What is a Corporate Level Strategy?
Essentially refers to broad or corporate-wide strategy synchronizing various
business level strategies into cohesive and coordinated efforts to achieve the
vision of the entire business organization.
The 4 E’s to Addressing Corporate Strategy
• Extend. It means extending the business by going beyond its current business model by adopting a new business model or entering into new business.
• Expand. This option takes the form of adding products and/or services within the context of the company’s existing business concern or present area of operation.
• Exit. This option takes the form of making some sacrifice by dropping some product lines and services or business units deemed uncompetitive or unprofitable or less profitable to operate.
• Enhance. This option takes the form of adding functionally or improving a product or service that is currently being offered.
Key Issues in Corporate Level Strategy• The firm’s overall orientation towards
growth, stability or retrenchment (directional Strategy)
• The industries or markets in which the firm competes through its products and business units. (portfolio Strategy)
• The manner in which management coordinates activities, the transfers resources, and cultivates capabilities among product lines and business units (parenting Strategy)
Strategic Choices at the Corporate Level
Business Closure. This is an undesired act of folding up or shutting down non profitable business units to control or avoid further losses.
Business Disposal. This calls for disposing or unloading some of the members, subsidiaries, affiliates or investments in other business concerns deemed unprofitable or less profitable and/or deemed a burden to the mother organization.
Business Acquisition. This is an option of business establishments meant to expand their size and make their presence felt in whatever area they want to do business.
Business Reorganization. This option may or may not lead to ownership changes among members of the organization or the conglomerate nor it may result to business acquisition or disposal option.
Business Start-up. This option means purposely organizing another business concern instead of simply acquiring an existing business organization or investing in it.
The impact of doing nothing different. Sounding weird and uncalled for, status quo can be an option if after a thorough study and analysis such situation is deemed appropriate.
Vertical Integration Option
Involves engaging in business activities to the level of sources
of supply or forward in the direction of final consumers.
Components of Vertical Integration
Full Integration. The firm internally makes 100 percent of its key supplies and completely controls its distributors.
Taper Integration. A firm internally produces less than a half of its own requirements and buys the rest from outside suppliers.
Quasi- Integration. The company does make any of its key suppliers but purchases most of its requirements from outside suppliers that are under its partial ownership or control.
Long-Term Contracts. The company signs an agreement or contact with another firm providing agreed upon goods and services for a specified period of time.
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• Forward vertical integration - the firm engages in business activities in the area of distribution and retailing of the product or services directly to the customer
• Backward vertical integration– the business concentrating the efforts at the stage of raw materials production or close the source of raw materials.
• Horizontal diversification – the firm engages in adding new product or services.
Horizontal diversification can be categorized into either:
• Conglomerate diversification - involves in dealing with product s or services that have nothing to do or not related to the kind of product or services it is presently dealing with.
• Concentric diversification – involves in dealing with the product or services that are somehow related with what the firm is presently handling.
What is a Strategic fit?
refers to the relatedness in making decisions concerning the
appropriateness of the strategy moves vis-à-vis the various operating
divisions or business unit of the company.
The concept of strategic fit has been categorized into three as follows
• Product fit
• Operating fit
• Management fit
Direction of Corporate Level Strategy Three Grand Strategies
1. Growth strategy – expands the company’s activities
Growth strategy can be categorized into the following:
Merger- involving two or more corporations in which a stock is exchanged or swapped among independent business organization from which only one company survives.
Acquisition – the purchase of a company then completely
absorbed as an operating subsidiary of the acquiring corporation.
Strategic alliance- involving a partnership among two or
more corporations to achieve strategically significant objectives that are mutually beneficial.
2. Stability strategy – continuing it current activities without any significant change in direction.
Stability strategy may come in any of the following form:Pause/proceed with caution – it is the
opportunity to rest before continuing a growth or retrenchment.
No change strategy- it involves a decision to do new.
Profit strategy - it involves to do nothing new in a worsening situation and instead, to act as though the company’s problem is only temporary.
3. Retrenchment – reducing its company’s level of activities.
Retrenchment strategy takes the form in any of the ff.
Turnaround strategy – it emphasizes on the improvement of operational efficiency and is probably most appropriate when corporations problem are pervasive but and not critical.
Sell-out/divestment- this strategy is resorted when a company has a weak competitive position in its industry.
Bankruptcy strategy- giving up management of the firm to courts in return for some of settlement of corporation’s obligations.
Liquidation strategy - the termination of the firm’s business operation .
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International and Other Entry OptionsExporting Licensing
Franchising Joint venture Acquisition
Greenfield development Production sharing Turnkeys operations
Management contract Build-Operate Outsourcing
Strategic Alliance Is an option to take where it might be costly
or disadvantageous to engage in any of the other strategies already discussed?
