question

Business ethics concerns

answer

the application of ethical principles and standards to business activities, behavior, and decisions.

question

Management's most powerful tool for winning employee commitment to good strategy execution and operating excellence is

answer

a properly designed system of rewards and incentives.

question

The single most visible factor that distinguishes successful culture-change efforts from failed attempts is

answer

competent leadership at the top.

question

Total quality management (TQM) emphasizes all but which one of the following?

answer

Widespread adoption of industry standard operating practices

question

Which of the following is not an example of an unhealthy company culture?

answer

Hyper-adaptive cultures

question

The consequences of pursuing a strategy that has unethical or shady components include

answer

All of these.

question

The contention that because different societies and cultures have divergent values and standards of right and wrong it is appropriate to judge behavior as ethical/unethical in the light of local customs and social mores rather than according to a single set of ethical standards

answer

defines what is meant by "ethical relativism."

question

Recruiting and retaining capable employees

answer

is important because the quality of an organization's people is always an essential ingredient of successful strategy execution—knowledgeable, engaged employees are a company's best source of creative ideas for the nuts-and-bolts operating improvements that lead to operating excellence.

question

Companies engaged in a single line of business utilize an organizational structure that may vary depending upon the strategy-critical activities and can be

answer

either a functional (departmental), multidivisional, or matrix organizational structure.

question

Which of the following is not a common trait of an unhealthy company culture?

answer

An aversion to incentive compensation, failure to recruit the best and brightest employees, subpar support for employee training, overemphasis on working in teams, and low ethical standards

question

Operating systems that support company strategies and value-creating internal processes include all of the following except

answer

data management systems for undertaking benchmarking, TQM, and Six Sigma quality control.

question

Which of the following is not characteristic of a compensation and reward system designed to help drive successful strategy execution?

answer

A reward system that involves 50 percent nonmonetary rewards and a work environment that avoids placing pressure on managers and employees to perform at high levels

question

The primary building blocks within a company's organizational structure

answer

can include a functional or departmental structure that includes process, geographic, product, or customer groups performing one or more major processing steps along the value chain.

question

The essence of socially responsible business behavior is

answer

balancing strategic actions to benefit shareholders against the duty to be a good corporate citizen.

question

Which of the following should be on a company's menu of actions to consider in crafting a strategy of social responsibility?

answer

All of these

question

Which one of the following is false as concerns the merits of why acting in a socially responsible manner is "good business"?

answer

Acting in a socially responsible manner nearly always results in higher profits and a higher stock price for shareholders.

question

Six Sigma quality control

answer

consists of a disciplined, statistics-based system aimed at producing not more than 3.4 defects per million iterations for any business process.

question

The disadvantages of a centralized organizational structure include

answer

making the organization sluggish in responding to changing conditions.

question

Environmental sustainability involves

answer

deliberate actions to protect the environment and provide for the longevity of resources, maintain ecological support systems for future generations, and guard against the ultimate endangerment of the planet.

question

The principal managerial actions and initiatives undertaken in the strategy execution process include which of the following?

answer

All of these

question

Leading the strategy execution process requires

answer

All of these.

question

Which one of the following statements about recruiting and retaining capable employees is true?

answer

The quality of an organization's people is always an essential ingredient of successful strategy execution—knowledgeable, engaged employees are a company's best source of creative ideas for the nuts-and-bolts operating improvements that lead to operating excellence.

question

For decentralized decision making to be successful it is predicated on a belief that

answer

decision-making authority should be pushed down to the lowest organizational level capable of making timely, informed, competent decisions.

question

Putting constructive pressure on the organization to achieve good results and operating excellence entails

answer

All of these

question

The statistical thinking underlying Six Sigma is based on the following three principles:

answer

All work is a process, all processes have variability, and all processes create data that explains variability.

question

When trying to change a problem culture, management should undertake such steps as

answer

identifying which aspects of the present culture are supportive of good strategy execution and which ones are not.

question

Companies with insular, inwardly focused cultures usually

answer

tend to possess arrogant overconfident mind-sets, thereby tending to underestimate the competencies and accomplishments of rival companies and overestimate their own progress.

