Strategic market planning in a turbulent business environment

This study investigates the relationship between business environment and strategic market-planning procedures. The study results are based on the responses of 149 marketing executives of the Fortune 1000 companies. The results indicate that as the business environment becomes turbulent, the strategic market plans become more complete and more long-term orientated. The companies facing a turbulent environment emphasize decentralization in developing the strategic market plans. These companies use a variety of risk-reduction methods such as the usage of conceptual models, consultants, and computer-mathematical models in their strategic market-planning process.     

Strategic choices of firms in expanding overseas business

Based on a case study of Pfizer’s production scope evolution in China from 1993 to 2002, we propose that MNCs usually have to face dual pressures of keeping integration among global businesses on the one hand, and remaining responsive to local market conditions on the other. When there is large discrepancy between the two, due to the bounded rationality of the decision-makers, the development paths of the subsidiaries are likely to exhibit recursive pattern, instead of the sequential mode as suggested in the extant literature. On the other hand, we argue that companies can make strategic choices to facilitate the development of their overseas subsidiaries. By the adjustment of the strategic parameters pertaining to the content and processes of their development paths, companies can accumulate knowledge about the local market and strike a balance between the dual pressures they have to face. The implication of our study for the indigenous Chinese companies in their international expansion is that when facing unfamiliar business environment in overseas market, paying attention to the idiosyncratic local market condition and keeping strategic flexibility are pivotal to their success. __________ Translated from Guanli shijie 맜理世界 (Management World), 2005(10): 123–138     

Strategic prescriptive theories in the business context of an emerging economy

Three strategic theoretical concepts – design, planning and positioning – are examined for their relevance to the business context of Ghana. For design, the Ghanaian culture on respect for elders and authority is argued to be partly responsible for the ‘accepting’ nature of subordinates. Formal planning by organisations is mostly found with large companies and multinationals due to the influence of parent organisations. Firms seek to position on service reliability, value for money, branding, social responsibility and others. The paper contributes to knowledge and practice in African business by developing propositions around which organisations can achieve competitive advantage in the Ghanaian business setting during the application of the strategic concepts discussed.     

Entrepreneurship and strategic thinking in business ecosystems

Success in business ecosystems that include well-established companies and new ventures requires collaboration and competition, a task that demands strategic thinking to leverage a firm's resources and capabilities. Strategic thinking and the entrepreneurial activities in an ecosystem influence one another in a cycle that perpetuates and even sparks innovation. These interactions vary significantly across four types of business ecosystems—Orchestra, Creative Bazaar, Jam Central, and MOD Station—and determine the success and failures of new ventures and established companies. The nature and effect of the dynamic interactions in a business ecosystem can have profound implications for organizational success.     

Implementing new business models: What challenges lie ahead?

What strategic choices do business leaders make when implementing new business models? This study tries to answer this question by analyzing the development of several business model innovations that were new to the industry. We find that business model innovators face four strategic trade-offs and accompanying tensions during the implementation of their business model innovation process: (1) the level of independence granted to the developer (independence vs. dependence), (2) the degree to which the roadmap is planned in advance (discovery vs. planned execution), (3) the degree to which the value proposition challenges the status quo (challenging vs. maintaining status quo), and (4) the rigor to which business model innovators preserve the logic of the initial value proposition (solid vs. fluid logic). Our in-depth analysis reveals that business model innovators make pragmatic decisions that may deviate from the guidelines offered by existing literature, and we offer insights into the drivers behind these decisions.     

The power of business models

Over the past few years, “business models” have surged into the management vocabulary. But, while it has become quite fashionable to discuss business models, there is still much confusion about what business models are and how they can be used. In fact, business models can serve a positive and powerful role in corporate management. While other authors have recently offered definitions of “business model,” none appear to be generally accepted. This lack of consensus may in part be attributed to interest in the concept from a wide range of disciplines, all of which have found a connection to the term. To help managers better understand business models, this paper reviews the extant literature and identifies and classifies the components of business models cited therein. Components were classified into four primary categories: strategic choices, the value network, creating value, and capturing value. To address the absence of a generally accepted definition of a business model, a new definition that integrates and synthesizes the earlier work is offered. Based on the proposed definition, business models are then contrasted with strategy. Four problems associated with business models are also discussed.     

Customer portfolio planning in a business network context

In an increasingly globalised business environment, it is no longer adequate to analyse and develop supplier-customer relationship portfolios without consideration of a firm's network relationships. While research in business relationships has examined resource allocation and strategy development in the context of a dyadic relationship, portfolios and network relationships, little is known about the network effects of a focal firm's relationships on its performance particularly from both supplier and customer evaluations. The present study attempts to fill this gap by developing a customer portfolio framework that includes four levels of business relationships, and integrates a resource-based view and industry determinants of competitive advantage. The proposed framework is applied and analysed using data of UK-based food service companies. The main results show that a focal relationship performance is influenced by both industry and resource-based advantages in a business network context. The results also suggest that a focal firm can better enhance its competitive position with the knowledge of network effects and interdependence of strategic actions in a business network context.     

