Question 1
Question
The 'principal-agent problem' refers to:
Answer
-
The power held by suppliers over prices
-
The power held by buyers over prices
-
The trust of employees
-
The separation of ownership from control in firms
Question 2
Question
Those who advocate the stakeholder view of organizations have the view that:
Answer
-
An organization's sole purpose is to create shareholder value
-
An organization's sole purpose is to make profits for the owners
-
An organization has more than one purpose - it also needs to consider the society within which it
operates
-
An organization's sole purpose is to increase the quality of life of its employees
Question 3
Question
Stakeholders can be defined as:
Answer
-
Individuals or groups that are affected by the organization
-
Individuals or groups that affect the organizations
-
Individuals or groups that affect and are affected by the organization
-
Individuals or groups that have invested money in the organization
Question 4
Question
Organizational performance is a measure of how efficiently and effectively managers use available
resources to satisfy customers and achieve organizational goals.
Question 5
Question
A measure of the appropriateness of goals selected by managers for the organization and the degree to
which the organization achieves these goals is known as the effectiveness of the organization.
Question 6
Question
Which one of the following is NOT a good indicator of how well a company's present strategy is
working?
Answer
-
The company's market share ranking and whether its share is trending up, down, or staying more or
less the same
-
Whether the company is regarded as a leader in some significant area (technology, product quality,
customer service, product innovation and so on) and the firm's image and reputation with customers
-
Whether the company's profit margins are increasing or decreasing and how large they are relative
to other firms in the industry
-
Whether the company's resource strengths and competitive capabilities outnumber its resource
weaknesses and competitive vulnerabilities
-
Whether the company is achieving its stated financial and strategic objectives and whether the
company is an above-average or below-average industry performer
Question 7
Answer
-
consists of three steps: identifying a company's resource strengths and weaknesses and its
opportunities and threats, drawing conclusions about the company's overall situation, and
translating the conclusions into strategic action to improve the company's strategy.
-
provides a quick overview of where on the scale from "alarmingly weak" to "exceptionally strong"
the attractiveness of the company's overall business situation ranks.
-
helps provide a basis for matching the company's strategy to its internal resource capabilities and its
external opportunities and threats.
-
helps identify actions for improving the company's strategy.
-
All of these.
Question 8
Question
A core competence:
Answer
-
holds the potential for being a cornerstone of a company's strategy because it gives a company
competitive capability and qualifies as a genuine company strength and resource.
-
nearly always resides in the calibre of the company's assets on its balance sheet rather than in its
people and in its intellectual capital; furthermore, balance sheet-related core competencies tend to
be competitively more valuable than core competencies grounded in intellectual capital.
-
is better suited to helping a company defend against external threats than in pursuing external
market opportunities.
-
is usually tied closely to the calibre of a company's manufacturing capability and/or its proprietary
technology and know-how.
-
is a more valuable company resource than either a "competence" or a "distinctive competence" but
it is not as good a resource strength as a "competitive capability."
Question 9
Question
A distinctive competence:
Answer
-
is a more important competitive asset than a core competence.
-
represents competitive superiority in performing an activity and thus is a basis for building a
competitive advantage over rivals.
-
is a competitively important value chain activity that a company performs better than its rivals.
-
is a strong candidate for being used as a cornerstone of a company's strategy.
-
All of the above.
Question 10
Question
Which of the following is NOT a measure of the competitive power of a company's resource strengths
and competitive capabilities?
Answer
-
How hard it is for competitors to copy a particular resource strength or competitive capability of a
company
-
Whether the company has more resources/capabilities than any other key rival
-
Whether the resource or capability is really competitively superior to what rivals have or can do
-
How easily the resource or capability can be trumped by the different resources/capabilities of rivals
-
Whether the resource or capability is durable and has staying power (in the sense of not losing its
value quickly because of new developments)
Question 11
Question
The industry or market opportunities that are most relevant to a company and those which its strategy
should aim at capturing include
Answer
-
opportunities that are well-suited to the company's competitive capabilities and resource strengths.
