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Organization, Strategic Organization Article, scope of large corporations
Article at a glance:

Strategy in an era of global giants

  • The world's largest corporations are greatly increasing their scale and scope, and the resulting mega-institutions are fundamentally changing the landscape of business.
  • These mega-institutions have disproportionately high profits and market values because they understand the link between their profitability and the talents of their professionals and knowledge workers.
  • Mega-institutions are pioneering a new model of competitive advantage by using their huge size to develop and exploit intangible assets in novel ways.
  • The corporate strategists of these companies must now develop new performance metrics and business models as well as find ways of overcoming the organizational barriers that size creates.
This article includes the following exhibits:
  • Exhibit 1: Mega-institutions are developing extraordinary scale
  • Exhibit 2: Book value is shrinking for the top 150 companies
  • Exhibit 3: Increasing income with fewer employees
  • Exhibit 4: Increasing returns on net income per employee
  • Exhibit 5: The leaders achieve higher levels of profit per employee
  • Sidebar exhibits: How complexity affects business
About the artwork:

Chuck Close
Self-Portrait, 1997
(detail)
Oil on canvas, 102 × 84 inches
© Chuck Close
Courtesy Pace Wildenstein, New York

 

More from the author
This article is adapted from "Mobilizing Minds: Creating Wealth from Talent in the 21st-Century Organization," a book by McKinsey partners Lowell Bryan and Claudia Joyce. These Quarterly articles are also based on their research:

Better strategy through organizational design
Making a market in knowledge
Making a market in talent
The new metrics of corporate performance: Profit per employee
The 21st-century organization

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