-On the strategic management of enterprises in China.
Joining WTO means that China enterprises must participate in international competition, so they must undergo drastic changes and transformations. In order to cope with the fierce impact of international competition, China enterprises must make strategic adjustments, strengthen strategic management, take control of their own destiny in international competition, and grow stronger in the process of change. According to the present situation of enterprises in China, this paper analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of enterprises in China by using the SWOT analysis method in enterprise strategic management, and puts forward the basic ideas of constructing strategic system and strengthening strategic control.
First, use SWOT analysis to recognize the development conditions.
SWOT analysis is a method that comprehensively considers various factors of internal conditions and external environment of enterprises, conducts systematic evaluation, and then selects the best business strategy. Here s refers to advantages, w refers to internal enterprises, w refers to disadvantages, o refers to internal enterprises, o refers to opportunities, t refers to external enterprises, and t refers to threats from external enterprises.
(A) the strengths and weaknesses of the enterprise (strengths and weaknesses)
The advantages and disadvantages of enterprises are relative to competitors, which are generally manifested in the capital, technical equipment, staff quality, products, market, management skills and so on. There are generally two standards to judge the internal advantages and disadvantages of enterprises: one is the advantages and disadvantages of individual items. For example, if an enterprise has sufficient funds, it will have an advantage in funds; If the market share is low, it will be at a disadvantage in the market. The second is to combine advantages and disadvantages. In order to evaluate the comprehensive advantages and disadvantages of enterprises, some important factors need to be screened, evaluated and scored, and then weighted according to their importance.
External opportunities of enterprises refer to the factors that are beneficial to enterprises in the environment, such as government support, the application of high technology, and the good relationship between buyers and suppliers. External threats of enterprises refer to unfavorable factors in the environment, such as the emergence of new competitors, the current competitive position of market growth rate or the main obstacles affecting the future competitive position of enterprises.
As far as China enterprises are concerned, the first step of SWOT analysis is to compare with foreign competitors, and what are their strengths and weaknesses. Strength is a factor that enables enterprises to compete effectively and operate well, which is usually manifested as a comparative advantage of enterprises. For example, enterprises have sufficient sources of funds, cost advantages, perfect service system and advanced production capacity. If an enterprise has advantages that competitors can't imitate, and has a super-standard contribution to the value valued by customers, it constitutes the core competence of the enterprise. Internationalization in 2 1 century will increasingly reflect the competition of enterprise's core competitiveness.
After China's entry into WTO, domestic enterprises will have to face fierce international competition. If they only have some strengths without their own core competitiveness, it will be difficult for them to gain an advantage in the competition. Therefore. When analyzing their own capabilities, domestic enterprises should seriously consider whether they have core capabilities and how to establish their own core capabilities; Domestic enterprises must also change the past tendency of focusing only on tangible resources and ignoring intangible resources, because core competence is not determined by tangible resources owned by enterprises, but depends on intangible resources of enterprises, such as technology, knowledge and corporate culture.
Enterprises should analyze their weaknesses as deeply and concretely as possible. Weaknesses are unfavorable factors for enterprise management, and the existence of these factors will put enterprises at a disadvantage in market competition. At present, compared with western enterprises, domestic enterprises have many weaknesses, such as low technical level, high production cost, backward management, backward research and development, and poor ability to respond quickly to the market. For example, the average life cycle of products in China's machinery enterprises is 10.5 years, while the average life cycle of similar products in the United States is only 3 years, and the product development cycle is only 3 months. For another example, it is generally believed internationally that enterprises with R&D funds accounting for 1% of sales revenue are difficult to survive, enterprises with R&D funds accounting for 2% can maintain, and enterprises with R&D funds accounting for more than 5% are competitive. Japanese Hitachi Company accounts for 6.3%, Canon Company accounts for 14.6%, and China enterprises only account for 0.7% on average.
Opportunities and threats faced by enterprises.
The second step of SWOT method is to identify the opportunities and threats faced by enterprises. It is an important factor affecting enterprise strategy, which can be divided into two forms: one is industry opportunity, that is, the development opportunity provided by a certain industry environment for all enterprises; Second, enterprise opportunities, that is, opportunities that each enterprise can grasp due to its own advantages and disadvantages. After joining the WTO, it will be very beneficial to some industries, such as labor-intensive and export-oriented light industry, because enterprises can enjoy tariff preferences from other countries and regions and cancel import quota restrictions. However, whether an enterprise can finally transform its industry into its own depends on whether it can make full use of its own advantages and make full preparations.
After China's entry into WTO, China's export-oriented enterprises, enterprises with imported products as raw materials or inputs, labor-intensive enterprises and resource-based enterprises will all face rare opportunities.
