Implications For Corporate Strategy Research Articles

Strategic Analysis of Japanese Megabanks - Changes in Relative Prioritization of Stakeholders & the Implication for Corporate Strategy

We perform a series of 5 strategic analyses of Japanese Megabanks. In this paper we review how changes in relative prioritization of stakeholders may impact corporate strategy at Japanese Megabanks. We look to answer the following questions via a case study with reference to RUS Megabank. Which key stakeholders have had the highest priority for Japanese Megabanks up to now and which have had the lowest priority? How have these priorities been reflected in actual strategy? Is the relative prioritisation of stakeholders likely to change over the next five years and what are the strategy implications for Japanese Megabanks?

Corporate Renewal through Internal Innovation: The Four ‘R’s of Bricolage in Large Firms

I explain the elements of bricolage — creating solutions with what is at hand — as they apply to innovation in large firms. First, managers can enumerate existing resources through architectural and historical analysis to uncover valuable assets. Second, managers can encourage employees to alter their routines by changing how people interact across internal boundaries; either promoting boundary-spanners, restructuring, or destructuring. Third, managers can recognize new market opportunities by asking employees, customers, and others already in the firm’s network to engage in analogical thinking or interact with existing artifacts, such as products. Fourth, to enable the ideas generated through any of the first three steps to come to fruition, managers can relax mechanisms for selection by choosing more organic, decentralized structures. The bricolage approach is recommended when alternative means of innovation would take too much time or money. The framework has implications for corporate strategy and structure.

The persistence of economic profit

Recently, as practitioners and researchers from developed countries have increasingly probed the activities of emerging economies, what exactly drives the long-term economic profitability of firms in China has become the most salient issue in the above fields. However, a study dedicated to the persistence analysis of profitability differentials among firms in China has not yet been proposed. This study thus employs China’s business database to examine the persistence in the incremental components of the industry and firm effects on economic profitability and tests the hypotheses that conform to the conventional wisdom of relative rates of persistence. A persistence partitioning model is fitted to a new data set, and the results show that the incremental effects of industry on economic profitability persist longer than the incremental effects of the firm. In other words, the long-term competitive advantages of firms in China are more predictable and sustainable based on industry influences compared to firm factors. These findings support the predictions of industrial organization economics, and provide some implications for corporate strategy.

Bringing the natural environment into strategic management: theoretical perspectives and a reassessment of the 'Brent Spar' case

Environmental challenges and their potential implications for corporate strategy are becoming increasingly important in the field of strategic management. Still, the strategic management literature deals with the concept of ‘environment’ in a rather abstract way. This paper aims at bridging the gap between (rather abstract) discussions of the concept of ‘environment’ in strategic management literature and the implications for corporate strategy provided by the challenges of the natural environment. We build on different theoretical perspectives, but most importantly on recent developments in systems theory. Thus, our paper contributes to the paradigm discussion in the strategic management field by making a fundamental differentiation between system and environment as a starting point. We reassess the well-known ‘Brent Spar’ case in order to illustrate our propositions.

How Corporate Diversity and Size Influence Spinoffs and Other Breakups

In recent months, the list of large diversified companies that have decided they would be worth more as several smaller, focused companies has grown sharply. In many of these cases, it has been outside pressure from activist investors that has motivated these actions by management—and with some pretty favorable results.But what is driving these strategic actions and what is most important in determining whether breakups create value? To answer this fundamental questions, it is critical to decide whether large, diversified companies have a value recognition problem or a value creation problem. In this article, the authors present and try to integrate the findings of two separate but related research studies on business diversity and size with the aim of identifying their implications for corporate strategy and helping company executives create more value for their investors.The specific reasons for underperformance by large diverse companies vary greatly, but there are a number of potential problems discussed in this article, including organizational “distance,” capital allocation, human capital allocation, cross subsidies, and ineffective governance. Instead of waiting for activist investors to demand a breakup, executives of large diverse companies should be proactive in addressing the potential weaknesses of their organizations. Private equity firms understand how to make diversification work and many of today's executives could learn some valuable lessons from these firms. Large diverse businesses should embrace “Internal Capitalism,” a corporate culture and set of practices that emphasizes the importance of strategic decision‐making that is linked through continuous performance assessment to the corporate goals of boosting efficiency and sustainable growth.

