Case Wesfarmers p. 177-178
1. Drawing upon the case, identify the levels of strategy at Wesfarmers.
As a conglomerate, Wesfarmers is an organization with several different kinds of businesses, which is why we have to differentiate between corporate- and business-level strategies.
Accordingly Wesfarmers' top management would follow the corporate-level strategy, and appoint, for example, which of the businesses in the organization are going to be supported with further capital or which will be disposed off. But in Wesfarmers' case, it also involves incorporating the business-level strategies for their fertilizer, hardware and other divisions. Each of these divisions has to develop its own strategy, since it is not related to the other businesses of the organization, but has to encounter individual environments, costumers or problems, and still be competitive in its field.
Suggested improvement
Everybody agreed with this answer.
2. Using Miles and Snow's terminology, how would you classify Wesfarmers? How would you classify the main operating divisions? Is it possible for the organization as a whole and the main operating divisions to be different strategic types?If you answered yes, discuss what challenge this presents for Miles ans Snow's theory.
We would classify Wesfarmers as an analyzer, since it mostly purchases other companies, after they have proven themselves to be successful with their products or services in their own field. Since it says in the case that Wesfarmers generally is not known for its innovations, you could classify the main operating divisions into the strategic type of defenders.
Wesfarmers prooved that it can succeed even if not all the dicisions come from the head office and the different businesses are encouraged to develop new strategies themselves. This fact challenges Miles and Snow’s theory in this aspect, that one firm as a whole can follow more than one of the presented strategies, if its subdivisions follow...