1. What are the difficulties of employing Porter's five forces frameworks in practice? From your experience of this module, provide details of a particular industry or firm to support your answer.
2. Critically evaluate Porter's approach to explaining business performance. What are the key criticisms of Porter's approach? In your view, are these criticisms justifiable?
3. Do you think the value net approach proposed by Brandenburger and Nalebuff (1995) offers a superior model to the Porter's Five Forces model? Explain your answer.
4. In Porter's view, a firm should not be ‘stuck-in-the-middle'? Discuss this proposition and explain how being ‘stuck in the middle' puts a business at a competitive disadvantage.
5. How do you think generic strategies are affected by (1) industry evolution and (2) organisational structure? Refer to examples, where appropriate, to support your answers.
6. Is the resource based view (RBV) to understanding businessperformance a useful perspectivefor strategic managers? (Evaluate its effectiveness) Clearly explain and justify your answer. What shortcomings, if any, exist?
7. With reference to the work of Penrose and Peterarf, explain the essential elements of the Resource Base View (RBV) of the firm.
8. Barney (1999) argues that sustainable competitive advantage can be achieved when the firm has a human resources pool that cannot be imitated or substituted by its rivals. Discuss this proposition, drawing on examples and evidence.
Explain the RBV approach according to Penrose, Peteraf and Barney (either one, or combination of 3). Based on this view of the firm, how does a firm obtain a competitive advantage?