A New Approach to Analysing the Growth Strategy of Business Groups in Developing Countries: The Case Study of India's Tata Group

Earlier works on firms’ competitiveness show limitations by mainly focusing on input factors, or the “what” factors for growth. This paper first shows the current business environment in which there are decreasing gaps in the level of resources and technology along with other input factors and introduces a new perspective of strategy formulation to pay more attention to the process factors – the “how” approach to understanding the sources of competitive advantage of firms, particularly the business groups. This paper highlights that competitiveness is more about how a firm utilizes resources than about what resources it possesses. By emphasizing how firm competitiveness is built through time, this paper uses the ABCD model which fills the gap in the established literature of growth strategy and competitiveness. This paper analyses Tata Group of India as a case study and shows the applicability of ABCD model in explaining the growth of business groups in developing countries.