Strategic Management & Leadership Flashcards

Which change management model proposes three stages: Unfreeze, Change, and Refreeze?

Answer: Lewin's Change Model

Kurt Lewin's three-stage model describes change as unfreezing current behaviors, transitioning, then refreezing new behaviors into place.

A manager using 'management by exception' will:

Answer: Intervene only when performance deviates significantly from standards

Management by exception allows routine operations to proceed uninterrupted and only triggers managerial intervention when variances exceed acceptable thresholds.

A first-mover advantage is MOST likely to be sustainable when:

Answer: The firm can establish strong customer switching costs or proprietary technology

First-movers maintain advantages longest when switching costs, proprietary assets, or network effects make it costly for customers to switch to later entrants.

In strategic decision-making, 'bounded rationality' means that decision-makers:

Answer: Make decisions that are constrained by cognitive limits and incomplete information

Herbert Simon's concept of bounded rationality recognizes that humans 'satisfice' rather than optimize due to cognitive limitations and imperfect information.

The term 'strategic fit' refers to:

Answer: The alignment between an organization's strategy and its external environment and internal capabilities

Strategic fit measures how well a firm's chosen strategy aligns with its external opportunities/threats and internal strengths/weaknesses.

Which approach best describes 'blue ocean strategy'?

Answer: Creating uncontested market space by making competition irrelevant

Blue ocean strategy, from Kim and Mauborgne, focuses on creating new demand and market space rather than fighting for share in crowded existing markets.

A leadership team conducting a 'pre-mortem' analysis is attempting to:

Answer: Proactively identify ways a future initiative could fail before it begins

A pre-mortem has the team imagine a future failure and work backward to identify its probable causes, improving planning and risk management.