Strategic Management Terms

2. response time The time that it takes for a good to be delivered or a service to be performed.
5. differentiation The process by which strategic managers choose how to divide people and tasks into functions and divisions to increase their ability to create value.
7. needs. Desires, wants, or cravings that can be satisfied by means of the characteristics of a product or service.
10. A group of companies offering products or services that are close substitutes for each other---that is, products or services that satisfy the same basic customer needs.
12. barriers The economic, strategic, and emotional factors that prevent companies from leaving an industry.
16. governance. The mechanisms that exist to ensure that managers pursue strategies in the interests of an important stakeholder group, the shareholders.
19. change The movement of a company away from its present state toward some desired future state to increase its competitive advantage and profitability.
21. The way in which a company allocates people and resources to organizational tasks and divides them into functions and divisions so as to create value.
22. The people (functions, departments, or organizations) who supply a process with its necessary inputs.
23. What it is that the company exists to do.

1. implementation. Putting strategies into action.
3. of control The tendency to overestimate one's ability to control events.
4. loyalty Preference of consumers for the products of established companies.
6. The creation of a good or service.
7. A company's skills at coordinating its resources and putting them to productive use.
8. A possibility of something dangerous or unpleasant happening.
9. Individuals or groups with an interest, claim, or stake in the company, in what it does, and in how well it performs.
11. needs Universal needs exist when the tastes and preferences of consumers in different nations are similar if not identical.
13. chain The idea that a company is a chain of activities for transforming inputs into outputs valued by customers.
14. The quantity of inputs that it takes to produce a given output (that is, efficiency = outputs/inputs).
15. of ethics A formal statement of the ethical principles a business adheres to.
16. productivity Output per unit of invested capital.
17. chain The idea that a company is a chain of activities for transforming inputs into outputs valued by customers.
18. analysis The comparison of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
20. An agreement between two companies to pool their operations and create a new business entity.