The final confrontation lecture with mr Rietdijk was quite helpfull. I will not list everything that has been said during the final confrontation lecture. In stead, I will say something about what the implictions of this final CL are for my essay.
I will try to avoid too academical language and I will briefly explain difficult words that I use (such as competitive advantage, etc.). It seems that I will also have to define my problem statement and that I will have to come up with some sub questions that result from the theory part (thusfar I only formulated sub questions that I found relevant myself). I will therefore have to ask some more questions in my empirical research. In the discussion part I will bridge my findings.
It seems that still a lot of work have to be done for my (and your) essay. I want to wish everybody good luck with completing their essay!
What a commotion about this challenge… Altough I didn’t like the idea of the challenge first, it was not so bad after all.
I filmed at an flower import and export company that is located in the flower auction in Aalsmeer. I chose for such a firm because I thought that it would be nice to be able to show the whole process, from an order to delivery of the goods.
I did have problems with getting the film to my computer. I bought a firewire cable for this purpose, but it seems that only little computers have such a connection on it. So then I bought a firewire card, which (as you may guess) did’t function. I can tell you that I spend quite some hours on trying to get it to work. Finally, the next day, I went to the MediaXprience at the VU, where it was possible to transcribe the film to the PC. I used Adobe Priemere Elements for editing, which is a nice programme with lots of opportunities. Off course you have to learn how the programme functions first…
After all, I hope it was all worth it. And I hope that I will see this back in my score…
Last thurday i attended the final confrontation lecture with mister Rietdijk. The final confrontation was usefull for me in the sense that i finally get a clear view of what is expected of us for the final essay. A full thesis!!…comparable to the bachelor thesis we did last year but only now in a few weeks! During the first few weeks i got the advice to keep my research as general as possible Because of this advice i now found it rather dificult to begin typing my essay. During the confrotation lecture mister Rietdijk adviced us to try and specify our problemstatement and subquestions more. This makes writing the essay easier and more concreet for me. After giving it some thought i came up with the following…i am going to devote my essay on writing about related diversification in the airline industry. For this i will use the interview of Stork i already completed and i will interview one other person this coming week. As Stork can be catergorized as a mature organization i thought it would be interesting to do a second interview with a start up organization in the airline industry. This organization will be Aerocat. I will not use the results of the interview i did with the owner of the local pizzaria as the anwsers will not fit in my new approach.
Well hope all works out and wish everybody lots of luck with this coming week!!
Another week had past and the last challenge of this quest has come and gone (hopefully!). I would like to use this post to discuss my experience of the challenge. In my last post i mentioned that i was still waiting for an answer from my contact at Stork. Luckely this had a positive outcome, i received a green light!!! I must say it is always very handy to already have some good contacts. Anyways during my challenge, Stork was very helpfull in improving my understanding of the electronic division of Stork. Now that i have seen other movie outcomes i see that i had a different interpretation of the challenge as i presented the production process of a wafer stepper. I believe that this was probably the whole idea of the challenge as there were no guidelines to which we were supposed to keep to. Well i must say it wasn’t a waste of time but if it was very valuable….?? I would have liked to devote this time in writing my essay and truely getting a better understanding of why companies diversify, instead of getting into the mind of a moviemaker. Well enough about the challenge and lets get back to business!
This week, after the filming drama, I continued my quest. I have read some books and articles. And I found some motives and reasons why firms diversify. I summed up my findings below. I also distinguished diversification in related and unrelated. This way it is easier to compare both reasons.
A few motives for diversification are the following:
- The business environment changes, both threatening the future of current strategies and throwing up new opportunities
- An organization has resources and competences that can be exploited in new arenas
- The expectations of powerful stakeholders might drive diversification
Some reasons for related diversification
- Control of supplies; Quantity, quality and price
- Control of markets
- Access to information
- Cost savings
- Building on: Core competences and Technology
- Resource utilisation
- Parenting
Some reasons for unrelated diversification
- Exploiting underutilised resources and competences
- Escape from present business
- Spreading risk
- Even out cyclical effects in a given sector
- Need to use excess cash or safeguard profits
- Personal values or objectives of powerful figures
These findings can help me with the conclusion of my essay. I am also glad I can distinguish diversification in related and unrelated to give a “layperson” a clear insight in diversification. I will also illustrate some reasons why firms shouldn’t diversify, because there are also disadvantages of diversification.
Challenge 4, where shall I start! Making a film, that was something I wasn’t familiar with. After a lot of phone calls I finally found a video camera, which I could borrow from someone. The next step of course was finding a company where I could make the film. I contact a lot of organizations, but it was very hard to find one that was willing to let me film their activities. Even when I said the film will be treated confidential, almost no company wants to cooperate. Finally I found a company that wanted to cooperate. It is a large warehousing and distribution company dedicated to the fashion industry. It is a very dynamic company. I went there to film lots of different processes. When I was finished filming I went back home to start editing the film. Well, when I started editing the problems begun. I couldn’t play the film on my computer. The film was a VRO file, and after a lot of phone calls and visits from experts in that area, they told me I couldn’t use this file for editing. The file had to be converted to an mpeg or avi file. Well, I never heard of it before. So the next step was converting the file. So, we searched for a program to convert the file. Unfortunately, the programs were very expensive, there was no free version to convert the whole movie. Because it was for a one time use, I found it ridiculous to spend so much money, so I didn’t do it. Thus, I spend a lot of hours/days to this challenge, but unfortunately I couldn’t edit my film. It is a pity I cannot show you or anyone else the results of my work.