The Persistence of Superior Performance at Industry and Firm Levels: Evidence from the IT Industry in Taiwan

The industrial organization economics and the resource-based view of the firm have led to disagreements over the question as to which of firm performance at the industry and firm levels has persisted longer since the 1970s. Acknowledging that the IT industry in Taiwan has become very competitive and has demonstrated outstanding performance in the world since the 1990s, this study calculates the persistence in the incremental components of the effects on profitability, and tests hypotheses that conform to the above mainstream views of relative rates of persistence. A persistence partitioning model is fitted to a new data set, and the results show that the incremental effects of firms on profitability persist longer than the incremental effects of industry. In other words, the long-term competitive advantages of IT firms in Taiwan are more predictable and sustainable in regards to firm factors than for industry influences. These findings support the predictions of the resource-based view of the firm, and provide some implications for corporate strategy.

The Market for Innovation: Implications for Corporate Strategy

The Market for Innovation: Implications for Corporate Strategy

Examining the role of the forest industry in collaborative ecosystem management: implications for corporate strategy

The North American timber industry owns or controls a substantial amount of commercial timberland, and it is within this privately held acreage that major portions of critical natural habitat and areas of biodiversity are found. Because significant ecosystem components and processes lie within the ownership of forestry operations, industry participation in collaborative ecosystem management initiatives is vital to protect the integrity of ecological units at the landscape scale. This article analyzes and identifies the role of industry in ecosystem management projects, industry's willingness to participate in collaborative ecosystem management and the motivations behind company participation. Companies indicated active involvement in collaborative ecosystem management as both project initiators and collaborators. Motivations for participating in collaborative ecosystem management initiatives include the desires to decrease governmental regulations, collect data, develop relationships and improve current practices. Many companies also feel that participation is financially beneficial because it positively impacts corporate public relations. We discuss the implications of these results for developing an effective corporate environmental strategy associated with resource-based industries. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Markets for Technology and their Implications for Corporate Strategy

Although market transactions for technologies, ideas, knowledge or information are limited by several well-known imperfections, there is evidence that they have become more common than in the past. In this paper we analyze how the presence of markets for technology conditions the technology and corporate strategy of firms. The first and most obvious implication is that markets for technology increase the strategy space: firms can choose to license in the technology instead of developing it in-house or they can choose to license out their technology instead of (or in addition to) investing in the downstream assets needed to manufacture and commercialize the goods. The implications for management include more proactive management of intellectual property, greater attention to external monitoring of technologies, and organizational changes to support technology licensing, joint-ventures and acquisition of external technology. For entrepreneurial startups, markets for technology make a focused business model more attractive. At the industry level, markets for technology may lower barriers to entry and increase competition, with important implications for the firms' broader strategy as well. Copyright 2001 by Oxford University Press.

Markets for Technology and Their Implications for Corporate Strategy

Although market transactions for technologies, ideas, knowledge or information are limited by several well known imperfections, there is increasing evidence that, during the last two decades or so, such market transactions have become more common than in the past. These markets bring about new challenges to the firms. This paper examines some implications of markets for technology for the firms' corporate and technology strategies. Markets for technology change the traditional mindset in which the only available option for a company wishing to introduce an innovation is to develop the technology in-house, or for a company developing the technology to own the downstream assets needed to manufacture and commercialize the goods. This affects the role of companies both as technology users (they can now buy technologies) and as technology suppliers (they can now sell technologies). The implications for management include more proactive management of intellectual property, greater attention to external monitoring of technologies, and organizational changes to support technology licensing, joint-ventures and acquisition of external technology. For entrepreneurial startups, markets for technology make a focused business model more attractive. At the industry level, markets for technology may lower barriers to entry and increase competition, with obvious implications for the firms' broader strategy as well.

