CAL POLY POMONA

College of Business Administration

BUS 4950 Strategic Management
Wednesdays / Hybrid
Spring 2021
DR. SEAN D. JASSO

EXAM 1

Below are the essay questions for your first take-home exam. The exam is intended for you to work
independently. You may, however, use your team’s data from the work you have done to date.

Each question is worth a total of 20 points. Please answer each question as thoroughly as possible, providing
rich detail from our lectures, readings, and discussions. The organization of your answers, the complexity of
your analysis, and the clarity of your critical thinking are the key elements of your evaluationi

1. On the Basics –
a. We have said that strategic management is an evolution and a destination. What does this mean?
Discuss in detail.
b. Provide three examples of how your team company is or is not a strategic management firm.
c. Lastly, clearly and succinctly describe your team company’s mission statement as well as the 2021
goals and objectives of the firm.
2. On Corporate Governance –
a. Discuss three traditional roles of the board of directors. Also, identify and discuss the most urgent
governance issue impacting your team company’s board – what are they doing to manage this
important issue?
b. Finally, identify and evaluate a major philanthropic initiative/program to which your team CEO
company contributes or leads that aims to do good while also helping the firm do well.
3. On Competition & Porter’s Five Forces
a. We have said that competition forces society to be better by providing superior value. Identify and
discuss your CEO team company’s competitive advantage and core competency – in essence, the
magic sauce that makes the company stay in the game.
b. Lastly, provide a descriptive discussion of the Five Forces Model of your team’s company and
include what Wheelen and Hunger call the sixth force in your analysis.
c. Kim and Mauborgne argue that sustaining a “competitive advantage” is to make the competition
irrelevant – hence, the blue ocean metaphor. Identify and discuss what must be done to achieve or
sustain your team company’s position in a ‘blue ocean’. Pull from the readings to support your
response.
4. On the Value Chain –
a. Identify and discuss the business model that best describes your CEO team company.
b. Lastly, provide a descriptive overview of the various components of Porter’s value chain model –
include the firm’s current and target profit margin.
i. Identify the areas within the value chain needing to be strengthened for your company to
strengthen the profit margin of the firm.
o Pull from Zenger’s Corporate Theory to help support your discussion
5. On General Strategy –
a. Define and discuss the current business and corporate strategies of your team company using the
language from our readings.
i. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the current strategies?
b. Lastly, identify the most urgent decision needing to be made to ensure the competitive sustainability
of the company or to move toward a sustainable competitive advantage.

i
Recommendations on excellence – ten pages is your minimum target; dig deep into the readings and language of our text and
lectures; provide unique insight, reach for high-level presentation and formatting; use 12-point, Times New Roman font; pay
attention to details; use end-notes to cite your sources from your readings. For example, at the end of a sentence that you either cite
directly or summarize, you will insert an end-note such as this one. The end-note simply needs to indicate the author and page
number such as, Wheelen and Hunger, p. 82; put some time into this assignment; teach me something new.