Multimarket competition has become a substantial part of the modern economy. As such, it has drawn the attention of academics in both economics and strategy fields. Many studies have found empirical evidence of mutual forbearance in several industries, but despite its importance, its behavioral roots have not been explored. In my dissertation I integrate the reality of boundedly-rational decision makers into the mutual forbearance hypothesis. I apply an outgrowth of the behavioral theory of the firm – the shifting focus model of risk taking – to the study of competitive behavior. I propose a behavioral model of multimarket competition that focuses on corporate strategic decisions - market entry and exit decisions, regardless of entry mode (e.g. acquisitions) or exit mode (e.g. divestitures). This approach provides a granular view of changes in the business scope of the firms in terms of product and geographic markets served. I test my hypotheses in the U.S. property liability insurance industry over a 12-year period (1998-2008). I argue that firms follow the mutual forbearance logic as long as their performance goals are satisfied. However, under conditions of adversity, firms shift attention to recovering from the performance shortfall and their actions deviate from the mutual forbearance predictions. This dissertation shows that underperforming firms with abundant slack take longer to forbear, and underperforming firms with limited slack start forbearing sooner, as predicted. By bridging behavioral and competitive perspectives to the study of market entry and exit decisions, I underscore the value of cross-fertilization in strategy research.

Partial Strategies of an Enterprise - marketing, sales, business, economic, financial, personnel, investment and other strategies

The goal of this paper is to explore corporate and information strategies, focus is put on new and modern business models. I accentuate alignment between corporate and information strategy. Theoretical overview of corporate and information strategies is followed by description of modern trends that were discovered by author. All new trends are analyzed from IT and business point of view. Some trends are demonstrated on real companies in the paper. The analysis consists of corporate strategy and searching for the way how IT can support business and how to be in alignment. Two types of companies are included. First type is company that built up business model based on IT/ICT strategy. The other type includes companies that are running business for longer time and new IT/ICT strategy deployment or better alignment between strategies brought improvement and better market position. The paper includes basic model representing strategic management that is presented at the end. This gives an overview to all readers how the process goes from corporate and information strategy to application portfolio. The paper is destined for professionals and nonprofessionals who are interested in modern strategies. It is also useful for IT/ICT managers when working on own strategies.

The primary objective of the master's thesis is to identify and to characterize following action steps, which lead to establish a virtual network operator as a new start-up company. Firstly, a virtual operator is characterized from a technical point of view and as an innovation. Czech telecommunication market is compared to foreign markets by its price level. The power of market competitors was described and market gaps were identified. A project founding a virtual network operator was made to support the main objective of the thesis. General action steps were identified and commented after the project part of the thesis.

This master thesis combines corporate culture, corporate strategy, motivation and education of employees. Furthermore, there is also a focus on their interconnections. A real company Unicorn a.s. is presented in the second part -- owner's (Vladimír Kovář's) vision, goals and strategies. Moreover, there is introduced Unicorn's corporate culture, education of employees and human resources management. To check if the culture seems to be friendly and motivational to employees there was used a questionnaire among them. On the other hand, a few managers were interviewed -- if they are satisfied with the education level of their employees. The conclusions are summarized at the end.

Paper comprehensively summarizes the context and background of retail brokers on the Czech market and successfully leads through the various stages of setting corporate strategy on practical case, the company Directa Czech. The theoretical part provides basic information about the retail broker area, most traded instruments and describes differentiation between categories of retail brokers. In the practical part priority was given to situational analysis because it was necessary to establish a firm foothold for determining the appropriate corporate strategy. Chapter about analysis of the development potential properly extended and detailed knowledge of this situation analysis, which was used especially in determining the appropriate steps for implementation of the corporate strategy.

