Authentic CIPS L4M5 Exam Dumps PDF – 2023 Updated [Q42-Q60]

Explanation
A key consideration when seeking to negotiate prices is to establish what proportion of the spend is addressable by procurement action such as negotiation. Addressability of spend is influenceable through negotiations or application of other saving effort or leverage with suppliers.
LO 2, AC 2.1

Professor Gavin Kennedy highlights that we need to distinguish negotiation from other forms of decision-making by focusing on what is unique about it (the voluntary exchange) and not shared by other techniques such as persuasion, gambling (e.g., coin tossing), command decision, instruction, litigation and coercion.

Activity-based costing is an alternative approach to traditional absorption costing. The characteristics of these two methods are illustrated in the graph below:
Graphical user interface, text, chat or text message, website Description automatically generated

Explanation
Nonverbal communication is important because it gives us valuable information about a situation including how a person might be feeling, how someone receives information and how to approach a person or group of people.
There are several types of nonverbal communications you should be aware of, including:
1. Body language
Body language is the way someone situates their body naturally depending on the situation, the environment and how they are feeling.
Example: Someone might cross their arms if they are feeling angry or nervous.
2. Movement
The way you move your arms and legs such as walking quickly or slowly, standing, sitting or fidgeting, can all convey different messages to onlookers.
Example: Sitting still and paying attention in a meeting conveys respect and attention.
3. Posture
The way you sit or stand can also communicate your comfort level, professionalism and general disposition towards a person orconversation.
Example: Someone might slouch their shoulders if they feel tired, frustrated or disappointed.
4. Gestures
While gestures vary widely across communities, they are generally used both intentionally and unintentionally to convey information toothers.
Example: Someone in the United States might display a “thumbs up” to communicate confirmation or that they feel positively about something.
5. Space
Creating or closing distance between yourself and the people around you can also convey messages about your comfort level, the importance of the conversation, your desire to support or connect with others and more.
Example: You might stand two to three feet away from a new contact to respect their boundaries.
6. Paralanguage:
Paralanguage includes the non-language elements of speech, such as your talking speed, pitch, intonation, volume and more.
Example: You might speak quickly if you are excited about something.
7. Facial expressions
One of the most common forms of nonverbal communication isfacial expressions. Using the eyebrows, mouth, eyes and facial muscles to convey can be very effective when communicating both emotion and information.
Example: Someone might raise their eyebrows and open their eyes widely if they feel surprised.
8. Eye contact
Strategically using eye content (or lack of eye contact) is an extremely effective way to communicate your attention and interest.
Example: Looking away from someone and at the ground or your phone may convey disinterest or disrespect.
9. Touch
Somepeople also use touch as a form of communication. Most commonly, it is used to communicate support or comfort. This form of communication should be used sparingly and only when you know the receiving party is okay with it. It should never be used to conveyanger, frustration or any other negative emotions.
Example: Placing your hand on a friend’s shoulder may convey support or empathy.

Explanation
The coercive power comes from the belief that a person can punishothers for non-compliance. It can be considered as opposite to reward power, which results from one person’s ability to compensate or reward another for compliance.
LO 1, AC 1.3

Internal stakeholder support will be important not just at the initial negotiation of the contract, but potentially throughout the life of the contract right through to exit.
As a general rule, connected stakeholders (with the exception of suppliers) have a low level of influence on procurement negotiations.
Suppliers are connected stakeholders who have contractual relationships with the organisation.
Commercial negotiation objective should be driven by thebusiness needs of the organisation, and not just the instinct of procurement.

Explanation
In a globalisedcommercial world characterised by dynamic market and multiple companies competing for business, a positive corporate reputation can be an enormous asset. Reputational strength in one organisation might be based on some or all of the following characteristics:
– Quality of products or services
– Low cost/high value for money
– High ethical standards
– Reliability
– Cutting-edge technology
– Strong customer focus
– Engineering excellence
LO 1, AC 1.4

In 1959, French and Raven described five bases of power:
1. Legitimate – This comes from the belief that a person has the formal right to make demands, and to expect others to be compliant and obedient.
2. Reward – This results from one person’s ability to compensate another for compliance.
3. Expert – This is based on a person’s high levels of skill and knowledge.
4. Referent – This is the result of a person’s perceived attractiveness, worthiness and right to others’ respect.
5. Coercive – This comes from the belief that a person can punish others for noncompliance.
Six years later, Raven added an extra power base:
6. Informational – This results from a person’s ability to control the information that others need to accomplish something.
In the scenario, Neville attracts and keeps good relationship with his colleagues not because of neither position nor reward nor coercion. He has good skills and kindness, which increase his charisma. His source of power is referent power.

Collaborating is both assertive and cooperative. When collaborating, an individual attempts to work with the other person to find a solution that fully satisfies the concerns of both. It involves digging into an issue to identify theunderlying concerns of the two individuals and to find an alternative that meets both sets of concerns. Collaborating between two persons might take the form of exploring a disagreement to learn from each other’s insights, resolving some condition that would otherwise have them competing for resources, or confronting and trying to find a creative solution to an interpersonal problem.

