strategic-management

304 PART 4 • STRATEGY EVALUATION
Issues for Review and Discussion
1. Discuss the nature and implications of the upcoming accounting switch from GAAP to IFRS
in the United States.
2. Ask an accounting professor at your college or university the following question and report
back to the class: “To what extent would my learning the IFRS standards on my own give me
competitive advantage in the job market?”
3. Give an example of “consonance” other than the one provided by Rumelt in the chapter.
4. Evaluating strategies on a continuous rather than a periodic basis is desired. Discuss the pros
and cons of this statement.
5. How often should an organization’s vision/mission be changed in light of strategy evaluation
activities?
6. Compare Mintzberg’s notion of “crafting” strategies with this textbook’s notion of “gathering
and assimilating information” to formulate strategies.
7. Why has strategy evaluation become so important in business today?
8. BellSouth Services is considering putting divisional EFE and IFE matrices online for
continual updating. How would this affect strategy evaluation?
9. What types of quantitative and qualitative criteria do you think Ellen Kullman, CEO of
DuPont, uses to evaluate the company’s strategy?
10. As owner of a local, independent supermarket, explain how you would evaluate the firm’s
strategy.
11. Under what conditions are corrective actions not required in the strategy-evaluation
process?
12. Identify types of organizations that may need to evaluate strategy more frequently than
others. Justify your choices.
13. As executive director of the state forestry commission, in what way and how frequently
would you evaluate the organization’s strategies?
14. Identify some key financial ratios that would be important in evaluating a bank’s
strategy.
15. As owner of a chain of hardware stores, describe how you would approach contingency
planning.
16. Strategy evaluation allows an organization to take a proactive stance toward shaping its own
future. Discuss the meaning of this statement.
17. Explain and discuss the Balanced Scorecard.
18. Why is the Balanced Scorecard an important topic both in devising objectives and in
evaluating strategies?
19. Develop a Balanced Scorecard for a local fast-food restaurant.
20. Do you believe strategic management should be more visible or hidden as a process in a
firm? Explain.
21. Do you feel strategic management should be more a top-down or bottom-up process in a
firm? Explain.
22. Do you believe strategic management is more an art or a science? Explain.
Notes
1. Dale McConkey, “Planning in a Changing Environment,”
Business Horizons (September–October 1988): 64.
2. Robert Simons, “Control in an Age of Empowerment,”
Harvard Business Review (March–April 1995): 80.
3. Dale Zand, “Reviewing the Policy Process,” California
Management Review 21, no. 1 (Fall 1978): 37.
4. Eccles. 3: 1–8.
5. Claude George Jr., The History of Management Thought
(Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1968):
165–166.
6. M. Erez and F. Kanfer, “The Role of Goal Acceptance in
Goal Setting and Task Performance,” Academy of
Management Review 8, no. 3 (July 1983): 457.
7. D. Hussey and M. Langham, Corporate Planning: The
Human Factor (Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 1979):
138.
8. Carter Bayles, “Strategic Control: The President’s
Paradox,” Business Horizons 20, no. 4 (August 1977): 18.
9. Adam Lashinsky, “The World’s Most Admired
Companies,” Fortune (March 16, 2009): 81–91.
10. Robert Waterman, Jr., “How the Best Get Better,”
BusinessWeek (September 14, 1987): 105.
11. Robert Linneman and Rajan Chandran, “Contingency
Planning: A Key to Swift Managerial Action in the
Uncertain Tomorrow,” Managerial Planning 29,
no. 4 (January–February 1981): 23–27.