A Guide to Strategy Resources on the Web
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Listed below are books by key authors in the strategy area. To view commentary on a book at Amazon.com, click on the thumbnail or the associated link.
Contemporary Strategy Analysis introduces students to the fundamental concepts and principles of strategy. The text reflects current academic thinking and management practice, and gives students the tools they need to formulate and implement strategies in order to enhance the performance of the organizations that they join. Now in its fourth edition, this exciting text has been thoroughly revised and updated. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
Management scholars from Stanford University present practical frameworks and concepts to help managers who are responsible for setting a company's direction think strategically, and to understand how their strategies fit with the markets in which they compete and with the organization of their company. They draw on current economic and organization theory to show how the company's performance is affected by its competitive environment, its position in its value chain, its capabilities, its organizational design, and its ability to change. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
A historically grounded and contemporary perspective on modern business strategy, providing logical bridges for some of the current strategy debates. Uses rich examples and concise explanations to lay out key concepts, which are based on a course offered at Harvard business school. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
A comprehensive textbook that presents and explains concepts and theories that are useful in understanding the strategic management process; critically analyzes studies in the field of strategy; describes the people who manage strategically; and suggests a model of strategic management. The focus is on the business corporation. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
A textbook presenting the concepts of strategic management, providing case studies to demonstrate these concepts. Emphasizes the role of e-commerce in today's business world, giving students a change to learn online with MYPHLIP on the companion Web site for the text. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
This comprehensive book applies modern economic principles to study a firm's strategic position. The book integrates insights from the theory of the firm, industrial organization and strategy research while building upon a strong theoretical and empirical foundation familiar to academics working in economics and strategy. The broad sweep of modern economics and strategy research is organized and presented in an appealing format. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
An introduction to planning and managing strategic activities, for business students. Covers the strategic management process, defining the company mission, internal analysis, and formulating, implementing, and evaluating strategy, with chapter case studies from the Coca-Cola company. This fifth edition incorporates revised material on external analysis, environmental forecasting, the global business setting, and organizational culture as a central dimension of strategy implementation. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
The text combines theory, practice, and discussion of the linkage between the two in its coverage of strategy and organization. Rather than discussing "implementation" as is more traditional, the final section deals with the elements of strategy and organization in combination, as they can be seen in seven particular contexts. Numerous case studies are balanced with descriptive, rather than prescriptive, theory; published articles and portions of other books are presented in their original form rather than through summaries. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
Formal planning alone is not the best way for managers to develop strategy. Facts, figures, and forecasts are necessary; but managers also need an intuitive understanding of the organization, a feel for the business not unlike a potter's feel for the clay. Strategy is not just a plan for the future but also a pattern out of the past. Strategies are not always deliberate--they also emerge over time as organizations innovate and respond to their markets. By seeing patterns take shape in their environments, the best strategists find strategies as well as create them. To buy this article click here.
Michael Porter explains how clusters foster high levels of productivity and innovation and lays out the implications for competitive strategy and economic policy. Economic geography in an era of global competition poses a paradox. In theory, location should no longer be a source of competitive advantage. Open global markets, rapid transportation, and high-speed communications should allow any company to source any thing from any place at any time. But in practice, location remains central to competition. Today's economic map of the world is characterized by what Porter calls clusters: critical masses in one place of linked industries and institutions that enjoy unusual competitive success in a particular field. To buy this article click here.
In many companies, strategy making is an elitist procedure and "strategy" consists of nothing more than following the industry's rules. But more and more companies, intent on overturning the industrial order, are reviewing those rules. What can industry incumbents do? Either surrender the future to revolutionary challengers or revolutionize the way their companies create strategy. What is needed is not a tweak to the traditional strategic-planning process, but a new philosophical foundation: strategy is revolution. The author offers ten principles to help a company think about the challenge of creating truly revolutionary strategies. To buy this article click here.
Companies that have risen to global leadership over the past 20 years invariably began with ambitions out of proportion to their resources and capabilities. This concept, fundamentally different from that which underpins Western management thought, is "strategic intent." These organizations begin with a goal that exceeds their present grasp and existing resources. They then rally the organization to close the gap by setting challenges that focus employees' efforts in the near to medium term. The result is a global leadership position and an approach to competition that has reduced larger, stronger Western rivals to an endless game of catch-up. To buy this article click here.
A company's competitiveness derives from its core competencies and core products. Core competence is the collective learning in the organization, especially the capacity to coordinate diverse production skills and integrate streams of technologies. First companies must identify core competencies, which provide potential access to a wide variety of markets, make a contribution to the customer benefits of the product, and are difficult for competitors to imitate. Next companies must reorganize to learn from alliances and focus on internal development. To buy this article click here.
A study of the diversification records of 33 large U.S. companies from 1950 to 1986 shows that diversification--whether through acquisition, joint venture, or start-up--generally has not brought the competitive advantages or profitability expected. Portfolio management, restructuring, transferring skills, and sharing activities are four concepts of corporate strategy that companies most commonly use. Companies have the best chance of being successful at diversification if they capitalize on the existing relationships between business units by having them transfer skills and share activities. To buy this article click here.
Many factors determine the nature of competition, including not only rivals, but also the economics of particular industries, new entrants, the bargaining power of customers and suppliers, and the threat of substitute services or products. A strategic plan of action based on this might include: positioning the company so that its capabilities provide the best defense against the competitive forces; influencing the balance of forces through strategic moves; and anticipating shifts in the factors underlying competitive forces. To buy this article click here.
The authors' thesis is that successful organizations - the market leaders - excel at delivering one type of value to their chosen customers. The key is focus. Market leaders choose a single "value discipline" - best total cost, best product, or best total solution - and then build their organization around it. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
A history of strategic planning reviews the pitfalls of planning, showing how it can destroy commitment, discourage change, and breed a political atmosphere and arguing that managers must rethink the process. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
The book that explored Porter's concept of the value chain - a method of disaggregating a company into "activities," or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
Based on analysis of over one-hundred leading manufacturing and service industries in ten nations, Michael Porter presents a theory of how and why some nations compete more effectively in international markets than others. The book introduces Porter's "diamond," a way to understand the competitive position of a nation Porter's concept of "clusters," or groups of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and institutions that arise in particular locations. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
Porter introduces his three generic strategies -- lowest cost, differentiation, and focus. He shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
Kaplan and Norton outline their performance measurement system that links strategic objective to individual and organisational performance measures. To buy this book from Amazon.com click here.
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