What Is Corporate Strategy ?

According to Mantere (2013) organizational strategy exhibits a division of linguistic labour, where responsibility for key concepts is assigned to particular individuals or organizational functions. Such linguistic experts oversee the proper use and maintenance of strategy language. The language-based view helps to understand linkages between institutional, network, organizational, and micro level views on strategy. It also problematizes widely held intuitions regarding the relationship between strategy and organizational outcomes. When both of them are executed well an organization will achieve best possible outcome. In business, the Structure follows strategy, which means that a corporate structure is created in order to implement a given corporate strategy. For example in the middle of operational and choice making levels numerous layers makes it difficult to see the week signs identifying with business sector opportunities and dangers which brings about wrong

Strategy is a set of complicated tactics formulated by the executives of a company directed towards the achievement of company’s goal (Salmela, 2002). It is about all the path ways that a company would follow to reach its ultimate goal. It is a company’s strategy which helps to identify what it does better than the other companies in the industries, which may be different from what it does best. For successful strategy formulation and implementation, a company should know the needs of customers and should have knowledge of its competitors. Through a good strategy a company would identify that opportunity which makes it different from the others (Thompson, 2005).

Miles and Snow have produced a typology of business level strategies. Their typology involves four strategic types: defenders, prospectors, analyzers and reactors. Using Miles and Snow’s strategy typology that consist of; defender, analyzer, reactor, and prospector, I will categorize Dollar Tree in its strategy typology. In the first strategy defenders try to carve a niche in the market where stability can be found. As in the prospector strategy, companies are constantly producing innovations. I understand through Miles and Snow typology of business level strategies that defenders, analyzers, and prospectors are forms of organizations. Therefore, if an alignment is reached between a chosen strategy, and organizational structure mentioned above Dollar Tree has the potential to be a

Corporate level: where top management directs overall strategy for the entire organization, this is usually the board of directors and senior management officers.

According to Slack et al. The corporate strategy or business strategy is the guide lines for the whole corporation’s businesses in relation to its markets, customers, and the competitors (2007). In the same context, the same authors discussed the link between the corporate strategy and

Bureaucracy structures are mass producing factories that work on a set routine schedule and require strict rules which are implemented by several managers. These types of companies are a stable work environment and employees do the same thing every day. Any company that requires a uniform standard to operate and produces mass quantities of a product will use this type of structure. An example of this type of company would be Snap On.

Another type of bureaucracy, more common in the modern world, is the administrative system that oversees the operations of a large institution. Bureaucratic organizations are formed for this purpose. These organizations often operate in a hierarchy. By operating in this manner, the roles of the workers become clearly defined while everyone takes definite responsibility for their actions. However, these organizations are usually slow when it comes to adapting to

Corporate strategy is primarily about the choice of direction for a firm as a whole and the management of its business or product portfolio. There are three active strategies that can affect the overall direction of the company. The company can either expand their current activities, make no change, or reduce its current activities (Wheelen, Hunger, Hoffman, & Bamford, 2015). Since the company was first founded in 1909, Ford Motor Company has participated in all three strategies to varying degrees of success or failure.

In a nutshell therefore, the corporate-level strategy would make decisions regarding strategic alliances, diversification, resource allocation, acquisition, and new business ventures formulation (Thomas, n.d).

Corporate Strategy has been defined by numerous authors. Grant (1995) claims corporate strategy deals with the way a corporation manages a number of different businesses. Lynch, R, in both his third and fourth edition books on corporate strategy refers to Penrose (1959) definition of corporate strategy as “the pattern of major objectives, purposes or goals and essential polices or plans for achieving those goals, stated in such a way as to define what business the company is in or to be in and the kind of company it is or to be”

The corporate level strategy is roughly the same as the business level strategy since Starbucks only has one primary business. I believe that fact that Starbucks only focuses on one primary business makes the organization stronger. For example, there is no chance for conflict between the business level strategy and the corporate level strategy and the entire organization can focus on a single mission. Furthermore, this strategy has allowed them to reproduce their model all over the globe. As is the case with the Japanese, Chinese

Corporate level strategy can be defined as the master plan that decided by the top management for the whole company and also the organisation’s strategic business units. With the help of corporate level strategies, an organization or company can determines and indicates what business it should be in, which path it should follow and also which role should be played by respective business units in order to pursue respective direction. By the way, corporate level strategies can be divided into three types which are growth strategy, stability strategy and also renewal strategy.

According to Walker and Mullins, a business-level strategy is refer to how a business unit compete within industries it entered. The major issues of business strategy are sustainable competitive advantage and appropriate scope within industries entered.

The mechanistic structure is the traditional or classical design, common in many medium- and large-size organizations. Mechanistic organizations are somewhat rigid in that they consist of very clearly delineated jobs, have a well-defined hierarchical structure, and rely heavily on the formal chain of command for control. Bureaucratic organizations, with their emphasis on formalization, are the primary form of mechanistic structures. According to Max Weber, bureaucracy is a form of organization characterized by a rational, goal-directed hierarchy, impersonal decision making, formal controls, and subdivision into managerial positions and specialization of labor. Bureaucratic organizations are tall consisting of hierarchies with many levels of management. In a tall structure, people become relatively confined to their

Corporate organisation strategy differentiates between macro or corporations, micro or business-units, enterprise as well as their function and active strategies which are depended on identity, culture, strategy and product. With reference to the above, each corporation or business-unit operates at different levels and structure but to achieve the organisational goal, their communication strategic processes must be coherent and consistence.