Explanation
Legitimate power comes from the belief that a person has the formal right to make demands, and to expect others to be compliant and obedient. Legitimate power comesfrom rules, formal authority, organisation rank, staff grade or official position held. In commercial negotiation, legitimate power can be demonstrated by job title and rank.
LO 1, AC 1.3

Explanation
In 1983, Peter Kraljic devised a means to segment the supplier base in the article in HBR. In this, heargued that supply items should be mapped against two key dimensions: risk and profitability.
Risk relates to the likelihood for an unexpected event in the supply chains to disrupt operations. For instance, in important areas of spend, such as tire suppliers for an automotive are business critical, and should a disruption occur, the auto company is likely itself to face substantial problems.
Profitability describes the impact of a supply item upon the bottom line. For certain areas of spend, such as stationery, supplies have only a negligible effect on profits. In other categories, a single source of supply can make or break a business.
Putting these two dimensions together yields a classic two-by-two matrix.
Diagram Description automatically generated

Source: Peter Kraljic, HBR

The assumption is false, because when aprocurement professional negotiates on behalf of his employer, he brings the power of his organisation (its brand, reputation and purchasing spend) as well his own personal power (that which is embedded within him) to the negotiation.
From a negotiation perspective, both organisational and personal power have the ability to influence the behaviours of other or the cause of event. This power is clearly core to negotiation, and of enormous important in seeking to achieve the objectives.

Explanation
An oligopoly exists when there are small number of producers that exert a significant influence in the market.
Oligopoly’s main characteristics are discussed as follows:
– Interdependence
The most important feature of oligopolyis the interdependence in decision-making of the few firms which comprise the industry. This is because when the number of competitors is few, any change in price, output, product etc. by a firm will have a direct effect on the fortune of its rivals, which will then retaliate in changing their own prices, output or products as the case may be.
– Importance of advertising and selling costs
A direct effect of interdependence of oligopolists is that the various firms have to employ variousaggressive and defensive marketing weapons to gain a greater share in the market or to prevent a fall in their market share. For this various firms have to incur a good deal of costs on advertising and on other measures of sales promotion. Therefore, thereis a great importance of advertising and selling costs under conditions of market situation characterised by oligopoly
– Group behaviour
Another important feature of oligopoly is that for the proper solution to the problem of determination of price and output under, it analysis of group behaviour is impor-tant.
– Indeterminateness of demand curve facing an oligopolist
In this question, ‘Prices in oligopoly are predicted to fluctuate widely and frequently’ is an incorrect statement as producers in oligopoly often try to set up price. Prices fluctuate more frequently in perfect competition.
LO 2, AC 2.2

Explanation
Commercial negotiation objectives should bedriven by the business needs of the organisation. Organisations are made up of different stakeholder groups, some of whom may have different, even conflicting objectives.
From a negotiation perspective, stakeholders can be defined as persons or groups thathave interest (or stake) in the outcome of the negotiation you are leading or participating in.
CIPS distinguishes between 3 sets of stakeholders:
– Internal stakeholders
– Connected stakeholders
– External stakeholders
End-users are examples of internalstakeholders. They are the people who will benefit from the purchase of a product or service. However, their interest may conflict with other groups, i.e. the budget controllers whose objective is minimising the expense. In negotiation perspective, procurement should involve different groups of stakeholder.
LO 1, AC 1.1

Dynamic pricing is the practice of dynamically calculating the price of a product or service in order to incorporate real-time market conditions, input costs, and/or competitive perspectives. Dynamic pricing which is based on marginal costing, is used by airlines and many other organisations.
Marginal cost is the cost of producing an additional unit of output. Marginal Costing is a costing technique wherein the marginal cost, i.e. variable cost is charged to units of cost, while the fixed cost for the period is completely written off against the contribution.

Supplier conditioning is the process of influencing a supplier or suppliers to behave in a certain way, or to accept certain circumstances. Within a negotiation, the buyer needs to make sure that the supplier has a number of messages in mind, about the outcomes that the buyer needs to achieve and about the shared sense of purpose that buying organisation has in achieving these outcomes.
Supplier appraisal is a process of evaluating a supplier’s ability to carry out a contract in term of quality, delivery, price and other contributing factors.
Supplier positioning is the process of classifying spend with a supplier in terms of the profit potential and supply risk and assists in prioritising categories of spend and developing the rightstrategy.
Supplier selection is the process of selecting a supplier to acquire the necessary materials to support the outputs of organisations. Selection of the best and/or the most suitable suppliers is based on assessing supplier capabilities (Shih et al., 2004).

As a financial metric, the margin of safety (safety margin) is equal to the difference between current or forecasted sales and sales at the break-even point. The margin of safety is sometimes reported as a ratio, in which the aforementioned formula is divided by current or forecasted sales to yield a percentage value. The figure is used in both break-even analysis and forecasting to inform a firm’s management of the existing cushion in actual sales or budgeted sales before the firm would incur a loss.
This is a question that a student met in her actual exam. The margin of safety is not even mentioned in the CIPS study guide.

Explanation
Hearing is passive but listening is active, and some people need to learn to be a good, attentive listener. The following rules of attentive listening will help you to become a successful negotiator:
* Be motivated to listen
* Be alert to non-verbal cues
* Do not interrupt the other party when they are speaking
* Fight off distractions
* Write everything down
* Listen with a goal in mind
* Give the other party your undivided attention
* React to the message, not the person
LO 3, AC 3.3

Explanation
Emotional Quotient is the set of skills that enables us to make our way in a complex world – the personal, social and survival aspects of overall intelligence, the elusive common sense and sensitivity that areessential to effective daily functioning. It has to do with the ability to read the political and social environment, and landscape them; to intuitively grasp what others want and need; what strengths and weaknesses are; to remain unruffled by stress; andto be engaging. The kind of person others want to be around and follow.
EQ seeks to measure emotional intelligence and is centred on abilities such as the following:
– Identifying emotions
– Evaluating how others feel
– Controlling one’s own emotions
– Perceiving how others feel
– Using emotions to facilitate social communication
– Relating to others
On the other hand, cognitive ability is defined as a general mental capability involving reasoning, problem solving, planning, abstract thinking, complex ideacomprehension, and learning from experience (Gottfredson,
1997).
LO 3, AC 3.3