COB 300 Management Exam 2
external environments - correct answer ✔✔are the forces and events outside a company that have the
potential to influence or affect it.
3 characteristics:
Resource scarcity
Environmental change
Environmental complexity
Environmental change - correct answer ✔✔rate at which a company's general and specific environments
change.
stable environment - correct answer ✔✔the rate of environmental change is slow.
Wholefoods
Dynamic environments - correct answer ✔✔the rate of environmental change is fast.
Tech
punctuated equilibrium theory - correct answer ✔✔companies go through long periods of stability
(equilibrium) during which incremental changes occur; followed by short, complex periods of dynamic,
fundamental change (revolutionary periods); and finishing with a return to stability (new equilibrium). 4
Environmental Complexity - correct answer ✔✔complexity refers to the number and the intensity of
external factors in the environment that affect organizations. Simple environments have few
environmental factors, whereas complex environments have many environmental factors. The dairy
industry is an excellent example of a relatively simple external environment.
,resource scarcity - correct answer ✔✔the abundance or shortage of critical organizational resources in
an organization's external environment
Uncertainty - correct answer ✔✔extent to which managers can understand or predict which
environmental changes and trends will affect their businesses
When environmental change and complexity are at high levels and resource scarcity is high (i.e.,
resources are scarce), uncertainty is high, and managers may not be at all confident that they can
understand, predict, and handle the external forces affecting their businesses. When environmental
change and complexity are at low levels and resource scarcity is low (i.e., resources are plentiful),
uncertainty is low, and managers feel confident that they can understand, predict, and react to the
external forces that affect their businesses.
General environment - correct answer ✔✔the economic, technological, sociocultural, and political/legal
trends that indirectly affect all organizations
Specific environment - correct answer ✔✔the customers, competitors, suppliers, industry regulations,
and advocacy groups that are unique to an industry and directly affect how a company does business
4 components of the general environment - correct answer ✔✔the economy, the tech, sociocultural,
and political/legal trends that indirectly affect all organizations.
Business confidence indices - correct answer ✔✔Because economic statistics can be poor predictors,
some managers try to predict future economic activity by keeping track of business confidence.
Business confidence indices show how confident actual managers are about future business growth.
Technology - correct answer ✔✔Technology is the knowledge, tools, and techniques used to transform
inputs (raw materials, information, and so on) into outputs (products and services). For example, the
inputs of authors, editors, and artists (knowledge) and the use of equipment like computers and printing
presses (technology) transformed paper, ink, and glue (raw materials) into this book (the finished
product).
,Although technological changes can benefit a business, they can also threaten it. Companies must
embrace new technology and find effective ways to use it to improve their products and services or
decrease costs. If they don't, they will lose out to those companies that do.
Sociocultural changes and trends influence organizations in two important ways. - correct answer
✔✔First, changes in demographic characteristics, such as the number of people with particular skills or
the growth of or decline in the number of people with particular population characteristics (marital
status, age, gender, ethnicity) affect how companies staff their businesses.
Second, sociocultural changes in behavior, attitudes, and beliefs also affect the demand for a business's
products and services.
two basic strategies for monitoring customers - correct answer ✔✔reactive and proactive. Reactive
customer monitoring involves identifying and addressing customer trends and problems after they occur.
Proactive monitoring of customers means identifying and addressing customer needs, trends, and issues
before they occur.
Competitors - correct answer ✔✔companies in the same industry that sell similar products or services to
customers.
Competitive analysis - correct answer ✔✔a process for monitoring the competition that involves
identifying competition, anticipating their moves, and determining their strengths and weaknesses
Suppliers - correct answer ✔✔are companies that provide material, human, financial, and informational
resources to other companies.
Supplier dependence - correct answer ✔✔the degree to which a company relies on a supplier because
of the importance of the supplier's product to the company and the difficulty of finding other sources of
that product
for over a decade Apple has been highly dependent on Samsung for the computer chips
Buyer dependence - correct answer ✔✔the degree to which a supplier relies on a buyer because of the
importance of that buyer to the supplier and the difficulty of finding other buyers for its products
, While Samsung is one of Apple's key suppliers (i.e., supplier dependence), Apple, in turn, is Samsung's
key buyer of computer components.
Opportunistic behavior - correct answer ✔✔a transaction in which one party in the relationship benefits
at the expense of the other
Relationship behavior - correct answer ✔✔the establishment of mutually beneficial, long-term
exchanges between buyers and suppliers
DreamWorks Studios, which makes films and TV shows, has had a long-term strategic relationship with
HewlettPackard (H-P), which makes computers and software.
Industry regulation - correct answer ✔✔regulations and rules that govern the business practices and
procedures of specific industries, businesses, and professions
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg passed a controversial new law requiring restaurants, movie theaters,
and other food service locations in the city to limit the size of sugary drinks
Advocacy groups - correct answer ✔✔concerned citizens who band together to try to influence the
business practices of specific industries, businesses, and professions
Unlike the industry regulation component of the specific environment, advocacy groups cannot force
organizations to change their practices.
Public communications - correct answer ✔✔an advocacy group tactic that relies on voluntary
participation by the news media and the advertising industry to get the advocacy group's message out
Media advocacy - correct answer ✔✔an advocacy group tactic that involves framing issues as public
issues; exposing questionable, exploitative, or unethical practices; and forcing media coverage by buying
media time or creating controversy that is likely to receive extensive news coverage