-
opportunities which the company has the financial resources to pursue.
-
opportunities that offer important avenues for growth.
-
opportunities where the company has the greatest potential for competitive advantage.
-
All of the above
Question 12
Question
A company's value chain consists of:
Answer
-
the activities a company performs in converting its resource weaknesses into resource strengths.
-
the collection of activities it performs in the course of designing, producing, marketing, delivering,
and supporting its product or service and delivering value to customers-these activities can be
grouped into (a) the primary activities that are foremost in creating value for customers and (b) the
related support activities that facilitate and enhance the performance of the primary activities.
-
the activities a company performs to build a competence and turn it into a strong competitive
capability.
-
identifying the primary activities and related support activities that a company performs in
developing a distinctive competence.
-
identifying each and every activity that results in a cost to the company and that, therefore, has to
be covered by its price.
Question 13
Question
A company's cost competitiveness is largely a function of:
Answer
-
whether it does a good enough job of benchmarking its value chain activities against the value chains
of competitors so that it knows exactly how low to drive its costs to be cost-competitive.
-
how efficiently it manages its overall value chain activities relative to how efficiently competitors
manage theirs.
-
whether it does a better job of building its resource strengths more cost effectively than rivals.
-
whether it possesses more core competences and competitive capabilities than rivals.
-
how closely its internally-performed activities are linked to the activities performed by suppliers and
to the activities performed by forward channel allies.
Question 14
Question
One of the most dependable ways for a company to build competitive advantage:
Answer
-
is developing the skills, competencies, and capabilities to perform competitively crucial value chain
activities better than competitors.
-
is using its resource strengths to insulate itself from the impact of the five competitive forces.
-
is improving the calibre of its product or service (because superior products or services are almost
impossible to clone or improve upon).
-
is moving into the strategic group where profit margins are highest.
-
is neutralizing the external threats to a company's well-being and then focusing company resources
on the company's single best market opportunity.
Question 15
Question
Identifying the strategic issues that company managers need to address:
Answer
-
involves using the results of both industry and competitive analysis and what has been learned from
evaluating the company's present strategy, SWOT analysis, and the evaluations of the company's
own competitiveness
-
entails developing a "worry list" of "how to...", "whether to....", and "what to do about....."
-
is an important component of company situation analysis because a good strategy must include
actions to deal with all the strategic issues that need to be addressed.
-
entails locking in on what challenges the company has to overcome in order to be financially and
competitively successful in the years ahead.
-
All of the above.
Question 16
Question
"Shareholder wealth" in a firm is represented by:
Answer
-
the number of people employed in the firm.
-
the book value of the firm's assets less the book value of its liabilities.
-
the amount of salary paid to its employees
-
the market price per share of the firm's shares.
Question 17
Question
The long-run objective of financial management is to:
Answer
-
maximize earnings per share.
-
maximize the value of the firm's shares.
-
maximize return on investment.
-
maximize market share.
Question 18
Question
A(n) _______________ would be an example of a principal, while a(n) ________________
would be an example of an agent.
Answer
-
shareholder; manager
-
manager; owner
-
accountant; bondholder
-
shareholder; bondholder
Question 19
Question
The decision function of financial management can be broken down into the ____________
decisions.
Answer
-
financing and investment
-
investment, financing, and asset management
-
financing and dividend
-
capital budgeting, cash management, and credit management
Question 20
Question
A company's ____________________ is (are) potentially the most effective instrument of good
corporate governance.
Answer
-
shareholders
-
board of directors
-
top executive officers
Question 21
Answer
-
change
-
stability
-
effectiveness
-
efficiency
Question 22
Question
Entrenched companies may have cost advantages not available to potential rivals. This is an
example of:
Question 23
Question
Which of the following financial objectives best relates to a firm's ability to meet its short-term
financial obligations?
Answer
-
Liquidity
-
Profitability
-
Efficiency
-
Stability
Question 24
Question
Which of the following financial objectives best relates to how productively a firm uses its assets
relative to its revenues and its profits?
