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Question
In which one of the following instances is the training and retraining of employees likely to make the LEAST important contribution to good strategy execution?A. When a company shifts to a strategy requiring different skills, competitive capabilities, managerial approaches, and operating methods
B. When an organization is striving to build skills-based competencies
C. When technical know-how is changing so rapidly that a company loses its ability to compete unless its skilled people have cutting-edge knowledge and expertise
D. When the chosen strategy calls for a deeper technological capability or building and using new capabilities
E. When the strategy execution effort is based on tried-and-true operating practices that vary little from year to year
Answer
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Related questions
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Which of the following is NOT an example of leadership actions or managerial practices taken to foster a results-oriented, high-performance culture? A. Treating employees as valued partners B. Utilizing people-management practices to build morale and foster pride C. Setting stretch objectives and clearly communicating expectations for reaching targets D. Using motivational techniques and compensation incentives to inspire employees E. Following a must-be-invented-here mindset
Q:
The leadership challenges that top executives face in making corrective adjustments when things are not going well include: A. knowing when to replace poorly performing workers and when to do a better job of coaching them to do the right things. B. being able to discern whether to emphasize adjustments that will promote better achievement of strategic performance targets or whether to emphasize adjustments that will promote better achievement of financial performance targets. C. undertaking a thorough analysis of the situation, exercising good business judgment in deciding what actions to take, and then ensuring good implementation of the corrective actions that are initiated. D. having the analytical skills to separate the problems due to a bad strategy from the problems due to bad strategy execution. E. deciding whether the company would be better off making adjustments that curtail the achievement of strategic objectives or that curtail the achievement of financial objectives or that curtail the achievement of some of both.
Q:
Which of the following managerial practices is NOT used to lead the effort to foster a results-oriented, high-performance culture? A. Using empowerment to help create a fully engaged workforce B. Making champions out of the people who spearhead new ideas and/or turn in winning performances C. Celebrating individual, group, and company successes D. Treating employees as valued partners in the drive for operating excellence and good business performance E. Placing a premium on not making mistakes, prompting managers to lean toward safe, conservative options intended to maintain the status quo
Q:
Which of the following does NOT describe an unhealthy company culture? A. Insular and inwardly-focused B. Change-resistant C. Unethical and greed-driven D. Politicized E. Hyper-adaptive
Q:
What is the hallmark of an adaptive corporate culture? A. A shared willingness to adapt core values to fit the changing requirements of an evolving strategy B. A conservative strategy, prudent risk-taking, and strong peer pressures to observe cultural norms C. A clear willingness on the part of organizational members to accept change and take on the challenge of introducing and executing new strategies D. A commitment to the types of core values and ethical standards that make a company a great place to work E. A strong preference for performance-based compensation systems-especially the payment of bonuses and stock options
Q:
The hallmarks of a high-performance corporate culture include: A. a deep commitment to employee training, unusually attractive fringe benefit packages for company personnel, and frequently revised and updated values and ethics statements. B. a "can-do" spirit, pride in doing things right, no-excuses accountability, and a pervasive results-oriented work climate where people go the extra mile to meet or beat stretch objectives. C. a strong emphasis on teamwork, strict enforcement of company policies and procedures, and incentive compensation for all employees aligned with a balanced scorecard approach to measuring performance. D. a deep commitment to pioneering new best practices, a preference for being a fast-follower as opposed to a first-mover or late-mover, and across-the-board bonuses for all personnel when the company meets or beats stretch objectives. E. a deep commitment to top-notch quality and superior customer service, dedicated use of TQM and/or Six Sigma quality control programs, and the payment of big performance bonuses and stock options.
Q:
Which of the following is NOT a reason why companies might use outsourcing to improve performance of strategy-critical activities? A. Improving a company's chances for outclassing rivals in the performance of strategy-critical activities and turning a core competence into a distinctive competence B. Promoting quick establishment of a total quality culture C. Speeding internal decision making and shortening the time it takes to respond to changing market conditions D. Capitalizing on the partnerships with outsiders to enhance its arsenal of capabilities and thus contribute to better strategy execution E. Helping decrease internal bureaucracies and flatten the organizational structure
Q:
Which of the following is NOT part of organizing the work effort in ways that promote successful strategy execution? A. Facilitating collaboration with external partners and strategic allies B. Providing for cross-unit coordination and deciding which value chain activities to perform in-house and which ones to outsource C. Determining how much authority to centralize at the top and how much to delegate to down-the-line managers and employees D. Determining which functions and organizational units require superior intellectual capital E. Maintaining expertise and resource depth in performing those internally strategy-critical value chain activities that underpin its long-term competitive success and provide for the main building blocks in the organization structure
Q:
Sometimes a company can short-circuit the task of building an organizational capability in-house by: A. putting in high-incentive bonuses to reward individual employees who train hard to develop the desired capability. B. launching an extensive training effort to develop the capability quickly with newly hired employees. C. either acquiring a company that has already developed the capability or else acquiring the desired capability through collaborative efforts with outsiders having the requisite skills, know-how, and expertise. D. using benchmarking and the adoption of best practices to imitate a capability that rivals have already developed. E. empowering a team of employees to develop the capability however they best see fit.
