Strategic Management
1. What is a competitive advantage, and what are the characteristics of a sustainable advantage?
A competitive advantage is a firm’s ability to provide value to customers that exceeds what competitors can provide. The characteristics for sustainable advantage are:
• Superior value
• Difficult to imitate
• Nonsubstitutability
• Rarity
2. What is the strategic management process? What are its major components?
Strategic management process is a planning process in which managers establish the organization’s general direction and objectives, formulate a specific strategy, plan and carry out the strategy’s implementation, and monitor results and make necessary adjustments. It major components are:
• Strategic vision
• Organizational mission
• External and Internal environment
• Strategic objectives
• Formulating and implementing a strategy
3. How is an environment analysis used to formulate a strategy?
It is used because the environment can affect the strategy that a company needs to use in order to be successful. The different environmental factors can cause a company to succeed or to fail; therefore these factors have to be analyzed before deciding the strategies and practices that are going to be done by the firm.
4. What are the five dimensions of the general environment? Please explain each.
The five dimensions of the general environment are:
• Sociocultural forces: consists of the demographics, which is the characteristics of the people in the society and cultural characteristics of the societies in which an organization operates
• Technological forces: the innovation in technology can lead to a business rising or falling. They have two dimensions: product technological changes, which lead to new features or new products and process technological changes, which are changes in how products are made.
• Economic forces: economic conditions affect the demand and supply of products and services, and the costs of producing them. These economic
A competitive advantage is a firm’s ability to provide value to customers that exceeds what competitors can provide. The characteristics for sustainable advantage are:
• Superior value
• Difficult to imitate
• Nonsubstitutability
• Rarity
2. What is the strategic management process? What are its major components?
Strategic management process is a planning process in which managers establish the organization’s general direction and objectives, formulate a specific strategy, plan and carry out the strategy’s implementation, and monitor results and make necessary adjustments. It major components are:
• Strategic vision
• Organizational mission
• External and Internal environment
• Strategic objectives
• Formulating and implementing a strategy
3. How is an environment analysis used to formulate a strategy?
It is used because the environment can affect the strategy that a company needs to use in order to be successful. The different environmental factors can cause a company to succeed or to fail; therefore these factors have to be analyzed before deciding the strategies and practices that are going to be done by the firm.
4. What are the five dimensions of the general environment? Please explain each.
The five dimensions of the general environment are:
• Sociocultural forces: consists of the demographics, which is the characteristics of the people in the society and cultural characteristics of the societies in which an organization operates
• Technological forces: the innovation in technology can lead to a business rising or falling. They have two dimensions: product technological changes, which lead to new features or new products and process technological changes, which are changes in how products are made.
• Economic forces: economic conditions affect the demand and supply of products and services, and the costs of producing them. These economic