CHAPTER 6

Corporate-Level Strategies

Learning Objectives

CONTENTS

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

Introduction

1. Understand corporate strategy and identify its components.

Corporate Strategy

2. Evaluate and identify different approaches to corporate strategy development.

The Portfolio Approach

3. Understand how organisations can create and sustain the multibusiness advantage.

Corporate Strategy and
Adding Value

4. Appreciate how different corporate strategies could add value to a corporation.
5. Appreciate the complexities of developing corporate strategy at the international level. The Core Competence
Approach
Creating and Sustaining the Multibusiness
Advantage
Corporate-Level Strategy in the International
Perspective
Summary
Study Questions
References and Further
Readings

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110 CHAPTER 6:

Corporate-Level Strategies

Opening Case
The case study organisation is one of the largest international hotel chains operating in more than one hundred countries with its internationally recognised brands. However, the company does not have a culturally diverse workforce at the senior level. It usually recruits executives to the key decision-making positions either from the United Kingdom or the United States.
In this respect, it is defined as Anglo-Saxon. Some people argue that the company should get the best from other nationalities involved in the development of an organisation’s strategy. Different nationalities holding senior positions in the company would not only facilitate the organisation’s understanding about foreign markets but would also help the company to start thinking more in a non-Anglo-Saxon way of doing business in different country markets.
Indeed, in this organisation, the U.S. and U.K. activities have been used as benchmarks for doing business in other
country