ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF (PhD admission and fellowship) · India · National Testing Agency for ICAR
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersSetting the direction of an agribusiness: analysing its environment and industry, choosing strategies for growth, integration or turnaround, and making them happen.
In the exams: agribusiness management PhD entrance and fellowship examinations, strategic management (heavy); agricultural scientist eligibility tests, strategic management and entrepreneurship (heavy)
ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF (PhD), Agri-Business Management Unit 10 (strategic management)
Heavy unit. Authors and frameworks (Chandler, Mintzberg, Porter's five forces, generic strategies and value chain, Ansoff, BCG, GE-McKinsey, Barney's VRIO, Prahalad and Hamel, Weihrich's TOWS, Glueck's grand strategies, 7S, Kaplan and Norton), classification questions (types of integration, mergers, alliances, controls), and short numericals: relative market share and BCG cell, GE weighted scores, balanced-scorecard composites, experience-curve costs.
How our questions for ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF spread across the units of Strategic Management. Difficulty: 37 easy, 42 medium, 18 hard.
| Diversification | 12 | |
| Environmental and industry analysis | 9 | |
| Value-chain analysis | 9 | |
| Mission and objectives | 8 | |
| Strategic control | 8 | |
| Corporate governance, CSR and ethics | 7 | |
| Generic competitive strategies | 7 | |
| Mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures | 7 | |
| Strategy in fragmented, mature and declining industries | 7 | |
| Strategy implementation, structure and culture | 7 | |
| Vertical integration | 6 | |
| Turnaround strategies | 6 | |
| Business models | 4 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
Abell's framework defines a business along three dimensions. Which set is correct?
B. Customer groups, customer functions and technologies
Abell asks who is being satisfied (customer groups), what need is being satisfied (customer functions) and how it is satisfied (technologies). The other lists mix the marketing mix, SWOT and the five forces.
Further reading: Abell, Defining the Business (1980)
Hamel and Prahalad's concept of 'strategic intent' refers to:
D. An ambitious long-term aspiration that deliberately stretches beyond present resources
Strategic intent (1989) is a stretch goal that forces the firm to build new capabilities. It is the opposite of the 'fit' view that limits ambition to current resources, which is the tempting wrong answer.
Further reading: Hamel and Prahalad, Strategic Intent, Harvard Business Review (1989)
A manager decides whether to launch a cheaper but riskier pesticide formulation by weighing the total benefits and harms to all affected people. Which ethical approach is this?
A. Utilitarian approach
Judging an action by its consequences for the greatest number is utilitarian. The rights approach asks whether any person's fundamental rights (such as the right to safety information) are violated regardless of total benefit.
Further reading: Cavanagh, Moberg and Velasquez (1981)
Which statement best represents Milton Friedman's classic position on corporate social responsibility?
A. The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits while staying within the rules of the game
Friedman (1970) argued that managers who spend shareholders' money on social causes are in effect imposing a tax and deciding how to spend it. Stakeholder balancing is Freeman's view; people, planet and profit is Elkington's triple bottom line.
Further reading: Friedman, New York Times Magazine (1970)
In Barney's VRIO framework, the letters stand for:
D. Valuable, rare, costly to imitate, organised to capture value
VRIO asks whether a resource is valuable, rare, costly to imitate and whether the firm is organised to exploit it. Barney's earlier (1991) list was VRIN: valuable, rare, inimitable, non-substitutable.
Further reading: Barney, Journal of Management (1991); Barney, Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage
A digital marketplace becomes more valuable to each buyer as more farmers join, and more valuable to each farmer as more buyers join. This is called:
A. An indirect, cross-side network effect
In a two-sided platform, value to one side rises with the number of users on the other side: a cross-side network effect. It also creates the chicken-and-egg problem of attracting both sides at once.
Further reading: Parker, Van Alstyne and Choudary, Platform Revolution (2016)
A weak regional seed company gives up its own brand and marketing and agrees to produce seed exclusively for one large firm under a long-term contract in exchange for assured volumes. In some strategy texts this retrenchment option is called:
D. Captive-company strategy
A captive company gives up independence and becomes a dependent supplier to one major customer in return for security. It is not divestment, since no unit is sold, and not a merger.
Further reading: Wheelen and Hunger, Strategic Management and Business Policy
A merger between a fertiliser manufacturer and an unrelated hotel chain is a:
A. Conglomerate merger
A conglomerate merger joins businesses with no significant operational relationship. A congeneric (concentric) merger joins related businesses, such as fertiliser and crop protection.
Further reading: Standard classification of mergers
In Haspeslagh and Jemison's integration framework, an acquired specialist organic-food firm that needs high autonomy and has low strategic interdependence with the acquirer should be integrated by:
A. Preservation
Low interdependence with high autonomy need calls for preservation. Absorption fits high interdependence and low autonomy; symbiosis high on both; holding low on both.
Further reading: Haspeslagh and Jemison, Managing Acquisitions (1991)
An agri-input retailer opens dozens of standardised, low-cost village outlets built and run to one tightly specified design. Porter's name for this way of coping with fragmentation is:
C. Formula facilities
Formula facilities are efficient, low-cost, replicable units. Tightly managed decentralisation keeps units small and autonomous under strong controls; no-frills competes on low overhead.
Further reading: Porter, Competitive Strategy (1980)
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