QUESTIONAIRE

1. How do you perceive the concept of strategic planning?

2. Has your global vision/mission statement been the same ever since Merck
came into being? If they were changed, what were the reasons for such a
change?
3. When was the present vision/mission statement formulated?
4. Who are the main people responsible for strategic planning? Do the conflicts
arise during the process? How are they managed/avoided or resolved?
5. To what extent you use intuition for strategic planning?
6. SWOT analysis is a great tool to assess a company. How frequently do you
conduct formal SWOT analysis?
7. What are your core strengths? What gives you a competitive edge? What are

the areas where your competitors are better than your company?
8. How do you prioritize the factors during PEST analysis?
9. What are your long term objectives for Merck?
10.What strategies have you formulated? How do you generate relevant
strategies?
11.What is the process of selecting the strategies (any selection tool or criteria)?
How are new strategic initiatives communicated to the organization?
12.Strategic management means “Looking Ahead, planning and aiming to
achieve the desired goals”. What does strategic management mean to you
and your company?
13.Is strategic management in Merck a ‘people process’ or a ‘paper process’? Is
there sufficient employee involvement in the stage of strategy formulation?
14.As you know the recession period affected everyone, what impact it had on
Merck? What strategic changes were required?
15.Share of multinational pharmaceuticals is decreasing day by day, what plan
and strategies have you adopted to increase Merck’s growth rate and
maintain the market share?
16.How do you see Merck after 10 years keeping in view the changing
environment? What short term and long term plans have you developed to
deal with that?
17.How do define the process of strategy implementation?
18.Once the strategy has been formulated what are the steps/measures taken to
implement them?
19.Do you go for making annual objectives? How are they set?
20.What policies are adopted to achieve the objectives?
21.What type of structure and culture exist in Merck? Is it strategy supportive
or not?
22.Has the implementation stage of strategies ever demanded cultural/structural
change or modification?
23.What are the changes and trends that had the greatest impact on Merck over
the last 5 years? How did they affect the process of strategy implementation?
24.Implementation stage of strategies is the action stage which totally depends
on the people working within an organization. Is sufficient motivating
environment provided to maintain and support the implementation of
strategic initiatives?
25.How much importance does budgeting hold in the process of strategy
implementation?
26.For example, product development is the strategic plan. How do all the
departments align themselves for the accomplishment of strategy?
27.What were the different kinds of issues or problems that you faced while
implementing the strategies?
28.How effective is your current governance model as it relates to the
implementation of strategies?
29.What are your current practices for the evaluation/assessment of strategic
initiatives?
30.30. What are the metrics used to measure whether or not you are achieving
your goals? Has your organization developed a set of key performance
indicators or some other form of accountability to track the success of
strategic initiatives?
31.According to the developed set of key performance indicators, how much
success they have provided to you in identifying and taking corrective
actions when the strategic initiatives were failing or weren’t suitable for/or
coping up with the changing external or internal environment?
32.How much time does your organization take to respond, after they
acknowledge that a strategic initiative is failing?
33.How effective is Merck at evaluating the impact of changes subsequent to
initial strategy formulation?
34.What is the level of participation of
a. BOD
b. Executive committee
35.C) Executive Director
a. Management staff, in strategy evaluation?
36.does all this, strategy process give you a competitive advantage at your rival
company? Which area?
37.What is the role of Merck Pakistan in the strategic input of Merck
International?