Strategic economic zones and strategic economic centers. Strategic economic center. Analysis of a set of strategic economic zones

Here, a strategic economic zone is understood as a separate segment of the environment to which the firm has (or wants to get) access. A strategic business center is an intrafirm organizational unit responsible for developing the strategic positions of a firm in one or more strategic business areas.

Within the framework of the university, the strategic economic center, in our opinion, can be characterized by the following features

Obviously, when building management on a divisional basis, separate business units - (faculties), educational and research centers - are assigned the role of strategic economic centers.

Combination (or combination). This operational strategy of the enterprise integrates the considered Various types private strategies of strategic economic zones or strategic economic centers. This strategy is typical for the most large enterprises(organizations) with broad sectoral and regional diversification operating activities... Accordingly, the investment strategy of such enterprises (organizations) is differentiated in the context of individual objects of strategic management, being subordinated to various strategic goals of their development.

The solution to this problem in the economic literature is proposed to be carried out by dividing it into decentralized centers - strategic business units (SCU), strategic business centers (SCC). The idea behind this division is that each, for example, a zone or center can be considered as an independent business. So, for example, "strategic business fields" are highlighted, which are characterized by the following features

The definition of SZH occurs independently of the structure of the firm and its products. After the separation of SZH, a strategic economic center is being formed, which is an internal organizational unit responsible for the development of the company's strategic positions in one or several economic zones. Strategic Business Center) is responsible for the selection of the field of activity, the development of competitive products and sales strategies.

V last years the allocation of strategic economic centers headed by the "managing type of business" (vice president responsible for the subordinate market) is considered promising.

Production and business units were grouped into strategic business centers (SCC), focused on a specific sales market for products (services) and complex provision of resources. The SCC was entrusted with long-term production and sales plans, which became part of long-term plan of the corporation. An important feature of the reorganization carried out was that SCCs were created at various levels of the management hierarchy at the level of group management of departments, at the level of departments and within production departments. In other words, the strengthening of the strategic focus of activities can be traced in all existing management structures.

Companies have huge amounts of marketing and financial data at their disposal that may never be used to make marketing decisions unless they are organized around an IIA. One of the benefits of creating an IIA is that financial data is converted into a form that can be used by marketing managers. Traditionally, the data characterizing the profitability of the company is calculated for the purposes of accounting and financial reporting. This gave rise to two problems. Firstly, this data can be overly aggregated (for example, profitability by divisions or strategic business centers of the company), which makes them unsuitable for making marketing decisions at the product level, and, secondly, arbitrary distribution of marketing costs by goods can create incorrect ideas about their real profitability.

Remember what the following terms mean: strategy, resource allocation priorities, strategic objective, forecasting, portfolio analysis, portfolio planning, strategic economic zone, strategic economic center.

What is the relationship of concepts and strategic economic centers

If the company is engaged in a single-industry activity, then corporate level is absent and a strategy is being developed for a strategic economic center or a profit center, i.e. at the business level.

At the fifth step, in addition to setting two groups of tasks (short-term and strategic), the distribution of responsibility for making a profit from their implementation is carried out. Moreover, it is assigned to operational production and economic units, and responsibility for strategic development- to strategic business centers (SCHs) or strategic business units (SCS) that form the business portfolio of the enterprise (firm).

A strategic investment center is an independent structural unit of an enterprise (organization), which specializes in performing certain functions or areas of investment activity, ensuring effective economic activity of individual strategic economic zones and the enterprise as a whole. The investment strategy of such centers is limited by the functional areas of their activities and is subordinated to the tasks of the general strategic investment management of the enterprise.

Organizations for the competent implementation of strategic planning must clearly identify their areas of production and economic activity, in other terminology - strategic economic units (СХЕ), strategic business units (SEB) or business centers. The emergence of SCU was driven by the growth in the size of the organization and the requirements to ensure effective management. Rice. 2.1. characterizes the dynamics of costs for production (1) and management (2), as well as total costs (3). From fig. 2.1. it follows that, for economic reasons, the size of the organization as a whole should not exceed certain sizes, after which the task of dividing the organization arises on the basis of certain organizational and legal principles. One of these principles is the allocation of CXE.