Q:
The traits of the capability building process involve all of the following EXCEPT: A. evolving changes in customer needs and competitive conditions that often require tweaking and adjusting a company's portfolio of competencies and intellectual capital to keep its capabilities freshly honed and on the cutting edge. B. a core competence or capability that emerges incrementally out of company efforts either to bolster skills that contributed to earlier successes or to respond to customer problems, new technological and market opportunities, and the competitive maneuverings of rivals. C. core competencies or capabilities that are most often bundles of skills and know-how that grow out of the combined efforts of cross-functional work groups and departments performing complementary activities at different locations in a firm's value chain. D. the key to leveraging a core competence into a distinctive competence (or transforming a capability into a competitively superior capability), which concerns concentrating more effort and talent than rivals on deepening and strengthening a competence or capability so as to achieve the dominance needed for competitive advantage. E. saving time by creating capabilities from scratch to remain aligned with external conditions and company strategy rather than updating and remodeling existing capabilities.
Q:
A dynamic capability is the: A. ongoing capacity to modify existing resources and capabilities to create new ones. B. improvement evaluation process for eliminating waste in the firm. C. functional and operating resources management process. D. ongoing capability to understand and establish a rival commitment to resource alignment. E. most compelling product or service a firm .
Q:
Which of the following statements about recruiting and retaining capable employees is FALSE? A. The quality of an organization's people is always an essential ingredient if critical value chain activities are to be performed competently. B. Recruiting and retaining capable employees is a particularly important organization-building task in enterprises where superior intellectual capital is a key resource and also a basis for competitive advantage. C. Recruiting and retaining capable employees are usually much more important to good strategy execution and the achievement of true operating excellence than is assembling a capable top management team. D. It is very difficult for a company to competently execute its strategy and achieve operating excellence without a large band of capable employees who are actively engaged in the process of making ongoing operating improvements. E. In many industries, adding to a company's talent base and building intellectual capital is more important to good strategy execution than additional investments in plants, equipment, and capital projects.
Q:
General Electric has an up-or-out policy, where key personnel in underperforming units are pressured to boost performance to acceptable levels and keep it there or risk being replaced. What is this an example of? A. Staffing the organization with managers and employees capable of executing the strategy well B. Developing the resources and organizational capabilities required for successful strategy execution C. Tying rewards and incentives directly to the achievement of strategic and financial targets D. Adopting best practices and business processes to drive continuous improvement in strategy execution activities E. Exercising the internal leadership needed to propel strategy implementation forward
Q:
The managerial approach to implementing and executing a strategy should always: A. be customized to fit the particulars of a company's situation. B. involve only minor changes to the existing strategy. C. require radical strategy changes for successful execution. D. rely on the active support of frontline employees. E. focus on market conditions and the company's resources and capabilities.
Q:
Why does a company's budget need to be closely linked to the needs of good strategy execution?
Q:
Which of the following is NOT characteristic of a compensation and reward system designed to help drive successful strategy execution? A. Tying incentives to performance outcomes directly linked to good strategy execution and financial performance B. Keeping the time between achieving the target performance outcome and the payment of the reward as short as possible C. Making sure that the performance targets that each individual or team is expected to achieve involve outcomes that the individual or team can personally affect D. Providing generous rewards for people who turn in outstanding performances E. Offering rewards that amount to 3 percent of an employee's total compensation
Q:
Motivational and incentive compensation practices that aim at winning the commitment of company personnel to good strategy execution typically: A. use only positive rewards and never involve the use of tension, fear, job insecurity, stress, or anxiety. B. entail decidedly positive rewards for meeting or beating performance targets, but also impose sufficiently negative consequences when actual performance falls short of the target. C. aim at creating a no-pressure/no-adverse-consequences work environment. D. entail paying the highest wages and salaries in the industry for all jobholder positions and also stressing nonmonetary rewards, like cash bonuses for high-performing employees. E. put top priority on making employees happy and secure in their jobs.
