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

Examples of support activities include all of the following EXCEPT

People are a critical resource for helping organizations learn how to continuously innovate.

Gamma, Inc., has struggled for industry dominance with Ardent, Inc., its main competitor, for years. Gamma has gathered and analyzed large amounts of competitive intelligence about Ardent. It has observed as much of the firm's internal functioning and technology as it can legally, yet Gamma cannot understand why Ardent has a competitive advantage over it. The source of Ardent's success is

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

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.

Define capabilities and how they affect the firm's strategic success.

____ is measured by a product's performance characteristics and its attributes for which customers are willing to pay.

A company can earn above-average returns only when the value it creates is less than the costs incurred to create that value.

If a firm has a service that is valuable, rare, and costly-to-imitate, but a substitute exists for the service, the firm will

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

Value chain activities include all of the following EXCEPT

Describe a value chain analysis. How does a value chain analysis help a firm gain competitive advantage?

Which of the following is NOT required for a firm to achieve strategic competitiveness and earn above-average returns from its core competencies?

The foundation of many capabilities lies in the unique skills and knowledge of a firm's employees.

Valuable capabilities allow the firm to exploit strengths or neutralize weaknesses in the internal environment.

Case Scenario : B.B. Mangler. B.B. Mangler is a top U.S. business-to-business distributor of maintenance, repair, and service equipment, components, and supplies such as compressors, motors, signs, lighting and welding equipment, and hand and power tools. Customers include contractors, service and maintenance shops, manufacturers, hotels, government, and health care and educational facilities. Mangler's industry is typically referred to as MRO, which is an acronym for maintenance, repair, and supplies. Mangler states its strategy as having the "capacity to quickly offer an unmatched breadth of lowest total cost MRO solutions to business." Mangler's GoMRO sourcing center for indirect spot buys locates products through its unique database of 8,000 suppliers and 5 million products. Mangler also dominates the North American market in terms of its sheer local physical presence. It has 388 physical branches in the U.S. largest cities, including Puerto Rico (90% of sales), 184 in Canada, and five in Mexico. This physical presence also has garnered them a reputation for excellent, dependable service in their target markets, which in turn translates into a vast and loyal clientele. -(Refer to the above Case Scenario) Mangler's reputation among its customers is an example of

Capabilities

The capabilities used to create the sustainability/green initiatives at Walmart and Target are ____ but less likely to be ____.

By emphasizing core competencies when formulating strategies, companies learn to compete primarily on the basis of

Which of the following is NOT a reputational resource?