Answer
-
Liquidity
-
Profitability
-
Efficiency
-
Stability
Question 25
Question
_____ is a written report that quantitatively describes a firm's financial health.
Answer
-
A forecast
-
A budget
-
A business plan
-
A financial statement
Question 26
Question
Friedman (1962) is a famous exponent of the view that:
Answer
-
Business is business
-
Business is society
-
Business is politics
-
Business is power
Question 27
Question
Benchmarking is a popular tool to measure performance. Benchmarking involves the continual process
of comparing organizational performance against:
Question 28
Question
Which of the following statements regarding flaws suffered by financial measures is not correct?
Answer
-
They are hard to quantify.
-
They do little to motivate employees to improve accounting profits.
-
They are not effective in getting managers' attention.
-
They are useful in identifying operational problems.
-
None of the above.
Question 29
Question
The description of an organization's values, definition of its responsibilities to stakeholders, and
identification of its major strategies is known as a:
Answer
-
business-level strategy.
-
business model.
-
mission statement.
-
balanced scorecard.
-
None of the above.
Question 30
Question
The description of how different levels and employees in the organization must perform for the
organization to achieve its goals is a:
Answer
-
business-level strategy.
-
business model.
-
mission statement.
-
balanced scorecard.
-
None of the above.
Question 31
Question
What term is used to describe the continuous process of measuring a company's own products,
services, and activities against competitors' performance?
Answer
-
Balanced scorecard
-
Business-level strategy
-
Benchmarking
-
Internal calibration
-
None of the above.
Question 32
Question
Which of the following statements regarding multiple measures or a single measure of performance is
not correct?
Answer
-
The advantage of using branch profits to evaluate branch managers is that profit is relatively simple
to compute and reflects the organization's ultimate goal.
-
The use of multiple measures can influence branch managers' decisions by changing the components
of the performance measurement system to reflect changes in the firm's strategy.
-
If the branch managers are more knowledgeable than the corporate staff about local conditions and
what local clients value, a single measure could be preferable.
-
If the corporate office has better knowledge of what it requires to operate a profitable branch, using
multiple measures provides a way to communicate this knowledge and achieve common branch
operations
-
All of the above are correct statements.
Question 33
Question
Which of the following is not a reason that worker involvement is important in an effective performance
measurement system?
Answer
-
Many managers believe that when workers take on real decision-making authority, their commitment to the organization and its objectives increases.
-
When decision-making responsibility lies with workers closer to the customer, workers are more responsive to customer concerns and can make informed decisions.
-
Giving decision-making responsibility to workers uses their skills and knowledge and motivates them
to further develop those skills and knowledge in an effort to improve the organization's performance.
-
Workers are more likely to understand financial measures than nonfinancial measures.
Question 34
Question
Taking a bribe is:
Answer
-
A violation of human rights
-
A violation of an individual's right to privacy
-
A violation of distributive justice
-
A violation of common decency
Question 35
Question
Ethical behavior is not in the long-term interest of businesses.
Question 36
Question
Extortion is an attempt to buy:
Question 37
Question
Distributive justice refers to:
Answer
-
Rewards allocated to those who shout loudest
-
Rewards allocated by level of contribution
-
Rewards allocated to those who cannot help themselves
-
Rewards allocated regardless of contribution
Question 38
Question
Ethical business practice requires, above all else, an active awareness and consideration of the likely
long-term consequence of any action.
Question 39
Question
By professing ethical behavior, organisations in the ____________ hope to avoid threats of litigation,
boycotts, strikes and shareholder alienation.
Answer
-
Reactive
-
Compliant
-
Immoral
-
None of the above.
Question 40
Question
Amoral management conforms to high standards of ethical behavior.
Question 41
Question
Amoral managers practice a style of management devoid of ethical principles and active opposition to
what is ethical.
Question 42
Question
It is important for businesses to practice ethical behaviour to________________.
