Southern University Bangladesh

Department of Business Administration

Graduate Program (MBA) (Friday and Evening)
Course Title: MG 5230/ 4310 Business Policy and Strategy
Final Term Examination Summer-2020 (Online Exam)
Time: 1 Hour (7.00PM-9.00PM) Full Marks: 50

[N.B. - (i) Answer any Two questions only from Part-A and Part-B is mandotary for all (ii) Figures in the right margin indicate full, Marks; (iii) all parts of each
question must be answered serially.
Part-A (Marks-30)
1 a) Your are a principal executie of Renata Group. To create a successful business model, you 05
must choose business-level strategies that give the company a competitive advantage over its
rivals; that is, they must optimize competitive positioning. Thus, you must first decide on
decisions which strategies managers formulate and implement to put a company’s business
model into action. Explain your decisions with relevant example.
b) What strategies does a company need to develop to become a broad differentiator? In what 05
ways does this provide the company with a competitive advantage over cost leaders? Over
differentiators?
c) You are a strategic leader of ‘Gramen Phone’. What are some of the reasons you company 05
lose control over their business models, and thus its competitive advantage, over time?

2 a) In Bangladesh, two telecommunication companies X and Y have been conducting their 05

respective business since the last decade. Now, many other competitors have been doing
business and captured market share according to the competitive advantages. In this
circumstance, X and Y have decided, they will integration their business for maintaining
sustainable growth in the future. As a corporate leader of company Y, what will be your
preferred strategy for the integration of your company business with company X? Explain
why you prefer this strategy?

b) Mr. Mamun is a strategic manager. His company tried to choose the decision for outsourcing. 05
Now he is assigned to report for choosing the strategy to justify the benefits and risk of
Outsourcing. As Mr. Mamun, write your assignment to help the board members of your
company.
c) Imagine that IBM has decided to diversify into the telecommunications business to provide 05
online “cloud computing” data services and broadband access for businesses and individuals.
What method would you recommend that IBM pursue to enter this industry? Why?

3 a) “ Policy is a guidlines of decision but it not a decsion” Justify this stament 05

b) Dicuss the different form of business policy with replicated the model of Steiner’s pyramid 05
c) Suppose you are a CEO of AKG, your company now formulate a policy for maintianing 05
operation post pendemic situation. Now, as CEO which step you should advice for
implementing this new policy in your SBU’s.
Part-B (Marks-20)
Case Title: Alan Mulally Transforms Ford’s Structure and Culture
After a loss of more than $13 billion in 2006, William Ford III, who had been Ford Motor’s CEO for 5 years, decided he was
not the right person to turnaround the company’s performance. In fact, it became apparent that he was a part of Ford’s
management problems because he and other top managers at Ford tried to build and protect their own corporate empires, and
none would ever admit that mistakes had occurred over the years. As a result, the entire company’s performance had suffered;
its future was in doubt. Deciding they needed an outsider to change the way the company operated, Ford recruited Alan
Mulally from Boeing to become the new CEO.
After arriving at Ford, Mulally attended hundreds of executive meetings with his new managers. At one meeting, he became
confused why one top division manager, who obviously did not know the answer to one of Mulally’s questions concerning the
performance of his car division, rambled on for several minutes trying to disguise his ignorance. Mulally turned to his second-
in-command Mark Fields and asked him why the manager had done that. Fields explained that “at Ford you never admit when
you don’t know something.” He also told Mulally that when he arrived as a middle manager at Ford and wanted to ask his boss
to lunch to gain information about divisional operations, he was told: “What rank are you at Ford? Don’t you know that a
subordinate never asks a superior to lunch?” Mulally discovered that over the years Ford had developed a tall hierarchy
composed of managers whose primary goal was to protect their turf and avoid any direct blame for its plunging car sales. When
asked why car sales were falling, they did not admit to bad design and poor quality issues in their divisions; instead they hid in
the details. Managers brought thick notebooks and binders to meetings, using the high prices of components and labor costs to
explain why their own particular car models were not selling well—or why they had to be sold at a loss. Why, Mulally
wondered, did Ford’s top executives have this inward-looking, destructive mind-set? How could he change Ford’s
organizational structure and culture to reduce costs and speed product development to build the kinds of vehicles customers
wanted?

