Corporate Strategy: The Concept Of Corporate And Business Strategy

Introduction

This memo aims to discuss the concept of corporate and business strategy, and to further acquaint ourselves with what entails the formation of corporate and business strategies. It also takes a look into their relationships with one another and how these strategies might affect the human resources management in an organization. This memo also aims to identify Michael Porter’s strategies, as well formulate recommendations against the Walmart case in the Hartley casebook.

Corporate Strategy

Corporate strategy refers to how companies create value across their different lines of business (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990). According to the Harvard Business School, a company’s corporate strategy is an action plan that tasks a corporation to infuse investments into valuable sets of resources. This is done in order to refine and improve their business portfolios and to improve the efficiency and productivity of their organizational structure, communications & management systems, and other corporate functions in pursuit of profitability (Sadun, 2016).

Business Strategy

Business

It also helps companies identify the weaknesses and strengths of an industry (Foss, 1998).

The five forces in question are competition in the industry, potential of new entrants into the industry, the power of suppliers, the power of customers, and the threat of substitute products (Bateman & Snell, 2010). Competition in the industry refers to the number of competitors a company has in the industry, as well as their ability to pose as a business threat to the company. Companies typically enjoy less power in an industry as the number of competitors and equivalent products and services increases (Bateman & Snell, 2010). Inversely, companies enjoy greater competitive power when there is lower competitive