Strategy for the Corporate Level: Where to Invest, What to Cut Back and How to Grow Organisations with Multiple Divisions, 2nd Edition

Chapter Nine Eight Ways Headquarters can Destroy Value

Corporate headquarters can as easily destroy or subtract value as add value: headquarters actions can cause business divisions to perform less well than they would as independent companies. Corporate-level actions and initiatives can result in less good decisions, delays in decision making, extra costs, distractions from commercial priorities, inefficient services and demotivation. It is for this reason that the Heartland matrix has “risk of subtracted value” on one of its axes.

While the existence of subtracted value has always been understood by managers – bosses can as easily hold you back as help you succeed – one of the first research projects to expose the size of the problem ...