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Diversification as a corporate strategy : an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in South Africa

Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012.

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Other Authors: Saville, Adrian
Format: Thesis
Published: University of Pretoria 2013
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access_status_str Open Access
author2 Saville, Adrian
author_browse Saville, Adrian
author_facet Saville, Adrian
collection Thesis
dc_rights_str_mv © 2011, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.
description Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012.
format Thesis
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institution University of Pretoria (South Africa)
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:40:37.576Z
license_str Other — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository
publishDate 2013
publishDateRange 2013
publishDateSort 2013
publisher University of Pretoria
publisherStr University of Pretoria
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source_str UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository
spelling oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/25812 Diversification as a corporate strategy : an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in South Africa Saville, Adrian ichelp@gibs.co.za Deonanan, Averen UCTD Corporate strategy Diversification Financial performance Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. Corporate strategy forms the foundation when considering the strategic alternatives available to an organisation. Corporate diversification and specialisation are two of the more popular configurations often proposed by corporate strategy theory in order to grow and sustain financial performance. The issue of whether or not diversification leads to financial performance has been debated since the early 1950s. Ample research has been conducted from an international perspective. However, the findings have been inconclusive/mixed/inconsistent and there remains a lack of consensus regarding the diversification-performance relationship. This study attempts to provide clarity on the matter by using a quantitative method to assess the financial performance of companies listed on the industrial sector of the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE) for the period 2003 to 2010. Thirty-nine companies met the criteria for inclusion in the sample and were classified as either focused, moderately or highly diversified. Three financial measures were compared for the different categories, namely return on average equity, return on average assets and market return. Two of the three hypotheses are not statistically significant and the differences in the average (mean) performance measures are due to sampling error. One of the performance measures, return on assets, indicates that the difference in the ii average (mean) performance is statistically significant. The pairwise comparisons revealed significant differences between highly and moderately diversified companies as well as between moderately diversified and focused companies. The mean difference between focused and highly diversified companies was not statistically significant. In this regard, moderately diversified companies performed better than highly diversified and focused companies. Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) unrestricted 2013-09-07T00:41:52Z 2012-09-19 2013-09-07T00:41:52Z 2012-03-08 2012-09-19 2012-06-24 Dissertation Deonanan, A 2011, Diversification as a corporate strategy : an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in South Africa, MBA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://hdl.handle.net/2263/25812 > F/12/4/644/zw http://hdl.handle.net/2263/25812 http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-06242012-155306/ © 2011, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. application/pdf University of Pretoria
spellingShingle UCTD
Corporate strategy
Diversification
Financial performance
Diversification as a corporate strategy : an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in South Africa
title Diversification as a corporate strategy : an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in South Africa
title_full Diversification as a corporate strategy : an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in South Africa
title_fullStr Diversification as a corporate strategy : an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in South Africa
title_full_unstemmed Diversification as a corporate strategy : an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in South Africa
title_short Diversification as a corporate strategy : an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in South Africa
title_sort diversification as a corporate strategy an assessment of financial performance of industrial companies in south africa
topic UCTD
Corporate strategy
Diversification
Financial performance
url http://hdl.handle.net/2263/25812
http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-06242012-155306/