Climate change is an environmental issue that has actual or potential strategic impacts on many companies. The research problem emanates from the scientific work on climate change and the vast health effects that would pose as implications within the healthcare industry. The aim of the research was to explore the strategic response of private healthcare funders in South Africa to global climate change. By means of a case-study based research design, the stimuli for strategic response, risks and opportunities related to global climate change and strategy and an overall strategic organisational posture under the RDAP continuum scale framework had evolved. Evidence from the results and analysis brings light to the fact that global climate change as a strategic concern to private healthcare funders remains a point of scepticism. Although some of the organisations from the sample have considered climate change as a strategic concern, there are others that do not. The study showed that global climate change continues to remain an issue of complexity and uncertainty in the external business environment such that strategy formulation and implementation and acting proactively on the matter remains complicated. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Cette thèse examine la façon dont les choix stratégique des firmes multi-établissements affectent la performance de leurs filiales et contribuent aux débats récurrents liés à la pertinence et l’importance de la stratégie d’entreprise. Dans le premier chapitre, nous nous intéressons à savoir le poids relatif des décisions stratégiques des sièges sociaux sur la performance de leurs établissements. Nous montrons l’incapacité des méthodes traditionnelles à rendre compte efficacement des effets entreprises. Nous soutenons en effet que les études précédentes sous-estiment systématiquement les effets entreprises car elles ne tiennent pas compte de l’hétérogénéité de l’impact des décisions des sièges sociaux sur leurs filiales. Une filiale peut recevoir une part très différente des ressources de l’entreprise. Par conséquent, le fait d’étudier toutes les filiales comme s’il s’agissait d’un seul groupe sous-estime systématiquement les effets entrepris. Nous soutenons plutôt qu’il est important de tenir compte de la variance induite par l’entreprise sur la performance des filiales. Nous appelons cette variance induite « effet entreprise variant », et montrons qu’elle est tout aussi importante que la valeur des effets entreprise standards, à savoir « les effets entreprise invariants ». Dans le deuxième chapitre nous nous sommes intéressés au débat relatif à l’efficacité des marchés de capitaux internes, comme une des sources essentielles d’hétérogénéité de la performance des filiales. La question centrale du débat consiste à discuter les modalités d’allocation optimale du capital. Les études empiriques mettent en évidence des montants d’allocation très au-dessus des niveaux optimaux dans des filiales qui ont des niveaux de croissance apparemment relativement faibles. Tenant compte à la fois du degré d’incertitude auquel une firme est confrontée lorsqu’elle décide d’allouer son capital et du niveau d’interdépendance de ses filiales, nous distinguons « les déviations inefficaces » des « déviations non nécessairement inefficaces ». Nous expliquons que les déviations par rapport à la logique de sélection des gagnants dans les décisions d’allocation de capital peuvent simplement refléter des intentions stratégiques différentes plutôt que des inefficacités d’allocation. De plus, nous soulignons le rôle de l’ampleur de l’expérience antérieure des dirigeants dans le domaine des filiales, en tant que source de compétences en allocation de capital des firmes, dans l’atténuation des déviations inefficaces et l’augmentation de la valeur de la corporation grâce à de meilleures pratiques d’allocation du capital. Le troisième chapitre incorpore les ressources financières à la théorie de redéploiement des ressources. La théorie standard a exclu les ressources financières qui, par définition, peut être allouée et ré-allouées à tout type d’investissement sans contrainte. Nous soutenons toutefois que, lors de l’affectation vers l’une de ses filiales de ressources financières à des investissements imparfaitement fongibles ou divisibles, telles que le capital physique, tel que des usines ou des technologies, le siège social achète également l’option de redéploiement de ces mêmes ressources dans le futur. En effet, le choix d’investissement présent doit être réalisé en tenant compte des coûts de redéploiement éventuels dans le futur. Par conséquent, la direction des flux de capitaux actuels entre les filiales ne sera pas simplement réalisée en fonction des opportunités actuelles de croissance relative du marché, mais aussi en fonction des coûts d’ajustement due aux redéploiements éventuels entre les filiales dans les périodes ultérieures. Cette extension permet d’étendre le champ d’études empiriques de la théorie du redéploiement de ressources non-financier. En effet, les études empiriques dans ce domaine ont été rares jusqu'à présent en raison du défi que représentent l'observation et la mesure du redéploiement des ressources non financières. / This dissertation deals with how multi-business firms’ strategies affect the performance of subsidiary businesses and contributes to long standing debates in corporate strategy. Overall, each of my 3 dissertation essays are designed to, correspondingly, analyze the debated magnitude, efficiency, and mechanism of the effect of a multi-business firms’ strategies on the performance of its subsidiaries. In the first chapter, I address a root question in corporate level strategy; I question traditional methods to estimate corporate effects (the effect of corporate headquarters on subsidiary businesses’ performance). I argue that previous corporate effect studies fail to account for the uneven impact of corporate decisions on subsidiaries. A headquarters makes conscious and deliberate decisions that might induce performance heterogeneity among its subsidiaries. Consequently, considering all subsidiaries as a bundle will systematically underestimate the corporate effects. Rather, I argue that it is important to account for the firm’s induced variance on the subsidiaries’ performance. We connote this induced variance as “business-variant corporate effects”, and show that they are just as important in magnitude as the value of the standard corporate effects, namely “business-invariant corporate effects”, found in previous studies. In the second essay, I focus on corporate capital allocation as a critical dimension of corporate strategies that might contribute to, within-firm, subsidiaries’ performance heterogeneity. We particularly delve deeper into the internal capital market efficiency debate by extending current theories that aim to justify why headquarters provide more resources to subsidiaries with seemingly lower growth opportunities. Considering both the level of uncertainty a firm faces when making capital allocation decisions, and the level of interdependence among its subsidiaries, we disentangle between inefficient and not-necessarily-inefficient deviations from standard models’ prescription. We explain that higher investments in subsidiaries with seemingly lower growth opportunities may simply reflect different strategic intents rather than allocation inefficiencies. Furthermore, we highlight the role of the breadth of CEOs’ prior experience in subsidiaries’ domain, as a source of firms’ capital allocation competency, in attenuating inefficient deviations and enhancing corporate value through better capital allocation practices. In the third essay, I incorporate financial resources, as a perfectly fungible and divisible resource, within the scope of the resource redeployment theory. Indivisibility and imperfect fungibility of resources play a critical role in the theory and this is why the standard theory has excluded the financial resources from its boundaries. I, however, argue that when allocating financial resources, such as capital, to one of its subsidiaries to acquire non-financial assets such as plants or technology, a corporate headquarters also purchases the option to redeploy those same resources in subsequent periods. Therefore, the direction of current capital flow among subsidiary businesses will not merely be a function of their current relative market growth opportunities. Rather, it is a function of the adjustment costs of potential resource redeployments among the subsidiaries in subsequent periods. My extension of the resource redeployment theory to include intrafirm capital allocations paves the way for further empirical investigations of the theory; that have been scarce so far, due to the challenge of observing and measuring the redeployment of non-financial resources. In turn, studying intrafirm capital allocations through the lens of RR theory helps us further develop and offer novel predictions for the theory.

