Corporate Policy & Strategy

Dr. Nguyễn Gia Ninh

No. LEARNING OUTCOMES

appreciate the techniques and processes involved in

1.
business policies;

2. apply the techniques in practical situations;

3. critically evaluate the techniques used;

4
use the knowledge and competencies gained in prior
subjects in an integrated fashion
 CONTENT
• Topic 1 Overview: The nature and scope of business strategy
• Topic 2 Crafting and executing strategy
• Topic 3 Evaluating a company's external environment
• Topic 4 Evaluating a company's internal environment
• Topic 5 The five generic competitive strategies
• Topic 6 Supplementing the chosen strategy
• Topic 7 Competing in foreign markets
• Topic 8 Tailoring strategy to fit industry & situations
• Topic 9 Diversification strategies
• Topic 10 Strategy, ethics, & social responsibility
 REFERENCES
PRESCRIBED TEXTS
• Thompson, A. A., Strickland III, A. J. and Gamble, J. E. (2010). Crafting & Executing
Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage, Concepts and Cases (17th ed.). NY:
McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Required reading / resources
• Morehouse, J., O‟Meara, B., Hagen, C., & Huseby, T. (2010). Hitting back: Strategic
responses to low-cost rivals. In A. A. Thompson, A. J. Strickland & J. E. Gamble (Ed.),
Crafting and executing strategy: Text and readings (17th ed., pp. 466-475). Boston:
McGraw-Hill/Irvin.
• Chatterjee, S. (2010). Why is synergy so difficult in mergers of related businesses? In A.
A. Thompson, A. J. Strickland & J. E. Gamble (Ed.), Crafting and executing strategy: Text
and readings (17th ed., pp. 514-519). Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irvin.
• Bansal, P., & Kandola, S. (2010). Corporate social responsibility: Why good people
behave badly in organisations. In A. A. Thompson, A. J. Strickland & J. E. Gamble (Ed.),
Crafting and executing strategy: Text and readings (17th ed., pp. 520-524).Boston:
McGraw-Hill/Irvin.
• van de Ven, B., & Jeurissen, R. (2010). Competing responsibly. In A. A. Thompson, A. J.
Strickland & J. E. Gamble (Ed.), Crafting and executing strategy: Text and readings (17th
ed., pp. 525-538). Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irvin.
 CHAPTER 1:
What Is
Strategy
and Why Is
It Important?
 CHAPTER 1 OBJECTIVES
LO 1 What we mean by a company’s strategy.
LO 2 The concept of a sustainable competitive advantage.
LO 3 The five most basic strategic approaches for setting a
company apart from rivals and winning a sustainable competitive
advantage.
LO 4 That a company’s strategy tends to evolve because of
changing circumstances and ongoing efforts by management to
improve the strategy.
LO 5 Why it is important for a company to have a viable business
model that outlines the company’s customer value proposition
and its profit formula.
LO 6 The three tests of a winning strategy
“Without a strategy the organization is like a
ship without a rudder, going around in circles”
Joel Ross and Michael Kami
Tuan is the manager of an SME who provides customers
with chairs and tables. This firm also builds small houses
and offers related services. His firm was established in
2018.
Whilst Tuan and his firm had some problems from time to
time, he was able to pay salary for about 30 employees.
Tuan was up to his neck in dealing with customers’ issues
and contracts. He found that he did not have enough time
to tackle all problems and tasks. He supposed that in the
meantime, it seemed quite alright to have some profit and
still be able to pay for costs. But in the long term, he had
no idea what to do. What should he do?
When CEOs from the big three American automakers,
Ford, General Motors (GM), and Chrysler, showed up
without a clear strategic plan to ask congressional leaders
for bailout monies, they were sent home with instructions
to develop a clear strategic plan for the future.

Austan Goolsbee, one of President Obama’s top economic

advisers, said, “If the three auto CEOs need a bridge, it’s
got to be a bridge to somewhere, not a bridge to
nowhere.”
In November 2006 Yahoo! manager Brad Garlinghouse
issued a memo that directly challenged the senior
management of the Internet giant. Leaked to the media as
‘The Peanut Butter Manifesto’, his memo accused Yahoo!’s
leadership of lacking strategic direction. Growth had
slowed, Google had overtaken Yahoo! in terms of online
advertising revenues, and the share price had fallen by
nearly a third since the start of the year. According to Brad
Garlinghouse, Yahoo! was spread too thin, like peanut
butter. It was time for strategic change
 WHAT IS STRATEGY?
Once there were two company presidents who
competed in the same industry. These two
presidents decided to go on a camping trip to
discuss a possible merger. They hiked deep into
the woods.
Suddenly, they came upon a grizzly bear that
rose up on its hind legs and snarled. Instantly,
the first president took off his knapsack and got
out a pair of jogging shoes.
The second president said, “Hey, you can’t
outrun that bear.” The first president
responded, “Maybe I can’t outrun that bear, but
I surely can outrun you!”
=> This story captures the notion of strategy,
which is to achieve and maintain competitive
advantage
WHAT IS STRATEGY?
 Strategy – A definition
• A company’s strategy is the set of actions that its
managers take to outperform the company’s
competitors and achieve superior profitability.

