Louw and Venter (2013) state that “business strategies provide guidance and represent road maps that the organization can use to achieve its strategic objectives.” An organization's top-level management or strategic management team is responsible for deciding which business strategy to adopt. Before making the selection, it is critical that managers collectively evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their organization. The group must also evaluate, as empirically as possible, the organization's real potential to benefit from perceived market needs or its ability to manage associated risks (Foss, 2005). The decision could mean the difference between commercial prosperity and large-scale bankruptcy and therefore should not be taken lightly. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayA number of factors influence the formulation of an organization's business strategy. However, that being said, the choice of strategy ultimately derives from the organization's business objectives. These serve to grow the company or defend it when it is in a weak position (Louw and Venter, 2013). Thus leading to the two main corporate strategic options: growth strategies and defensive strategies. According to Suttle (2018), when an organization wants to grow its business, it will implement growth strategies that include market penetration, market development, product development, diversification, and integration. On the other hand, as mentioned by Louw and Venter (2013), “defensive strategies are divided into two groups: turnaround or end-game management”. The purpose of this essay is to critically discuss defensive strategies through research, using relevant examples. Focusing in particular on the two types of defensive strategies and the corporate actions associated with them. When an organization's current business units face challenges in growth potential, management may decide to implement defensive strategies (Gomes, 2010). The first type of defensive strategy, as mentioned above, is called turnaround. “Turnaround, an ever-present concept in organizational decline, is described as the recovery of a company's performance after a severe decline” (Santana, Valle, & Galan, 2017). Habitual influences such as inefficiency, non-competitiveness and recession (Louw and Venter, 2013) incite turnaround. Turnaround strategies consist of scaling, recovery and revenue growth. These strategies are directed toward internal efforts to reverse organizational decline and thus make the company more profitable. Downsizing strategies provide organizations with the ability to reorganize in response to persistent decline across business units. Management can implement one or both of the business actions associated with this approach, namely cutting costs and reducing non-core resources (Louw and Venter, 2013). According to Bravo and de Egaña (2017), cost cutting is defined as “a strategic alternative, which includes different combinations of reductions in a company's physical, human and organizational systems, to adapt it to the competitive conditions of a unit corporate". Organizations should assess which of their business units are not sustainable for sustained competitiveness and prioritize these for turnaround, before reducing the number of employees (Louw and Venter, 2013). This is because reducing key employees can result in the loss of essential capabilities. There are other means by which organizations can reduce theirs, 2005).