For the first time, this approach was implemented in the structure of the American company General Electric. The formation of strategic business divisions has transformed the corporation from a specialized electric motor manufacturer to one of the most widely diversified companies in the United States. The corporation had about 200 autonomous branches - profit centers. The autonomy of the branches often ran counter to corporate interests, it was difficult to centrally manage such a number of structural divisions, the efficiency of the company was declining. Thus, all types of businesses were divided into 43 isolated economic organizations.

Production- These are strategic economic centers. An important economic group for the management of TNCs is the group level

A strategic business center (SCH) is an internal organizational unit responsible for the development of the company's strategic positions in one or more areas of management and for the end result of its activities. The first such structural unit was introduced by the American company General Electric, which assigned operational and economic divisions (production departments, sales organizations) to the SCS, responsible not only for planning and implementing the strategy, but also for the final result - making a profit. Following General Electric, many other American companies followed the path of creating SCH. The main criterion for the formation of SCS is the effectiveness of development in a specific strategic direction, effective use of technology and a high level of profitability. The objects of strategic planning are the diversification of the firm's activities.

In companies in Western European countries and in Japan, production units play a slightly different role. With the transition to a decentralized form of management, production departments play the role of coordinators of the activities of their subsidiaries, which have operational, economic, financial and legal independence. At the same time, subsidiaries themselves are not only profit centers, but also centers of responsibility. The latter means that they independently develop strategic directions of production activities within the framework of the product range assigned to them, conduct research and development, identify potential consumers of products, carry out their production and sales, provide the necessary capital investments for the modernization of production, organize the material and technical supply of their enterprises. ... As profit centers, they are fully responsible for the rate of return set by the management of the concern, maintain independent balance sheets and have separate profit and loss accounts, which are compiled in a single form and included in the consolidated balance sheet of the company. The functions of the production department include control and coordination of the activities of the subsidiaries assigned to it, usually according to the following critical areas research, production, sales, finance.

The primary object of analysis for strategic planning is the strategic center of management, uniting several production departments of the company, acting on the market as an independent economic unit - the center of profit.

We believe that the concept of strategic economic zones and strategic economic centers 2, formulated by I. Ansoff, is very fruitful.

Abroad they are called strategic economic centers (SCC). They are an intra-shipping structural unit with economic independence, formed according to the principle of technological, assortment, consumer unity of the corresponding products and services being developed, produced and sold on the market.

It is not easy to implement the principles of synergy in diversified enterprises. Heads of strategic economic centers, not connected with other SCCs by interests, avoid becoming dependent on each other. Therefore, the management of the firm must make a lot of efforts to prove the importance of this principle to the managers of the structural units.

And - the last one. The company's activities can be diversified in several directions, while a separate direction often corresponds to a division that is engaged in serving a certain group of consumers and faces certain competitors. Each direction can be autonomous in terms of strategy, i.e. to form a strategic economic center (SBU - strategi business unit). The main component of the corporate plan is the allocation of resources for each such unit. Strategic decisions at the corporate level typically involve acquisitions, divestitures, and other forms of diversification. Here, the role of marketing planning is also to identify opportunities and threats that come from

In the early stages, strategy development began by defining "what industry the firm is in." This was the generally accepted view of the boundaries that set the firm apart and designated the outer limits to growth and diversification that it could claim. For example, T. Levitt, who in the 60s condemned railway and oil companies for the fact that they could not determine the content of their entrepreneurial activity, invited them to declare their industry affiliation - the first to transport, the second to energy.

In the eyes of early strategists, defining “the industry in which we operate” and figuring out the strengths and weaknesses the firm was tantamount to marking the boundaries of attention to traditional areas of business.

By the beginning of the 60s, most medium-sized firms and all large ones without exception had turned into complexes that unite the production of diverse products and enter numerous product markets with it. And if in the first half of the century most of these markets grew rapidly and retained their attractiveness, then by the beginning of the 60s the prospects for their evolution were very different - from boom to decline. This discrepancy has arisen due to differences in the degree of saturation of demand, local economic, political and social conditions, competition, and the rate of technology renewal.

