The primary means for gaining and sustaining competitive advantages, accounting homework help

1. The primary means for gaining and sustaining competitive advantages for most companies are shifting downstream. Explain and discuss this statement.

2. After conducting an internal audit, a firm discovers a total of 100 strengths and 100 weaknesses. What procedures then could be used to determine the most important of these? Why is it important to reduce the total numbers of key factors?

3. Do you agree or disagree with the resource-based view theorist that internal resources are more important for a firm than external factors in achieving and sustaining competitive advantage? Explain your position.

6. How does strategy formulation differ for a small versus a large organization? How does it differ for a for-profit versus a non-profit organization?

7. Smith & Wesson is vertically integrating. What does this mean? How could S&W vertically integrate further?

8. Discuss the limitations of various strategy formulation analytical techniques.

9. Why do you think the SWOT matrix is the most widely used of all strategy matrices?