Exam 3: The Internal Organization: Resources, Capabilities, Core Competencies, and Competitive Advantages

At the conclusion of the internal analysis, firms must identify their strengths and weaknesses in resources, capabilities, and core competencies.

Firms should outsource only activities where they can create the most value or where they are at an advantage compared to competitors.

By themselves, resources can allow firms to create value for customers as the foundation for earning above-average returns.

Firms that have strong positive relationships with suppliers and customers are said to have _________________, an essential ingredient to creating value.

Costly-to-imitate capabilities are those which other firms cannot easily develop as they have no strategic equivalent.

It is possible that Borders' core competencies of store locations and a desirable physical environment for customers became core rigidities eventually leading to the filing of bankruptcy as a result of

Complete the following about the difference between tangible and intangible resources. Tangible resources are ____ constrained because they are _____ to leverage.

Compared to tangible resources, intangible resources are an inferior source of core competencies.

Compared to tangible resources, intangible resources are ____ and ____.

The proper matching of what a firm can do with what it might do

Interpersonal relationships, trust, friendships, and a firm's reputation are all examples of complex social phenomena that make capabilities costly to imitate.

Resources must be combined to form capabilities as illustrated by Subway which linked its fresh ingredients with several other resources including the continuous training it provides to those running the firm's units as the foundation for customer service as a capability.

A firm should outsource only activities where it cannot create value or where it is at a substantial disadvantage compared to competitors.

Analyzing the internal environment enables a firm to determine what it might do by identifying what opportunities and threats exist.

Firms that achieve competitive parity can expect to

At IBM, human capital is critical to forming and using the firm's capabilities in customer relationships, scientific and research skills, and technical skills in hardware, software, and services.

Firms should seek to continually develop new core competencies because all core competencies have limited life spans.

The challenge and difficulty of making effective decisions are implied by preliminary evidence suggesting that one-half of organizational decisions fail.

The overall lesson from the Chapter 3 Strategic Focus about decision-making at several companies was the importance of _________

The critical executive skill of the current business age is the ability to