Exam 2: Managing the Organizational Environment

The four building blocks of a competitive advantage are increasing efficiency, offering superior quality, creating new or better products, and being responsive to customer needs.

Discuss how the "general environment" of an organization can affect the ability of an organization to respond to opportunities and threats from its environment.Give a specific business example of a company that would be affected by its environment in this way.

The task environment is also known as the industry-specific environment.

The outcomes of the changes in the laws of a country are examples of the political and legal forces in the environment.

For the typical manager, opportunities and threats which result from changes in the task or industry-specific environment are more difficult to identify than events in the general environment.

To gain a competitive advantage in the global economy, firms can use five building blocks.

Globalization has resulted in restricted capital flows.

The general environment includes economic, technological, socio-cultural, demographic, political and legal, and global forces.

The outcomes of the changes in the laws of a society are known as:

Managers need to understand how declining barriers to trade and distance between national cultures have affected the global economy.Discuss.

Suppliers are individuals or firms that provide an organization with inputs that it needs to produce goods and services.

Globalization is driven by the free movement of which of the following?

All of the following are examples of the industry-specific or task environment of the organization EXCEPT:

Forces in the task or industry-specific environment have immediate and direct effects on a managers' ability to obtain resources or sell an organization's goods and services.

are outcomes of changes in international relationships, changes in nations' economic, political, and legal systems, and changes in technology.

The wide ranging set of forces and conditions that operate beyond an organization's boundaries and affect the organization are known as forces in the general environment.

The main task of middle managers is to collect relevant data on forces in the task environment.

Which of the following could be an example of a customer of a computer manufacturer, such as Acer Canada?

The path of globalization is shaped by the ebb and flow of which types of capital?

Explain how managers can minimize threats and uncertainty from forces in the external environment.Identify three forces from your own experience that contribute to the complexity and rate of environmental change.