跨国公司服务外包的解决机制研究

跨国公司专注于核心业务而将非核心业务外包,已成为一种普遍的战略选择。外包可以降低交易成本,增强企业核心竞争力,优化企业价值链。但跨国公司需要建立起有效的解决机制,才能保证外包目的的实现。作为服务外包的发包方和主要承包方,跨国公司通过管理手段、政策措施等建立起有效的服务外包发包、承包解决机制。     

Lessons learned from international expansion failures and successes

Many retail and restaurant companies adopt international expansion as a strategy to take advantage of business opportunities presented by target markets. Common objectives include increasing revenue, escaping a hypercompetitive or saturated home market, entering an emerging or lucrative market, and leveraging domestic capabilities in a bordering country. Success in international expansion is not guaranteed, however; the business world is littered with failures. In this article, we examine the international expansion failures of five service companies that opened physical facilities in a foreign country: Target, Tim Hortons, Best Buy, Tesco, and Walmart. While a variety of factors led to these failures, some common causes have been identified. These include a lack of understanding of the purchasing characteristics of consumers, underestimation of the local competition, supply chain issues, and poor strategic decisions regarding facility location and the rate of expansion. Not all international expansions are failures, though, and herein we also present the success stories of Aldo, Carrefour, and Nordstrom. These companies understood customer preferences and focused on location issues and their supply chains. Based on the aforementioned failures and successes, we offer guidance for companies looking to expand their business operations via a physical presence in a foreign country.     

Performance effects of aligning service innovation and the strategic use of information technology

In the current dramatically changing business environment, innovation capability is the key to attaining competitive advantages for firms. Drawing on the concept of alignment, the present research proposes a service innovation alignment model within which service innovation and strategic use of information technology (IT) coexist in evaluating performance. Data for hypotheses testing are collected from top-ranked service companies in Taiwan. A total of 165 surveys were collected. Performance implications of alignment are examined using fit as covariation approach. The findings demonstrate that the alignment between service innovation and the strategic use of IT has significant impacts on service innovation performance as well as business performance.     

Marketing planning in the larger family business

In recent decades a considerable literature on marketing planning has accumulated. The larger part relates to marketing planning in big firms with specialized, professional managers. There are books on the subject, like that of Malcolm McDonald which has gone through several editions, and there is also a steady stream of articles in the academic journals. In addition, the marketing planning activities of big firms are referred to by many more writers in the overlapping but broader contexts of “strategic marketing” and “strategic planning”. A lesser part of the literature relates to marketing planning in small firms. The small firms in question are usually very small. Typically they are owner‐managed and employ just a handful of people in a single location. The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the literature by examining a medium‐sized firm; a category which seems to have been neglected by researchers.

Most modern economies are characterized by a significant group of middle‐sized firms, still owner‐managed, but with multi‐million dollar turnovers. Many of these remain family companies and constitute an important reservoir of business initiative. One such family business is the focus of this study. Given the relative lack of scrutiny of such firms to date, the author decided to conduct an in depth evaluation from within one large, family firm rather than seek by means of questionnaire to obtain information from a significant sample of the group. The results of the study suggest that neither the existing typologies of small firm approaches to marketing nor the formal models of marketing planning attributed to big companies necessarily characterize the marketing planning and management of larger, family businesses.     

Collaborative business models: Aligning and operationalizing alliances

It is not unusual for companies to generate substantial revenue through alliances. However, alliance failure rates are high, leaving much revenue at risk and value unrealized. The big challenge facing managers is to align company interests with alliance interests. Such alignment can only be achieved when executives pay considerable attention to building the right collaborative business model. In this article, we synthesize the insights of the existing literature to arrive at three collaborative business models—sharing, specialization, and allocation—that managers can use to address the specific requirements of their alliances. Because the literature provides limited insight regarding how to operationalize these models, we highlight what managers need to focus on when operationalizing each of these models. We find that the choice for an overall business model is relatively straightforward in most cases but that operationalization of business models requires more complex combinations of management techniques. Finally, we show how the three collaborative business models can be combined to build hybrid models.     

