STRATEGIC MAGEMENT
9. Consultation
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1. Basic concepts
Which legal forms of enterprises do you know? What is the
difference in the liability of their owners?
What are considered small, medium, and large size
enterprises? (9)
What is the most frequent form of a firm’s life cycle?
(figure)
What are the management functions according to H. Fayol?
What is the mission of an enterprise? Give two examples as
well.
What are the most important connections among a
mission, a strategy and the operative plans? (figure) (19)
What is the blue banana? (25)
How can you characterise the growth (GDP/capita) of the
Hungarian economy in international comparison?
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2. Strategic planning
What are the main goals of an enterprise? What is the
economic role of a value chain?
What are the main characteristics of a competitive market?
What is the SWOT model? How does Porter complete the SWOT
model?
What are the main types of competitors (according to M.
Porter)? (14)
What types of (business) strategy do you know? (~17)
What is the more frequent form of a product life cycle? (figure)
What does the BCG growth-share matrix look like? What can
planners conclude on the basis of this matrix? (19-21)
What is the content of a (yearly) business plan of a small firm?
How do authors make distinctions between growth and
development?
How can the competitiveness of a country be measured?
What is the activity rate? Why is it important in Hungary? (28)
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Example: Hungarian tourism strategies
In spite of the great number of concepts on the Hungarian tourism
development, the national strategy is confused. The main problems
are the following:
• The concepts’ information base is questionable. The statistics on
domestic tourism are incomplete; the number of visitors of many
attractions is unknown.
• Main decision-makers are ministery officers, and many stakeholders
can not participate on the decision-making on development
objectives.
• Some objectives are irrational (e.g. decisions on the construction of
new baths, hydro-hotels in small villages, or on the liquidation of the
Budapest amusement park).
• The selection of development tools is inefficient. Often the main
tools are tax allowances, although the main causes of the poor
tourism supply are the bureaucracy and the corruption (e.g. the
corrupt hygienic control).
• Often the control of the development actions is not organised.
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3. Techniques of strategic planning
(continuation)
What information sources of a firm’s planning do you
know?
What is the brainstorming? And the Delphi technique?
What is the goal of the Balanced Scorecard?
How do we calculate expected value of a future value?
Why do planners develop scenarios? What methods does
the EU recommend for their development? (11)
What figure has the GE Nine-Cell matrix?
What tools does a firm use to influence the demand of
their products?
What is the content of a SME’s business plan?
What is the reason, and what are the main principles of
the corporate governance?
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4. Strategy implementation
What types of firm’s implementation strategies (according to FarkasdeBacker) do you know? (2-3-4-5)
What are the techniques of the modern human resources management?
What is a learning organisation?
How can be determined the break-even point ? Why is its non-linear form
important? (2 figures) (11)
How can be determined the rational proportions of the utilisation of two
factors of production? (figure)
What is a flow-chart (Gantt diagram)? (17)
How can the critical path be determined?
Why the monitoring of the implementation is important?
What are the main determinants of the reliability of an enterprise survey?
What are the main factors braking the growth of the Hungarian firms?
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5. Innovation strategies
What are the definitions of R&D and innovation? (2)
What types of institutions are the main actors in the National
Innovation System? And in the Triple Helix?
Why is the innovation important in the modern economies?
What are the main methods of the knowledge creation?
Which methods can be used to collect innovation ideas?
In what phases of firms’ life are innovations the most important?
Why?
What is a spin-off? Why are they important in Europe? (17)
What is the goal of a knowledge audit, and a knowledge map?
What are the main methods of IP protection?
What is the European Paradox? What are the data proving it?
(22)
What were the economic objectives of the EU in the last decade?
In what documents were they fixed?
Why is the innovation willingness low in Hungary?
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Case study on allowances of R & D tax
Since 2004 Hungarian firms can subtract their R & D costs
from their taxes. The Tax Office controlled the users. The
main statements were the following:
• Sometimes the beneficiary firms really realised R & D
projects which supported successful innovations.
• A number of managers however did not know, what the
“scientific” definition of the R & D is, e.g. they financed a
simple review of the professional literature, which is not R
& D, because in general it can not find out new knowledge.
• The main goal of some other beneficiary firms was the tax
economy; in these cases they often realised R & D with any
chance of a profitable utilisation (e.g. the writing a book).
• At times the only goal of a tax reduction was the creation of
some possibility to the corruption. In this case the
management ordered a small and simple analysis, but for a
great fee, and it asked back a part of the sum.
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6. Financial strategy
What are the balance sheet and the income statement?
Why do firms have to protect their goodwill?
What is the present value? Why and how do planners
count the risk discount?
What are the main sources of enterprise financing in the
different phases of the firm’s life-cycle?
What is the main task of the cash flow management?
What is the debt ratio?
What are the main tools of firms to increase the
profitability?
How can the financial situation of the Hungarian firms be
evaluated?
What are the Maastricht criteria? Why can not Hungary
enter to the euro area currently?
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7. Regional policies
Why did the regional strategies become important in the
modern economies?
What are the types of the regions in a developed economy
(according to M. Porter)?
Which were the leading centers of the world during the
past centuries? And nowadays?
What are the main goals and tools of the regional policy?
What does the principle of subsidiarity mean? And what
does the principle of partnership mean?
What is the red boomerang? How it can be characterised?
Describe the main problems (deficiencies) of the Hungarian
regional strategies.
What does “brain drain” mean?
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Case study on regional development
Hungary has great traditions in the regional development,
but often the strategies are wrong. The main mistakes
are as follow:
• The strategy of the Wien region calculates on the
demand and supply of many Czech and Hungarian
spaces. But the Hungarian regions do not analyse the
capabilities of the neighbouring regions, so, they
ignore many opportunities.
• In Hungary, the main decision-makers are politicians,
who fix the goals (distributing e.g. some EU
subventions) in the base of political points of view.
• The Hungarian regions do not co-operate in the
development actions, aldough they have many
common interests. So, these interests are not validated
in the realisation of their strategies.
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8. National economic policy
What do the GDP mean? What are the main
“factors” (engines) of its growth?
What are the “traditional” (classic) tools of an
economic policy? What additional elements can
be important in a modern economy?
What is the relationship between the corruption
and the growth in a country?
What are the principles of the contestable market
and why are they important?
What elements of the yearly economic forecasts
GKI can well predict and the forecasting of what
indexes are unreliable?
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