Roll No:...................................

(To be filled in by the student)

APEEJAY SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

Dwarka, New Delhi

End Term Examination – October 2021

________________________________________________________________
Corporate Strategy

Time Allowed: 2 Hours Total Marks:50

Instructions to Candidates:

i. Please note that this question paper has 2pages.

ii. Attempt any four questions. Each question carries equal marks i.e.,12.5
iii. Please write name of the course, date of the exam and your roll no. on the first page of
the answer-sheet. Provide page no. on each page.
iv. Scan the answer-sheet as per the correct page no. and ensure that the PDF is in order.
v. Save the PDF as CS-your roll no. For example, if your roll no. is 28/001, please save
your file as CS28001.

Q1. Explain any two of the following concepts in about 150-200 words (12.5 Marks)

a. The Purchasing Chessboard

b. BCG Matrix
c. Porter’s Five Forces Model
d. Strategic Thinking
e. Value Chain Analysis

Q2. Critically examine the mission statement of any company of your choice. Rewrite the
mission statement by including the missing components of an ideal mission statement. (12.5
Marks)

Q3. Assuming you are part of strategic management team of a large company, prepare a
SWOT Matrix. Also, suggest different business strategies (in terms of SO, WO, ST & WT
strategies) that your company may adopt for gaining competitive advantage. (12.5 Marks)

Q4. Critically examine the external environment of any company of your choice using
PESTEL Analysis. Explain how each of the external factors may affect the company chosen
by you. (12.5 Marks)
Q5. Critically examine the processes of implementing and evaluating strategies. Suggest how
implementation and evaluation of strategies can be effective. (12.5 Marks)
Q6. As part of the strategic management team of a large steel manufacturing company,
prepare a plan of action for fostering Sustainable Business Practices in the organization (12.5
Marks)
Q7. Read the case carefully and answer the questions given at the end: (12.5 Marks)

Should LinkedIn Cooperate with Facebook?

Headquartered in Mountainview California, LinkedIn is an online professional network

designed to help members find jobs, connect with other professionals, and locate business
opportunities. There are currently more than 160 million LinkedIn members in 200 countries.
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is free to join, but the company offers a paid premium
membership with additional features. LinkedIn sells advertising and erns revenue through its
job-listing services. Companies post job openings on LinkedIn and search for candidates on
LinkedIn –particularly advantageous for students nearing graduation. Members of LinkedIn
tend to be white collar and highly educated, more than 40% of LinkedIn visitors earn more
than $100000 per year.

LinkedIn’s major rival, Facebook recently launched ‘professional’ rather than personal
features to its business, thus trying to take market share from LinkedIn, whose primary
strategy is product development. LinkedIn continually develop new and improved, visible
and invisible, business analytics models to gather and assimilate data. LinkedIn has
developed a big data framework dubbed Goblin that helps the social network collect tons of
data from a variety of sources, so that it can be analyzed in its Hadoop-based data
warehouses. The company also houses a variety of internet data (information pertaining to
member profiles, user actions such as comments and clicking and so on) in databases such as
Espresso and even logging system such as Kafka. Also, LinkedIn takes data from outside
sources such as Salesforce and Twitter. Advertisers increasingly are using LinkedIn to more
effectively promote various products and services to businesspersons globally.

Questions:

a. Examine how Facebook’s new professional features may affect LinkedIn’s Business.
b. Rival firms are increasingly forming partnerships and cooperative agreements.
Perhaps LinkedIn and Facebook should cooperate. Identify and describe three ways in
which both LinkedIn and Facebook can cooperate in mutually beneficial ways.
c. Identify and describe two alternative strategies for LinkedIn apart from product
development currently being followed by the company.