how businesses and managers might adjust their corporate strategies to become more successful

Adjustment of Corporate Strategies of Success
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Executive Summary
Today’s business environment is characterized by the internationalization of companies due to globalization. With operations distributed in different countries around the world, organizations and managers face the challenge of finding the best strategies to attain competitive advantage. As shown in this paper, four strategies that can be applied by a business with international operations include global, multi-domestic, transnational, and international. This paper begins by giving a literature review of how organizations approach international operations based on Michael Porters’ configuration and coordination dimensions. The paper goes on to place the topic in the international business context by noting that optimal configuration and coordination of value chain activities are integral for success in the global market. The paper also examines how international firms such as Carrefour and Volvo approach the global market. The paper concludes by recognizing the challenge organizations and managers face and offers two recommendations that can help them adjust their corporate strategies to be more successful.
Literature Review
A key unresolved issue in international business according to Hoon and Rugman (2012) is whether firms should pursue a regional or global strategy. Pursuing a global strategy, in this case, means applying the strategy used in the domestic country to the global context. Regional strategy means that assets are distributed within each of broad geographical region (Hoon & Rugman, 2012). The authors point out that configuration indicates how a firm locates its plants and resources in the value chain. Hernández and Pedersen (2017) note that in order to build an overview of the configuration of the global value chain, it is important to evaluate the activities involved. Therefore, primary activities such as outbound logistics, operations, inbound logistics, and marketing as well as secondary activities such as human resources, research and developmet (R&D), and finance have to be examined (Fearne, Martinez, & Dent, 2012).
According to Schmid, Grosche, and Mayrhofer (2016), firms operating in the international market environment have to choose how far they will concentrate and centralize their activities. For each of the activity that makes up the value chain, an organization must make sure that they are coordinated appropriately across the borders. The article by Hernández and Pedersen (2017) explores other important activities that organizations and managers have to take into consideration: essential activities, core activities, upstream activities, middle-end activities, and downstream activities. Coordination in an organization aims to locate each of the value chain activities where conditions are best for the highest possible level of efficiency (Vahlne, Ivarsson, & Johanson, 2011). The authors note that the resulting configuration determines the processes that need to be coordinated. In this sense, an important goal when coordinating two organizational units is to create a fit such that better joint productivity is attained (Vahlne, Ivarsson, & Johanson, 2011...