A new idea on enterprise development strategy research based on systemic metaphors and its application

Abstract

In late last year the Post Office of Guangdong (GD) province (China) needed to make a new enterprise development strategy because of the intense competition situation in the post market. On the basis of systemic metaphors，we first present a new idea for the research on enterprise strategies, i.e. to choose the proper methodology of strategy research schools. In accordance with this idea, we choose the methodology of Positioning school to research the development strategy for GD Post Office. Based on this methodology, we integrate Porter's model of five competitive forces [1981] with his method of industry scenarios analysis [1985] and hence present a new framework for competition strategy research that consists of two phases: competitive situation analysis and competition strategy formation. Moreover, in the phase of competitive situation analysis we embedded M. Chen's model of competitive rivalry [1996] into Porter's model of five competitive forces to classify the competition rivals. Results of the rivals' classification are directly introduced into the industry scenarios analysis in the second phase to form the competition strategy.