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From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy.

Decent Essays

From Competitive advantage to Corporate strategy.

A diversified company has 2 levels of strategy:

1. Business unit (competitive): how to create competitive advantage in each business?

2. Corporate (companywide): concerns two different questions: what businesses the corporation should be in and how the corporate office should manage the array of business units?

Most corporate strategies have dissipated instead of created shareholder value. Now we have to rethink to corporate strategy according to past diversification strategies failed and large takeover possibilities over every firm.

In order to study the diversification program of a firm we have to analyze it over the long run. Porter found that on average corporation …show more content…

2. Restructuring The new businesses are not necessarily related to existing units. All that is necessary is an unrealized potential. The restructuring strategy seeks out undeveloped, sick, or threatened organizations or industries on the threshold of significant change. The result must be a strengthened company or a transformed industry. To work this strategy requires a corporate management team with the insight to spot undervalued companies or positions in industries ripe for transformation. There is a high risk in this strategy and usually limit the time in which the company can succeed at the strategy. 3. Transferring skills The first 2 concepts of strategy have the purpose of creating value trough a company’s relationship with each autonomous unit. The last 2 exploit the interrelationship between businesses. We are talking about synergies! To understand the role of relatedness in corporate strategy we must give a new meaning referring to the activities of the value chain (value activities) that we can group in primary and support activities. The value chain defines the 2 types of interrelationships that may create synergy. The first is the company’s ability to transfer skills and expertise and the second is the ability to share activities. Transferring skills leads to competitive advantage only if similarities among businesses meet 3 conditions: 1. Similar activities: sharing expertise makes sense

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