[ANSWERS] Week 3 Quiz

Question 1
1 / 1 pts
Executives whose visions and decisions help their companies achieve competitive advantage can be considered strategic leaders.
Correct!
True
Explanation: Executives whose vision and decisions enable their organizations to achieve competitive advantage demonstrate strategic leadership
False

Question 2
1 / 1 pts
Strategic leaders spend the majority of their time working alone to devise new strategies.
True
Correct!
False
Explanation: Strategic leaders spend 67% of their time in face-to-face meetings. They consider face-to-face meetings most effective in getting their message across and obtaining the information they need.

Question 3
1 / 1 pts
An employee lacking some of the innate abilities to be a top-level manager can still become an effective strategic leader through hard work and experience.
Correct!
True
Explanation: According to the upper-echelons theory, effective strategic leadership is the result of both innate abilities and learning. By mastering each level of the Level-5 leadership pyramid, an employee can learn to become an effective strategic leader.
False

Question 4
1 / 1 pts
It is helpful to break down strategy formulation and strategy implementation into five distinct areas.
True
Correct!
False
Explanation: It is helpful to break down strategy formulation and implementation into three distinct areas—corporate, business, and functional.

Question 5
1 / 1 pts
The autocratic strategic management process exhibited by the former head of Apple, Steve Jobs, is best described as an emergent strategy.
True
Correct!
False
Explanation: Under its co-founder and longtime CEO, Steve Jobs, Apple was one of the few successful tech companies using a top-down strategic planning process. Jobs felt that he knew best what the next big thing should be. In contrast, an emergent strategy describes any unplanned strategic initiative bubbling up from deep within the organization.

Question 6
1 / 1 pts
A surprise event that leads to a change in strategic initiatives, such as the accidental discovery of a new use for an existing product, is known as serendipity.
Correct!
True
Explanation: Serendipity describes random events, pleasant surprises, and accidental happenstances that can have a profound impact on a firm’s strategic initiatives.
False

Question 7
1 / 1 pts
A firm’s resource-allocation process (RAP) has very little effect on its realized strategy.
True
Correct!
False
Explanation: A firm’s resource-allocation process (RAP) determines the way it allocates its resources and can be critical in shaping its realized strategy. Emergent strategies can result from a firm’s resource-allocation process (RAP).

Question 8
1 / 1 pts
Because they are a crucial component of a firm’s success, customers are considered internal stakeholders.
True
Correct!
False
Explanation: Internal stakeholders include employees (including executives, managers, and workers), stockholders, and board members. External stakeholders include customers, suppliers, alliance partners, creditors, unions, communities, governments at various levels, and the media.

Question 9
1 / 1 pts
A firm is required by society and its shareholders to meet its ethical and philanthropic responsibilities.
True
Correct!
False
Explanation: Ethical and philanthropic responsibilities are expected by society, but not required.. Society and shareholders require economic and legal responsibilities.

Question 10
1 / 1 pts
Under the strategy as a planned emergence model, even entry-level employees can help generate strategic initiatives.
Correct!
True
Explanation: In the strategy as a planned emergence process, every employee plays a strategic role. Any employee, even at the entry level, can have great ideas that might become strategic initiatives with the potential to transform companies.
False

Question 11
1 / 1 pts
Hannah is the Chief Operating Officer of the startup AppPalace. In which of the following scenarios does Hannah exhibit strategic leadership?
Citing budget concerns, Hannah ignores the directions from AppPalace’s CEO to double the size of the customer support staff. As a result, the company misses its third quarter customer satisfaction target but exceeds its net profit expectations by 5 percent.
With a major pitch to potential investors coming up, Hannah works alone for 10 hours a day until she writes the perfect sales pitch. Even though the rest of her team doubts that they can meet the performance goals Hannah has set, she makes the presentation anyway.
Correct!
Hannah schedules a meeting with the manager of the marketing department and overcomes his skepticism about a new campaign aimed at customers in the 55+ age group. Over the next three months, AppPalace gains 250,000 new users in that group.
Explanation: Strategic leadership pertains to executives’ use of power and influence to direct the activities of others when pursuing an organization’s goals. Power is defined as the strategic leader’s ability to influence the behavior of other organizational members to do things, including things they would not do otherwise. Hannah’s ability to influence the behavior of the marketing department to target a new, underserved customer segment enables AppPalace to achieve a competitive advantage.
Hannah directs the company to produce an app for reptile enthusiasts, a community she happens to be a part of. Even though the app ends up losing significant amounts of money, Hannah is proud of the product and uses it every day.
Related: [SOLVED] Innovation in Healthcare        locate an article that compar
Question 12
1 / 1 pts
Trung has been an employee with PureEnergy Inc. for 15 years. He started with an entry-level job, and today he is a manager of an entire division. Over the years, Trung has acquired a reputation for doing the right things in the company. Hence, as an efficient leader, he is capable of effectively communicating and motivating his subordinates to work toward the company’s vision and mission. According to the Level-5 leadership pyramid, which is the highest level of leadership Trung has reached so far?
Correct!
Level 4: Effective Leader
Level 2: Contributing Team Member
Level 3: Competent Manager
Level 5: Executive

