1. What are political risks and what are economic risks? How should firms approach dealing with these risks? What are the firms you've selected for your Strategic Plan doing to identify and mitigate political and economic risks? In your opinion, is their strategy effective? Why or why not?

2. What are political risks and what are economic risks? How should firms approach dealing with these risks? What are the firms you've selected for your Strategic Plan doing to identify and mitigate political and economic risks? In your opinion, is their strategy effective? Why or why not?

3. According to Hitt, Ireland, and Hoskisson (2014), "the functional structure consists of a chief executive officer and a limited corporate staff, with functional line managers in dominant organizational areas such as production, accounting, marketing, R&D, engineering, and human resources.

This structure allows for functional specialization, thereby facilitating active sharing of knowledge within each functional area. Knowledge sharing facilitates career paths as well as professional development of functional specialists."

In my opinion, the differences between the functional structures enable the relate strategies by negatively affecting communication and coordination among those representing different organizational functions.

In your opinion and experience, how do reporting relationships and decision-making authority influence achieving strategic goals? Provide examples to support your claims.

4. The authors suggest banks that use a cost leadership strategic outperform banks that do not use similar strategies. There are additional implications in their findings that enable that performance.

In your opinion, what capabilities must be coupled with this strategic direction to support higher performance levels? Provide examples in your response.