Demetria Brown

December 9, 2019

Finial Exam II

1.Pick the current or a past president of the United States and evaluate his performance against

the leadership characteristics discussed in the text. On the basis of this comparison, do you think

that the president was/is a good strategic leader? Why?

The president that I feel fit was a good strategic was Barack Obama. Barack Obama was the 44th

president of the United States and the first African American commander-in-chief. He served two

terms, in 2008 and 2012. Encouraged by poll numbers, Obama decided to run for the U.S. Senate

open seat vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald in the 2004 Democratic primary. He defeated

multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes with 52 percent

of the vote.

That summer, he was invited to deliver the keynote speech in support of John Kerry at the 2004

Democratic National Convention in Boston. Obama emphasized the importance of unity and

made veiled jabs at the Bush administration and the diversionary use of wedge issues.

After the convention, Obama returned to his U.S. Senate bid in Illinois. His opponent in the

general election was supposed to be Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, a wealthy former
investment banker. However, Ryan withdrew from the race in June 2004 following public

disclosure of unsubstantiated sexual deviancy allegations by his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan.

In August 2004, diplomat and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes accepted the Republican

nomination to replace Ryan. In three televised debates, Obama and Keyes expressed opposing

views on stem cell research, abortion, gun control, school vouchers and tax cuts. In the

November 2004 general election, Obama received 70 percent of the vote to Keyes' 27 percent,

the largest electoral victory in Illinois history. With his win, Obama became only the third

African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

Sworn into office on January 3, 2005, Obama partnered with Republican Senator Richard Lugar

of Indiana on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern

Europe and Russia. Then, with Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a

website to track all federal spending. Obama also spoke out for victims of Hurricane Katrina,

pushed for alternative energy development and championed improved veterans' benefits.

2.Under what conditions is it ethically defensible to outsource production to producers in the

developing world who have much lower labor costs when such actions also involve laying off

long term employees in the firm’s home country?

Ethically, let's start with business ethics. Broadly business ethics revolve around increasingly the

value of the business to stockholders or stakeholders (depending on the form of capitalism). If

outsourcing labor reduces costs and translates into increased profits for the company, that is
enough to consider it in line with the overarching mandate of the business regardless of whether

there is a reduction in price for the consumer.

Is it ethically wrong to leverage technological advances to increase production efficiency when

demand in a market is relatively inelastic? Farming used to be 40% of American jobs. Now it's

roughly 2% and yet out production has grown.

Long-term the destruction of a category of employment is typically offset by the creation of a

new category the requires more cognitive resources. In fact, entire new industries can be created.

So it is also not entirely accurate to limit your view to just the people who are displaced from

their jobs. It is entirely possible that the net effect on the economy is positive.

But again ethics are more subjective and have to do with the form of capitalism to which one

subscribes, political philosophy, and view of social responsibility of business.

3.Who benefited the most from the late-1990s boom in initial public offerings of Internet

companies: investors (stockholders) in those companies, managers, or investment bankers?

Defend your answer.

All of these benefited to some extent, but in different ways. Stockholders that bought at the time

of the initial public offering (IPO) and sold when the stock was high profited tremendously.

Unfortunately, the average investor who bought sometime after the IPO when the stock value
was high, and didn’t sell until the price had fallen substantially made little money, or even

experienced losses. Managers, to the extent that they were stockholders, experienced the same

risk-return relationship. Many managers were among those who invested early, and therefore had

a greater chance of profits, if they sold before the drastic decline. Investment bankers made

money primarily on fees for the IPOs, which are quite steep. Fees are less risky than are stock

investments, and therefore the bankers had a greater chance of profiting from their participation

in the IPOs.

4.Discuss Porter’s five forces model with reference to what you know about the U.S. airline

industry. What does the model tell you about the level of competition in this industry?

Porter's Five Forces is a framework for analyzing a company's competitive environment.

The number and power of a company's competitive rivals, potential new market entrants,

suppliers, customers, and substitute products influence a company's profitability. Framework is a

tool for analyzing competition of a business. It draws from industrial organization (IO)

economics to derive five forces that determine the competitive intensity and, therefore, the

attractiveness (or lack of it) of an industry in terms of its profitability. Porter's Generic

Competitive Strategies (ways of competing) ... The two basic types of competitive advantage

combined with the scope of activities for which a firm seeks to achieve them, lead to three
generic strategies for achieving above average performance in an industry: cost leadership,

differentiation, and focus.

5.When is a company’s competitive advantage most likely to endure over time?

A company's competitive advantage is most likely to endure over time when the company has

built barriers to imitation, which make it difficult for a competitor to copy the company's

distinctive competencies. When is a company’s competitive advantage most likely to endure over

time? A company’s competitive advantage is most likely to endure over time when the company

has built barriers to imitation, which make it difficult for a competitor to copy the company’s

distinctive competencies. Another element needed is the ability to quickly react to changes in the

customer’s needs and have a high absorptive capacity in order to identify, value, assimilate, and

use new knowledge. Lastly, the company needs to have industry dynamism a Each of these

distinctive competencies allow a company to differentiate its product and offer more utility or

value to its customers and lowers the companies cost structure. First, when a company has

superior efficiency, they have fewer inputs required to produce a given output. For example,

measuring employee productivity is a common measure of efficiency. If it takes one company A’s

employees 5 hours to produce a product and company B’s employees take 8 hours to produce the

same product, company A has a superior efficiency and is helping the company to attain a

competitive advantage through a lower cost structure.and be able to keep up with the rapidly

changing environment with new innovative products.