It became more and more obvious that advancement in new industries would in no way help the company to solve all its strategic problems or use all the opportunities, since new tasks arose precisely in the sphere of its traditional activities. Therefore, strategy analysis increasingly focused on the perspectives of the set of industries in which the firm was already involved. Consequently, the first step in the analysis was no longer "defining the industry in which the firm operates", but developing ideas about the totality of those numerous activities in which it is engaged.

This required the managers to radically change their angle of view. By the middle of the century, I had to learn to see the prospects of the company as if "from the inside", perceiving its future through the eyes of various organizational units and in terms of the traditional groups of products produced by the firm. Prospects were usually determined by extrapolating the performance of the firm's divisions. However, by the early 1970s, each division was usually serving a whole group of markets with very different perspectives and, at the same time, several divisions could work in the same area of ​​demand. Extrapolation of previous performance results lost its reliability and, most importantly, did not allow assessing possible changes environmental conditions in all their diversity. Therefore, I had to learn to "look outside", to study the environment of the company from the point of view of individual trends, dangers, opportunities that arise from the state of this environment.

The unit of such analysis is the strategic economic zone (SZH) - a separate segment of the environment to which the firm has (or wants to get) access. The first step in strategy analysis is to identify the appropriate areas, investigate them outside the relationship with the structure of the firm or its current products. The result of such an analysis is an assessment of the perspective that opens up in this area to anyone. A reasonably seasoned competitor in terms of growth, profit margins, stability, and technology goes to the next stage with this information in order to decide how the firm is going to compete with other firms in the relevant field.

The assessment of the perspective from the point of view of the external environment was first undertaken in the US Department of Defense by R.

In the entrepreneurial world, the American firm General Electric became the initiator, proposing, in addition to this concept, the idea of ​​a strategic business center (SCC) - an internal organizational unit responsible for the development of the company's strategic positions in one or more economic zones.

The relationship between the concepts of a strategic economic zone and a strategic economic center is shown in Fig. 2.2.1. The upper part of the figure shows that SZH is characterized by both a certain type of demand (needs) and a certain technology. For example, prior to 1950, the need to amplify weak electrical signals was met by vacuum tube technology. Invented in 1948, the transistor became the mainstay of competition in semiconductor technology.

The need to amplify weak signals together with semiconductor technology is one SZX, the prospects for which began to fade after 1950. The same need plus transistor technology is another area, extremely promising at the time.

As this example shows, as soon as one technology is replaced by another, the problem of their correlation becomes for the company a matter of the most important strategic choice: to keep (and for how long) the traditional technology or switch to a new one, due to which a certain part of the company's products becomes obsolete. ... There are many examples of how firms that do not benefit from the development of SZH retain their old products even after they have become obsolete.

Rice. 2.2.1. Strategic economic zones and strategic economic centers

As the bottom part of Fig. 1, after choosing a SZH, the firm must develop an appropriate product range. The responsibility for the choice of the field of activity, the development of competitive products and marketing strategies lies with the SCC. Once the product range is developed, the responsibility for realizing the profit falls on the divisions of the current commercial activities.

When a firm first addresses this concept, it must decide for itself an important question about the nature of the relationship between departments - strategic and commercial.

To avoid this double strategic responsibility, General Electric found another solution. She did the hard work - she distributed her departments of current commercial activities (groups of factories, design bureaus, sales offices, etc. - Approx. Scientific ed.) Between the SCC so that the latter were responsible not only for planning and implementing the strategy, but also for the end result - making a profit.

This approach made it possible to get rid of the transfer of the strategy “across the road” and made the SCC responsible for both profits and losses. However, as General Electric and other companies have found, the existing organizational structure does not fully correspond to the newly created SCC, which makes it impossible to share responsibility clearly and unambiguously.