First, Mulally decided he needed to change Ford’s structure, and that a major reorganization of the company’s hierarchy was
necessary. He decided to flatten Ford’s structure and recentralize control at the top so that all top divisional managers reported
to him. But, at the same time, he emphasized that teamwork and the development of a cross-divisional approach to manage the
enormous value-chain challenges that confronted Ford in its search for ways to reduce its cost structure. He eliminated two
levels in the top management hierarchy and clearly defined each top manager’s role in the turnaround process so the company
could begin to act as a whole instead of as separate divisions in which managers pursued their own interests.

Mulally also realized, however, that simply changing Ford’s structure was not enough to change the way it operated, its other
major organizational problem was that the values and norms in Ford’s culture that had developed over time hindered
cooperation and teamwork. These values and norms promoted secrecy and ambiguity; they emphasized status and rank so
managers could protect their information—the best way managers of its different divisions and functions believed to maintain
jobs and status was to hoard, rather than share, information. The reason only the boss could ask a subordinate to lunch was to
allow superiors to protect their information and positions! What could Mulally do? He issued a direct order that the managers
of every division share with every other Ford division a detailed statement of the costs they incurred to build each of its
vehicles. He insisted that each of Ford’s divisional presidents should attend a weekly (rather than a monthly) meeting to openly
share and discuss the problems all the company’s divisions faced. He also told managers they should bring a different
subordinate with them to each meeting so every manager in the hierarchy would learn of the problems that had been kept
hidden.

Essentially, Mulally’s goal was to demolish the dysfunctional values and norms of Ford’s culture that focused managers’
attention on their own empires at the expense of the entire company. Mulally’s goal was to create new values and norms that
encouraged employees to admit mistakes, share information about all aspects of model design and costs, and, of course, find
ways to speed development and reduce costs. He also wanted to change Ford’s culture to allow norms of cooperation to
develop both within and across divisions to allow its new structure to work effectively and improve company performance. By
2011, it was clear that Mulally’s attempts to change Ford’s structure and culture had succeeded. The company reported a profit
in the spring of 2010, for which Mulally received over $17 million in salary and other bonuses, and by 2011 it was reporting
record profits as the sales of its vehicles soared. In 2011, Mulally had reached 65, the normal retirement age for Ford’s top
managers, but in a press conference announcing Ford’s record results, William Ford joked that he hoped Mulally would still be
in charge of the transformed company in 2025.
Case Discussion Questions
a) In what ways did Mulally change Ford’s structure and control systems over time?
b) Why did he make these changes? Did they improve its performance?

Exam Instruction:
i. In front of the page, write: ID no, Course Name, Corse code, Program Name, Teachers’ Name
ii. You are requested to submit your answer script by scanning and save as pdf file on or before 9.20 pm @
email id: sirajulislam@southern.edu.bd
iii. You should save the file with id_ sub_prgram. Example 0275413_BPS_ MBA
 1. Please join Google meet 10 minutes before the final exam, and stay until the exam finishes.
Announcements (if any) will be made orally and by typing in the chat windows. No help will be offered
if you miss any announcements due to not attending the meeting.
2. Final exams will be posted on crowd mark (similar to tests). Please stop writing and start to take pictures
at the due time. Evidence pictures need to be taken no later than that. There will be 0 marks for any late
submission without evidence. NO EXCEPTIONS!!! The 2nd due time is 20 minutes later for submission
of your answers.
3. If you failed the submission, for example due to losing internet connection, to ask for help, ONLY
evidence pictures taken before the first due time will be accepted. You need to share your screen and
show evidence pictures and the time they were taken.
4. You should sign the attestation (next page), and upload it along with your solutions. Students who
fail to upload the signed attestation will receive 0 as a final mark. You can either print, or just
write by hand the attestation in case you do not have a printer. I would recommend you to have
the attestation ready before the exam.
5. Sign (hand writing) on the top right hand corner of each page of your answer script. Solution pictures
without signature will not be graded.
6. Please make your picture small, clear, and readable. Unclear or unreadable submissions will not be
graded.
iv. Students with accommodation get extra time according to the letters sent to you. Please note, you can
only submit once after the 2nd due time. You won’t be able to re-submit after that.