Special：Xing Talk—Celebrities Interview



It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. The famous quote by Charles Dickens applies appropriately to domestic Chinese markets. Many young and entrepreneurial companies enjoy the rapid growth in the “rising sun” industries. In contrast, a lot others struggle and suffer in the “setting sun” segments. What strategies are best for businesses in decline? What are the feasible alternatives? Is divestiture the answer? With these questions in mind, recently, Xing Zong, a 5th year Ph.D. student at Duke University took an exclusive interview with Prof. Harrigan of Columbia Business School.

About Prof. Kathryn Harrigan,

Professor Harrigan, who teaches courses in strategic management and international business strategy, is a specialist in corporate strategy, industry and competitor analysis, diversification strategy, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, turnarounds, industry restructurings and competitive problems of mature- and declining-demand businesses. She serves on the boards of three publicly traded firms and is the author of several prize-winning books on strategy.

Xing Zong: Hello Prof. Harrigan. My first question in this interview, how can Chinese firms differentiate the clues of declining industry? Could you please summarize the characteristics? Is it simply declining revenues?

Harrigan: I need to distinguish carefully between distressed industries – in the United States, these are industries like textiles, steel, petrochemicals, and automotive – and truly declining industries. I have just finished a summer-semester course devoted to distressed companies (which often operate within distressed industries) which are so uncompetitive that they could devolve into insolvency and possible bankruptcy. The B8711 course on turnaround management was devoted to fixing troubled companies – through operations as well as restructuring.

The books I wrote about declining industries were devoted to strategies for companies invested in industries where unit shipments are declining industry wide (although a particular firm may be increasing its respective unit shipments by taking market share away from others). Although I generated a list over 100 product categories that were facing declining demand (as measured by U.S. Census of Manufacturers data), generic demand within many of these declining industries was met instead by a substitute technology. What made the phenomenon interesting for my research was the irreversibility of the assets needed to compete in providing the declining products. As an interesting side comment, I might mention that oftentimes revenues went up (due to price increases) even as productive capacity was shrinking and fewer customers demanded the product. Look for evidence of industry wide decline in consumption and think of the marketing construct of the “product life cycle.”

As a further side comment, I must mention that when data was gathered for the declining demand research, international competition was not particularly fierce yet and the companies studied did not ship their products overseas from United States facilities. (In 1984, I published an article about international product life cycles to address the differences in demand that exist from nation to nation.) The strategy alternatives I presented in my research pertained to competition within a single large country. Typically, declining demand occurred because of technological substitution or fashion (lifestyle) changes. (Some industries shipped fewer and fewer units because federal laws regarding environmental pollution limited the quantity of a product that could be made. Where pollution is the primary reason for decline demand for products are sometimes satisfied by off shore vendors facing less stringent laws regarding pollution.)