Strategies for business development of consulting companies in the Lao People's Democratic Republic

Abstract

The objectives of the study were: (1) to study the level of strategicdirections performance achieved by the consulting companies in the Lao PDR; (2) to study the level of value creation performance achieved by the consulting companies; (3) to compare the company profile data towards the value creation of the consulting companies; (4) to study relationship between strategic directions and value creation factors of the consulting companies; (5) to propose suggestions towards business development for the consulting companies in the Lao PDR. The target population of the research was 61 consulting companies and the Yamane's formula was used as sampling technique to draw 53 companies, thus used the simple sampling technique to determine the needed samples. The data obtained by the questionnaires were analyzed by using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA and Pearson Correlation. The results obtained from this research showed that (1) the overall levels of the strategic directions achieved by the consulting companies in the Lao PDR were in the high performance. The consulting companies used most of the strategic levels for their business development. (2) The overall levels of value creation achieved by the consulting companies were in the high performance level. (3) There was no difference noted between company profiles towards the value creation factors at the significant level 0.05, but the value creation achieved by companies registered under joint-venture and were managed by the Lao and foreign nationalities were at very high performance level. (4) The research had also shown the moderate positive relationships between quality, efficiency, innovation, customer responsiveness and corporate-, business-, functional strategies at significant level of 0.01. (5) The consulting companies need efficient and potential support from the government and international agencies working in the Lao PDR for reaching internationally recognized quality standards.