• The objective of a well-crafted strategy is not merely

temporary competitive success and profits in the
short run, but rather the sort of lasting success that
can support growth and secure the company’s future
over the long term
 Strategy – A definition
• How to attract and please customers.
• How to compete against rivals.
• How to position the company in the marketplace and
capitalize on attractive opportunities to grow the
business.
• How to respond to changing economic and market
conditions.
• How to manage each functional piece of the business
(R&D, supply chain activities, production, sales and
marketing, distribution, finance, and human resources).
• How to achieve the company’s performance targets.
 Strategy Is about Competing Differently

 Every company’s strategy needs to have some distinctive

element that draws in customers and
produces a competitive edge.
 Strategy, at its essence, is about competing differently—
doing what rival firms don’t do or what rival firms can’t
do.
 This does not mean that the key elements of a company’s
strategy have to be 100 percent different, but rather that
they must differ in at least some important respects
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage

 The heart and soul of any strategy are the actions

and moves in the marketplace that managers are
taking to gain a competitive advantage over rivals.

 A company achieves a competitive advantage

whenever it has some type of edge over rivals in
attracting buyers and coping with competitive
forces.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

 There are many routes to competitive advantage, but they all

involve either giving buyers what they perceive as superior value
compared to the offerings of rival sellers or giving buyers the
same value as others at a
lower cost to the firm.

 Superior value can mean a good product at a lower price, a

superior product that is worth paying more for, or a best-value
offering that represents an
attractive combination of price, features, quality, service, and
other attributes.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

Five of the most frequently used and

dependable strategic approaches –

1. A low-cost provider strategy—achieving a

cost-based advantage over rivals.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

1. A low-cost provider strategy—achieving a

cost-based advantage over rivals.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

2. A broad differentiation strategy—seeking to

differentiate the company’s product or service
from that of rivals in ways that will appeal to a
broad spectrum of buyers.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

2. A broad differentiation strategy—

 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

3. A focused low-cost strategy—concentrating

on a narrow buyer segment (or market niche)
and outcompeting rivals by having lower costs
and thus being able to serve niche members at a
lower price.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

4. A focused differentiation strategy—concentrating on a narrow

buyer segment and outcompeting rivals by offering buyers
customized attributes that meet their specialized needs and tastes
better than rivals’ products.

Lululemon, for example, specializes in high-quality yoga clothing

and the like, attracting a devoted set of
buyers in the process.
Jiffy Lube International in quick oil changes,
McAfee in virus protection software, and
The Weather Channel in cable TV.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

5. A best-cost provider strategy—giving customers more

value for the money by satisfying their expectations on key
quality features, performance, and/or service attributes
while beating their price expectations.

This approach is a hybrid strategy that blends elements of

low-cost provider and differentiation strategies; the aim is
to have lower costs than rivals while simultaneously offering
better differentiating attributes.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

 Clever rivals can nearly always copy the

attributes of a popular product or service.

 But for rivals to match the experience, know-

how, and specialized capabilities that a
company has developed and perfected over a
long period of time is substantially harder to do
and takes much longer.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.

FedEx, for example, has superior capabilities in next-

day delivery of small packages
Apple has demonstrated impressive product
innovation capabilities in digital music players,
smartphones, and e-readers.
Hyundai has become the world’s fastest-growing
automaker as a result of its advanced manufacturing
processes and unparalleled quality control system.
Each of these capabilities has proved hard for
competitors to imitate or best.
 Strategy and the Quest for
Competitive Advantage – cont.
At Google
Why a Company’s Strategy Evolves over Time

Need to modify the strategy in response to:

 Changing market conditions,

 Advancing technology,
 Unexpected moves by competitors,
 Shifting buyer needs,
 Emerging market opportunities, and
 New ideas for improving the strategy.
A Company’s Strategy Is Partly Proactive and Partly Reactive

A company’s deliberate
strategy consists of:

 proactive strategy
elements that are planned;

emergent strategy
consists of reactive strategy
elements that emerge
as changing conditions
warrant
A COMPANY’S STRATEGY AND ITS BUSINESS
MODEL
WHAT MAKES A STRATEGY A WINNER?

A winning strategy must pass three tests:

1. The Fit Test: Internal Fit, External fit, Dynamic
fit.
2. The Competitive Advantage Test: Is the
strategy helping the company achieve a
sustainable competitive advantage?
3. The Performance Test: Is the strategy
producing good company performance?
 WHY CRAFTING AND EXECUTING
STRATEGY ARE IMPORTANT TASKS
END OF CHAPTER 1
 References
Thompson, A. A., Strickland III, A. J. and Gamble,
J. E. (2010). Crafting & Executing Strategy: The
Quest for Competitive Advantage, Concepts and
Cases (17th ed.). NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.