Deck 4: Analysing the External Environment

Question 1

Hubbard,Rice and Galvin suggest that the ways in which capability performance may be compared are:

A)external peer review,intra-industry comparisons,benchmarking,cost driver analysis
B)internal self-perception,intra-industry comparisons,benchmarking,cost driver analysis,competitive intelligence
C)internal self-perception,inter-industry comparisons,benchmarking,competitive analysis
D)external peer review,intra-industry comparisons,benchmarking,cost driver analysis

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Hubbard,Rice and Galvin do NOT suggest getting competitor intelligence by:

A)talking to customers and competitors' customers
B)visiting competitors' premises and going through their rubbish for confidential documents
C)'reverse engineering' a competitor's product or service
D)talking to people employed in the industry

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Hubbard,Rice and Galvin suggest three approaches in searching for strategic capabilities:

A)function analysis,resource analysis,process and system analysis
B)resource analysis,external analysis,internal analysis
C)pattern and process analysis,dysfunction analysis,resource analysis
D)implementation analysis,variance analysis,gap analysis

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Which three areas have emerged as the focus of dynamic capabilities analysis?

A)Knowledge acquisition,innovation,learning outsourcing,management cognition
B)Knowledge management,learning and ability to innovate
C)Knowledge acquisition,innovation,learning by doing,management recognition
D)Knowledge management,innovation,learning organisation,management by objectives

Question 5

Hubbard,Rice and Galvin recommend identifying cost drivers by:

A)looking at the cost structure by broad category of expense
B)looking at the useful information provided by functional costing
C)establishing a value chain or set of activities that the organisation performs
D)none of the above

Question 6

Teece argues that dynamic capabilities can be disaggregated into three aspects.Which of the following is NOT included in those aspects?

A)Sensing and shaping opportunities and threats
B)Seizing opportunities
C)Sharing resources
D)Maintaining and reconfiguring resources and capabilities

Question 7

Hubbard,Rice and Galvin's critique of SWOT analysis:

A)recommends it as the cornerstone of all strategic analysis
B)finds that it is the dominant methodology of strategic analysis in organisations in practice
C)encourages having an up-to-date SWOT analysis instead of mentioning capabilities
D)finds that the 'strengths' accurately represent 'strategic capabilities'

Question 8

Which of the following is important for organisations to meet environmental sustainability?

A)Identifying surface capabilities and measuring performance against others
B)Developing 'green' capabilities
C)Forcing knowledge dissemination and cultural conformity on all employees
D)Establishing a community of practice network and a knowledge reward system

Question 9

Senge coined the term 'learning organisation' to reflect:

A)on how decisions can lead to actions and new learning follows
B)the strategic value of seeing underlying learning as a core competence
C)on how learning leads to knowledge and prevents repeating future mistakes
D)the importance of learning ability in organisational adaptability and ongoing success

Question 10

In terms of social sustainability,increased focus on meeting the social needs of employees will include all of the following except:

A)flexible working arrangements
B)aligning rewards to performance
C)desirable cultures and values
D)hiring and firing skills

Question 11

According to the resource-based view,a necessary condition for competitive advantage is that:

A)resources are heterogeneous and immobile between organisations
B)all resources are unique
C)all resources can be imitated
D)all resources are interchangeable

Question 12

Strategic capabilities:

A)create competitive advantage
B)create sustainable competitive advantage
C)are possessed by every firm in the industry
D)are easy to imitate or replicate

Question 13

Leonard's findings about the ability to innovate did NOT include:

A)outsourcing problem-solving for greater efficiency
B)implementing new methodologies
C)experimenting and prototyping
D)learning from the market

Question 14

Leonard's 'core technical dynamic capability' model does NOT include:

A)external societal systems
B)managerial systems
C)organisational values and norms
D)individual skills and knowledge

Question 15

Hauschild et al.found that successful knowledge management practice included:

A)rewarding employees for creating a store of private knowledge
B)setting easily achievable goals to encourage incremental improvement
C)tying incentives to goals that could only be achieved through intense personal effort
D)updating databases regularly

Question 16

Leonard suggested that one of the reasons why core rigidities are allowed to develop is:

A)attacking core rigidities attacks the future economic viability of the organisation
B)organisational routines easily become outmoded
C)attacking current strategic capabilities attacks the current power structure
D)habits arise from the cultural responsiveness of the workforce

Question 17

We define 'capabilities' as the ___,___ or ___ which the organisation uses to coordinate its resources for productive use.

A)preparations,systems,organisational routines
B)processes,strategies,organisational routines
C)processes,systems,organisational routines
D)processes,systems,operational repertoires

Question 18

The features of 'benchmarking' explained by Hubbard,Rice and Galvin exclude:

A)comparing organisational performance against other organisations
B)comparing against the 'best in class' performer
C)ease in identifying the world best practice organisation
D)comparing the performance of one or more specific activities

Question 19

The definition of 'strategic capabilities' does NOT require that they:

A)create value for customers
B)create value for shareholders
C)are better than those of most competitors
D)are difficult to imitate or replicate

Question 20

Which of the following is NOT suggested by Nonaka as a way to turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge:

A)articulation
B)codification
C)sharing
D)externalisation

Question 21

Describe the links between resources,capabilities and strategic capabilities.

Question 22

Knowledge management,learning and the ability to innovate are the three key areas of achieving dynamic capabilities.

Question 23

What ways can be used to measure performance (or the difference in quality or capabilities)of an organisation as compared with its competitor? Discuss the initial approach in depth.

Question 24

Resources are defined as the tangible assets of the organisation.

Question 25

There is only one sure way to gather competitor intelligence - talking to competitors' customers.

Question 26

Non-substitutable and exploitable are two additional elements of the framework for evaluating capabilities.

Question 27

Compare and contrast the assumptions of conventional economics with those of the 'resource-based view' of competition.Can they be reconciled or are they contradictory?

Question 28

Leonard developed three reasons why organisations at the peak of their industries develop core rigidities.

Question 29

Why have some authors criticised the resources and capabilities focus of looking at an organisation over time?

Question 30

Equivalent terms used by others and in practice for the word "capabilities" do not include the current terminology of:

A)Valuables
B)Competences
C)Skills
D)Resources

Question 31

One of the challenges of strategic management is finding agreement in terms of a common terminology of capabilities.

Question 32

Why is it so difficult to identify strategic capabilities within organisations? What should be used for this search?

Question 33

Capabilities exist only in the key departments of the organisation.

Question 34

Hubbard et al.found that winning organisations in Australia were focused on maintaining low staff turnover.

Question 35

Where there are several competitors,the VRIO tests may break down.

Question 36

Dynamic capabilities include easy-to-replicate enterprise capabilities required to adapt to changing customer and technological opportunities.

Question 37

One of the limitations of functional analysis is that it follows conventional thinking and is likely to uncover only strategic capabilities.

Question 38

Strengths in the traditional SWOT analysis do not usually address the test of 'better than most competitors',which is a crucial test for competitive advantage.

Question 39

How does the emergence of sustainability as a macro-environment issue affect the analysis of organisational capabilities?

Question 40

There are two distinct types of knowledge: explicit and tacit.

Question 41

Assess the relevance of SWOT analysis from the 'resource-based view' of organisations.