Answer
-
Avoid conflict and promote distributive justice.
-
Promote conservation of resources and preserve corporate reputation.
-
Promote long term profitability and avoid societal conflict.
-
All of the above.
Question 43
Question
Which one of the following managers does not factor ethical considerations into own actions since
business activity lies outside sphere of moral judgment?
Question 44
Question
The income statement reflects a firm's results over a period of time.
Question 45
Question
The three major criteria managers should look for when selecting employees are physical, mental and
________________capability?
Answer
-
Intellectual
-
Emotional
-
Psychological
-
Physiological
Question 46
Question
A system for providing employees with regular feedback on their performance is known as
___________________?
Answer
-
Empowerment
-
Enrichment
-
Appraisal
-
Enhancement
Question 47
Question
Which of the following is not usually associated with a highly motivated workforce?
Answer
-
High quality work output
-
High staff turnover
-
High work satisfaction
-
High staff involvement
Question 48
Question
The purpose of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act is to give effect to and regulate the right to fair
labour practices conferred by section 23(1) of the Constitution by:
Answer
-
establishing and enforcing basic conditions of employment
-
regulating the variation of basic conditions of employment
-
to give effect to obligations incurred as a member state of the International Labour Organisation
-
all of the above
Question 49
Question
The purpose of the Employment Equity Act, 55 of 1998 is to achieve equity in the workplace by :
Answer
-
a) promoting equal opportunity and fair treatment in employment through the elimination of unfair
discrimination
-
implementing affirmative action measures to redress the disadvantages in employment experienced
b) by designated groups, to ensure their equitable representation in all occupational categories and
levels in the workforce
-
c) to advance the interests of historically disadvantaged individuals
-
a) and b)
-
a) and c)
Question 50
Question
The principal purpose of the Labour Relations Act is to advance economic development, social
justice, labour peace and the democratisation of the workplace by fulfilling the primary objects of
this Act, which are:
Answer
-
To give effect and regulate the fundamental rights conferred by section 27 of the Constitution
-
To give effect to obligations incurred by the Republic as a member state of the International Labour
-
Organisation To provide a framework within which employees and their trade unions, employers and
employers’ organisations can collectively bargain to determine matters of mutual interest and
formulate industrial policy
-
To promote orderly collective bargaining, employee participation in decision-making in the
workplace and effective resolution of labour disputes
-
all of the above
Question 51
Question
The Labour Market Review has sought to review the following legislations:
Answer
-
Basic Conditions Employment Act, Labour Relations Act, Employment Equity Act, Compensation for
Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act, Unemployment Insurance Act, Skills Development Act
-
Basic Conditions Employment Act, and Labour Relations Act, Employment Equity Act
-
Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act, Unemployment Insurance Act, Skills
Development Act
-
Basic Conditions Employment Act, and Labour Relations Act, Unemployment Insurance Act, Skills
Development Act
Question 52
Question
Amendments have been effected to the following Acts to fulfil South Africa’s obligations as a
member state of the International Labour Organisation
Answer
-
Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act, Unemployment Insurance Act, Skills
Development Act
-
Labour Relations Act , Basic Conditions of Employment Act , Employment Equity Act
-
none of the above
Question 53
Question
The ILO action their Decent Work agenda by focusing on four key objectives
Answer
-
Creating Jobs
-
Guaranteeing rights at work
-
Extending social protection
-
Promoting social dialogue
-
all of the above
Question 54
Question
Unethical behaviour in business can be reduced if management does all of the following except
Answer
-
establish clear policies on unethical behavior.
-
limit opportunities for unethical behavior.
-
establish formal rules and procedures.
-
punish unethical behavior firmly.
-
depend totally on employees' personal ethics.
Question 55
Question
Which of the following best describes the relationship between utilitarianism and consequentialism?
Answer
-
Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism.
-
Consequentialism is a form of utilitarianism.
-
Utilitarianism and consequentialism are completely independent theories.
-
Utilitarianism and consequentialism are inconsistent.