Environmental Product Differentiation: Implications for Corporate Strategy

Political demands for environmental improvement create obligations for managers that can conflict with shareholder value creation. While differentiating products along environmental lines is a conceptually straightforward way of reconciling these apparently conflicting demands, not all attempts to do so have succeeded. This article describes three requirements for successful environmental product differentiation. Firms must discover or create a willingness in consumers to pay for public goods; they must overcome barriers to the dissemination of credible information about the environmental attributes of their products; and they must defend themselves against imitation. More broadly, environmental strategy must be integrated with the overall strategy of the business. The appropriate environmental strategy depends, like the business's overall strategy, on the fundamental economics of the industry and the business's internal capabilities—basic constraints that have often been obscured in the academic debate about business and the environment.

The emerging global-warming market-driver in the energy sector: A status report

The financial institutions have in recent years been progressively awakening to a severe threat inherent in human-enhancement of the greenhouse effect. Insurance companies, and increasingly banks and pension funds, have come to fear that a warming world holds the danger of unmanageable property-catastrophe losses triggered by an increase in extreme climate-related events, plus a spectrum of major knock-on problems for debt and equity investments. This emerging greenhouse market-driver now has major implications for corporate strategy in both the financial and energy sectors.

THE ‘COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONAL’ THEORY OF THE FIRM: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR CORPORATE STRATEGY*

ABSTRACTThis article outlines a rationale for the existence of firms and derives its implications for corporate strategy. It argues that one important source of sustainable rents is the ability of firms to reduce the costs they experience in organizing both internal and external transaction below those of their rivals.

Quality comes first when hatching power brands

Power brands like Perdue Farm's Oven Staffer chickens and Gillette's Sensor razor achieve superior profitability by convincing customers that they offer superior quality says a noted analyst of the data linking strategy and performance. His conclusions are based on a review of 25 years of confidential data from major U.S. corporations. His insights have important implications for corporate strategy and should provoke a review of business operations in many firms.

External control, corporate strategy, and firm performance in research‐intensive industries

AbstractThis paper explores the proposition that the divergence of interest between managers and stockholders has implications for corporate strategy and firm profitability. Stockholders prefer strategies which maximize their wealth. Managers prefer strategies which maximize their utility. It is theorized that in research‐intensive industries, when stockholders dominate, innovation strategies are favored. When managers dominate, diversification strategies are favored. In addition, innovation is argued to be associated with greater firm profitability than diversification. This theory is tested on 94 Fortune 500 firms drawn from research‐intensive industries. The results largely confirm theoretical expectations.

Controlling Competitive Dynamics by Taking Strategic Initiative

Today the popular press as well as the academic literature is replete with discussions of the increased turbulence of competition. The surviving competitors in the wake of this past decade's turbulent times are highly competent, aggressive, and possess significant resources. The implication for corporate strategy is that any competitive advantage currently held will eventually be eroded by the actions of these competent, resourceful opponents. It is no longer a question of whether the current competitive advantage will be eroded but rather a question of when. As a result, the challenge for today's strategist is to constantly seek the second act even as the firm is benefiting from the current competitive advantage it should be laying the groundwork for the upcoming competitive advantage. This challenge is best depicted by Exhibit 1. From the time the firm decides to make some strategic move to secure the initiative to the time that this initiative has been achieved and some type of competitive advantage has been created, is called the launch period. It is critical to minimize this period of time. The longer it takes to get an initiative in place, the more likely it is competitors will spot the move and the more time they will have to develop a counterinitiative. Furthermore, the launch period is a period of investment rather than revenue generation. So the longer it takes, the more we have to discount the revenue streams that result from having secured the initiative. In today's high cost capital markets, projects with long launch periods and high early outlays seldom return a positive net present value.

New opportunities in global services

This article calls attention to macroenvironmental changes and competitive factors affecting the international distribution of services and addresses some options and implications for corporate strategy. It provides a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating services trends, cites examples of services that are expanding internationally and explores the interrelationships between production and services trade.