The concept of organizational strategy has emerged as one of the cornerstones of both management theory and practice. To review the studies about this concept, we can find the followings.
(1) Much greater emphasis has been placed on the organizational processes by which strategies are developed than on the content of the strategies themselves.
(2) More attention has been focused on corporate strategy rather than business level strategy.
(3) Most studies have explored only the environment of organizations as a contingent variable ignoring the importance of the internal resources of organizations.
To bridge the theoretical gap of strategies study, the studies about the content of business strategy are needed.
Business strategy focuses on how to compete within a particular industry or product/market segment. To compete effectively firms should maximize opportunities and minimize threats offered by environment. Therefore business strategy is a function of the environment and internal resource of firms.
In this study the PLC (Product Life Cycle) model which was revised to reflect Korean situation was used as an environmental variable. The internal resources of firms decide the competitive positions of firms. In this study the composite measure utilizing multiple variables is used as an indicator of competitive position.
The conceptual framework integrating the PLC and the competitive position is as follows.
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This study hypothesized that 4 SBUs' (Strategic Business Units) groups (i.e. Stars, Wildcats, Cash Cows and Dogs) may have different characteristics in both performances and strategic attributes.
The data required in this study was gathered by interview from 43 firms in Korea. To test the research hypothesis, Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA and Multiple Discriminant Analysis were used.
The research findings are as follows: (1) 4 SBU's groups have no significant differences in performances. (2) 4 SBUs' groups have significant differences in most strategic attributes.
In summary this study can verify that business strategy is a function of the environment and the competitive position of firms. Future research based on this study must examine the relationship between strategic attributes and performances in each SBUs' group.
