Strategic Management: A Competitive Advantage Approach Concepts and Cases 17th Edition Instructor ma

 
1-21.  List what you believe are the five most important lessons for business that can be garnered from The Art of War book.
 
Answer:  Both business and military organizations must adapt to change and constantly improve to be successful. Table 1-3 provides narrative excerpts from The Art of War, but some of the following especially apply to business.

• Analyze the enemy’s plans so that you will know his shortcomings as well as his strong points.
• An army should be likened to water. Just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army should avoid strength and strike weakness.
• Unskilled leaders work out their conflicts in courtrooms and battlefields. Brilliant strategists rarely go to battle or to court; they generally achieve their objectives through tactical positioning well in advance of any confrontation.
• When you do decide to challenge a rival, much calculating, estimating, analyzing, and positioning bring triumph.
• Skillful leaders do not let a strategy inhibit creative counter-movement. 
• When a decisive advantage is gained over a rival, skillful leaders do not press on. They hold their position and give their rivals the opportunity to surrender or merge. 
• Brilliant strategists forge ahead with illusion, obscuring the areas of major confrontation, so that opponents divide their forces in an attempt to defend many areas.  

 
1-22.  What is the fundamental difference between business strategy and military strategy in terms of basic assumptions? 
 
Answer:  The fundamental difference between military and business strategy is that business strategy is formulated, implemented, and evaluated with an assumption of competition, whereas military strategy is based on an assumption of conflict. 
 
1-23.  Explain why the strategic management class is often is called a “capstone course.”
 
Answer:   Strategic management is commonly called a capstone course because students’ major responsibility in this class is to use all knowledge gained in prior courses to chart the future direction of different organizations. Students have the opportunity in this course to utilize their marketing, finance, management, MIS, and accounting knowledge.
 
1-24.  What aspect of strategy formulation do you think requires the most time? Why?
 
Answer:  Important aspects of strategy formulation include developing a business mission, performing an external audit, conducting an internal audit, generating alternative strategies, and choosing among alternative strategies. Performing an external audit generally takes the most time. For example, identifying competitors’ strengths and weaknesses is an essential aspect of the external audit. Effective use of the Internet can reduce the time required for performing an external audit.
 
1-25.  Why is strategy implementation often considered the most difficult stage in the strategic-management process?
 
Answer:  Strategy implementation is often considered to be the most difficult stage in strategic management because it requires discipline, sacrifice, commitment, and hard work from all employees and managers. It is always more difficult to do something than to say you’re going to do it.
 
1-26.  Why is it so important to integrate intuition and analysis in strategic management?
 
Answer:  No analytical tools can capture all aspects of a given organization’s culture and situation. Nor can analytical tools assimilate all the subjective information that must be considered in strategic management, such as personalities, emotions, values, beliefs, customs, and ethical factors. However, analytical tools are essential to utilize in strategic planning because they have been developed over many years using actual data, and are effective for assimilating facts and figures. Intuition alone is insufficient for making good strategic decisions. Based on one’s past experiences, judgment, and “gut” feelings, intuition is especially under time constraints, and in assigning weights and ratings in planning matrices. Strategists must integrate intuition and analysis in strategic management, but in the view of this author, analysis is more important than intuition. Unfortunately, too many firms rely too heavily on intuition, and some disastrously rely exclusively on intuition.
 
1-27.  Explain the importance of a vision and mission statement.
 
Answer:  Reaching agreement on a formal vision and mission statement can greatly facilitate the process of reaching agreement on an organization’s strategies, objectives, and policies. Organizational success depends on reasonable agreement on key issues, so a clear, jointly developed and supported, vision and mission statement are essential in strategic management.