Firm’s Unique Competing Space Firm Boundaries and Strategic Decision Making

DOI: 10.5176/2251-1970_BizStrategy15.09

Authors: George Tovstiga

Abstract: Organizational boundaries of the firm have long been a central theme in organizational theory. An approach to making sense of the strategic significance of the firm’s strategic boundaries is proposed in this. The paper develops the concept of the proposed “unique competing space” framework and presents the findings (descriptive statistics, correlation and principal component analyses) of an empirical study involving 75 UK firms carried out to test the applicability of the proposed framework in practice. This paper proposes a pragmatic analysis approach that provides the strategic practitioner with a practical “back of the envelope” for the analysis of strategic issues and the derivation of strategic implications from these on the basis of relatively simple yet powerful heuristic approach. The notion of strategic growth invariably invokes some consideration of the firm’s boundaries; both directed outwardly as well as as inwardly. This paper proposes a relatively simple yet pragmatic approach for thinking about the firm’s boundaries.

Keywords:  Strategic, boundaries, competing space, issues framing and analysis.