Acharya Nagarjuna University (ANU) 2006 M.B.A Business Administration - VI - BUSINESS POLICY AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT - Question Paper

M.B.A.(Second Year) DEGREE EXAMINATION, MAY 2006
PAPER - VI - BUSINESS POLICY AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Time: 3 hours Maximum: 75 marks

part - A (3 X five = 15 marks)
ans any 3 of the subsequent

1. (a) Strategic management.
(b) Corporate management
(c) SWOT Analysis.
(d) Cost Analysis
(e) Organisational change
(f) valuation of strategy.

part - B (3 X 15 = 45 marks)
ans any 3 ques.

2. define the strategic management process.
3. elaborate the legal and managerial roles of Board of Directors?
4. explain which segment of the environment has the most impact on the organisation.
5. elaborate the causes of high cost levels of Indian products and elaborate their consequences?
6. discuss the screening process for merger and acquisition.
7. What is strategy implementation? Why is the task implementation is complex?

part - C (15 marks)
Compulsory

8. Case Study:
In a market dominated by behemoths like SAIL and TiscO, finding a niche is of crucial importance for a small player. What could a Lloyds do with a meagre annual capacity of making 6 lakh tonnes of HR coils while SAIL sold over 1,600 lakh tonnes in the identical time? Should Lloyds follow the market leader or adopt its own unique approach to its business strategy? It is in the situation of such ques. that Lloyds. attention came to rest on the manufacturing process.

Almost all steel producers adopt the blast furnace technology. In this, the process begins with a clear differentiation among the ultimate products to be manfactured. So, manufacturing batch size has to be large enough to take up customised orders. The raw material, iron ore, has to pass through several complex stages of manufacturing.

Lloyds looked for an option technology that could suit its requirements. The solution lay in the Electric Arc Furnace technology where the unique feature was that initial manufacturing stages need not differentiate among various products. Such a differentiation came at a much later stage. Translated into a business proposition, what it meant was that Lloyds could operate with a much smaller batch size of, say 100 tonnes and deliver quickly. For instance, a 1,000-tonnes small order of specialised product custommade to buyer.s specification could be delivered in as little as 15 days. Such a quick delivery schedule would not be possible for a large, integrated steel manufacturer. In this manner, analogous to small gunboats that could effectively torpedo a large, slow-moving ship, Lloyds carved out a niche in the highly competitive steel market.

Question:
Comment on the nature of the business strategy of Lloyds. elaborate the conditions in which such a strategy would succeed? Could fail?

Earning:   Approval pending.