1. The WTO's comprehensive trade dispute settlement mechanism can prevent big countries from taking unilateral restrictive measures, which provides a good mechanism for resolving trade disputes and gives China's export enterprises a place to protect their legitimate rights and interests. When China's industry suffers substantial damage, anti-dumping agreement of WTO can become a legal weapon for self-defense.
2. Joining WTO is the most effective way for China to integrate into the mainstream of the world economy. China will enjoy the benefits of the world multilateral trading system and trade liberalization, which will help enterprises to expand their products exports. China enterprises are pushed onto the international stage and exposed to the fierce competition environment, which is conducive to promoting scientific and technological progress and improving production efficiency.
3. The 3.WTO promotes the liberalization of trade and investment, enabling China to participate in the international division of labor according to the principle of comparative advantage, which will effectively improve the optimal allocation of resources and the efficiency of resource utilization, and enterprises can choose the required raw materials or inputs from the international scope and reduce their production costs.
After China's entry into WTO, all state-owned enterprises, private enterprises and foreign enterprises in China will receive equal national treatment, which is conducive to fair competition.
Joining the WTO is conducive to introducing foreign capital and expanding transnational operations, and effectively utilizing the largest piece of foreign direct investment-transnational mergers and acquisitions.
6. After China's entry into the WTO, China's infant industry has huge investment opportunities for domestic and foreign investors. For domestic investors, some domestic industries can be built on the basis of high technology from the beginning because of their late-comer advantages, and the time to catch up with the advanced world level can be shortened by learning by doing.
The threats faced by enterprises refer to the unfavorable factors in the external environment. After China's entry into WTO, China enterprises are bound to face the strong challenge of a large number of foreign competitors flooding into the domestic market, and these foreign competitors will compete with China enterprises for the domestic market with their strong strength. When competing with foreign competitors, China enterprises should carefully analyze the specific situation of foreign competitors, avoid their sharp edges, seize their weaknesses, and give full play to their own advantages to compete with them, so as to minimize or eliminate threats. For example, Lenovo Group in China makes full use of its geographical position, people and advantages in the domestic market to establish its market position when competing with world-class big companies. While the main technical performance of computers is dominated by Intel and Microsoft, Lenovo has its own advantages compared with China users in terms of secondary technical performance by mastering the special needs of users in China. After strictly implementing the quality operation rules of ISO9000, Lenovo microcomputers are almost the same as them in quality, but Lenovo Group has advantages in low cost and domestic service network.
At present, China mainly adopts measures such as high tariffs and non-tariff barriers to protect national industries. Although the tariff rate in China has dropped from the simple arithmetic average rate of 1.992 to the current rate of 1.7%, it is still far higher than that of developed and developing countries after the Uruguay Round. As far as specific industries are concerned, tariffs are higher, such as the tax rate of ordinary automobile products is 80%. In addition to tariffs, China mainly adopts licensing system, import quota system, subsidy system and export tax rebate system. Encourage exports, restrict imports and restrict the penetration of foreign service trade into China.
Due to the backward technology, backward equipment, backward management, low innovation ability, small scale, weak market awareness, serious redundant construction and low service quality, the reduction of tariffs and the gradual abolition of non-tariff barriers will have an impact on China's technology-intensive and capital-intensive enterprises, such as automobiles, computers, communication equipment, machine tools, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. Although the products of these industries still have potential demand in China, there is a certain gap with imported goods in terms of quality, price and technology. Therefore, once imported goods flood in, these industries will inevitably be at a disadvantage. Allowing foreign enterprises with strong financial strength to intervene in China's financial, commercial and service industries will also intensify the competition in the service industry and increase the risks in the financial market. Generally speaking, the influence of these industries mainly comes from the following aspects:
1. Price shock: With the tariff gradually reduced to a level lower than that of developing countries, capital-intensive ethnic products, such as automobiles, will lose their price advantage.
2. Impact of quality and technology: This is more serious than price. At present, the market competition in China mainly focuses on price competition, with little product difference and low technology content. Under the impact of foreign products with high technology content and excellent texture, many products will face the danger of being expelled from the market.
3. Impact of quality service: Foreign enterprises bring advanced management concepts and quality services to the China market, which will have a great impact on China's retail, financial and insurance services.
Due to the protection of intellectual property rights, we lost the opportunity to imitate foreign advanced technology for free. To use foreign advanced technology, you must pay a high transfer fee. In the medical field, computer and other industries have low innovation ability, and their situation will be very difficult.
Second, adjust enterprise strategy and enhance competitiveness.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that after China's entry into WTO, China enterprises must adjust their development strategies according to their own conditions, build their own strategic system to support the blindness of business behavior, and completely change the disadvantages of being eager for quick success and neglecting the long-term development of enterprises.
1, building the overall strategy of the enterprise.