question

Companies that adopt the principle of ethical relativism in providing ethical guidance to company personnel

answer

have little moral basis for ethical standards companywide because it has no ethical standards or principles of its own.

question

Which one of the following is false as concerns the merits of why acting in a socially responsible manner is "good business"?

answer

Acting in a socially responsible manner nearly always results in higher profits and a higher stock price for shareholders.

question

According to the school of ethical universalism,

answer

to the extent there is common moral agreement about right and wrong actions and behaviors across multiple cultures and countries, there exists a set of universal ethical standards to which all societies, all companies, and all individuals can be held accountable.

question

Six Sigma's DMADV process of define, measure, analyze, design and verify is a particularly good vehicle for

answer

developing new processes or products at Six Sigma quality levels.

question

MBWA refers to

answer

the managerial practice of making regular visits to field operations and talking with many people at many different levels.

question

Proficient strategy execution requires executive managers to

answer

be current with events and closely monitor progress, put constructive pressure on the organization for operating excellence, and initiate corrective action when necessary to improve performance and achieve desired results.

question

The character of a company's corporate culture is a product of

answer

All of these.

question

Once company managers have decided on a strategy, the emphasis turns to

answer

converting the strategy into actions and good results.

question

The backbone of identifying, studying, and implementing best practices is

answer

benchmarking.

question

Unethical business behavior tends to be driven by such factors as

answer

All of these.

question

Business process reengineering is a tool for

answer

pulling the pieces of strategy-critical activities out of different departments and unifying their performance in a single department or cross-functional work.

question

Which one of the following is not a benefit of prescribing policies and operating procedures to aid management's task of implementing strategy?

answer

Helping build employee commitment to adopting best practices and using the tools of TQM and Six Sigma

question

Total quality management (TQM) programs

answer

achieve the biggest success when extended to employee efforts in all departments—human resources, R&D, accounting and records, information systems, and so forth.

question

A company's unethical behavior may result in the following except

answer

the company will have to deal with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which requires the company remove the tarnished employees.

question

Good strategy execution

answer

All of these.

question

Unhealthy company cultures typically have such characteristics as

answer

a politicized internal environment, hostility to change, an insular, inwardly focused culture, and unethical or greed-driven behavior on the part of executives.

question

Which of the following is not something a company should usually consider in crafting a strategy of social responsibility?

answer

Actions to benefit shareholders (such as raising the dividend to boost the stock price)

question

Changing a problem culture

answer

is one of the toughest managerial tasks because of the tendency of company personnel to cling to familiar practices and ways of doing things.

question

Which one of the following falsely characterizes a centralized organizational structure?

answer

A company that draws on the combined intellectual capital of its people can outperform a company that relies on command and control.

question

In a highly centralized organizational structure,

answer

All of these.

question

The three components of building a capable organization are

answer

staffing the organization, building core competencies and competitive capabilities, and structuring the organization and work effort.

question

Which one of the following is not a fundamental part of a company's culture?

answer

The company's strategic vision, strategic intent, and strategy

question

A useful guideline in designing strategy-facilitating policies and operating procedures is

answer

to prescribe enough policies to give organizational members clear direction in implementing strategy and to place desirable boundaries on their actions, then empower them to act within these boundaries however they think makes sense.

question

A well-designed reward system

answer

is focused on "what to achieve" to be rewarded as opposed to "what to do" and is management's most powerful tool for gaining employee commitment to superior strategy execution.

question

Total quality management (TQM)

answer

is a philosophy of managing a set of business practices that emphasizes continuous improvement in all phases of operations, 100% accuracy in performing tasks, involvement and empowerment of employees at all levels, team-based work design, benchmarking, and total customer satisfaction.

question

Companies with politicized cultures

answer

tend to drive managers to consume a great deal of organizational energy and make the company's strategic agenda take a backseat role to political maneuvering.

question

Which of the following is not generally on a company's menu of actions to consider in crafting a strategy of social responsibility?

answer

Actions to look out exclusively for the best interests of shareholders

question

The business case for why companies should act in a socially responsible manner includes such reasons as

answer

All of these

question

Which one of the following is not a tool that company managers can use to promote continuous improvement (operating excellence) in performing value chain activities?

