Thompson and Strickland Essay Questions

2.1 – explain the strategic purpose of a) school governors, b) senior management team, c) other statutory roles e.g. SENCO, d) teachers and e) support staff roles.

1. Review the definition of management at the beginning of the chapter and briefly define each of the 4 functions. What are the challenges in carrying out these functions in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace?

1. Read `Spotlight on Management` on pages 133-149 and the practice lesson `The Real World` on page 152. Please discuss the following questions in detail.  Your response to each question should consist of:  a minimum word count of 250 words and at least three (3) scholarly sources (1 resource can be the textbook):

3. Briefly describe how the current production cost assignment system works. What are the consumption ratios (activity percentages) for assigning manufacturing overhead to each product at present?

2. The senior management and members of board of directors satisfy themselves that a company has a reliable way to track and respond to strategic risk based on the plans that company have. Most companies focus on the quality of the

Mintzberg, H. Research . (1972) On strategy-making', Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Academyo f Management,N Minneapolis.

According to Porter (1985) a company can apply three generic types of strategies to protect itself while competitive force is a key issue of the management. To achieve this position a strategy based on competency must be accomplished

The fourth step into the creation of executable strategies relies in the alignment of resources, purposes, and strategical thinking contemplations into reality. The rationale of this step is to create

4. What are the various levels of management, and how do they participate in the process of strategic decision making?

3. ECCO has a fully integrated vertical value chain. What are the pros and cons of this strategy? What economic and strategic factors should be analyzed to answer this question?

1. Which of the four basic strategy types were used by GM? Explain your rationale.

Q: Explain how has leadership been used to support such strategy and develop an organizational culture that could accept and how the link worked between strategic management and the leadership?

There are also some risks for each strategy. Upholding cost leadership can be risky because of the requirement of frequent capital investment to sustain cost advantage, then cost surges narrow price differentials and diminish ability to compete with other’s brand royalty. Differentiation strategy has some threats, such as imitation decreases alleged differentiation, buyers need for differentiation falls. Meanwhile, the risks for focus or niche strategy are the differences in preferred products or services between the strategic market and target as a whole narrows, the cost discrepancy between wide ranged competitors and the focused firms broadens to eradicate the cost advantages of allocating a narrow target or to offset the

b. Revamping the firm’s overall value chain to eliminate or bypass some cost-producing activities altogether

Competitive advantage is explained by Mahoney and Pandian (1992) as the function of industry analysis, organizational governance and the firm’s effects in the form of resource advantages and strategies. In order for a firm to be competitive it must adapt to the volatile business environment and through strategic management decisions establish a competitive advantage that will ultimately produce superior performance relative to its competitors (Akimova 2000).