MBA Exam1 Learning Objectives
Chapter 1
Define strategic competitiveness, strategy, competitive advantage, above-average returns.
Define resources, capability, and core competencies.
Use the industrial organization (I/O) model to explain how firms can earn above-average
returns. (Figure 1.2)
Use the resource-based model to explain how firms can earn above average-returns. (Figure
1.3)
Describe vision and mission and discuss their value.
Define stakeholders and describe their ability to influence organizations.
Identify different types of stakeholders (Figure 1.4)
Who are a firms strategic leaders?
Explain the strategic management process. (Figure 1.1)
What is performance?
Why is performance central to the study and practice of management?
Discuss the relative nature of performance.
Chapter 2
Explain the importance of analyzing and understanding the firm’s external environment.
Identify, define and describe the 3 major areas of a firm’s external environment. (Figure 2.1)
What are opportunities and threats and why is it important to identify them?
Identify and describe the four activities of the external environmental analysis process.
(Table 2.2)
Identify and briefly describe the general environment’s seven segments.
Identify the five competitive forces and explain how they determine an industry’s profit
potential. (Figure 2.2)
What affects the strength of the five competitive forces?
What is strategic group mapping and what can it be used for?
Define strategic groups and describe their influence on the firm.
What is competitor analysis, what are its components, and why is it important? (Figure 2.3)
Chapter 3
Explain the need for firms to study and understand their internal organization.
Define value and discuss its importance.
Identify and discuss the major components of analyzing the internal organization. (Figure
3.1)
Describe the differences between tangible and intangible resources.
Define capabilities and core competencies and discuss how they develop.
Identify and describe four criteria of sustainable competitive advantage used to determine
whether resources and capabilities are core competencies. (Table 3.4)
What is a value chain and value chain analysis and how can they be used to identify and
evaluate resources and capabilities.
What are primary and support activities?
Define outsourcing and discuss the reasons for its use.
Discuss the importance of identifying internal strengths and weaknesses.
Chapter 4
Define business-level strategy and discuss its purpose.
What does business-level strategy involve?
How is strategic competitiveness achieved with business-level strategy?
Identify and describe 5 business-level strategies. (Figure 4.2)
Explain the differences among business-level strategies.
Use the five forces model to explain how low cost and differentiation advantages can
assist in the earning of above-average returns.
Identify and describe the competitive risks of using each of the business-level strategies.
Discuss the relative nature of business level strategies.
Chapter 5
Define competitors, competitive rivalry, competitive behavior, and competitive
dynamics.
Define competitive actions, competitive response, strategic action/response, and tactical
action/response.
Describe market commonality and resource similarity as the building blocks of a
competitor analysis.
Explain awareness, motivation, and ability as drivers of competitive behavior.
Identify and discuss 3 factors affecting the likelihood a competitor will take competitive
actions.
Identify and discuss 3 factors affecting the likelihood a competitor will respond to actions
taken against it.
Explain competitive dynamics in slow-cycle, fast-cycle and standard-cycle markets.
Chapter 6
What is corporate level strategy, what does it involve, and how is it different than
business level strategy?
What is product diversification?
What is level and type of diversification? Identify and describe the 5 categories of
businesses in Figure 6.1
Why do firms diversify? Identify and explain value-creating, value-neutral, and value
reducing incentives to diversify. Table 6.1.
Describe the relationships depicted in Figure 6.2.
What are relatedness diversification, economies of scope, operational relatedness and
corporate relatedness? How are these terms related?
What is market power and how can it be created using related diversification?
Define multipoint competition and vertical integration.
What are unrelated diversification and financial economies? How are these terms
related?
Identify and explain two types of financial economies.
What is portfolio analysis and what is it used for?
Identify and briefly describe 2 tools that can be used to evaluate a firm portfolio of
business units.
Chapter 7
Define merger, acquisition, and takeover.
Identify and describe 7 reasons why firms use merger and acquisition strategies?
What are horizontal, vertical, related, unrelated, and cross-border acquisitions?
Identify and describe 7 potential problems with merger and acquisition strategies?
Identify and describe basic attributes of successful acquisitions. Table 7.1
What is restructuring and when should it be used?
Identify and describe 3 restructuring strategies.