Take the Ethics Awareness Inventory and Ethical Choices in the Workplace assessments to assess your values.
Write a paper of no more than 700 words in which you do the following:

Explain the role of ethics and social responsibility in developing a strategic plan, considering stakeholder needs.

Explain how your ethical perspective has evolved throughout the program.

Knowledge Check
1. For the past 28 years, ABC, Inc. has made a significant investment of time, money, and other resources to increase the literacy rate in adult Americans. This represents which of these principles of successful collaborative social initiatives?

2.According to stakeholder theory, in a survey of over 2000 directors from over 290 U.S. companies, which of these stakeholders was perceived to be least important?

3. Which law revised and strengthened auditing and account standards?

4. Which of these is true about Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002?

5. A major consequence of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has been the

6. The most critical quality of ethical decision making is

7. Judging the appropriateness of a particular action based on a goal to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people is what ethics approach?

8. Judging the appropriateness of a particular action based on equity, fairness, and impartiality in the distribution of rewards and costs among individuals and groups is what ethics approach used by managers?

9. A broadly framed but enduring statement of a firm's intent is defined as the company

10. This statement of a company's philosophy usually appears within the mission statement and specifies basic beliefs of a firm.

11. This statement presents the firm's strategic intent that focuses the energies and resources of the company on achieving a desirable future.

12. The strategic decision makers in the firm are responsible for

13. The idea that businesses have a duty to serve society as well as the financial interest of stockholders is called

14. Which of the following strategic decision makers implement the overall strategy?

15. Which level of strategy uses a portfolio approach?

16.Of the three levels of strategy that are part of an organizations decision-making hierarchy, which level develops annual objectives and short-term strategies in such areas as production, operations, and research and development, finance and accounting, marketing, and human relations?

17. The behavioral consequences of strategic management are similar to those of

18. What do strategic managers call a flow of information through interrelated stages of analysis toward the achievement of an aim?

How you intend to ensure the organization's vision, mission, and people strategies and values statements are aligned with the proposed strategic plan.

Use publicly available information, including Securities and Exchanges Commission filings.

Choose an organization that is introducing new products or services.

Knowledge Check

1. A firm's external environment is divided into various subcategories that include

2. When managers consider the general availability of credit, the level of disposable income, and the propensity of people to spend, they are considering what factors?

3. This factor considers or provides creative adaptations that can suggest possibilities for new products or for improvements in existing products or in manufacturing and marketing techniques.

4. The quasi-science of anticipating environmental and competitive changes and estimating their importance to an organizations operation refers to

5. This term refers to the relationships among human beings and other living things and the air, soil, and water that supports them.

6. Economies of scale in an industry

7. This term refers to descriptive characteristics that can be used to differentiate groups of present or potential customers.

8. This information is used to explain or predict some aspect of customer behavior with regard to a product or service. Information such as usage rate, benefits sought, and brand loyalty can provide significant aid in the design of more accurate and profitable strategies.

9. Because the quantity, quality, price, and accessibility of financial, human, and material resources are rarely ideal, assessment of suppliers and creditors is critical to an accurate evaluation of which of the firm's external environments?

10. What Human Resource component within its operating environment is a major element of a firm's ability to satisfy its personnel needs?

11. A firm's access to needed personnel is affected primarily by four factors that include

12. This element of employment or labor represents the workers in their negotiations with employers through the process of collective bargaining.

13. The environment that is typically subject to much influence by the firm is

14. Which of these is a determinant of entry, according to Porter?

15. Which threat of entry creates a barrier by forcing entrants to spend heavily to overcome customer loyalty?

16. This group is considered powerful if it is not obliged to contend with other products for sale to the industry.

17. This is considered a collection of firms that offer similar products or services that customers perceive to be substitutable for one another.

18. This environment in the strategic planning process comprises factors in the competitive situation that affect a firm's success in acquiring needed resources or in profitably marketing its goods and services.

External and Internal Environmental Analysis

Complete the external environmental scan for your organization.

