Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for University

Part I: Strategic Management Fundamentals

1. Which of the following terms has no relationship with the definition of business strategy?
   Answer: d. Executives
2. Which of the following aspects has no relationship with the nature of firm strategy?
   Answer: b. Tactics
3. Amongst the most frequent causes of strategic failure, we can mention:
   Answer: d. Organizational inertia
4. In the definition of the corporate strategy of the firm, we must pay special attention to:
   Answer: c. The definition of the scope of the firm
5. The diagnosis of the opportunities and strengths of the firm takes place along the stage of:
   Answer: d. No one of the previous answers is true
6. Deliberate strategy is associated with:
   Answer: b. A rational approach to business strategy
7. Amongst the limitations

Part C: Financial Performance Analysis

Analysis of Price Meeting Strategy Across All Products

1. Sales Volume by Product and Region

2. Sales Price per Unit by Product and Region

3. Sales Revenue Calculation

4. New Profit Situation and Cost Analysis

The Emperor's New Clothes: A Tale of Vanity

The Weavers' Deception

An emperor was so fond of new clothes that he spent all his time in his wardrobe. One day, two weavers arrived, claiming they could manufacture very special clothes. The unique property of this fabric was that it was invisible to anyone who was unfit for their job. The emperor ordered the clothes immediately, as he wanted to find out who in his kingdom was unfit for their position. However, the weavers simply took the gold thread and silk given to them and put it all in their knapsacks while pretending to work at their empty looms. They were given the title of "Gentlemen Weavers."

The Royal Inspection

First, the king sent his faithful old minister to see the clothes. The minister... Continue reading "The Emperor's New Clothes & The Swineherd: Classic Tales Retold" »

2011 Financial Crisis: Regulatory Failures

The 2011 autopsy revealed widespread failures in regulation and unethical behavior at all levels. Excessive risk-taking occurred on both Wall Street and Main Street. The blame game involves several key players:

• Mortgage brokers: Made loans to people who could not pay and sometimes lied about borrowers’ ability to pay.
• Homeowners: Borrowed more than they could repay and sometimes lied about their income.
• Lenders (Banks and S&Ls): Engaged in excessive risk-taking, made loans to unqualified borrowers, and failed to verify repayment ability.
• Investment bankers: Misrepresented the quality of mortgages to investors, used faulty data to assess risk, and pressured lenders for more mortgages.
• Big investors:

Moral Development Concepts

Your Guess. 1. Moral Dumbfounding

2. Nativism

Instinctive, evolutionary history with a strong genetic base.

3. Empiricism

Morality learned during childhood.

4. Epigenetics

How the environment regulates particular genes in an individual’s lifetime. For example, twins raised in the same conditions are not perfectly correlated in either physiological or psychological measures (Plomin, 1994). This suggests that a genes + environment model is insufficient to explain the origin of morality, potentially pointing toward molecular chance.

5. Piaget: Rationalism

Morality in children is self-constructed through their interactions with others. Example: volume of a glass of water.

6. Kohlberg's Stages

Stages of moral development based... Continue reading "Moral Development Theories and Research Findings" »

YOU CAN'T. 1.Infants: incredible ‘learning Machines’ depending from their caregivers.4

2.Vygotsky: language is the main Facilitator of social interaction, if children are deprived of access to any Type of langue input prior to puberty, they will find it difficult to fully Develop grammatically abilities later on.

3.Lennerg, 1967: supported this with Cases studies of wild or feral children (Genie): abused and neglected by her Parents, she couldn’t speak at all at first, and afer intensive speech therapy, She was never able to communicate in grammatically correct, complex sentences (Buddenhagen, 1971).

4.Tomasello (2000), challenged this And current thinking suggests that language, like any skill, can be acquired at Any time providing that... Continue reading "I is correct ii is correct" »

The Psychology of Attraction and Relationship Formation

Why We Choose Specific Partners

The phrase "Birds of a Feather Flock Together" encapsulates a fundamental question in social psychology: Why do we choose to form relationships with certain individuals and not others?

The first stage of any relationship is attraction.

Key Factors Influencing Interpersonal Attraction

Research identifies several crucial factors that determine who we are attracted to:

• Proximity
• Familiarity
• Physical Attractiveness
• Similarity
• Complementarity

Proximity and Familiarity

Studies on proximity have consistently shown that our immediate circle of friends often consists of people who live or work very close to us. Increased exposure leads to increased familiarity, which generally... Continue reading "The Science of Attraction: Similarity, Proximity, and Partner Selection" »

Knapsack Problem Solution Methods

This implementation demonstrates several methods for solving the Knapsack Problem, including Linear Programming (LP) relaxation, the Dantzig heuristic, the standard Greedy algorithm, and a Local Search approach (Exchange Problem).

1. Initialization and Data Loading

uses "mmsystem"

declarations
    n, cap: integer
    archivo_datos = "gen300_5.txt"
end-declarations

fopen(archivo_datos, F_INPUT)
readln(n)
readln(cap)

declarations
    objetos = 1..n
    p, w, candidato: array(objetos) of integer
    t1: real
    x: array(objetos) of mpvar
    xp: array(objetos) of integer
    g: array(objetos) of real
    sol: array(objetos) of integer
    zgreedy, carga, final: integer
    ind0: array(objetos) of integer

Nationalization of important branches of the economy

Many strategic branches of the economy were nationalized in many countries, for example, heavy industries like iron and steel or shipbuilding, network industries such as telecommunications and electricity (which were considered natural monopolies).

Finance/Industry relationship

●The Anglo-Saxon model is different and firms rely more on capital markets for the provision of finance.

●In Germany banks have been heavily engaged with industrial capital in durable relationships based on long-term success. The interlocking relationships between financial and industrial capital have provided stability, a healthy flow of information to the financial institutions which in turn has helped firms to obtain... Continue reading "Nationalization of Strategic Industries and Finance-Industry Relationships" »

1. Raw Materials and Services Defined

   • Raw materials are basic products.
   • Services refer to technical support.

2. Understanding Industrial Products

   An industrial product is defined as the combination of tangible and intangible aspects.

3. Industrial Product Development Process

   The process to develop new industrial products includes:

   1. Idea Generation
   2. Idea Screening
   3. Concept Development and Testing
   4. Business Analysis
   5. Product Development
   6. Market Testing
   7. Commercialization

4. Distribution Channel Decisions

   A distribution channel decision consists of determining the type and number of middlemen.

   • In the cardboard case, it was suggested to combine all distribution channels.
   • Distribution channels in industrial markets should be responsible for selling and promoting the products.

5. Total