answer

Adoption of standard industry techniques

question

Building an organization capable of good strategy execution entails

answer

staffing the organization, building core competencies and competitive capabilities, and structuring the organization and work effort.

question

Notions of right and wrong, fair and unfair, moral and immoral, ethical and unethical

answer

are present in all societies, organizations, and individuals.

question

An important consideration in designing a strategy-supportive motivation and reward system is to

answer

make both monetary and nonmonetary rewards integral parts of the reward system.

question

Successfully leading the effort to instill a spirit of high achievement into a company's culture and put constructive pressure on the organization to achieve good results

answer

entails such actions as treating employees with dignity and respect, celebrating individual, group, and company successes, and setting stretch objectives.

question

Which of the following is most integral to the task of leading the drive for good strategy execution and operating excellence?

answer

Making sure the company has a good strategic plan, staying on top of how well things are going, pushing organization units to achieve good results, pushing for corrective actions to improve both the company's strategy and how well it is being executed, and displaying ethical integrity and leading social responsibility initiatives

question

The organizing challenge of a decentralized structure that stresses employee empowerment is

answer

how to exercise adequate control over the actions and decisions of empowered employees so that the business is not put at risk while trying to capture the benefits of empowerment.

question

If management is to match a company's organization structure to its strategy in an effective way, then it is essential

answer

for strategy-critical value-chain activities to be the main building blocks on the organization chart.

question

Companies committed to environmental sustainability

answer

undertake initiatives directed at improving the company's triple bottom line (TBL), which places importance on economic, environmental, and social metrics.

question

A company's social responsibility strategy is typically comprised of all but which one of the following elements?

answer

Actions to keep prices low enough that the company's profits will not be viewed by the general public as obscenely high or exorbitant

question

Company strategies and value creating processes can't be effectively executed without internal information systems that include

answer

customer data, employee data, supplier/partner data, operations data, and financial performance data.

question

A company's ability to marshal adequate resources in support of new strategic initiatives and steer them to the appropriate organizational units is important to the strategy execution process because

answer

changes in strategy often require resource reallocation and, therefore, directing the proper amounts of resources to strategy-critical organizational units because they need the proper funding to carry out their part of the strategic plan effectively and efficiently.

question

Which of the following statements about adaptive corporate cultures is false?

answer

The standout cultural traits are a "can-do" spirit, pride in doing things right, no-excuses accountability, and a pervasive results-oriented work climate where people go the extra mile to meet or beat stretch objectives.

question

The chief advantage of a decentralized organizational structure is to

answer

put decision-making authority in the hands of those closest and most knowledgeable about the situation.

question

The contentions that (1) many of the same standards of what's ethical and what's unethical resonate with peoples of most cultures, societies, and religions and (2) to the extent there is common moral agreement about right and wrong actions, there exist a set of common ethical standards to which organizations and individuals can be held accountable are defining beliefs of

answer

the school of ethical universalism.

question

According to integrative social contracts theory, the ethical standards a company should try to uphold

answer

are governed both by (1) a limited number of universal ethical principles that are widely recognized as putting legitimate ethical boundaries on actions and behavior in all situations and (2) the circumstances of local cultures, traditions, and shared values that further prescribe what constitutes ethically permissible behavior and what does not—but universal norms always take precedence over local ethical norms.

question

A belief in ethical relativism leads to the conclusion that

answer

whether the payment of bribes/kickbacks should be deemed ethical or unethical depends on the moral standards, values, beliefs, convictions, and business norms that prevail in particular cultures, societies, countries, or circumstances.

question

A change in strategy nearly always entails budget reallocations because

answer

organizational units important in the prior strategy but having a lesser role in the new strategy may need downsizing, while units and activities that now have a bigger and more critical strategic role may need more people, new equipment, additional facilities, and above-average increases in their operating budgets.

question

Which one of the following statements about a high-performance culture is false?

answer

High-performance cultures often have a low regard for high ethical standards, a strong preference for high-risk strategies, and a slow and methodical approach to responding to changes in the marketplace.

question

Which one of the following is not a part of the business case for why companies should act in a socially responsible manner?

answer

Every business has a moral duty to be a good corporate citizen.

question

The hallmarks of a high-performance corporate culture include

answer

a "can-do" spirit, pride in doing things right, no-excuses accountability, and a pervasive results-oriented work climate where people go the extra mile to meet or beat stretch objectives.

question

Which one of the following is not one of the major drivers of unethical managerial behavior?

answer

Intense competitive pressures

question

Which of the following is generally not among the practices that companies use to staff jobs with the best people they can find?

answer

Weeding out the 20% lowest-performing employees each year

question

The contention that ethical standards should be governed both by (1) a limited number of universal ethical principles that are widely recognized as putting legitimate ethical boundaries on actions and behavior in all situations and (2) the circumstances of local cultures, traditions, and shared values that further prescribe what constitutes ethically permissible behavior and what does not are the basic principles of

answer

integrative social contracts theory.

question

Corporate social responsibility as it applies to businesses refers to

answer

a company's duty to operate in an honorable manner, provide good working conditions for employees, encourage workforce diversity, be a good steward of the environment, and actively work to better the quality of life in the local communities where it operates and in society at large.

question

The Six Sigma process of define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) is

answer

an improvement system for existing processes falling below specification and needing incremental improvement; the DMAIC process is a particularly good vehicle for improving performance when there are wide variations in how well an activity is performed.

question

Reengineering how a firm performs a business process

answer

is a tool for pulling the pieces of strategy-critical processes out of different departments and unifying their performance in a single department or cross-functional work group.

question

Some of the most important nonmonetary approaches to enhancing motivation and helping drive successful strategy execution include

answer

All of these.

question

Companies with change-resistant cultures

answer

are often overly gung-ho about looking outside the company for best practices, new managerial approaches, and innovative ideas.

question

Ethical principles in business

answer

are not materially different from ethical principles in general.

question

The guidelines for designing an incentive compensation system that will help drive successful strategy execution include

answer

making the payoff for meeting or beating performance targets a major, not minor, piece of the total compensation package.

question

Putting together a capable top management team

answer

entails filling key managerial slots with people who are good at figuring out what needs to be done and skilled in "making it happen" and delivering good results.

question

A company's strategy needs to be ethical because

answer

a strategy that is unethical not only damages the company's reputation but it can also have costly consequences.

question

The purpose of managing by walking around is to

answer

gather information about what is happening from people at different organizational levels and learn firsthand how well the strategy execution process is proceeding.

question

In moving to alter a problem culture, management should

answer

All of these.

question

Symbolic culture-changing actions are best represented by

answer

All of these.

question

Which of the following is not a sound guideline for designing a reward and incentive system that helps promote good strategy execution?

answer

Ways must be found to reward deserving nonperformers who, for some reason, do not fare well under the incentive system.

question

The school of ethical relativism holds that

answer

when there are country or cross-cultural differences in what is considered ethical or unethical in business situations, it is appropriate for local moral standards to take precedence over what the ethical standards may be elsewhere.

question

The major drivers of unethical business behavior include

answer

corporate cultures that put the bottom line ahead of ethics, heavy pressures on company managers to meet or beat performance targets, and overzealous or obsessive pursuit of wealth accumulation, power, status, and other selfish interests.

question

Executing strategy

answer

All of these.

question

A company's corporate culture is best defined and identified by

answer

the character of a company's internal work climate—as shaped by the company's core values, beliefs, and business principles.

question

The big difference between business process reengineering and continuous improvement programs such as TQM or Six Sigma is that

answer

reengineering is a tool for achieving onetime quantum improvements whereas TQM and Six Sigma programs aim at incremental progress improvement (striving for inch-by-inch gains again and again in a never-ending stream).

question

Which one of the following is not a substantive culture-changing action that a company's managers can undertake to alter a problem culture?

answer

Urging company personnel to search outside the company for work practices and operating approaches that may be an improvement over what the company is presently doing

question

The costs incurred when ethical wrongdoing is done fall into three specific categories and include all except

answer

intangible costs such as legal and investigative costs incurred by the company.

question

Which of the following is not among the types of actions and initiatives undertaken by management in the strategy execution process?

answer

Deciding which core competencies and value chain activities to leave as is and which ones to overhaul and improve

question

Good corporate citizens

answer

Go beyond meeting society's expectations for ethical strategies and business behavior by fostering social benefit and balancing the interests of all.

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