UGC-NET (June 2025) · India · National Testing Agency
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)
UGC-NET Management and doctoral or master's programmes abroad
The same canon with emphasis on theories (RBV, dynamic capabilities, transaction cost, agency and stakeholder theory), corporate governance codes, M&A integration, and case-style questions asking for the best strategic response.
How our questions for UGC-NET spread across the units of Strategic Management. Difficulty: 37 easy, 39 medium, 6 hard.
| Mission and objectives | 8 | |
| Value-chain analysis | 8 | |
| Corporate governance, CSR and ethics | 7 | |
| Diversification | 7 | |
| Strategy implementation, structure and culture | 7 | |
| Environmental and industry analysis | 6 | |
| Generic competitive strategies | 6 | |
| Vertical integration | 6 | |
| Mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures | 6 | |
| Strategy in fragmented, mature and declining industries | 6 | |
| Strategic control | 6 | |
| Turnaround strategies | 5 | |
| 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)
A statement describing what an organisation wants to become, an image of its desired future, is its:
C. Vision
The vision is the desired future state. The mission states present purpose and scope (what business, whom it serves); objectives are measurable results; policies are guidelines for decisions.
Further reading: Wheelen and Hunger, Strategic Management and Business Policy
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)
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 fruit processor starts its own nurseries and orchards to supply fruit. This is:
A. Backward vertical integration
Moving toward the supply of inputs is backward integration. Forward integration moves toward the customer, such as opening retail outlets; horizontal integration combines firms at the same stage.
Further reading: Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson, Strategic Management
Selling a business unit to another firm so that it continues under new ownership is called:
C. Divestment
Divestment (divestiture) sells or spins off a unit that goes on operating. Liquidation ends the business and sells its assets piecemeal.
Further reading: Wheelen and Hunger, Strategic Management and Business Policy
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
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)
Ten here, 82 in the app. The Laisha app has every practice question we have written to UGC-NET in this subject, marked as you go, with timed papers, a jump-to-unanswered list and a certificate when you pass at 70 per cent.
Free for ten days, then one subscription of US$10 a month. We would rather say so here than have you find it later.
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