DBA Doctor of Business Administration MCQ 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In qualitative research, 'member checking' is a validity strategy that involves:
- Verifying researcher credentials with an IRB committee
- Sharing findings or interpretations with participants to confirm accuracy (Correct answer)
- Cross-checking data across multiple independent researchers
- Confirming sample size adequacy through statistical power analysis
Correct answer: Sharing findings or interpretations with participants to confirm accuracy
Member checking enhances credibility by returning interpretations to research participants to verify they accurately reflect their experiences.
Question 2: The concept of 'absorptive capacity' developed by Cohen and Levinthal refers to a firm's ability to:
- Absorb financial losses without bankruptcy risk
- Recognize, assimilate, and apply externally sourced knowledge (Correct answer)
- Increase market share through aggressive pricing strategies
- Manage employee grievances and organizational conflict
Correct answer: Recognize, assimilate, and apply externally sourced knowledge
Absorptive capacity describes a firm's prior knowledge base that enables it to identify valuable external information and integrate it into operations.
Question 3: A DBA practitioner-researcher studying their own organization must address which primary ethical concern unique to insider research?
- Selecting an appropriate statistical test for small samples
- Managing dual roles and power dynamics that may compromise participant autonomy (Correct answer)
- Achieving a representative sample from a large population
- Publishing findings in a peer-reviewed journal before implementation
Correct answer: Managing dual roles and power dynamics that may compromise participant autonomy
Insider researchers must carefully manage conflicts between their organizational authority and the voluntary, uncoerced participation of research subjects.
Question 4: Which growth strategy on the Ansoff Matrix carries the highest risk because it involves both new products and new markets?
- Market penetration
- Market development
- Product development
- Diversification (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Diversification
Diversification is the riskiest Ansoff quadrant because the firm operates in unfamiliar territory on both the product and market dimensions simultaneously.
Question 5: In corporate finance, the concept of 'real options' extends traditional NPV analysis by recognizing that managerial flexibility to:
- Refinance debt has no impact on project valuation
- Delay, expand, contract, or abandon projects has quantifiable value (Correct answer)
- Report earnings using multiple accounting standards simultaneously
- Diversify the portfolio eliminates systematic risk entirely
Correct answer: Delay, expand, contract, or abandon projects has quantifiable value
Real options analysis values managerial decision rights embedded in capital projects, capturing value that static NPV calculations miss.
Question 6: Transaction cost economics (TCE), developed by Williamson, predicts that firms will internalize (vertically integrate) activities when:
- Market prices for inputs fall below marginal cost
- Asset specificity and opportunism make market transactions costly (Correct answer)
- Industry concentration reduces bargaining power of suppliers
- Economies of scale favor external specialization
Correct answer: Asset specificity and opportunism make market transactions costly
TCE argues that high asset specificity combined with risk of opportunistic behavior raises transaction costs enough to justify hierarchy over markets.
Question 7: The Resource-Based View (RBV) of the firm, as articulated by Barney, holds that sustained competitive advantage derives from resources that are:
- Widely available, affordable, and easily substituted
- Valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable (VRIN) (Correct answer)
- Standardized, scalable, and efficiently allocated across industries
- Externally acquired through mergers and technology licensing
Correct answer: Valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable (VRIN)
Barney's VRIN criteria identify the conditions under which heterogeneous, immobile resources generate rents that competitors cannot erode.
DBA Doctor of Business Administration MCQ 5
In qualitative research, 'member checking' is a validity strategy that involves: