social architects who understand the interaction between organizational and behavioral variables; suggesting that such team leaders should be able to minimize dysfunctional conflict and to foster a climate of active participation.

Yukl (1994) suggests that leaders’ effectiveness is derived from four sources:

The level of power and influence possessed by the leader;

 How the leader interacts with others;

 The leaders’ personal qualities;

 The situation in which the leader is asked to lead.

Given their managerial controllability, this research focuses on the first two sources of leader effectiveness:

The NPD team leader’s power and influence (as reflected by position in the organization); Internal Dynamics of NPD Teams Healthy internal dynamics are essential for effective cross-functional NPD teams and, consequently, for the successful development of new products Specifically, the conflict resolution behaviors collaboration and communication behaviors of cross-functional NPD teams have been shown to have a tremendous impact on their performance. However, the mismanagement of these internal dynamics is among the most often cited barriers to effective NPD team functioning. In the present study three types of internal team dynamics is considered:

 (1) conflict resolution strategies; (2) collaboration; and (3) communication behaviors.

Collaboration is defined as the degree to which the members of the NPD team work together to accomplish specific tasks. Collaboration is indicative of effective team dynamics and an antecedent to improved team performance. Although some researchers consider collaboration as yet another form of functional conflict resolution strategy, others suggest that it as a much broader construct indicative of general integrative and supportive interpersonal cooperation among team members. Though some overlap is expected with functional conflict resolution strategies, collaboration is considered to be a distinct but related component of the internal dynamics of NPD teams.

As per my opinion, The Leader exchange style, which means exchange of favors between the individuals. It may be between the boss and subordinate or may be occur between two same grade people’s. For this leadership style need to know the how to develop, how to maintain relationship and how to follow up the work.

Reference:

By The Way You Think (Full Class). (n.d.). Types of Leadership Styles. Retrieved September 09, 2016, from https://www.legacee.com/types-of-leadership-styles/