Enterprises should make an overall plan for the strategic positioning of enterprises in a long period of time from the overall perspective through the analysis of the external environment and the ability of enterprises. In recent years, western enterprises attach great importance to building the overall strategy of enterprises on the basis of foreseeing the future development of the industry in order to establish the future competitive advantage. According to western scholars Hamel and C.K.Prahalad, in order to gain a competitive advantage in the future, senior leaders of enterprises should seriously consider what new benefits enterprises will provide to customers in the next century or so, or what core competencies are needed to realize these benefits, and how to improve the relationship with customers. The overall strategy of an enterprise should be clear about what the enterprise should do now to have a future, that is, what kind of core competence it should establish now, what kind of new customer groups it should understand now, what kind of new sales channels it should develop now, and what kind of products it should develop now to become an industry leader in future market competition. China enterprises must design the overall strategy from the perspective of the future industrial development direction, so as to seize the opportunity and gain the competitive advantage.
2. Build a functional strategy
The overall strategy of the enterprise points out the direction for its future development. However, in order to achieve the overall strategic goal, we must also formulate the strategic business unit (SBU) strategy and the different functional strategies within the overall strategy. SBU (generally large enterprises should be divided into SBU) strategy is a general competitive strategy adopted by each SBU under the company in its specific business areas according to the requirements of the company's overall strategic objectives, such as cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy, goal concentration strategy and so on. Functional strategy is the concretization of overall strategy and competitive strategy from the perspective of enterprise function, such as market and product strategy, technological innovation strategy, investment strategy, human resource management strategy and so on. The various functional strategies of enterprises are mutually restrictive and complementary, so we should pay attention to the synergy between them when formulating various functional strategies. For example, compared with foreign enterprises, China enterprises lack world-class brands, and some Lu brands are well-known in China, but almost no one knows them in the international market; There are also some enterprises whose products are backward in technology and poor in quality, which cannot be sold in foreign markets, which is very unfavorable for China enterprises to participate in international competition. To build a world-class brand, it is necessary to formulate effective product strategies and increase capital investment in technology development and innovation; At the same time, we must actively develop human resources and provide necessary training for employees so that they can master new knowledge and skills. It is worth mentioning that in the international competition of 2 1 century, human resource management strategy will occupy a very prominent position in all functional strategies. This is because the core competence that brings competitive advantage to enterprises will mainly come from the unique knowledge and skills possessed by enterprises, and only employees can create and use these knowledge and skills. Therefore, developing human resources has become an important strategic task for enterprises in 2 1 century.
Third, strengthen strategic control to ensure competitive advantage.
After China's entry into WTO, China enterprises are facing a changing environment full of many uncertain factors, which requires them to monitor the environment at all times and strengthen strategic control.
Once the enterprise strategy is determined and put into practice, it may encounter the inconsistency between the established strategy and the changing environment, which will lead to the process and result of strategy implementation deviating from the original strategic goal. Therefore, the control strategy is to remind the senior leaders of China enterprises to pay attention to analyze the problems or potential problems in the process of strategy implementation, and take corresponding measures to correct the deviation in time. In this regard, the usual measures include the composite control means of combining feedback control and feedforward control, that is, ratio analysis. Through ratio analysis, enterprises can clearly understand and evaluate the strategy implementation process. Ratio analysis includes financial ratio analysis and operating ratio analysis. The former is mainly used to quickly and comprehensively understand the source and use of funds of enterprises. Understand the effect of enterprise capital utilization and the ability of enterprise to pay and pay off debts. Operating ratio is directly used to explain the operation, main market share, relative market share and input-output ratio of an enterprise. If the environment has changed greatly and the original strategy itself has problems, it is necessary for enterprises to revise or change the original strategy to make it adapt to the environment again.
The control strategy has three main steps:
1, monitoring key external factors, such as the emergence of new technologies, changes in market demand, major competitors and suppliers.
2. Strategic assessment. That is, on the basis of monitoring the external environment, evaluate the existing strategy and judge whether the enterprise adapts to the changes in the environment.
3. strategic revision. If the external factors on which the strategy is based have undergone major changes, the enterprise should consider modifying or amending the existing strategy.
In the second half of the 20th century, due to the drastic changes in the competitive environment, many western enterprises made major revisions or changes to their original strategies. For example, the United States can strengthen its core business through electric companies and develop into service industries. Intel has shifted from the memory market to the development and production of microprocessors. Hewlett-Packard Company abandoned its unsuccessful business and returned to its main business in order to adapt to the global competitive situation. China enterprises should learn from the successful experience of western enterprises in this strategic adjustment, and keep the dynamic adaptation between enterprises and the environment.
Therefore, for the managers of enterprises in China, they must carefully examine their own strategies and make timely strategic corrections according to the changes in the environment, so as to ensure the success of enterprises in the future international competition.
In a word, applying SWOT analysis method in enterprise strategic management, correctly analyzing the internal and external situation of enterprises, constructing strategic system and strengthening strategic control are the ways for enterprises to win in international competition.