Advanced essay questions for the BUS 445 midterm 1
The midterm will consist of a mix of multiple choice and short essay questions which will
come from the following list.
1. Define macro environment and explain its relevance to strategic thinking.
2. Define the concepts of key success factors and driving forces. What is the strategymaking value of identifying an industry's key success factors? Of identifying the driving
forces? What steps should you take and/or what questions should you ask in order to
identify an industry’s KSFs and driving forces? Illustrate your answer with a description
of the KSFs and driving forces in the cola industry, based on the Cola Wars case.
3. Define the following concepts and explain how they are distinctive from and yet relate to
each other:
a.
b.
c.
d.
core competence
distinctive competence
competitive advantage
sustainable competitive advantage.
4. Discuss the relevance of each of the five questions that form the framework of company
situation analysis. (See p. 79 for the questions, which are discussed more fully throughout
chapter 3.) (In answering this question, you should be specific about how the answers
to these questions figure in the strategy-making process.) These questions include:
a. How well is the company’s present strategy working?
b. What are the company’s resource strengths and weaknesses and its external
opportunities and threats?
c. Are the company’s prices and costs competitive?
d. Is the company competitively stronger or weaker than key rivals?
e. What strategic issues merit front-burner managerial attention?
5. Diagram, describe, and discuss the analytical value in the strategy-making process of the
five forces model of competition. In addition, explain:
a. Under what conditions the threat of entry is stronger;
b. Under what conditions substitutes create stronger competitive pressures;
c. Under what conditions suppliers have stronger bargaining power
d. Under what conditions buyers have stronger bargaining power.
6. Diagram a typical company value chain and discuss its analytical value in the strategymaking process. In answering this question, you will need to incorporate the following
issues into your answer: cost competitiveness, core competencies, distinctive
competencies, outsourcing, and the choice of basic strategy (e.g., how the value chain
figures in a company’s choice of one of the five generic strategies). Where appropriate,
illustrate your answer using either the Cola Wars or the Ice-Fili case.
7. What is the value of SWOT analysis? In answering this question, be sure to define what
SWOT analysis is and explain its role in analysis of a company’s internal situation and
more broadly in strategic thinking.
8. Regarding the five generic competitive strategies:
a. What are they and on what parameters do they vary?
b. What is the basic competitive logic of each of the five, i.e., how does a company
pursuing a particular strategy seek to gain competitive advantage?
c. How does value chain analysis potentially play a role in the choice of a basic
strategy?
d. In practice, what should be the link between a functional strategy and a chosen
generic competitive strategy?
9. How does the changing pattern of vertical integration in the Cola Wars case (1960 to
2000) illustrate the rationales for backward or forward integration? What benefits do
rivals in the cola industry hope to derive from their forward integration into bottling? Do
you see any potential pitfalls to this strategy? If so, what?