The academic research articles I have been reading so far report more positive about related diversification than unrelated diversification, generally speaking, although both types of diversification do have advantages. E.g. related diversification is more likely to use its internal resources in a more efficient way, while unrelated diversifcation spreads the firm-specific risks.
I found an interesting article by Amit and Livnat (1989), that reports about the best of ‘both worlds’; unrelated and related diversification are combined into a third diversification strategy.
‘By assuming some form of capital market imperfection, management may seek to minimize the variability of the firm’s cash flows (i.e. reduce risk), while maintaining a desired level of growth. This will lead to investing in businesses with sufficiently diverse product markets to reduce the firm’s exposure to business cycle effects, but also sufficiently related in term of the resources that are used so as to maintain its porfitability.’
By means of this study, another advantagous option is provided for companies in order to implement a diversification strategy successfully, since it is focussed on the advantages of both unrelated and related diversification. This will be a nice addition to my final paper, since it provides new insights and assesses divirsification positively.
At first I didn’t have much confidence in the fourth challenge, once completed it wasn’t too bad all. Actually, I really liked ‘playing’ with the Windows Movie Maker, although I still believe that the time it takes to get to fully understand the Windows Movie Maker, making optimal use of it and editing takes too long… I’d rather spent that time on writing my paper… Anyway, I’m proud on what I created in such little time. And I did learn something new (which I don’t need for this course though).
I decided to record my video in the Bijenkorf, partly during the ‘Drie Dwaze Dagen’, since it clearly shows the department store’s dynamics, especially when you compare it with their day-to-day business. I decided though, to keep the video confidential, since I was not allowed to videotape in the Bijenkorf, at least, that is what they told me three times while I was recording (happily they didn’t ask for my tapes!!!).
I do realize that the challenges might be helpful tool to prepare you for the ’real world’ after graduation, when you have to deal with unexpected situations, using different skills that you may not be confident or familiar with, but how this challenge can help me on my Quest? That’s te Quest-ion!! The only reason that I can make up is that the Bijenkorf uses a diversification ’strategy’ for just 3 days, since they are attracting people for whom the Bijenkorf is usually too expensive, creating a new market for those 3 days, leading to sky-high sales. But it doesn’t really lead to a long-term advantage. Oh well, this is all I could make up, just kiddin’! Good luck writing your paper!
Dear fellow students and professors!
On this wednesdaymorning I have some very good news!!!!! Last night I succeded in converting and editing the movie! It took almost the whole night! Because when you think you are finished after making the movie, wait until you see wat happens if you want to upload it, it needed another convertion!!! The quality is not that good anymore, but the message hopefully still clear!
here is the linkL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB8khztCrW4
enjoy it!
Karen
Challenge 3
Our third challenge we were asked to interview 5 laypersons on there ideas on strategy and strategic management. I decided this challenge would be more interesting if I were to ask 5 people with different backgrounds. I ended up interviewing a girl that studied psychology, my mother, a police officer, a planology student, a communication student and an elementary school teacher and a student in computer science.
My experience was that my candidates reacted a bit confused to the question. At first they were all willing to help but a bit overwhelmed by the fact I needed six connotations to each question. Once we got going and I gave some of them a small example to what the idea was they elaborated freely. In comparison with my findings on strategy from challenge 2, I must say that I was quiet impressed by the out-comings. I was impressed because during the interview I kept in mind that these people have not had a study background that focuses a lot on these topics. Most connotations given where actually somewhat business related but more in the sense of the, what I called cooperate strategies then the organizational process strategy. So I got the impression that most people I interviewed see strategy more as a top management issue than that of middle management. Also I saw the, what I categorized as general strategies in challenge 2 return by the interviewees that are young and practice sports. Another interesting finding was that although the psychology student firstly stated the connotations to question 1 in a business like manner I later discovered she had not intended it that way. Although they seemed business wise to me she had meant them in a personal manner. She thinks of her list as ‘a strategy in personal life’ and not of the ‘life’ of an organization. Furthermore all the connotations mentioned were all of the sort conscious strategies”. Nobody I interviewed saw strategy in the subconscious way and answered and made clear that strategies in their point of view are always purposefully put in by a person. I don’t think this is strange as before my investigation I didn’t think of it in this manner either. I did find the social/cultural strategy appear in the brainstorm session, for example with the student computer science and his connotation on; when I hear the words strategic management I think ‘people centric’ and the police officer stating that he thinks of communication towards the employees, evaluating action plans and working closely together.
Did this challenge help me on my quest?? I am not really sure actually. It only proved to me that laypeople have more knowledge than I assumed in first place and that for my final paper I don’t think it will be necessary to elaborate on my question in the simplest manner. Ofcourse i need to think outside of our little management studies box dus we shouldnt underestimate people either.
Thats it for challenge 3
