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Strategic Management Text and Cases 9th Edition Dess
Test Bank
Strategic Management: Text and Cases, 9e (Dess)
Chapter 1 Strategic Management: Creating Competitive Advantages
1) Lands’ End’s failure under the leadership of Ms. Frederica Marchionni was said to be a direct
result of the quality of her leadership. According to the text, this would be an example of the
“romantic” perspective of leadership.
2) Strategic management consists of the analyses, decisions, and actions an organization
undertakes in order to create and sustain competitive advantages.
3) Management innovations such as total quality, just-in-time, benchmarking, business process
reengineering, and outsourcing are important but not enough for building sustainable competitive
advantage.
4) Trade-off decisions between effectiveness and efficiency are important in the practice of
strategic management.
5) According to Henry Mintzberg, a management scholar, most firms do not realize their original
intended strategy.
6) The final realized strategy of a firm is a combination of deliberate and time-tested strategies
only.
7) Strategy analysis is the study of only the big picture external environments of the firm.
8) All successful firms compete and outperform their rivals by developing bases for competitive
advantage, which can be achieved only through cost leadership.
9) The three primary participants in corporate governance are: (1) the shareholders, (2) the
management (led by the chief executive officer), and (3) the employees.
10) Decisions by boards of directors are always consistent with shareholder interests.
11) Ensuring effective corporate governance requires an effective and engaged board of directors,
uninvolved shareholders, and proper managerial rewards and incentives.
12) Social responsibility is the idea that organizations are only accountable to stockholders.
13) Shell, NEC, and Procter and Gamble have been measuring their performance according to
what has been called a triple bottom line. This technique involves an assessment of financial,
social, and environmental performance.
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14) Sustainability is being increasingly recognized as a source of cost efficiencies and revenue
growth.
15) Strategic management requires managers at all levels of the organization to take a segregated
view of the organization.
16) The strategic management process should be addressed only by top-level executives.
Mid-level and low-level employees are best equipped to implement the strategies of the
organization.
17) Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, is well known for creating an inclusive
organizational structure in which anybody in the organization can be involved in generating and
acting on new business ideas.
18) The vision of an organization is at the top level of its hierarchy of organizational goals. The
vision statement should be massively inspiring, overarching, and long term.
19) Much research has supported the notion that individuals work much harder when they are
asked to do their best rather than when they are striving toward a specific goal.
20) An idealistic vision can arouse employee enthusiasm and therefore is a good vision.
21) The text addresses two perspectives of leadership as well as their implications. These two
perspectives are
A) romantic and unromantic.
B) romantic and internal control.
C) external control and unromantic.
D) romantic and external control.
22) Ms. Frederica Marchionni became CEO of Land’s End in February 2015 when the company
showed a 73.8 million-dollar profit. By mid-June of 2016, the company had lost 27.2 million
dollars. What went wrong?
A) The new leadership did not understand the corporate culture and image.
B) The marketplace liked the new image.
C) The founder undermined the new CEO in her ability to bring about change.
D) The new goals and objectives were coherent with the company mission statement.
23) A CEO made a lot of mistakes in assessing the market and the competitive conditions and
improperly redesigning the organization into numerous business units. Such errors led to
significant performance declines. According to the text, this example illustrates the
perspective of leadership.
A) external control
B) romantic
C) internal mechanism
D) operational
24) According to the external control view of leadership, which of the following factors would not
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be considered an external factor that might positively or negatively affect a firm’s success?
A) economic downturns
B) governmental legislation
C) outbreak of war
D) company employee morale
25) According to the text, the strategic management process entails three ongoing processes. They
are
A) analyses, actions, and synthesis.
B) analyses, decisions, and actions.
C) analyses, evaluation, and critique.
D) analyses, synthesis, and decisions.
26) Management innovations such as total quality, benchmarking, and business process
reengineering cannot lead to sustainable competitive advantage because
A) companies that have implemented these techniques have lost money.
B) there is no proof that these techniques work.
C) they cost too much money and effort to implement.
D) every company is trying to implement them.
27) The organizational versus the individual rationality perspective suggests that objectives that
are
A) good for a functional area are always good for the overall organization.
B) good for the overall organization are always best for a functional area.
C) best for a functional area may not be best for the overall organization.
D) best for one functional area will never be best for all functional areas.
28) The four key attributes of strategic management include the idea that strategy must
A) be directed toward overall organizational goals and objectives.
B) be focused only on long-term objectives.
C) be focused on only one specific area of an organization.
D) focus only on competitor strengths.
29) The four key attributes of strategic management include all of the following except
A) including multiple stakeholder interests in decision making.
B) incorporating both short-term and long-term perspectives.
C) recognizing the trade-offs between effectiveness and efficiency.
D) emphasis on the attainment of short-term objectives.
30) Effectiveness is often defined as
A) doing things right.
B) stakeholder satisfaction.
C) doing the right thing.
D) productivity enhancement.
31) In choosing to focus on stakeholders, which of the following will not lead to success for a
manager?
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A) shareholders and employees
B) employees and suppliers
C) customers and the community at large
D) customers only
32) In strategic management, both the short-term and long-term perspectives need to be considered
because
A) shareholder value is only measured by short-term returns.
B) shareholders only care about long-term returns.
C) long-term vision precludes the analysis of present operating needs.
D) the creative tension between the two forces managers to develop more successful strategy.
33) Strategic management involves the recognition of trade-offs between effectiveness and
A) cost.
B) value.
C) return on investment.
D) efficiency.
34) All the following are ambidextrous behaviors except
A) taking initiative and being alert to opportunities beyond the job description.
B) being cooperative and seeking opportunities to combine personal efforts with that of others.
C) intensely focusing on the responsibilities of one individual and maximizing the output of the
department in the organization in which that individual works.
D) being brokers, always looking to build internal linkages.
35) Ambidextrous behaviors in individuals illustrate how a dual capacity for can be
woven into the fabric of an organization at the individual level.
A) alignment and adaptability
B) alignment and transparency
C) alignment and internal linkages
D) alignment and efficiency
36) The innovation paradox implies that consistency in products and services provokes a tension
with the need for new products. This results in a conflict between
A) stability and change.
B) structure and culture.
C) rewards and metrics.
D) stability and metrics.
37) According to Henry Mintzberg, the final realized strategy of a firm is
A) a combination of deliberate and emergent strategies.
B) a combination of deliberate and differentiation strategies.
C) not deliberate.
D) a result of unrealized intended strategy.
38) may be considered the advance work that must be done in order to effectively
formulate and implement strategies.
A) Goal setting