Sustainable Strategy Study For Beijing Furniture Enterprises

During the past few years, the furniture manufacturing industry in the world had begun to transfer to China at a fast pace, and China has become the largest furniture exporter in the world. After 20 years fast development, furniture industry has become one of the key traditional industries in Beijing. In recent years, however, under the pressure of competition from both local and international competitors, Beijing has lost its comparatively competitive advantage, while facing the evident trend of furniture industry clustering in the mean time. And many furniture enterprises in Beijing find themselves facing greater challenges, such as weakening competence, missing of growing potential, and etc. Some of them even have to consider to be or not to be, and some have to stop operation or go to bankruptcy. The popular competitive strategies available cannot help them to face the new challenge. An exploration of competitive strategy for Beijing furniture enterprises through a new lens is not only in urgent demand, but also of momentous current significance.The study adopts an integrative approach of benchmarking, case study, field visits and interviews, theoretical analysis and positive analysis. On the basis of a summary of other scholars' study of strategy, the sustainable development of Beijing furniture enterprises through competitive advantage is explored through a new lens. The study covers mainly a comparative study of Beijing with Shenzhen, the leading city of furniture manufacturing in China; SWOT analysis of Beijing furniture industry; the major obstacle and roots of sustainable development for Beijing furniture enterprises; how to strengthen the competitiveness of Beijing furniture enterprises with the help of sustainable development strategy; how to nurture core competence and obtain competitive advantage; the source of lasting competitive advantage; the role of social responsibility, harmonious stakeholder relations, enterprise culture, and the abilities to learn and innovation. It divides Beijing furniture enterprises, according to its maturity, into different categories, whose choice of different strategies is analyzedIt concludes sustainable development theory is the basis to study the sustainable development strategy of Beijing furniture enterprises, cultivating core competence is the objective, and obtaining sustainable competitive advantage is the core. Soft competence is the key source of competitive advantage. The practical approaches for the sustainable development strategy of Beijing furniture enterprises are: undertaking social responsibility, building harmonious stakeholder relations, constructing enterprise culture and learning organization, encouraging innovation and creation. Industry cluster shall contribute to the strengthening of Beijing regional furniture enterprises' competence. Each furniture category needs to consider its maturity against the background of the industry and change of market environment before making strategic choices.The innovation lies in its effort to apply the sustainability theory from macro to the micro area —Beijing furniture enterprises. It also discusses about the regional sustainable development strategy for Beijing furniture industry, measures to achieve competitive advantage through nurturing core competence, and different strategic choices of both growing-type and mature-type furniture enterprises. New ideas and line map are proposed when analyzing the mechanisms to achieve sustainable development through nurturing core competence for Beijing furniture enterprises. It also initiates a further discussion of arguments such as "soft competence is the major source of competitive advantage", replacing "maximizing shareholders' interest" with "maximizing the common interest of stakeholders", "responsibility is also competence," "how to balance economic and social benefits, social responsibility and environmental responsibility," "how to deal with stakeholders relations" and "harmonious relations with stakeholders shall contribute to sustainability".Apart from taking Shenzhen, the market leader of furniture industry in China, as the benchmark for analysis, factors behind the success of Tiantan Furniture, the so-called "Chinese Furniture King", are explored in the case study with the approaches of depth-interviews and focus group discussion. New research methodology is also introduced and experimented when analyzing the invisible competence.The objective of the study is to explore the sustainable development strategy and road map for Beijing furniture enterprises on the basis of sustainability theory through a new lens. It aims at enriching the content of sustainability theory and strategy theory, and at the same time, offering instructive theories for Beijing furniture enterprises to build core competence, obtain competitive advantage, and achieve sustainable development. The result of the study is expected to be beneficial to the strengthening of the competency of Beijing furniture enterprises in both the home market and global market. It is expected to be helpful to the healthy development of Beijing furniture industry. It is also expected to be beneficial to the effort to build up a harmonious society, a harmonious Beijing under the direction of a scientific development perspective.