How can a firm's strategy make the best use of the firm's resources? How does a firm's decision to have a centralized versus a decentralized organizational structure affect its strategy?

What will be an ideal response?

Strategy is a planned set of actions that managers employ to make best use of the firm's resources and core competencies to gain competitive advantage. When developing strategies, managers start by examining the firm's specific strengths and weaknesses. They then analyze the particular opportunities and challenges that confront the firm. Once they understand the firm's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges, they decide which customers to target, what product lines to offer, how best to contend with competitors, and how generally to configure and coordinate the firm's activities around the world.
International strategy is strategy carried out in two or more countries. Managers in experienced MNEs develop international strategies to help the firm allocate scarce resources and configure value-adding activities on a worldwide scale, participate in major markets, implement valuable partnerships abroad, and engage in competitive moves in response to foreign rivals.
A fundamental issue in organizational structure is how much decision-making responsibility the firm should retain at headquarters and how much it should delegate to foreign subsidiaries and affiliates. This is the choice between centralization and decentralization.
A centralized approach gives headquarters considerable authority and control over the firm's activities worldwide. A decentralized approach means substantial autonomy and decision-making authority are delegated to the firm's subsidiaries around the world. In every company, management tends to devise a structure consistent with its vision and strategies. Thus, MNEs that emphasize global integration tend to have a centralized structure. Those that emphasize local responsiveness generally are decentralized.
Planning shared by managers at headquarters and at subsidiaries, with negotiation and give-and-take on both sides, is vital to the design of effective strategies.