a milestone

It's a small one, but it's a milestone nonetheless: I just took my last WPR as a cadet! WPR stands for written partial review and is just the 'fancy' term for a test. I still have three finals to take in a few weeks (wouldn't you know that there is a 'fancy' name for finals too? TEE: term end exam), but this was the last regular test.

The test was in strategic management and covered cooperative strategy, corporate level strategy, mergers and acquisitions, international strategy, corporate governance, strategic entrepreneurship, and strategic leadership. We studied Proctor & Gamble's acquisition of Gillette, Mondavi wines, and Enron as case studies for those lessons. In case you were wondering what sort of questions come on a strategic management WPR, here you go:

1. The author of the Enron case asserts that Enron’s strategic leaders were able to violate “fairly straightforward accounting rules” for an extended period of time. Use information from the case and theoretical concepts of corporate governance and strategic leadership to discuss why the Enron board did not react effectively to this case of managerial opportunism.

2. According to the Mondavi case, a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of Mondavi’s domestic wine industry would be significantly different from a SWOT analysis of Mondavi’s global wine industry. Using information from the case, discuss how considerations of international strategy would differ from considerations of domestic strategy for Mondavi Wine.

3. Assume that you are a strategic consultant with the task of assisting P&G with its projected acquisition of Gillette. Your specific task is to develop a rationale for the premium that P&G will offer for Gillette stock. Use information from the case and theoretical concepts from the chapters on corporate-level strategy and mergers/acquisitions to develop your rationale.

4. Assume that you are a strategic consultant with the task of assisting P&G with its projected acquisition of Gillette. Your specific task is to use information from the case to identify and discuss all significant stakeholders and their likely position on the acquisition of Gillette.