Perform an internal competitive environmental scan for your organization.

Write a summary of no more than 1,400 words that does the following:

Identifies and analyzes the most important external environmental factor in the remote, industry, and external operating environments

Identifies and analyzes the most important internal strengths and weaknesses of your organization: include an assessment of the

organization's resources

Assesses the organization's competitive position and possibilities

Analyzes the structure of the organization and how this affects organizational performance

Learning Team Peer Evaluation

Share drafts of the External and Internal Environmental Analysis assignment with all team members.

Provide feedback to be incorporated into each member's paper.

Write a synopsis of no more than 350 words summarizing the team's discussion.

Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.

Knowledge Check

1. The structure of a simple organization

2. This structure is one in which a set of relatively autonomous units are governed by a central corporate office but where each operation has its own functional specialists who provide products or services that are different from those of other operations.

3. This type of organizational structure combines the advantages of functional specialization with the advantages of product-project specialization.

4. Twenty-first-century corporations reflect

5. Today, global means

6. This type of organization or structure is one that identifies a set of business capabilities central to high-profitability operations and then builds a virtual organization around those capabilities.

7. These are arrangements between two or more companies in which they both contribute capabilities, resources, or expertise to a joint undertaking, usually with an identity of its own, with each firm giving up overall control in return for the potential to participate in and benefit from the relationship.

8. This is an organization structure most notable for its lack of structure wherein knowledge and getting it to the right place quickly is the key reason for the organization.

9. One of the limitations of the SWOT analysis is that it can be

10. One of the limitations of SWOT analysis is that it can do this to a single strength or element of strategy.

11. Value chain analysis takes a

12. Which of the following is an example of a primary activity in the typical firm?

13. In VCA, which method of cost accounting is preferred?

14. This is an internal analysis technique wherein strategists examine customers' needs, company offerings, and competitors' offerings to more clearly articulate what their company's competitive advantage is and how it differs from those of competitors.

15. The first step of this type of analysis involves a firm determining what their customers value and why they value it.

16. Once a hypothesis about competitive advantage has been developed by a firm through three circles analysis, it should be tested by

17. This is a method of comparing the way a company performs a specific activity with a competitor, potential competitor, or company doing the same thing.

18. Companies committed to this process attempt to isolate and identify where their costs or outcomes are out of line with what they identify as the best practices of competitors or other companies or organizations that undertake similar tasks.

Strategic Choice and Evaluation

Identify the best value discipline, generic strategy, and grand strategy for your organization.

1. Firms that enjoy higher profit margins are using which of Michael Porter's generic strategies?

2. Which of the following companies is a good example of a low-cost leader?

3. Firms that follow this type of generic strategy can sometimes have difficulties succeeding without compromising the key attributes of a company's products or services.

4. Which of the following is a generic strategy developed by Michael Porter?

5. Striving to create and market unique products for varied customer groups is called

6. Which of the following is a value discipline?

7. Companies that pursue this value discipline strive to produce a continuous stream of state-of-the-art products and services.

8. Which of the grand strategies is typically lowest in risk?

9. The grand strategy in which the firm directs its resources to the profitable growth of a single product, in a single market and with a single technology is termed

10. What is it called when current products are marketed, often with only cosmetic changes, to customers in related market areas?

11. The acquisition of one or more businesses operating at the same stage of the production-marketing chain is an example of

12. If a textile producer acquires a shirt manufacturer, this is called

13. For the ABC Company, the Alpha business is in a dominant market share position in a mature market. As per the BCG matrix, Alpha is a

14. Which matrix makes fine distinctions among business portfolio positions with the inclusion of high/medium/low axes?

15. Which matrix involves a framework that can help ensure that businesses' strategies are consistent with strategies appropriate to their strategic environment?

16. Which of the following represents an operating opportunity to build value or sharing?

17. The most compelling reason companies should diversify can be found in situations when

18. The core competency must represent a major source of value to be a basis for competitive advantage. Furthermore, the core competency