Strategic alliance can be done through process of exploration and negotiation with targeted parties or business concerns leading to signing up an alliance document in the form of memorandum of agreement, memorandum of understanding and/or contracts stipulating mutual desire to attain specific objectives and expressing support for one another
Objectives in Strategic alliances
to collaborate on technology development or new product development
to fill gaps in technical or manufacturing expertise
to acquire new competencies
to improve supply chain efficiency
to gain economies of scale in production and/or marketing
to acquire or improve market access via joint marketing agreement.
Other justification for strategic alliances Collaborative arrangement can help a company
lower its costs or gain access to needed expertise and capabilities.
Firms often lack the resources and competitive skills to be successful in every demanding competitive races.
Allies can be useful in helping a company establish a stronger presence in global market and helping it win the race for global market leadership.
Allies with competitively useful technological know-how or expertise can greatly aid a company racing against rivals for leadership “industries of the future” now
are created by today’s technological and information age revolution.
Collaborative arrangements with foreign partners can be very helpful in perusing opportunities in unfamiliar national markets.
Potential benefits of alliances to achieve global and industry leadership.
Get into critical country markets quickly to accelerate process of building a global presence.
Gain inside knowledge about unfamiliar market and cultures.
Access valuable skills and competencies
concentrated in particular geographic locations.
Establish an inherent advantage for participating in target industry.
Master new technologies and build new expertise faster than would be possible internally.
Open up expanded opportunities in target industry by combining firm’s capabilities with resources of partners.
Some useful guidelines in forming strategic alliances
Pick a good partner, one that shares a common vision;
Be sensitive to cultural differences Recognize that the alliance must benefit both
sides Both parties have to deliver on their commitment
in agreements Structure decision-making process so actions can
be taken swiftly when needed; and Parties must do a good job of managing the
learning process, adjusting the alliance agreement over time to fit new circumstances.
Success and failure factor in alliances
The direction to succeed in the partnership is determined by certain factors such as the
following:
Ability of an alliances to endure depends on how well partners work together
Success of partners is responding and adapting to changing conditions
Willingness of partners to renegotiate the bargain
Factors and reasons that can lead to failure are as follow:
Diverging objectives and priorities of partners
Inability of partners to work well together
Emergence of more attractive technological paths
Marketplace rivalry between one or more allies
Merger and acquisition strategies
Benefits and pitfall of mergers and acquisitions
Combining operations by way of merger and acquisition or joint venture may result in:
More or better competitive More attractive line-up of productions/services; Wider geographic coverage; Greater financial resources to invest in R& D,
add capacity, or expand Cost-saving opportunities Filling in of resource of technological gaps Stronger technological skills Greater ability to
launch next-wave product/services.
Pitfalls or disadvantages are the following:
Resistance from rank-and-file employees
Hard-to-resolve conflict in management style corporate cultures
Tough problems in combining and integrating the operations of the once-different companies
Greater-than-anticipated difficult in achieving expected cost-saving, sharing of expertise, and achieving enhanced competitive capabilities
Outsourcing: advantages and conditions to consider
Its advantages lie in the following:
Improves firm’s ability to obtains high quality and/or cheaper components or services
Improves firm’s ability to innovate by interacting with “best in the world” suppliers
Enhances firm’s flexibility should customer needs and market conditions suddenly shift
Increases firm’s ability to assemble diverse kinds of expertise speedily and efficiently
Allows firm to concentrate its resources on performing those activities internally which it can perform better than outsider
When does outsourcing make sense?
Activity can be performed better or more cheaply by outside specialists
Activity is not crucial to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage
Risk exposure to changing technology and/or changing buyers preferences is reduced
Operation are streamlined i. Cut cycle time ii. Speed decision-making iii. Reduce coordination cost Firm can concentrate on doing those “core” value
chain activities that best suit its resources strengths and capabilities
Situation on Favoring Joint Venture
There are specific situations; however, that favor venturing into joint venture and here are some of them:
When a privately owned organization is forming a joint venture with a publicly owned organization; there are some advantages of being privately held such as close ownership; there are some advantage of being, publicly held, such as access stock issuances as a source of capital. Sometimes, the unique advantages of being privately and publicly held can be synergistically combined in a joint venture
b) When a domestic organization is forming a joint venture with a foreign company; a joint venture can provide a domestic company with the opportunity for obtaining local management in a foreign country, thereby reducing risk such as expropriation and harassment by host country officials;
When the distinctive competencies of two o more firms complement each other specially well
When some projects is potentially very profitable, but requires overwhelming resources and risk; the alas an pipeline is an example
When two or more smaller firms have trouble competing with large firm
When there exists a need to introduce a new technology quickly.