Formation of Strategic Areas for Development of Ukrainian Metallurgical Enterprises in Accordance With Tendencies in Export-Import Changes

Abstract

Introduction. The top management of enterprises, as a rule, have to solve several strategic issues when concluding a foreign trade contract, among which the choice of strategic direction of activity and the counterparty country is the highest priority. Methods. General and specific methods of system-structural analysis and synthesis were used to formulate the author's definition of "development strategy", to identify the interrelated stages of the development strategy formation; correlation-regression analysis was applied to determine the correlation density between imports and exports for the countries involved in Ukraine’s foreign trade in metallurgical products. Results. The theoretical study of approaches to the formation of a development strategy has allowed formulating the author's definition that the enterprise development strategy is a long-term plan, which contains complex decisions on choosing the direction of enterprise’s development, defining the major goals and models of actions for the formation and effective use of its potential; it also allows the enterprise to create favourable internal and external conditions for successful completion of the main stages of development. It has been found that analysis, monitoring, diagnostics of external and internal environment are a commonly-accepted component of any process of strategy formation. The results of the correlation between import and export as elements of the system have been obtained; it has been proved that a change in import volumes occurs simultaneously with the proportional change in export volumes. Enterprises will be advised to perform foreign economic activities only with counterparties in the countries for which the correlation coefficient between exports and imports is significant. Discussion. The density of export - import links for individual types of metallurgical products is greater than 0.5, indicating a significant correlation between the two considered features. The foreign economic relations between the metallurgical enterprises in Ukraine and various countries of the world are relatively balanced in the field of exports - imports of certain types of metallurgical products. The obtained results should be taken into account in the formation of a strategy for those metallurgical enterprises in Ukraine, which are to perform or expand their foreign economic activity. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account other factors influencing the resultant indicator, i.e. import, and to introduce advanced methods for their detection and research, which, in turn, will reduce the negative impact of the environment. Keywords. Development strategy, import, export, correlation, foreign economic activity, metallurgical enterprises, metallurgical products.