Q1 You are the CEO of a Canadian company that acquired a company in a foreign country recently. You learned last week that your employees in the new company in the foreign country (the acquisition that you made) are paying bribes to local government officials in order to win government contracts. Explain the three schools of thought of ethical standards discussed in class and in doing so, what actions or none, will you take about these bribes if you followed each of these three schools of thought. Explain separately for each of the three.

Q2 In executing a strategic plan, important things such as policies and procedures, benchmarking, the adoption of best-practices, the use of information and operating systems and well-designed incentives and rewards can be powerful tools for promoting proficient strategy execution and operating excellence. Explain each of these and how they might could be used for one of Henkle, Nokia, or Shopify.

Q3 Nokia decided to expand outside of Finland, its domestic market. Explain five reasons why companies generally, and Nokia specifically, decide(d) to enter foreign markets. Also explain how well Nokia did against these reasons / objectives.

Q4 Why does a firm decide to diversify, and in doing so explain the concepts of strategic fit and value chains? How does a firm evaluate whether diversifying should happen? Please explain this with detail. If you were a shareholder, why would you want the company to diversify? Why would you not want it to diversify?

Q5 Kasper Rorsted became the CEO of Henkel AG in 2008. How would you describe the culture of the company at the time he became CEO (in doing so reference the attributes of a companys culture that we discussed in class)? How can a leader change the culture of a company? Rorsted changed the culture at Henkel. How did he do this and do you think he was successful. Justify your thoughts. What was effective about his leadership? What about his leadership was ineffective?

Q6 What is a platform strategy? What is a traditional linear strategy? Explain whether or not you believe Shopify has a platform strategy, in detail. What are the core competencies that Shopify developed to create its strategy?