Q:
Management's most powerful tool for winning employee commitment to good strategy execution is: A. the establishment of strategy-supportive policies and procedures. B. empowering employees and encouraging them to adopt best practices. C. setting stretch objectives. D. a structure of rewards and incentives tied tightly to the achievement of the organization's strategic priorities. E. aggressive use of TQM and Six Sigma quality control programs.
Q:
Management's most powerful tool for mobilizing organizational commitment to competent strategy execution and operating excellence is the: A. diligent and persistent use of benchmarking and best practices. B. proper use of a reward structure with motivational incentives. C. implementation of TQM and/or Six Sigma programs. D. periodic giving of inspirational speeches aimed at arousing employees' emotional energy. E. process of providing employees with a high degree of job security (ideally, via a no-layoff policy).
Q:
Which of the following is NOT integral to superior strategy execution and operating excellence? A. Having real-time information systems that permit company managers to stay on top of implementation initiatives and daily operations and to intervene if things seem to be drifting off course B. Having state-of-the-art operating systems, information systems, and real-time data C. Having access to online systems that provide statistical information about operating activities D. Having the systems capability to identify and diagnose problems, so as to take corrective actions E. Having access to employee data of competitors
Q:
The broad areas that internal information business systems need to cover include all of the following EXCEPT: A. financial performance data. B. corporate culture data. C. customer data. D. operations data. E. employee data.
Q:
Identify and discuss the three ways that a corporate culture, grounded in actions, behaviors, and work practices and conducive to good strategy implementation can assist corporate strategy execution.
Q:
Identify the characteristics of an unhealthy culture and briefly describe three types of unhealthy cultures that adversely impact the corporate climate and performance.
Q:
Identify and discuss the purpose and benefits of closely aligning corporate culture with the requirements for proficient strategy execution.
Q:
When a company's social responsibility initiatives become part of the way it operates its business every day, these initiatives are: A. likely to be fully effective in creating a competitive advantage. B. normally based on a corporate social agenda. C. ambiguous and rarely make a difference in the way the company does business. D. implausible to advance a positive, high-energy workplace environment. E. heavily dependent on encouraging employee morality.
Q:
Sourcing a supply from a small, women-owned business is an example of a corporate social responsibility action to: A. enhance employee well-being. B. support philanthropy. C. protect and sustain the environment. D. ensure honorable and ethical action. E. promote workforce diversity.
Q:
Which of the following statements regarding a company's social responsibility and sustainability strategy is FALSE? A. A company is not demonstrating an adequate degree of social responsibility or endeavoring to be a model corporate citizen unless it spends 5 percent (or more) of pretax profits on social responsibility initiatives. B. Social responsibility strategies that have the effect of both providing valuable social benefits and fulfilling customer needs in a superior fashion can lead to competitive advantage. C. A few companies have integrated social responsibility and/or environmental sustainability objectives into their missions and overall performance targets. They view social performance and environmental metrics as an essential component of judging the company's overall future performance. D. Unless a company's social responsibility initiatives become part of the way it operates its business every day, the initiatives are unlikely to be fully effective. E. While the strategies and actions of all socially responsible companies have sameness in the sense of drawing on the same categories of socially responsible behavior, each company's version of being socially responsible is unique.
Q:
What is the function of the Global Reporting Initiative? A. It promotes greater transparency and facilitates benchmarking CSR efforts across firms and industries. B. It promotes and establishes mutual funds investment opportunities comprised of companies that excel on the basis of the triple bottom line. C. It promotes greater awareness of the Dow Jones World Index, which comprises companies that are engaged in environment sustainability. D. It promotes corporate governance, climate change, and labor practices. E. It is a nonprofit reporting organization that ranks companies on habitat protection.
Q:
The essence of socially responsible business behavior is that a company: A. should balance strategic actions to benefit shareholders against the duty to be a good corporate citizen. B. undertake actions that add value to shareholders. C. respect societal expectations that shareholders should be rewarded for providing risk capital. D. should work toward shareholders' expectations of maximum return. E. should provide jobs to the local community rather than outsourcing them.
Q:
Which of the following is NOT one of the benefits of outsourcing value chain activities presently performed in-house? A. Streamlines company operations in ways that improve organizational flexibility and cuts the time it takes to get new products into the marketplace B. Allows a company to concentrate on its core business, leverage its key resources, and do even better what it already does best C. Helps the company assemble diverse kinds of expertise speedily and efficiently D. Enables a company to gain better access to end users and better market visibility E. Improves a company's ability to innovate