**2.3 Globalization advantages and problems**

Generally speaking, from the internal point of view we cannot forget that every competitive strategy by firms is closely related to system factors and the global organization as well, in particular concerning the following:


Strategy is connected in fact to the quality and objectives of persons within every family, firm, institution, and country, but for firms in particular their

growth is connected with the attempts of a particular group of human beings to do something [37]<sup>3</sup> .

As a matter of fact, some companies in the globalized world faced globalization in a courageous way with smart results later on, being able at the same time to take advantage of external opportunities and to adapt themselves to changes, and the dissemination of products and brands jointly being a goal and a result. They were able to anticipate competitors to nip at their heels taking into account i) the larger propensity of consumers to spend (not only in proportion to income but also recurring to debt), ii) the epochal changes in consumers' culture and values, and iii) the fast dynamics of consumers' tastes and needs, today from voluble to volatile ones.

As a result, these firms repositioned themselves, individuating innovative strategic directions to seize a competitive position among their (new) important competitors. They applied creative strategies in addition to previous ones—cooperation agreements, strategic alliances, M&A included—in line with their new *strategic location map* within the globalized world.

Some other firms, on their turn, followed the previous ones, which succeeded in engaging in global competition, anyway being at first generally undecided, topically dubious about the right road to be taken, organizationally conflicting about the timing and the dimension of new investments. This sum of problems caused in a large number of cases delays on one side and/or insufficient investments on the other hand, and both these problems being anyway partly repaired in some others cases by the wiser directions taken by looking at the experience of forerunners and eventually to their errors.

The remaining set of firms was reluctantly forced to renew themselves. Their delays were implied by a set of different, cooperating reasons, and among them, the following ones:


To these obstacles, it is easy to add the internal frictions among top managers, prominent shareholders, and also stakeholders in some cases, each of them reasoning maybe in terms of personal advantage rather than firm perspectives.

As a consequence, a set of companies suffered from serious problems represented by their inability to coordinate and harmonize on a large scale, and their previous practices are related to specialized segments, finance, technology, and their cultural and administrative skills as well.

All these problems negatively affected the strategic directions and current choices of these companies, which, still thinking in an improper way, tried somehow to imitate the most powerful and concentrated companies in the planet (USA, Europe,

<sup>3</sup> Introduction.

Japan) to get revitalized, anyhow with late, uncertain, or even unstable results, not to speak of cases when they took downward turns.

The main difference among them all lies in the fact that dominant companies, or prominent oligopolists, no longer really belong to one country only, while, in the perspective of globalization, other companies belonging to different countries still work on similar but partial strategies, which makes difficult even not impossible to obtain the same competitive advantages or defenses at least. The same difference between the two groups, which creates further dis-equilibria, acts on the ability of getting convenient means of production (capital, technology, human resources, raw materials, and others), where the first ones are largely favored by their timely entrance into globalization and globalized visions of the world. The only problem can be represented by conflicts and wars among countries: Globalization made easier the availability of those means for companies, making them more independent and profitable, but at the same time, it tends to make conflicts more intense or widespread ones.
