An emerging framework for global strategy

The abundant opportunities in today's global marketplace present substantial challenges to manufacturing managers and executives. Strategic decisions require thoughtful consideration of many environmental variables, notably political, economical, and logistical influences that are typically outside their control. Possibilities for strategic initiatives and direction abound and manifest themselves in myriad possibilities evident in the academic literature and consultants' prescriptions. Leaders in manufacturing organisations must identify the most efficient and risk-reducing strategies among them. We propose a framework built upon two external, influential, and emerging factors, each converging to its own well-defined set of parameters: international trade agreements and quality management programmes. Seemingly unrelated, we suggest these two activities in fact create a path that contributes to successful strategic planning: the former acting as the classical market push mechanism, and the latter as the progressive customer-focused pull mechanism.