Business Structures Flashcards
Joint Ventures
This is where 2 or more businesses agree to work together on a particular project and to create a separate business
Examples of Joint Ventures
Sony and Ericsson with SonyEricsson cell phones, News Corp (which owns Fox), Disney (which owns ABC) and Comcast (which owns NBC) with video streaming site Hulu
Why do Joint Ventures?
Shared costs and risks
Benefit from others expertise
Able to exploit each other’s strengths
Risks of Joint Venture
Management and culture clash
Different external forces
Holding companies
This is where a business that owns and controls a number of separate business, but doesn’t unite them into one company (they are all legally separate)
Examples of Holding Companies
Airline Industry
Advantages of Holding Companies
- Can operate in different markets to allow a high degree of diversification
- Easier to manage separate companies compared to one big one
Disadvantages of Holding Companies
- Cannot fully benefit from economies of scale if they are run indepenedently
- Diseconomies of scale; hard to make management and cultural changes if not united
Privatization
- The selling of state-owned and controlled businesses to the private sector
- Opposite to nationalization where a private business/sector becomes run by the state (e.g. some banks in Europe)
Examples of Privatization
State schools becoming private schools
1980’s in the UK: any business starting with the name British was a government run business; now they are all privatised.
Advantages of Privatization
- Increased competition (no more monopolies)
- More efficiency
- Faster Decision Making
- Lower Prices for customers
- More choices for customers
- Increased income for governments (opportunity costs)
- More income generated in economy (may lead to economic growth)
Disadvantages of Privatization
- Some industries can’t be privatised as they cannot be ran for profit.
Eg:
Lighthouse, army, search and rescue, refuse collection, police, fire
- Increased competition may not in reality lead to a better service.
Local businesses
- operate in a small and well-defined part of the country.
• They do not have expansion as an objective and make no attempt to expand to obtain customers across the whole country.
National businesses
- have branches or operations across most of country.
• They make no attempt to establish operations in other countries.
International business
- operate in more than one country.
• These are often called multinational businesses.
Multinational business
a business which has its HQ in one country but operates in many other countries/worldwide markets in:
• products,
• capital
• labour,
• These are unrestricted by barriers to entry