Cross-level, cross-disciplinary research on the company suggests that combining strategy and behavioral perspectives can provide valuable insights into the process of inter-firm cooperation.
The organization known as Anheuser-Busch, like all living organisms, does not exist in a vacuum but is a member of a rather large eco system known as "beer" whose inhabitants include producers, sellers, and buyers.
Structurally, the beer industry is multi-layered, although three distinct levels of inputs can be identified. Primary constituent "inputs" (coming from the customers who but the product based on a number of perceptions), secondary inputs at the organizational level from various departments, i.e. brewery department inputting data to procurement, or sales inputting data to marketing or brewing, and finally, tertiary input from environmental factors and other events.
Various other inputs come from distributors and on-premises (taverns, restaurants, etc.) retail businesses that stock and sell beer to consumers. Note that all of these inputs are, for the most part, value-added in nature. As such, however, all of these inputs must survive at a both the micro and the macro economic level. This is because price and profit margins are particularly important in this industry.
Multiple transformations occur within this organization. A hierarchy of these transformations (from the most basic to the most esoteric) would be:
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