THE ROLE AND PLACE OF SCALING IN THE SYSTEM OF STRATEGIC ALTERNATIVES FOR ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Abstract
The article substantiates the role and place of business scaling within the system of strategic alternatives of organizational development and addresses the widespread tendency to equate scaling with conventional growth strategу. The purpose of the study is to compare strategic management approaches to distinguishing strategic alternatives with contemporary definitions and attributes of scaling and to clarify whether scaling is an independent strategic alternative or a cross cutting goal of organizational development. To achieve this purpose, the research applies comparative analysis of strategic alternative concepts, logical generalization, systematization of scaling characteristics, and conceptual modeling of links between strategic alternatives and scaling forms.The author's contribution is the interpretation of scaling as an operational-strategic goal that can be implemented through various strategic directions and requires managed organizational changes. On this basis, the article develops a compatibility model that links scaling with the strategic alternatives, and it outlines the nature and intensity of scaling for each of them. The study produces a comparative table that aligns the characteristics of strategic alternatives with key attributes of scaling and proposes a mapping between strategic alternatives and organizational forms of scaling that are relevant for information technology businesses, including horizontal, vertical, modular, and flexible approaches, as well as the use of franchising, licensing, and corporate alliances. The scientific novelty lies in defining the concept of business scaling within each of the strategic alternatives for increasing business size while maintaining efficiency and quality, which requires preparation, planning, and transformation of structure, processes, and resources. The practical significance of the results is the possibility of using the proposed models as tools for strategic diagnosis and scaling planning: they help assess the appropriateness of scaling under different alternatives and identify organizational forms that support the selected strategic direction. The main conclusions indicate that scaling aligns most strongly with growth oriented alternatives, primarily integration and concentration decisions; it may accompany specialization and diversification; however, under inertial development and retrenchment scaling increases the risk of losing managerial control and operational efficiency. Scaling effectiveness depends on an organization’s capacity to deliberately redesign its operating model and ensure consistency between strategic decisions and organizational change.
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