The third solution is to reorganize the company on the basis of the SCC so that each of them corresponds to one division of the current commercial activity. This option, which, at first glance, is so simple, has its own difficulties, since the main criterion for the formation of SCC within the organization - the effectiveness of development in this strategic direction - is only one of the defining parameters organizational structure generally. There are others: efficient use of technology and high levels of profitability. Reorganization based on SCC, while maximizing the effectiveness of strategic behavior, can at the same time reduce the company's profitability or simply turn out to be an impossible task for some reason related to technology (in Chapter 4.3. We will consider the problem of aligning strategic developments with current activities within the organizational structure).

It can be seen from the above that the problem of distribution of responsibility between the SCC of the company is by no means simple and its solution may be different each time. Nevertheless, it is already well known from experience that the concept of SZH and SZH is necessary tool providing the firm with a clear idea of ​​what its environment may become in the future, which is extremely important for making effective strategic decisions.

Organizational planning structures

The planning process involves:

First, the top management of the organization;

Second, the planning team;

Third, the heads and specialists of the departments.

The ideal, as already indicated, is such a situation when all employees of the organization are involved in the discussion and drawing up of plans.

How are responsibilities distributed among the participants in planned activities?

Top management is the architect of the planning process, defines its main phases and planning sequence.

Top management must make the planning process accessible and understandable for every employee of the organization, he must be able to involve his employees in it as much as possible.

Another function of senior management is to formulate the firm's strategy and make strategic planning decisions. The company's management determines the general goals of its development and the main ways to achieve them. Strategy development requires analytical skills and large-scale thinking from senior management.

Middle and lower management, and specialists divisions are engaged in the development of operational plans. The duties of specialists also include the analysis of the internal and external environment of the organization, making forecasts. Heads of departments and full-time employees are united in evaluating alternative strategies proposed for the organization.

The functions of the planning team will be discussed separately in one of the following paragraphs.

In recent years, in many large organizations, the functions

strategic planning are transferred to departments, that is, there is decentralization intercompany planning.

This process is carried out as follows.

1. The entire range of activities of the organization is divided into main segments - there is a "strategic segmentation" (the term was proposed by a well-known firm specializing in the analysis and development of strategies - "Boston Consulting Group" - BCG).

2. There is a redistribution of strategic powers in favor of segment leaders.

The top administration remains responsible for the general direction of the organization's development: the location and structure of capital investments, the total volume of production and profits. In addition, the central management determines resource (mainly financial) restrictions on the activities of lower levels.

Decentralization of the planning service is carried out - the number of the central department is reduced, planning departments are being created in the field.

3. A strategic economic center (SCC) is being formed at the level of a separate subdivision. He develops and implements his own strategic plans... Examples of companies that have created the SCC are the well-known American company General Electric, the British company Imperial Chemical Industries and some others.

Advantages of SCC:

=> SCC allows you to most accurately take into account the economic conditions at the level of individual large divisions, creates opportunities for more flexible adaptation of divisions to consumers, to the external environment as a whole;

=> within the framework of the SCC, the time for passing basic information is reduced, decision-making is accelerated;

=> the existence of the SCC makes possible a wider participation of workers in the planning of their activities.

Disadvantages of SCC:

=> the information overload of the top management of the company increases sharply, since information is now generated simultaneously in several places; => there is a threat that the very strategy and tactics of the organization's actions will be buried under the avalanches of planned activities in the agricultural center and the central services of the company (oversupply of planning);

=> there is a danger of eroding corporate goals and replacing them with a multitude of uncoordinated goals of departments.

If for large firms a pronounced tendency is the decentralization of planning activities, then small organizations, on the contrary, strive for greater centralization of planning, the creation and expansion of a central planning service.

3. CONTENT AND ORGANIZATION OF INTERNAL PLANNING

3.3. Planning schemes in an economic organization

3.3.3. Strategic business centers

In recent years, in many large organizations, strategic planning functions have been transferred to departments, that is, decentralization intercompany planning. This process is carried out as follows.

1) The entire range of activities of the organization is divided into main segments - "strategic segmentation" occurs (the term was proposed by a well-known firm specializing in the analysis and development of strategies - "Boston Consulting Group" - BCG).

