As we enter a high industrial society that widens the gap between the rich
and poor, demand for the security services has grown explosively. With the
growth in quantitative expansion of security services, people have also placed
increased requirements on more sophisticated and diversified security services.
Consequently, market outlook for private security services industry is positive.
However, Koreaʼs private security services companies are experiencing
difficulties in finding a direction to capture this new market opportunity due
to their small sizes and lack of management-strategic thinking skills.
Therefore, we intend to offer a direction of development for our private security
services industry using a management-strategy theory and the Analytic
Hierarchy Process(AHP), a structured decision-making method.
A resource-based theory is one of the important management strategy
theories. It explains that a companyʼs overall performance is primarily
determined by its competitive resources. Using this theory, we could analyze
a companyʼs unique resources and core competencies and set a strategic
direction for the company accordingly. The usefulness and validity of this
theory has been demonstrated as it has often been subject to empirical
verification since 1990s. Based on this theory, we outlined a set of basic
procedures to establish a management strategy for the private security services
companies.
We also used the AHP method to identify competitive resources, core
competencies, and strategies from private security services companies in
contrast with public companies. The AHP method is a technique that can be
used in the decision making process by quantifying expertsʼ knowledge and
unstructured problems. This is a verified method that has been used in the
management decision making in the corporate environment as well as for the
various academic studies. In order to perform this method, we gathered data
from 11 experts from academic, industrial, and research sectors and drew
distinctive resources, competencies, and strategic direction for private security
services companies vis-a-vis public organizations.
Through this process, we came to the conclusion that private security
services companies generally have intangible resources as their distinctive
resources compared with public organization. Among those intangible
resources, relational resources, customer information, and technologies were
analyzed as important. In contrast, tangible resources such as equipment,
funds, distribution channels are found to be relatively scarce. We also found
the competencies in sales and marketing and new product development as core
competencies. We chose a concentration strategy focusing on a particular
market segment as a strategic direction considering these resources and
competencies of private security services companies.
A concentration strategy is the right fit for smaller companies as a strategy
to allow them to focus all of their efforts on target customers in a single
segment. Thus, private security services companies would face the important
tasks such as developing a new market and appropriate products for such
market segment and continuing marketing activities to manage their
customers. Additionally, continuous recruitment is required to facilitate the
effective use of human resources in order to strengthen their marketing
competency in a long term.