Congruent, Divergent and Incoherent Corporate Level Strategies

This paper draws together four related strands of theory to address theprocesses of corporate value creation. Specifically, contributions fromresource-based theory, dynamic capabilities, corporate strategy and Mintzberg’sstructure theory have been combined to derive four congruent resource-creatingstrategies: financial control, scale, leverage, and creativity. Mintzberg’sconfigurations approach is used to explore the organisational structures andprocesses associated with each strategy. It argues that choices with respect tocorporate resource creation must be made as these four strategies requiredistinct, congruent organisational arrangements. When congruent strategiesdeliver diminishing returns, divergent strategies may be pursued. However, thereis a risk of incoherence where a divergent strategy is poorly implemen