<p>This dissertation examines the implications of digitization for firm corporate strategy and organizational governance. I aim to link together emerging research on platform businesses and classic corporate strategy research on firm scale, scope and organization, two important streams of work that have remained largely independent despite the close connection between them. To do so, my dissertation revolves around the following central question: How can platform owners leverage governance mechanisms to alleviate market frictions, and what are the performance outcomes? </p><p><br></p> <p>In the first chapter, using game-theoretic formal models, I analyze how long standing information frictions are alleviated by digital platforms through developing capabilities for solving these information problems and exploiting synergies between those capabilities. In the second chapter, using data from online peer-to-peer lending, I show that platform owners can mitigate problems of information asymmetry in platform markets and enhance market effectiveness through allocation of key decision rights among participants. Finally, in the third chapter, using data from mobile apps, I show that platform gatekeeping serves as a screening mechanism for platform owners and how it can shape the different ways app developers profit from innovation. </p><p><br></p><p>Collectively, my dissertation aims to advance corporate strategy research in two ways. First, my research broadens the application of theories of organizational governance core to corporate strategy to a new organizational form – platforms – and I show that core tenets of the theories still apply, although the specific empirical mechanisms might take a different form in the platform context (e.g., decision rights allocated between the platform owner and complementors, rather than between the corporate office and business units). Second, my research stands to expand existing theories in corporate strategy through a sharp focus on organization and governance features that are unique to platforms – such as by studying the orchestrating role of the platform owner (e.g., through gatekeeping, platform owner can control complementors' platform access and shape their value-creation activities on the platform), and the multi-layer relationships prevalent in platforms (e.g., relationships between the platform owner and complementors, between complementors on the same side, and between complementors across two or more sides).</p>

According to research findings, SMEs are continuously faced with unexpected changes within their operating environment. The rapid development of technology master’s new competitors, new products and markets which creates a source of uncertainty for these organisations. These changes are for instance demonstrated through changes in customer demands, lower barriers and government regulations, offering both opportunities as threats. Considering that SMEs play a significant role for society and the worldwide economy, they genuinely need to strive for innovative and efficient solutions in their business. By focusing on smarter use of information through Business Intelligence, SMEs can stay competitive in such an environment. Nevertheless, while BI utilization for efficient decision-making has been highly attractive to larger companies for some time, this has not been a reality for SMEs. The reasons for this are several and challenges vary. However, it is necessary to meet some basic conditions to effectively take advantage of BI, namely, to align BI with corporate strategies. This study applied the BISC framework on one strategic theme, the operations management, in an SME in order to identify gaps between BI and corporate strategy in their business performance management initiative. Gaps were identified by analysing current As-Is state of BI assets and the To-Be state. This thesis aims therefore to contribute in the understanding of problems and potentials regarding the process of aligning BI with corporate strategies in SMEs.