Environmental scanning involves monitoring internal and external environments to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Corporate governance involves relationships between management, directors, shareholders, and other stakeholders that determine how company objectives are set and performance is monitored. A strategic business unit is a division large enough to control most factors affecting its performance but small enough to be flexible. The balanced scorecard measures performance across learning/growth, business processes, customers, and finance.

1. Strategic Management Short Answers
1. What is Environmental Scanning?
Environmental scanning plays a key role in strategy formulation by analyzing the strengths and
weaknesses and opportunities and threats in the environment. Environmental scanning is defined
as monitoring, evaluating, and disseminating of information from external and internal
environments to managers in organizations so that long term health of the organization will be
ensured and strategic shocks can be avoided.
2. Define Corporate Governance.
Corporate Governance involves a set of relationships amongst the company‟s management its
board of directors, shareholders and other stakeholders. These relationships which various rules
and incentives provide the structure through which the objectives of the company are set and the
means of attaining the objectives and monitoring performance are determined.
3. Write the name of factors in Task environment.
External Environment of an organization which affects its ability to reach business goals. Any
business or consumer with direct involvement with an organization may be part of the task
environment. Examples of task environmental sector includes , competitors, customers, suppliers
and labour supply. It is a kind of external environment.It is closer to the organization and includes
the sectors that conduct day-to-day transactions with the organization and directly influence its
basic organization and performance.
4. What is SBU?
Strategic Business Units (SBU) is an autonomous division or organizational unit, small enough to
be flexible and large enough to exercise control over most of the factors affecting its long-term
performance. Because strategic business units are more alert (and usually have independent
missions and objectives), they allow the owning conglomerate to respond quickly to changing
economic or market situations.
5. What is Balanced Scorecard?
A performance metric used in strategic management to identify and improve various internal
functions and their resulting external outcomes. The balanced scorecard attempts to measure
and provide feedback to organizations in order to assist in implementing strategies and
objectives. This management technique isolates four separate areas that need to be analyzed:
(1) learning and growth, (2) business processes, (3) customers, and (4) finance. Data collection is
crucial to providing quantitative results, which are interpreted by managers and executives and
used to make better long-term decisions.
6. Define Tactics.
Tactics are the actions that lead to execution of the strategy. The keyword is action, but tactics
are made up of a few elements ,they are an action, a purpose, a schedule, a measurable result
7. What do you mean by ‘Strategic Implementation?’
Strategic Implementation is an act of turning strategies, plans or ideas into actions that are
tangible, so that certain goals can be achieved.
8. Business Process Re Engineering (BPR)
Systematic starting over and reinventing the way a firm, or a process, gets its work done. Defined
by Michael Hammer and James Champy as "Fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of
business process to achieve dramatic improvement in critical measures of performance such
as cost, service, and speed

