Corporate Management and Entrepreneurship

• Provide valuable goods (products, services)
  • Necessary activities: Procurement (Beschaffung), production, sales/logistics+reaserch & development, strategy, marketing, organization, HR, employees, innovation...
  • Most important point: Competition -> You have to do alle the points above better than your competitors
• Receive compensation (mostly money = prices)
  • B2B vs. B2C

• Decisions, actions, transactions -> Balance of inputs vs. outcomes
  • Maximize outcomes = Effectiveness (value, intended effects, revenues)
  • Minimize inputs at fixed/certain outcomes = Efficiency (costs, time, risks)

Overlap between both approaches:

• Optimizing inputs and outcomes at once = Utility (Nützlichkeit; comlex, decision science)
• Certain aspects can be perceived as both (inputs & outcomes): e.g. time, price
• Many aspects influence each other: risks, time, costs, quality, innovation

1. Acting strategically
   • acting accordingly to a long term "plan"
   • goals oriented
   • acting according to a pre-defined plan with a defined goal in mind
   • Strategic acting is acting delibarately according to a plan
   • All this in dependency of the competitors
2. Strategy
   • A plan of actions designed to achieve a long-term or averall aim

Definition of Alfred Chandler (1962):

Strategy is the determination of the basic long-term goals of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals.

• Complement to deficits in planning = some components are uncerain/ambiguous
• Combination of stability and adaptability in a complex and dynamic world
• Complexity reduction = selection what is relevant and what is not
• Communication internal & external = mission/vision statement -> identity
• Selection of relevant factors and activity options:
  • In what areas to be active (coporate strategy)?
  • How to act in these area (business area strategies)?
• Control: Permanent questioning to what extent the current strategy is still adequate (strategic controlling)

• Perception of a specific situation
• What goals should be pursued (values, self-concept, identity)?
• What resources/capabilities are available or can be developed?
• Ideas/beliefs: What actions lead to what effects?

Depend on perceptions and behaviors of thers: customers, stakeholders, shareholders, competitors, environment

• Strategic level: Strategic controlling
• Operational level: Implementation

In other words the indended vs. the realized strategy