Publication Date

Spring 2021

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Dana Cosby (Director), Marguerita DeSander, and Randy Capps

Degree Program

Department of Educational Administration, Leadership, and Research

Degree Type

Doctor of Education

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study to examine the impact of strategic alignment and the concept of fit on manufacturing firm performance in order to achieve its strategic objectives. This study also examines the impact of market concentrate, manufacturing competitive dimensions, and corporate link strategies on firm performance. The design for this research is correlational research following a quantitative, deductive approach. Data collected through a survey based on completed questionnaires to measure perspectives of leadership teams about strategic directions discussed in this research. The survey was designed based on the drawn framework from the literature review. A quantitative method is used to examine the hypotheses and relationships among five constructs and their impacts on firm performance. Convenient sampling method was utilized with the selection of leadership teams from both marketing, operations and executive functions of a multinational manufacturing firm. The results demonstrated that competitive strategies, market concentrate, manufacturing competitive dimensions, corporate link, and differentiation have strong relationships with firm performance. Correlational analyses showed the direct relationship between all of the independent variables with firm performance is strong.

The results demonstrated while corporate support strategy may enhance the buying power status of manufacturing organizations compared to their competitors, it appears that sharing global resources, knowledge, and expats is not profoundly utilized by the subsidiaries. The regression analysis demonstrated that the relationship of firm performance with corporate link at the presence of competitive strategies would be insignificant. In general, it is a well-accepted proposition in the literature that strategic co-alignment; that is, correspondence among a set of theoretically-related constructs, significantly impacts performance; however, this proposition was only partially supported by the findings of this study, most likely due to the sample size.

This study provides implications for managers that reflections on the understanding of customer needs, competitors’ activities, as well as operational performance can assist with more strategic consensus and interface and eventually to improve overall organizational performance. Knowledge sharing amongst the operations and marketing functions, as well as corporate and subsidiaries can help to mitigate potential conflicts, and promote overall corporation’s performance through participatory decision making process.

Disciplines

Business Administration, Management, and Operations | Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods | Strategic Management Policy

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