Blind pursuit of strategic goals: an examination of middle managers' strategic orientations in Japanese firms

Masaru Karube, 大 軽部, Toshihiko Kato and 俊彦 加藤

Hitotsubashi Journal of commerce and management, 2009, vol. 43, issue 1, 27-45

Abstract: This paper reports the symptoms of strategic problems through examining the current status of business strategies in Japanese firms. Based on data collected through a questionnaire survey in 2006 from 128 business units in 16 Japanese firms, this paper examines the relationships between business strategies pursued by middle managers and their performance. The empirical results suggest that middle managers blindly pursue less effective business strategies (e.g., pursuit of scale economies, market share, and excessive product differentiation) even in the face of environmental change - from the market growth stage to the maturity stage in the late 1990s and thereafter. Finally, this paper proposes some managerial implications for their recovery from dysfunction of business strategy.

Keywords: business strategy; strategic goal; matket share; product differentiation; management literacy in strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/17771/HJcom0430100270.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:hitjcm:v:43:y:2009:i:1:p:27-45

DOI: 10.15057/17771

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Hitotsubashi Journal of commerce and management from Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Digital Resources Section, Hitotsubashi University Library ().