Solutions Manual for

Solutions Manual for Strategic Management A Competitive Advantage, Concept and Cases, 18e Fred David, Forest David, Meredith David (All Chapters Download link at the end of this file) 1 / 4

Copyright © 2024 Pearson Education, Inc.1 Chapter 1 – The Nature of Strategic Management

Overview

Chapter 1 introduces the basic terms in strategic management. This chapter presents the comprehensive model for strategic planning that appears in each subsequent chapter and provides a unifying, logical flow for the entire textbook. This chapter describes the benefits of doing strategic planning, the drawbacks of not doing strategic planning, and the pitfalls of doing strategic planning incorrectly.

Learning Objectives

1-1. Describe the strategic management process.1-2. Discuss the three stages of activities for strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation.1-3. Explain the need for integrating analysis and intuition in strategic management.1-4. Define and give examples of key terms in strategic management.1-5. Describe the benefits of engaging in strategic management.1-6. Explain why some firms do not engage in strategic planning.1-7. Describe the pitfalls in doing strategic planning.1-8. Discuss the connection between business and military strategies.1-9. Explain how this course can enhance a student’s employability.

Teaching Tips

• Spend about 20 minutes going over the comprehensive strategic management model in

Figure 1-1, highlighting each component part with examples. This model integrates all the chapters in the book in a clear process approach to this course. Going over this model is an excellent way to cover the terms introduced in the chapter.

• Pull up the new and improved author website for this textbook, because it has great

resources for students. The URL is www.strategyclub.com. In class, listen to the four- minute author video at this website for “Why is Chapter 1 so Important?” Spend perhaps a whole class on the author website using the many resources there to give an overview of the whole strategic management process.

• The Edwards Deming quote mentioned in Chapter 1 (“In God we trust. All others

bring data.”) is vitally important in this course, because students tend to use vague terms throughout their case analysis. Vagueness is detrimental to development of any strategic plan. Therefore, highlight and emphasize the relevance and importance of the Deming quote and tell students that vagueness is disastrous in this course. Strategies must be 2 / 4

Copyright © 2024 Pearson Education, Inc.2 formulated to the extent possible on factual, specific, underlying key internal and external factors, rather than trying to formulate strategies based on general statements, opinion, or intuition. That is why Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 emphasize that underlying external and internal factors must be to the extent possible AQCD (actionable/quantitative/comparative/divisional).

• Chapter 1 introduces SWOT analysis, because this strategic planning tool is so widely

used across businesses – so go over SWOT analysis even though more detailed information is given in Chapter 6 regarding SWOT. See Figure 1-2.

• Go over the new Table 1-2 that reveals eight famous, strategic planning relevant quotes

from NFL coaches. These quotes are all applicable to effectively formulating and implementing strategies.

• Make sure students can define and give an example of all the strategic management

terms introduced in this chapter – because these terms are used throughout the textbook and in most businesses.

• Highlight “the benefits of doing strategic planning” in Figure 1-3. Use that exhibit to

emphasize the many benefits of doing strategic planning, as well as the drawbacks of not doing strategic planning.

• Ask students to raise their hand if they played football, basketball, or soccer for the

college/university. Ask several of those athletes to “tell the class how important having a good game plan is to the success of an athletic team.” Associate their answers to the importance of a business having a good game plan, i.e., strategic plan.

• Regarding the “Comparing Business and Military Strategies” section, emphasize to

students that there are countless examples in military history where a superior army was defeated by a smaller army that had a better strategic plan. The famous general, Alexander the Great, who never lost a battle, said (paraphrased): “I’d rather face an army of lions led by a sheep, than an army of sheep led by a lion.” That quote emphasizes the importance of strategic planning, and having an excellent strategist. All the Notable Quotes given at the www.strategyclub.com website under Student Resources are outstanding.

• Near the end of Chapter 1 is a section on Student Employability and how this course

enhances employability. This whole concept is enhanced with this edition and merits class time to accent the relevance of this course to a student’s overall career.

• Each chapter concludes with a mini-case designed to apply chapter concepts and

techniques. Go over the mini-case in this and all chapters.

• All end-of-chapter review questions are excellent to go over as many as possible in

class. Sometimes in class, the authors will assign every student a question and give the class 10 minutes to develop answers and then let each student give the class the answer, 3 / 4

Copyright © 2024 Pearson Education, Inc.3 and then comment on the answer (answers to all questions are given later in this manual).This is a great way to promote teacher/student interaction.

• Ask students to read the McDonald’s Cohesion Case presented after Chapter 1

because a third of all the end-of-chapter exercises at the end of every chapter apply chapter concepts to the McDonald’s case – thus preparing students for developing a case analysis on their assigned company. Divide students into three- or four-person teams within the first two weeks of class and assign to them one of the 30 cases in the book, and schedule a day for the teams to each give a 10- to 15-minute oral presentation revealing their recommended three-year strategic plan for the firm. The authors and most professors using this book use this approach.

• It is important to spend some class time also on the Chapter 1 end-of-chapter

Exercises 1A and 1B that apply the strategic management process to the McDonald’s Cohesion Case. Associated exercises at the end of other chapters utilize the information obtained from Exercises 1A and 1B and collectively help prepare students for performing case analysis on their assigned company.

• A popular exercise at the end of Chapter 1 is 1C titled “Perform SWOT Analysis for

My University.” You could spend a whole class day on this exercise alone. Definitely spend some time on this exercise because associated exercises at the end of each chapter apply strategy concepts to your college/university. Students are very knowledgeable about their university and their opinions differ widely as to strengths/weaknesses and opportunities/threats/strategies. Thus, spending class time working through this exercise will reveal to students how opinions vary regarding the importance of various factors/issues; opinions also vary in companies doing strategic planning. We use this exercise also to facilitate teacher/student interaction as well as student/student interaction, which is especially beneficial to do early in the semester.

• Exercise 1E introduces a new group versus individual decision-making exercise that

appears at the end of each chapter in the 18 th edition. These are fun, informative, effective exercises to determine winners and losers each day in class.

• Encourage your students to use the free Excel student template at the author website

at www.strategyclub.com. Your students will find this template to be immensely helpful in this course. Plus, two example strategic management case projects are provided at this website as a guide for students to follow.

Issues for Review and Discussion

1-1. Why do you believe SWOT analysis is so commonly used by businesses in doing strategic planning?

Answer: SWOT analysis is the most widely used strategic planning tool because it is intuitively simple, contains no numbers, lends itself to group discussion, and contains the

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