Question 13
1 / 1 pts
TriCorp is a major financial services corporation. With the CEO of TriCorp preparing to retire, several top managers are vying for the position. Jared considers himself to be a leading candidate. He not only has advanced degrees from business schools and more than a decade of experience working for TriCorp, but he also has personally ensured that his division has exceeded its performance benchmarks over the past three years, even though many of his employees are dissatisfied because they feel they are stagnating in their jobs. According to the level 5 leadership pyramid, why has Jared failed to exhibit the qualities of a level-5 leader?
His individual skills are not well developed.
Correct!
He is not able to help others reach their full potential.
Explanation: At Level 5, the strategic leader builds enduring greatness by combining willpower and humility. This implies that a Level-5 executive works to help the organization succeed and others to reach their full potential. Even though Jared’s division has exceeded expectations over the past three years, the fact that several of his employees feel that they are stagnating suggests that he has not mastered the capabilities necessary to be a level-5 executive.
He lacks the organizational ability to accomplish the organization’s goals.
His actions do not match the organization’s strategy.

Question 14
1 / 1 pts
The former CEO of Sam’s Club, a division with its own profit-and-loss responsibility, Rosalind Brewer, reported to Walmart’s CEO, C. Douglas McMillon, who as corporate executive oversees Walmart’s entire operations. Sam’s Club, therefore, is a _____ of Walmart.
branch office
Correct!
strategic business unit
Explanation: Strategic business units, or SBUs, are the stand-alone divisions of a larger conglomerate, each with its own profit-and-loss responsibility. Sam’s Club is the SBU of Walmart.
house brand manufacturer
corporate partner

Question 15
1 / 1 pts
Mercurial Foods is the parent company of several chain restaurants offering a variety of cuisines. The top management at Mercurial has decided to enter the frozen foods industry based on its assessment of the profit potential in that industry. Which of the following strategies does this best illustrate?
business strategy
functional strategy
Correct!
corporate strategy
Explanation: Corporate executives at headquarters formulate corporate strategy. They need to formulate a strategy that can create synergies across business units that may be quite different, and determine the boundaries of the firm by deciding whether to enter certain industries and markets and whether to sell certain divisions.
divisional strategy

Question 16
1 / 1 pts
A traditional top-down strategic planning process typically begins with
employees who have close contact with customers taking autonomous actions.
Correct!
strategic leaders adjusting a company’s vision and mission based on environmental analysis.
Explanation: In a traditional top-down strategic planning process, strategic planners first provide careful analyses of internal and external data and apply it to all quantifiable areas: prices, costs, margins, market demand, head count, and production runs. Based on a careful analysis of these data, top managers reconfirm or adjust the company’s vision, mission, and values before formulating corporate, business, and functional strategies.
employees at the operational level identifying problems within an organization.
functional managers formulating functional strategies for their respective departments.

Question 17
1 / 1 pts
The executives at Red Couture Inc. are developing strategic plans to address plausible future situations like rise in the prices of cotton and synthetic fabrics by 20 percent, appreciation in the value of the dollar, increase in the cost of labor by 30 percent, and increase in demand for the company’s products. By doing so, the company will be well prepared with its planned responses if any of these situations occurs in the future. Thus, Red Couture is employing _____ as the approach to the development of strategy.
reverse engineering
top-down strategic planning
pattern recognition
Correct!
scenario planning
Explanation: Scenario planning asks those “what if” questions. Similar to top-down strategic planning, scenario planning also uses a rational, scientific approach to the strategy process. In addition, in scenario planning managers envision different scenarios, to anticipate plausible futures.

Question 18
1 / 1 pts
When the strong dictatorial rule in Backenstein unexpectedly collapsed due to the shocking death of the royal family in an explosion, the nation’s economy experienced drastic changes. The laws became more restrictive, the country lost many locally produced resources and products, and the distribution of wealth became inequitable. The unexpected event that led to these changes can best be described as a(n) _____ event.
miracle
wild card
extinction
Correct!
black swan
Explanation: The unexpected event that led to these changes can best be described as a black swan event. The metaphor of a black swan describes the high impact of a highly improbable event.

Question 19
1 / 1 pts
A(n) _____ is best described as the strategic option that top managers decide most closely matches the current reality and which is then executed.
executive summary
Correct!
dominant strategic plan
Explanation: Dominant strategic plan is the strategic option that top managers decide most closely matches the current reality and which is then executed.
bottom-up emergent strategy
realized strategy

Question 20
1 / 1 pts
The best example of a firm’s external stakeholder is a(n)
shareholder who has invested money in the firm but is not employed by the firm.
employee of the firm who is responsible for a contract project.
Correct!
government agency that regulates the prices of products manufactured by the firm.
Explanation: The best example of a firm’s external stakeholder is a government agency that regulates the prices of products manufactured by the firm. External stakeholders of a firm include customers, suppliers, alliance partners, creditors, unions, communities, media, and governments at various levels.
board member from a wholly-owned foreign subsidiary of the firm.