Trends in strategies and performance of the indian corporate sector what has changed in two decades of economic reforms?

Abstract

In the context of various policy initiatives made during the last two decades to reform the Indian economy in general and corporate sector in particular, this paper documents strategies followed by firms in this period and the resultant changes in business conditions. We find that although the rate of growth of the industry sector has not accelerated following economic reforms probably due to slow growth in agriculture and industrial productivity, investment in general and FDI in particular have shown considerable increase. Increase in competitive pressures seems to have resulted in firms adopting a variety of strategies. While reliance on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) has increased to restructure business and grow, the role of embodied technology purchase has declined in relative terms with firms depending somewhat more on in-house R&D, disembodied technology purchase and FDI linked technology inflows. There are some signs of a growing domestic technology market as well. Although strategies of building marketing and distribution related complementary assets continue to be important for implementing the strategy of product differentiation, their role seems to have declined in a relative sense as these expenses as a proportion of sales show a declining trend. The emerging competitive pressures have significantly raised the importance of sub-contracting/outsourcing in manufacturing possibly as an alternative to the strategy of vertical integration, a measure of in-house value addition. While cost-efficiencies do not show improvements, export orientation has increased significantly across industries and import penetration has seen a marginal decline. Overall, the observed trends of corporate response to economic reforms are interesting, but one needs to systematically explore how M&As led consolidation and flows of FDI are linked to the adoption of various non-price strategies relating to technology and product differentiation. As economic reforms deepen and competitive pressures build up, an analysis of these interactions would provide useful insights for understanding corporate behaviour and for making policy choices.