Unraveling the Secret to Success: Investigating the Link Between a Business Strategy Model and Organizational Performance

Eybers, Sunet

Despite economic challenging times, a small insurance company (when compared to current industry leaders in developing countries) has stunned competitors by achieving extraordinary organizational success in a relative short time span. The organization is rapidly expanding their current market share and are winning awards for it. This achievement is quite noteworthy considering that prospective competitors in the insurance industry are often challenged by numerous market barriers in developing countries. These barriers include an existing saturated market with many big competitors offering insurance products at cut-throat prices. Adding to the challenge is the market’s strict compliance regulation prescriptions. This sparked the interest to investigate how this organization has achieved their success. A case study approach was used to investigate the extent to which the eight factors of a business strategy development approach – the Eight S model as proposed by Higgins [1] – was used and subsequently contributed to the overall success of the organization. After numerous observations, the analysis of secondary documentation and open-ended interviews across different levels of the organization, the main finding was that the seven contextual factors of the Eight S model proposed by Higgins [1] namely – strategy and purpose, structure, systems and processes, management style, staff, shared values contributing to strategic performance – were to some extent implemented in the organization. However, the main contributor towards achieving their success was the re-Sources (resources) factor. The strong focus on the re-Sources factor highlighted well established IT systems which included a strong focus on data analytics, in particular a management dashboard for monitoring organizational performance.