Exam 13: Implementing Corporate Strategy: Managing the Multibusiness Firm

The record of most large,mature corporations in developing new businesses is poor.

22,The greatest deficiency of BP plc's decentralized,performance management system based upon performance contracts for individual managers that was implemented by CEO John Browne at during 1995-2007,was

Implementing corporate strategy mainly involves the relationships between the corporate headquarters and the individual businesses.

The fundamental issue that Implementing corporate strategy addresses is:

As boards of directors have become increasingly preoccupied with compliance issues,they have become less effectives in guiding the strategies of the companies they oversee.

Although sharing resources among the different businesses within the multibusiness corporation can offer substantial cost economies,these savings are often offset by:

For conglomerate companies (companies that comprise unrelated businesses)portfolio management is likely to be more important source of value creation than in a diversified company that comprises closely-related businesses.

Corporate management systems based upon financial targets and budgetary controls tend to work best in multibusiness companies with relatively few,closely-related,technology-intensive businesses

A major disadvantage of legislation to improve corporate governance by imposing more stringent reporting requirements on public companies and increasing the penalties that directors face for negligence and misconduct is:

Within a multidivisional company,"portfolio management" involves managing the linkages among the businesses in order to exploit the synergies between them.

By separating their corporate headquarters into a corporate management unit and a shared services organization,large corporations anticipate the following benefits:

The changes in the ways in which CEOs and senior executives have been compensated in recent decades,particularly the growth of share options and performance incentives have:

The primary purpose of the "Ashridge portfolio display" is to:

Besides managing the overall corporate portfolio of businesses,corporate management can add value to individual businesses by:

The main purpose of a portfolio planning matrix is to:

The principal merit of the BCG portfolio planning matrix is:

Evidence that companies make only minor changes in their allocation of capital expenditure among their businesses from year to year supports Oliver Williamson's argument that multidivisional structures (the "M-form")permit more rationale,less politicized decision making at the corporate level.

IBM and Samsung Electronics are examples of large,mature corporations that have:

The closer the linkages between the business units of a multibusiness corporation,the more involved must corporate management be in coordinating across the businesses.

Oliver Williamson said two main corporate governance advantages of the multidivisional structure ("M-form")for large,diversified companies were: