Corporate Strategy
1. MODULE OVERVIEW
The business environment in China and in the world is becoming ever more complex, more turbulent, more global and more competitive. Corporations should position themselves and determine the scope of their activities in order to compete successfully and to create value for their shareholders and stakeholders.
As it was presented in module 5, analyzing Business Strategy begins by looking at a single business unit operating in a single region and requires examining whether the business has a competitive advantage or not. Yet today very few large and medium-sized firms operate in a single industry or in a single geography. Moreover many firms are diversified and frequently change the mix of industries in which they compete.
Corporate Strategy is different from business strategy: It addresses the choices that a corporation makes to create value through configuration of its multi-markets or multi-products activities. While business strategy is a set of choices confined to a single market and pertains only to business units, corporate strategy pertains to the corporation as a whole and addresses choices about multi-markets or multi-products activities.
The objective of this module is thus to understand why and how firms enter into new industries or new geographies. It should help participants identify the various options for growth that are available to companies in different companies, and more importantly, to help them think about the advantages and disadvantages of each of these options for growth in order to be able to make the right trade-offs when making real decisions on these issues. Finally, the course will lead participants to think about and discuss the implementation issues associated with each of the considered growth strategies.
The course will address the distinction between “directions for growth” and “modes of growth”. Firms can choose to grow in four possible directions:
-within their existing business (horizontal growth)
-along the value chain (i.e. vertical integration)
-into new related or unrelated business areas (i.e. diversification)
-into new geographic markets (i.e. international expansion)
Growth in any of these directions can be achieved through the following three modes
-internal or organic growth
-mergers and acquisitions
-alliances
2. FACULTY BIOGRAPHY
Professor Frederic Leroy is professor of Strategic Management at HEC and at Audencia Nantes School of Management. He is a graduate from Ecole Normale Superieure and from La Sorbonne University where he studied philosophy. He earned a PhD in Business Administration and Strategy from HEC, the leading business school in France and is graduated from the ITP London Business School. He teaches business strategy, and is in charge of a course on strategy and implementation processes in mergers and acquisition at HEC. He is also involved in many Executive Education Programmes at HEC. He has worked with strategic consulting firms (Corporate Value Associates, Mercer Management Consulting…).
His research interests include management and mergers & acquisitions, especially the strategy and implementation processes, organizational learning and development of knowledge in firms. He published many articles on theses topics and he is the author of “The firm’s strategies", Dunod – 2007 (3rd edition) and in 2003, "Mergers-acquisitions: strategy and implementation" (in collaboration with Mercer Management Consulting).