2. Strategic Management Short Answers
9. Define Intrapreneurship.
Employees in a large organization acting like an entrepreneur within the organization. The term
is derived from a combination of "intra" or internal, and "entrepreneurship." Intraprenuers are
usually highly self-motivated, proactive and action-oriented people who are comfortable with
taking the initiative, even within the boundaries of an organization, in pursuit of an innovative
product or service.
10. What is the meaning of ‘Strategic Piggybacking’?
Low cost market entry strategy in which two or more firms represents one another's
complementary (but non-competing or non-profit way) product in their respective markets..
11. What is Business Strategy?
A business strategy typically is a document that clearly articulates the direction a business will
pursue and the steps it will take to achieve its goals. In a standard business plan, the business
strategy results from goals established to support the stated mission of the business. A
typicalbusiness strategy is developed in three steps: analysis, integration and implementation
12. Define Ethics.
Ethics is the basic concepts and fundamental principles of right human conduct. It
includes study of universal values such as the essential equality of all men and women, human
or natural rights, obedience to the law of land, concern for health and safety and, increasingly,
also for the natural environment. It is essential for the professionals who serve for the society.
13. What do you mean by ‘Strategic Myopia’?
Management’s failure to recognize the importance of changing external conditions because they
are blinded by their shared, strongly held beliefs
14. What is Core Competency?
Core competence is a fundamental enduring strength which is a key to competitive advantage.
Core competence may be a competency in technology, process, engineering capability or
expertise which is difficult for competitors to imitate. One core competence gives rise to several
products. Honda‟s core competence in designing and manufacturing engines had led to several
products and business such as cars, motorcycles, lawnmowers, generators etc.
15. Define Joint Ventures.
A business arrangement in which two or more parties agree to pool their resources for the
purpose of accomplishing a specific task.
16. Give any two examples of Conglomerate Diversification.
Type of diversification whereby a firm enters (through acquisition or merger) an entirely different
market that has little or no synergy with its core business or technology.
Examples :-
Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) Manufacturing lighting Bulbs
General Electric (GE) Company moved into financing and financial services
17. What is Job enrichment?
Job enrichment adds new sources of job satisfaction by increasing the level of responsibility of
the employees. job enrichment is a vertical restructuring method by virtue of giving the employee
additional authority ,autonomy, and control over the way the job is accomplished
18. Define Corporate Culture.
The beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company's employees and management interact
and handle outside business transactions.Corporate culture is implied, not expressly defined, and

3. Strategic Management Short Answers
develops organically over time from the cumulative traits of the people the company hires. A
company's culture will be reflected in its dress code, business hours, office setup, employee
benefits, turnover, hiring decisions, treatment of clients, client satisfaction and every other aspect
of operations
19. Define Corporate Entrepreneurship.
Corporate Entrepreneurship can be seen as the process whereby an individual or a group creates
a new venture within an existing organization, revitalizes and renews an organization ,or
innovates. corporate entrepreneurship suggests a formal or informal activity aimed at creating
new businesses in established firms through product and process innovations and market
developments,.
20. What is the meaning of ‘Entrepreneurial Venture’?
Entrepreneurial venture is an enterprise development undertaking as an entrepreneurial
startup which typically means that a business decision maker motivated by the possibility of
financial gains takes an initiative to create a functional entity and get its operations going and who
is willing to take calculated risks.
21. What is strategy?
The term strategy is derived from a Greek word strategos which means generalship. A plan or
course of action or a set of decision rules making a pattern or creating a common thread.
"Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long-term: which
achieves advantagefor the organisation through its configuration of resources within a
challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfil stakeholder expectations".
22. What is Corporate Governance?
Corporate Governance involves a set of relationships amongst the company‟s management its
board of directors, shareholders and other stakeholders. These relationships which various rules
and incentives provide the structure through which the objectives of the company are set and the
means of attaining the objectives and monitoring performance are determined
23. What is competitive advantage?
A company has a competitive advantage over its rivals when its profitability is greater than the
average profitability of all companies in its industry. It has a sustained competitive advantage
when it is able to maintain above average profitability over a number of years.
24. What is vertical integration?
Vertical Integration is the process in which either input sources or output buyers of the firm are
moved inside the firm
Backward integration (Upstream)- Input sources are the firm like tea estate for three roses tea
Forward Integration (Down stream )- Output buyers of the firm Own outlets
25. What is strategic change?
A restructuring of an organisation’s business or marketing that is typically performed in order
to achieve an important objectives. For example a strategic change might include shifts in a
corporations policies targets market mission or organizational structure.
26. What is strategic control?
Strategic control can be defined as process of monitoring as to whether to various strategies
adopted by the organization are helping its internal environment to be matched with the external
environment. Strategic control processes allow managers to evaluate a company's program from
a critical long-term perspective. This involves a detailed and objective analysis of a company's
organization and its ability to maximize its strengths and market opportunities.
27. What are non-profit organizations?
“A non-profit organizations also known as a not-for- profit organization is an organization that
does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help
pursue its goals/ Types of non-profit-organizations are Private non-profit organizations Public
governmental units