Japanese Professional Business Services: A Proposed Analytical Typology

This paper explores certain characteristics of Japanese professional business services (PBS). The aim is to develop an analytical typology consisting of the three dimensions – organizational linkage, service market, and competitive situation – for analysing the obtained empirical data. This typology has been developed in order to increase the understanding of how Japanese companies operate within this sector and also to examine the reasons behind the fact that Japanese business services seem to be marginalized in an international context. This typology could serve as a theoretical frame for comparing Japanese companies with western companies in future research. This research is based on empirical material collected in Japan in the spring of 2001, covering research institutes, general trading houses and insurance companies. Using the constructed analytical typology, the findings reveal that strong organizational linkages have generated a business service market where diversification of service supply within companies is common. However, there are strong indications of a changing business environment with increased competition and further specialization among business service firms. Furthermore, the findings indicate that Japanese companies have difficulties competing with highly-specialized and reputable western business service firms.     

How companies overcome barriers to overseas business

The choice to a company among exporting, acquiring other firms, licensing products and services, and entering into strategic alliances with other business firms is often strongly influenced by governmental policies and practices. In turn, companies’ responses to such influences have increasing feedback effects on governmental activities as public-sector decision-makers are being forced to understand that they now have to become internationally competitive in the economic policies they devise.     

The Move to the Middle: Convergence of the Open‐Source and Proprietary Software Industries

In this paper we focus on open‐source software within the broader framework of the software industry. More specifically, we compare proprietary and open‐source software (OSS) companies in terms of three criteria: (a) approaches to the production of software; (b) business models; and (c) strategic interactions. We postulate three convergence hypotheses. First, there is evidence of convergence in production approaches: leading OSS firms tend to rely on R&D and acquisitions as intensely as leading proprietary companies do. Second, there is evidence of convergence in business models: through dual‐licensing models, top OSS firms derive substantial portions of their revenues from licenses, just as many proprietary companies do. Third, there is evidence of convergence in strategic interactions: the competitive strategies that a company follows do not really hinge on the ‘proprietary versus open‐source’ dichotomy, but on whether a firm feels threatened in the software layer where its core assets are located. This evidence of convergence raises a number of interesting questions for economic theory and for the analysis of the industry’s future evolution.     

建筑企业会计核算方法与特点探讨

随着经济的发展,我国建筑企业也得到了迅猛的发展,面对日益激烈的市场竞争形势,建筑施工企业需要不断的通过完善企业管理来提高企业的综合竞争力.财务管理作为企业管理工作的重要组成部分,与企业的生产和经营效率有着密切的关系.财务核算是影响财务管理质量的重要因素,因此对建筑企业会计核算特点以及核算方法的正确掌握,对于加强建筑企业的财务管理有着重要的意义.本文就主要对建筑企业的会计核算特点以及核算方法进行简单的探讨.     

Data-driven business and data privacy: Challenges and measures for product-based companies

To leverage the opportunities provided by the Internet of Things (IoT), product-based companies are exploring new data-driven business opportunities. They may miss these same opportunities, however, owing to data-privacy challenges. These challenges start with the customers of product-based companies, extend to the wider business ecosystem, and continue with the companies themselves. This article identifies 12 data-privacy challenges and introduces 12 measures to address them. These include intuitive recommendations, such as enabling cross-product consent collection, as well as less intuitive measures, such as fostering a can-do attitude in legal units, closing the gap between legal and business initiatives, or implementing a clear process for well-reasoned risk-taking. The following four principles were found to support companies in implementing these measures: (1) letting privacy and data-driven business go hand in hand, (2) putting customers first and turning their privacy preferences into opportunities, (3) aligning risk-management activities with the process of digital service development, and (4) using technology to professionalize legal processes.     

企业为何要即兴运作:对中国企业战略决策风格的一个检验

文章以中国企业为研究对象,全面探究了其战略决策中的即兴运作行为,认为即兴运作作为一种可供选择的战略行动模式而值得关注.文章的研究结论表明:即兴运作在中国企业是一个较为普遍的现象.企业对战略行动的选择是由多种因素综合驱动的,当企业的组织记忆水平越高、企业家导向越明显以及所面对的竞争环境不确定性程度越高时,企业就越可能采取即兴运作的战略行动方式;即兴运作虽然会对战略行动绩效产生负面影响,但组织柔性会显著降低其负面作用.     

The Link Between Human Resource Management and Company Performance

ABSTRACT

There seems to be a widespread agreement that human resources are the main source of competitive advantage in modern companies. Consequently, the traditional personnel function is being transformed into the human resource management (HRM), which, in turn, is becoming a part of strategic management with the goal of integrating HRM activities to fit business needs. In this paper, we analyze the transformation of personnel function in Slovene companies, which had to change their behavior due to the transition from socialist to market economy and increased competitive pressures. Our analysis leads to the conclusion that Slovene companies use many different personnel models. Transformation of traditional personnel function into HRM occurred mostly in those companies, which place greater emphasis on people-related goals when formulating business strategy. However, the positive effects of this transformation on company performance still have to be confirmed.