STR/581 – QUESTIONS

Answer the 8 questions below, each question must be a minimum of 200 words. Must be in APA format, please identify the questions on paper. Cannot accept more than 5% plagiarism, it will be submitted to TurnItIn.

Must be answered in your own words, NO cut and pasted phrases or paragraphs — you can include the URL address so we can click and go to the site, but do not copy and paste (even with references and citations). This way we can avoid plagiarism as well as copyright issues.

BOOK: Hitt, Ireland & Hoskisson (2015). Strategic Management: Competitiveness & Globalization.: Concepts and Cases: 11th edition.

Chapter 2: The External Environment: Opportunities, Threats, Industry Competition, and Competitor Analysis

1. Explain the importance of analyzing and understanding the firm's external environment.

2. Define and describe the general environment and the industry environment.

3. Discuss the four parts of the external environmental analysis process.

4. Name and describe the general environment's seven segments.

5. Identify the five competitive forces and explain how they determine an industry's profitability potential.

6. Define strategic groups and describe their influence on firms.

7. Describe what firms need to know about their competitors and different methods (including ethical standards) used to collect intelligence about them.

8. Read Exercise 2 which talks about what the future looks like: and then answer the following question.

Which of the seven dimensions of the general environment will this affect (may be more than one)?

• Describe the effect.
• List some business opportunities that will come from this.
• Identify some existing organizations that stand to benefit.
• What, if any, are the ethical implications?

EXERCISE 2: WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE?

A critical ingredient to studying the general environment is identifying opportunities and threats. An opportunity is a condition in the environment that, if exploited, helps a company achieve strategic competitiveness. In order to identify opportunities, you must be aware of trends that affect the world around us now or that are projected to do so in the future.

Thomas Fry, executive director and senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute, believes that the chaotic nature of interconnecting trends and the vast array of possibilities that arise from them are somewhat akin to watching a spinning compass needle. From the way we use phones or e-mail, or how we recruit new workers to organizations, the climate for business is changing and shifting dramatically, and at rapidly increasing rates. Sorting these trends out and making sense of them provides the basis for opportunity decision making. Which ones will dominate and which ones will fade? Understanding this is crucial for business success.

Your challenge (either individually or as a group) is to identify a trend, technology, entertainment mode, or design that is likely to alter the way in which business is conducted in the future.

You should consult a wide variety of sources. For example, the Gartner Group and McKinsey & Company both produce market research and forecasts for business. There are also many Web forecasting tools and addresses such as TED (technology, entertainment, design, where you can find videos of their discussions; see www.ted.com), that host an annual conference for path-breaking new ideas. Similarly, the DaVinci Institute and the Institute for Global Futures as well as many others have their own unique vision for tomorrow’s environment.