4. Strategic Management Short Answers
28. Define vision and mission with examples.
A vision statement is sometimes called a picture of your company in the future. vision statement is
your inspiration; it is the dream of what you want your company to accomplish.
A mission statement is a brief description of a company‟s fundamental purpose. The mission
statement articulates the company‟s purpose both for those in the organizations and for the
public.
29. What are planned and reactive strategies?
Planned strategy is a methodology used to plan for the future of an organization whereas reactive
planning is an active attempt to turn back the clock to the past. The past, no matter how bad, is
preferable to the present. And definitely better than the future will be. The past is romanticized
and there is a desire to return to the "good old days." These people seek to undo the change that
has created the present, and they fear the future, which they attempt to prevent
30. What is strategic intent?
Strategic intent refers to the purposes the organization strives for. These may be expressed in
terms of a hierarchy of strategic intent. The framework within which firms operate, adopt a
predetermined direction and attempt to achieve their goal is provided by a strategic intent.
31. What are operating strategies?
An operating strategy is basically how they are planning on running the business. For example:
Microsoft might have an operating strategy by which they target businesses in the construction
business for their new software and offering this software as a low cost alternative to another,
competing software. They would achieve this through research and proper marketing in
conjunction with cost controls.
32. Differentiate TQM from Reengineering.
Total Quality Management and BPR share a cross-functional relationship. Quality specialists tend
to focus on incremental change and gradual improvement of processes, while proponents of
reengineering often seek radical redesign and drastic improvement of processes. Quality
management, often referred to as TQM or continuous improvement, means programs and
initiatives, which emphasize incremental improvement in work processes, and outputs over an
open-ended period of time.
TQM aims at Continual improvement and BPR aims at radical change in an organization.
33. What are adaptive cultures?
The key to a successful organization lies in its ability to move forward with its current endeavors
while always maintaining an initiative to innovate without hindering that organization's overall
operation.
34. What is value chain approach to strategy?
35. Value Chain Analysis describes the activities that take place in a business and relates them to an
analysis of the competitive strength of the business. Influential work by Michael Porter suggested that
the activities of a business could be grouped under two headings:
(1) Primary Activities - those that are directly concerned with creating and delivering a product (e.g.
component assembly); and
(2) Support Activities, which whilst they are not directly involved in production, may increase
effectiveness or efficiency (e.g. human resource management). It is rare for a business to undertake all
primary and support activities.

5. Strategic Management Short Answers
Value Chain Analysis is one way of identifying which activities are best undertaken by a business and
which are best provided by others ("out sourced").
36. What is ‘brick and click’ strategy?
Brick and Click is a business model by which a company integrates both offline (bricks) and
online (clicks) presences. The Brick and Click model has typically been used by traditional
retailers who have extensive logistics and supply chains. Part of the reason for its success is that
it is far easier for a traditional retailer to establish an online presence than it is for a start-up
company to employ a successful pure “dot com” strategy, or for an online retailer to establish a
traditional presence.
37. What is strategic fit?
A situation that occurs when a specific project, target company or product is seen as appropriate
with respect to an organization’s overall objectives. Most business managers seeking to expand
their company’s operations through a merger or acquisition will look for another company that
makes a good strategic fit with their own firm.
38. What is organizational life cycle?
Organisation has five stages in any organization like Birth , Growth, Maturity, Decline and death..
39. What is ET OP ?
ETOP(Environmental Threat and Opportunity Profile) is a technique to structure environmental
issues. ETOP involves, dividing the environment into different sectors. Each sectors can be
subdivided into sub sectors. Analyzing the impact of each sector and subsector on the
organization.Describe the impact in the form of a statement.
40. What is SWOT?
A SWOT analysis, with its four elements in a 2×2 matrix. A SWOT analysis (alternatively SWOT
matrix) is a structured planning method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats involved in a project or in a business venture.