2) There is a redistribution of strategic powers in favor of segment leaders.

The top administration remains responsible for the general direction of the organization's development: the location and structure of capital investments, the total volume of production and profits. In addition, the central management determines resource (mainly financial) restrictions on the activities of lower levels.

Decentralization of the planning service is carried out - the number of the central department is reduced, planning departments are being created in the field.

3) A strategic economic center (SCC) is being formed at the level of a separate unit. He is engaged in the development and implementation of his own strategic plans. Examples of companies that have created the SCC are the well-known American company General Electric, the British company Imperial Chemical Industries and some others.

Advantages of SCC:

SCC allows you to take into account the most accurate economic conditions at the level of individual large divisions, creates opportunities for more flexible adaptation of the division to consumers, to the external environment as a whole;

Within the framework of the SCC, the time for passing basic information is reduced, decision-making is accelerated;

The existence of the SCC makes possible a wider participation of workers in the planning of their activities.

Disadvantages of SCC:

The information overload of the top management of the company is increasing sharply, since information is now generated simultaneously in several places;

There is a threat that the very strategy and tactics of the organization's actions will be buried under the avalanches of planned activities in the agricultural center and the central services of the company (oversupply of planning);

Strategic economic zones - SZH (strategicbusinessunit - SBU) - a grouping of business zones based on the allocation of some strategically important elements common to all zones. Such elements may include an overlapping range of competitors that are relatively close strategic goals, the possibility of unified strategic planning, common key success factors, technological capabilities.

The managerial significance of the SZH concept is that it enables diversified companies to rationalize the organization of diverse business areas. SBAs also help reduce the complexity of preparing a corporate strategy and the interaction of a firm's areas of business across industries.

SZH can be considered as a separate segment of the market environment, to which the company has or wants to have access.

Strategic economic zones and strategic economic centers

Strategy is a complex and potentially powerful tool with which the modern firm can withstand changing conditions. But this is not an easy tool, and its implementation and use is not cheap, although it justifies itself with interest. Strategy is a tool that can seriously help a company that finds itself in an environment of instability that has lost its prestige. Therefore, the strategy deserves the most serious attention as a management tool, but we must realize that it in no way complements the natural behavior of people working in the organization, and they treat it without any enthusiasm.

When strategic planning came into practice in the 1960s, diversification of the firm's activities became its main focus. As, due to the instability of technologies, changes in the competitive environment, slowdown in growth rates, the emergence of socio-political restrictions, etc. the number of tasks of a strategic nature increased, it became more and more obvious that by simply adding new types of activities it was impossible to solve all the problems that had arisen. Therefore, in the 70s, the attention of strategists switched from diversification to manipulating a whole set of industries, types of activities in which the firm specializes.

This was accelerated by the fact that different kinds the activities that the firm mastered gradually began to diverge more and more among themselves on such indicators as prospects for further growth, profitability and strategic vulnerability of the enterprise. The largest contribution to the concept of a firm's industry recruitment analysis was made by the Boston Advisory Group (BCG), which proposed a method known as the "BCG matrix". Others have developed the original concept with new, larger matrices.

In the early stages, strategy development began by defining "what industry the firm is in." This was the generally accepted view of the boundaries that set the firm apart and designated the outer limits to growth and diversification that it could claim. In the eyes of early strategists, defining “the industry in which we operate” and figuring out the firm’s strengths and weaknesses was tantamount to defining the boundaries of focus on traditional business areas.

By the early 1960s, most medium-sized firms and all large ones without exception had turned into complexes that unite the production of diverse products and enter numerous product markets with it. And if in the first half of the century most of these markets grew rapidly and retained their attractiveness, by the beginning of the 60s the prospects for their evolution turned out to be very different - from boom to decline. This discrepancy has arisen due to differences in the degree of saturation of demand, local economic, political and social conditions, competition, and the rate of technology renewal.

