Managers have several sourcing strategies to consider. Some of these include all of the following below, except:

a) Horizontal integration

b)Many suppliers

c) Virtual companies

d) Few suppliers

Answer:

a.)horizontal integration.

Horizontal integration is not a sourcing strategy. Sourcing basically means obtaining what we want from a source.in business context basically selecting the individuals or businesses based on set of criteria   so that we can obtain what we want from the source. Eg : selecting individual based on critical like merit to work as employees for company. Here in this context of our question sourcing strategies are used by managers to find suppliers of goods (like raw materials for production ) or service (eg: advertising services) for the company.    For this purpose of sourcing  the manager may use services of a virtual company (a company that works with more help  of computers and telecommunications services rather than real office space .) Or they may use many suppliers or less suppliers according to their needs . But horizontal integration is a different concept .in horizontal integration, the company combines with companies doing similar or different business to increase its scope of business operations. So as you can see, it's not a sourcing strategy.