Leveraging Resources and Capabilities Quiz-3

Which aspect of outsourcing specifically involves the outsourcing of things such as loan origination and call center operations?

• Business process outsourcing

• Offshoring

• Captive sourcing

• Domestic outsourcing

Having valuable, but common, resources/capabilities leads to:

• competitive parity.

• competitive advantage.

• lack of competition.

• competitive disadvantage.

When resources are valuable, rare, and exploited by the organization, but is not costly to imitate, what will the firm's performance most likely be?

• Below average

• Average

• Above average

• Consistently above average

Critics of offshoring make all of the following arguments EXCEPT which one?

• If even core functions such as engineering, R&D, manufacturing, and marketing can—and often should—be moved outside the country, what is left of the firm?

• In some cases, it undermines national security.

• Offshoring increasingly results in job losses and leads to income inequality.

• Many large US firms claim that they are “global companies” but they seem to be bound by “American values.”

The ability to sense and seize opportunities or to reconfigure existing assets is referred to as:

• onshoring.

• dynamic capabilities.

• captive sourcing.

• social complexity.

One of the ways in which a firm makes it more difficult for other firms to imitate its resources and capabilities is by establishing:

• direct duplication.

• non-value-adding activities.

• causal ambiguity.

• captive sourcing.

Which of the following is associated with hypercompetition?

• A shortened window of competitive advantage

• Static yet deliberate maneuvering

• Unleashing a series of large, visible actions

• Linear application of resources

The terms outsourcing and offshoring are:

• identical in meaning.

• two completely separate concepts.

• closely related but not identical in meaning.

• descriptive of activities to be avoided.

The relationship between valuable resources and capabilities and firm performance is:

• a factor only for large manufacturing organizations.

• most often a competitive disadvantage.

• the primary factor is deciding whether to exit an industry.

• the basis for determining whether activities are value-adding or non-value-adding.

When a company’s product is easy to imitate:

• valuable and rare resources are not really a source of competitive advantage.

• the company needs more tangible resources.

• the company benefits from causal ambiguity.

• proper organization can be used to maximize competitive advantage.