6.What role can top management play in helping a company achieve superior efficiency, quality,

innovation, and responsiveness to customers?

The role that top management can play in helping a company achieve superior efficiency, quality,

innovation, and responsiveness to customers is that top management can create strategies. ...

Management can find out what processes are working the best for the company and fine tune

those processes to make them better. The role that prime management will play in helping an

organization come through superior potency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to

customers is ensuring that when it's time to set goals for efficiency, quality, innovation and

responsiveness that they have to be hard. The worker has to know how these goals are going to

be achieved, have incentives achieve these goals and make certain the company is budgeted for

these varieties of goals. once when management create these forms of standards, they have to

create the management workers remember therefore all will work on a similar company’s goals.

The role of top management is totally crucial in achieving every of those goals. It's top

management’s task to line difficult efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness goals and

to speak the importance of those goals to others within.

7.Discuss this statement: Licensing proprietary technology to foreign competitors is the best way

to give up a company’s competitive advantage.

The statement is basically correct - licensing proprietary technology to foreign competitors does

significantly increase the risk of losing the technology. Therefore, licensing should generally be

avoided in these situations. Yet licensing still may be a good choice in some instances. When a

licensing arrangement can be structured in such a way as to reduce the risks of a firm's

technological know-how being expropriated by licensees, then licensing may be appropriate. A

further example is when a firm perceives its technological advantage as being only transitory,

and it considers rapid imitation of its core technology by competitors to be likely. In such a case,

the firm might want to license its technology as rapidly as possible to foreign firms in order to

gain global acceptance for its technology before imitation occurs. Such a strategy has some

advantages. By licensing its technology to competitors, the firm may deter them from developing

their own, possibly superior, technology. And by licensing its technology the firm may be able to

establish its technology as the dominant design in the industry. In turn, this may ensure a steady

stream of royalty payments. Such situations apart, however, the attractions of licensing are

probably outweighed by the risks of losing control over technology, and licensing should be

avoided
8.Discuss how the need for control over foreign operations varies with the strategy and

distinctive competencies of a company. What are the implications of this relationship for the

choice of entry mode?

If a firm’s competitive advantage (its core competence) is based on control over proprietary

technological know-how, licensing and joint venture arrangements should be avoided if possible

so that the risk of losing control over that technology is minimized. For firms with a competitive

advantage based on management know-how, the risk of losing control over the management

skills to franchisees or joint venture partners is not that great. Consequently, many service firms

favor a combination of franchising and subsidiaries to control the franchises within particular

countries or regions. The subsidiaries may be wholly owned or joint ventures, but most service

firms have found that joint ventures with local partners work best for controlling subsidiaries. A

company’s core competencies can dictate how they choose to operate overseas in foreign

markets. Often times, the method of entry, which has been our focus for the last week, can

foreshadow the company’s position on this matter. A more formal or strict company may require

more control over foreign operations, this would be because the company values rigidity highly

within the organization. This is how I would run the company because it allows me to remain

informed on all matters. Eventually, once I had more trust and established a relationship with the

leaders in the market I could see myself allowing them more control of their operations.

However, I would most likely not allow for them to make their own decisions before learning

enough from them to at least understand why they’re making the choices they are making.
9.What value creation activities should a company outsource to independent suppliers? What are

the risks involved in outsourcing these activities?

Companies in an industry often differ significantly from each other with respect to the way they

strategically position their products in the market in terms of such factors as the distribution

channels they use, the market segments they serve, the quality of their products, technological

leadership, customer service, pricing policy, advertising policy, and promotions. As a result of

these differences, within most industries it is possible to observe groups of companies in which

each company follows a strategy that is similar to that pursued by other companies in the group

but different from the strategies followed by companies in other groups. These different groups

of companies are known as strategic groups. Normally, the basic differences between the

strategies that companies in different strategic groups use can be captured by a relatively small

number of strategic factors.

10.What kind of structure best describes the way your (a) business school or (b) university

operates? Why is that structure appropriate? Would another structure fit better?
The organizational structures of American colleges and universities vary distinctly, depending on

institutional type, culture, and history, yet they also share much in common. While a private

liberal arts college may have a large board of trustees, and a public research university nested in

a state system no trustees of its own, the vast majority of public and private universities are

overseen by an institutional or system-wide governing board. This somewhat paradoxical

combination of distinctiveness and uniformity reflects the unique characteristics of individual

colleges and universities, and the shared-task environment (including strategic planning, fiscal

oversight, curriculum planning, and student affairs) common to American postsecondary

institutions. Scholars of higher education view many aspects of private colleges and universities

as significantly different than public universities. Yet the reliance on bureaucratic organizational

structures and the belief in research, advanced instruction, and service at both types of

institutions shape many aspects of public and private university governance structures in a fairly

uniform manner.