Strategic Tools & Portfolios
The BCG Matrix quadrant representing business units in high-growth markets that hold a strong competitive position.
What are Stars?
The process of moving work from foreign countries back to the organization's headquarters country.
What is Inshoring?
An organizational structure composed of dual reporting relationships where employees report to two managers.
What is a Matrix Organization?
The tier of management responsible for establishing strategic plans with a 3-to-7 year time horizon.
Who are Senior Executives?
Hofstede's cultural dimension that measures the extent to which a society accepts that organizational power is distributed unequally.
What is Power Distance?
A BCG Matrix quadrant representing business units in low-growth markets that maintain a strong competitive position and generate cash.
What are Cash Cows?
A global organizational model that centralizes key functions for cost economies while transferring technological expertise and enabling local response.
What is the Transnational Model?
The classical management principle inherently violated by a matrix structure because employees report to two supervisors.
What is Unity of Command?
Planning that translates broad strategic plans into specific goals and plans relevant to distinct functional areas like marketing (1–2 year horizon).
What is Tactical Planning?
Hofstede's cultural dimension reflecting the extent to which people in a society feel threatened by ambiguous or uncertain situations.
What is Uncertainty Avoidance?
A corporate strategy where a firm expands into new businesses related to its core business using existing capabilities.
What is Concentric Diversification?
A global organizational model characterized by centralized decision-making and tight parent control, adopted primarily to maximize cost efficiency.
What is the Global Model?
A web of independent, mostly single-function firms that collaborate via brokers to deliver a good or service.
What is a Network Organization?
Frontline planning that identifies specific procedures and processes required at lower levels with a time horizon of less than one year.
What is Operational Planning?
The presence of explicit rules and regulations governing how people in an organization interact.
What is Formalization?
A unique skill or knowledge possessed by an organization that is rare, valuable, inimitable, and organized, giving it a competitive edge.
What is a Core Capability?
Business initiatives aimed at selling low-cost products to or co-creating enterprises with the vast global population living in extreme poverty.
What are Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) Initiatives?
A technique to reduce the need for information processing by building extra buffer resources so the firm can adjust when caught off guard.
What is Creating Slack Resources?
The long-term direction and strategic intent of a company that provides a perspective on where the organization is headed.
What is Strategic Vision?
An organizational structure characterized by many reporting levels and a narrow span of control.
What is a Tall Organization?
A business strategy an organization uses to build competitive advantage by being unique along dimensions valued by customers.
What is a Differentiation Strategy?
The human tendency to judge other cultures by the standards of one's own culture, viewing one's own group as superior.
What is Ethnocentrism?
An integrative mechanism where interdependent units are required to meet specific deadlines and objectives to achieve a common goal.
What is Coordination by Plan?
A visual tool that illustrates how an organization creates long-term value by aligning financial, customer, internal, and learning/growth goals.
What is a Strategy Map?
Units that deal directly with the organization's primary goods and services, such as assembly, manufacturing, or distribution.
What are Line Departments?