It became more and more obvious that advancement in new industries would in no way help the company to solve all its strategic problems or use all the opportunities, since new tasks arose precisely in the sphere of its traditional activities. Therefore, strategy analysis increasingly focused on the perspectives of the set of industries in which the firm was already involved. Consequently, the first step in the analysis was no longer "defining the industry in which the firm operates", but developing ideas about the totality of those numerous activities in which it is engaged.

This required the managers to radically change their angle of view. By the middle of the century, it was necessary to learn to see the prospects of the company as if "from the inside", perceiving its future through the eyes of various organizational units and from the point of view of the traditional groups of products produced by the company. Prospects were usually determined by extrapolating the performance of the firm's divisions. However, by the early 1970s, each division typically served a whole group of markets with very different perspectives and, at the same time, several divisions could work in the same area of ​​demand. Extrapolation of previous performance results lost its reliability and, most importantly, did not allow assessing possible changes in environmental conditions in all their diversity. Therefore, I had to learn to "look outside", to study the environment of the company from the point of view of individual trends, dangers, opportunities that arise from the state of this environment.

The unit of such analysis is the strategic economic zone (SZH) - a separate segment of the environment to which the firm has (or wants to get) access. The first step in strategy analysis is to identify the appropriate zones, explore them outside the relationship with the structure of the firm or its current products. The result of such an analysis is an assessment of the perspective that opens up in this area to anyone. A reasonably seasoned competitor in terms of growth, profit margins, stability, and technology goes to the next stage with this information in order to decide how the firm is going to compete with other firms in the relevant field.

An environmental perspective was first undertaken at the US Department of Defense by R. McNamara and J. Hitch, who developed the principle of separate combat missions - the military equivalent of the concept of strategic economic zones.

After selecting a SZH, the firm must develop an appropriate product range. The responsibility for the choice of the field of activity, the development of competitive products and marketing strategies lies with the SCC. Once the product range is developed, the responsibility for realizing the profit falls on the business unit in the current business.

When a firm first addresses this concept, it must decide for itself an important question about the nature of the relationship between departments - strategic and commercial. For example, McNamara, starting to develop this concept, found that the main types of tactical forces - the army, navy, air force and marines - interfere and often contradict each other in solving the separate combat missions of strategic deterrence, United States air defense, limited military operations, etc. e. McNamara's solution was to create new divisions that strategically plan the respective segregated tasks. The strategic decisions developed by them are passed “across the road” - to the relevant departments for implementation. Thus, according to McNamara's plan, the strategic divisions were responsible only for the development of the planned strategy, and the departments - for its implementation. This division caused confusion and loss of coordination, in particular due to the fact that some departments often carried out the responsibilities of strategic units. So, for example, both the navy and military aviation were responsible for the development of individual functions of strategic deterrence.

To avoid this double strategic responsibility, General Electric found another solution. She did the hard work - she distributed her departments of current commercial activities (groups of factories, design bureaus, sales offices, etc.) between the SCC so that the latter were responsible not only for planning and implementing the strategy, but also for the final result - making a profit.

This approach made it possible to get rid of the transfer of the strategy “across the road” and made the SCC responsible for both profits and losses. However, as General Electric and other companies have found, the existing organizational structure does not fully correspond to the newly created strategic business centers (SCC), which makes it impossible to share responsibility clearly and unambiguously.

The third solution is to reorganize the company on the basis of the SCC so that each of them corresponds to one division of the current commercial activity. This option, which at first glance is so simple, has its own difficulties, since the main criterion for the formation of an SCC within an organization - the effectiveness of development in a given strategic direction - is only one of the defining parameters of the organizational structure as a whole. There are others: efficient use of technology and high levels of profitability. Reorganization on the basis of SCC, while maximizing the effectiveness of strategic behavior, can at the same time reduce the company's profitability indicators or simply turn out to be an impossible task for some reason related to technology.

It can be seen from the above that the problem of distribution of responsibility between the SCC of the company is by no means simple and its solution can be different each time. Nevertheless, it is already well known from experience that the concept of SZH and SZH is a necessary tool that provides a company with a clear idea of ​​what its environment may become in the future, which is extremely important for making effective strategic decisions.