文档介绍：Long Range Planning 33 (2000) 72±96 ate/lrp
Taking Stock of Synergy
A Framework for Assessing Linkages
Between Businesses
Michael Goold and Andrew Campbell
This article provides a framework panies that wish to conduct an audit of
how well their approach to synergy management is working. The framework, which
has been used essfully by panies, provides a practical and
systematic way of pinpointing unrealized opportunities and creating an agenda of
initiatives for addressing them. A detailed illustrative example shows how the
framework was used in a speci®pany. = 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights
reserved.
Michael Goold is a director of
the Ashridge Strategic
``Are we doing all we could to promote synergies across the Management Centre. He was
businesses we own?'' Whether the synergies are between differ- previously a director of the
ent local units within a multinational enterprise or different Boston Consulting Group.
businesses in a diversi®ed group, this is a question that we Corresponding address: The
have found more and more chief executives and senior man- Ashridge Strategic Management
agers are anxious to address. Centre, 17 Portland Place,
After a decade during which panies de-emphasised London W1N 3AF, UK.
synergy, in the belief that a clear focus on individual business
performance paid off better, the pressure to make two and two Andrew Campbell is also a
add up to more than four is back. Management experts from director of the Ashridge
Michael Porter to Sumantra Ghoshal1 claim that corporate Strategic Management Centre,
strategies that do not stress synergy are out of date and hard to and a visiting professor at City
University Business School.
justify. Investors press for the break-up of groups in which
Previously he was a Fellow in
there are no evident synergies between the constituent
the Centre for Business Strategy
Business managers grumble if they feel that they are getting too at the London Business Sch