Corporate Management of Diversified Companies - Information Demand and Information Processing
Corporate Management of Diversified Companies - Information Demand and Information Processing

Author: Nicolas Rabener

Publisher: diplom.de

Published: 2005-08-18

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13: 383248955X

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Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: The ultimate management challenge is said to be the management of a conglomerate. Diversified companies, especially conglomerates, are complex organisations that in the larger cases resemble full-blown economies, rather than firms. They develop internal capital markets with billion dollar budgets, enormous internal labour markets, and often a decent amount of bureaucracy. The International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT) owned more than 150 businesses in the 1960s, ranging from electronics to insurance companies, with operations across the globe. The architect of ITT, Harold Greneen, once acquired 20 unrelated business in a single month and was strongly convinced that sound management principles could be applied to any type of business. He believed that information was key to good management. During his reign earnings increased a 100 consecutive quarters and seemed to support this management belief. In the late 1960s, earnings did not increase any longer and the stock price lost significantly in value. By the early 1980s the company was already heavily involved in deconglomeration and had divested more than a 100 businesses. ITT was not the only diversified company in the 1980s that was on the search for focus. The conglomerate strategy went out of fashion with investors, due to poor performance associated with this strategy. The result was a conglomerate discount of an average 15 percent on the stock market that persists until today. Despite this investor aversion, some companies continued the conglomerate path and managed to be highly successful at the same time. General Electric has a broad product portfolio, which contains electronics and insurance businesses, too, and is currently the most valuable company in the world in terms of market capitalisation. Warren Buffet s Berkshire Hathaway, Citigroup or Virgin are diversified as well and have created substantial value for their owners. These and other successful diversifiers have mastered managing the diversified company. Diversification has been studied in strategic management, finance, economics, organisations theory and other subjects. Each of these subjects views the duties of corporate management of a diversified company slightly different. Combining the views yields an integrated approach for managing a diversified company. First is the management of the corporate portfolio that includes a selection of businesses that are desired and a continuous [...]

Downscoping
Downscoping

Author: Robert E. Hoskisson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1994-09-01

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0195360117

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Large, diversified firms face unique challenges as they compete worldwide, and corporate restructuring is one way multinationals strive for competitive advantage. Weighing the pros and cons of a variety of approaches to restructuring, Downscoping offers executives a clear, strategic path through the maze. The authors show that when a multinational conglomerate fails to compete effectively, too much diversification may be the culprit. Whether the result of weak corporate governance or poor corporate strategy, over-diversification can make managers, unfamiliar with some of the markets in which they compete, opt for safety over innovation. This risk-aversion and lack of long-range commitment to innovation lead inevitably to stagnation over the longer term. The answer is not downsizing--closing offices and laying off personnel--but downscoping: a strategic approach to restructuring. The options include incentive and compensation adjustments for executives, leveraged buy-outs and capital structure changes, focusing on core skills, diversifying internationally while focusing on businesses in which a firm has strong competencies, and buying and selling mature businesses where product development is not a great concern. Regardless of the approach, executives must exercise strategic leadership during and after restructuring, including providing strategic direction, exploiting core competencies, developing human capital, and sustaining the corporate culture. Based on systematic research rather than casual observation, Downscoping provides a strong description of restructuring alternatives and their resulting tradeoffs. Its specific guidelines for maintaining competitiveness will be essential reading for managers involved in corporate restructuring.

International Business: Strategic management of multinationals
International Business: Strategic management of multinationals

Author: Alan M. Rugman

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 9780415247146

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This comprehensive four volume set includes all major contributions to the field of international business. It also includes key writings in the areas of international political economy and on regional and national issues.

The Management of Corporate Acquisitions
The Management of Corporate Acquisitions

Author: Alessandro Sinatra

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-27

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 1349130168

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Finally! A comprehensive volume on the management of corporate acquisitions that summarizes contemporary research, and that moves what we know about acquisition management a step further. The book encompasses innovative works from several countries, related to a variety of issues; managerial motives, the role of acquisitions in competitive strategy, as well as organizational and political processes. Unlike several other works on acquisitions, this book emphasizes the most critical issue faced by managers today; how to manage successfully already acquired companies and operations. Both researchers, managers and students of strategy and organization will find this book an important supplement.

Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalisation
Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalisation

Author: Dallas Hanson

Publisher: Cengage AU

Published: 2016-09-29

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 0170373150

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With an emphasis on global advantage, the text offers a comprehensive examination of regional and international issues to provide a complete, accurate and up-to-date explanation of the strategic management process. New coverage on environmental concerns and emerging technologies as well as examples and cases from Australia, New Zealand and Asia-Pacific serve to engage students while updated international content demonstrates how strategic management is used in the global economy. The text takes a 'resource-based' approach, which requires the examining of a firm's unique bundling of its internal resources. This text is appropriate for upper-level undergrad, usually third year; post grad in Masters courses.

Current Topics in Management
Current Topics in Management

Author: M. Afzalur Rahim

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1351524100

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Current Topics in Management presents basic research on the theory and practice of management and administration. Volume 12 contains eleven contributions divided into four sections. The editor explains the volume in Chapter 1, while the other chapters were the survivors of competitive reviews of 124 submissions to the thirteenth annual International Conference on Advances in Management held at Lisbon, Portugal.Part 1, "Managing Evolution and Transformation" contains three chapters that deal with organizational transformation through reengineering for improving business processes, an organizing framework for the emergence of new organizational forms, and concepts and forms of "do-it-yourself" in organizations which involve creative use of resources to deal with a problem. Part 2, "Managing Inappropriateness" deals with some unusual situations: managing global imbalances that require cooperation and commitment from all countries and one of the most important contemporary phenomena--misrepresentation or radical distortion of reality. Part 3, "Issues in Strategic Management" focuses on the relationships of board of directors' attributes, conflict, and shared mental models to board effectiveness, controlling CEO compensation through an independent board of directors, and ecologically responsive behavior of corporate actors.The final part, "Entrepreneurship and Behavior in Organizations" concentrates with an opportunity-based approach to the theory and research in entrepreneurial discovery research; a study of the moderating effects of goal commitment, task feedback, and reward for competence on the relationship between work overload and creativity; and guidelines to managers for the diagnosis of the spiritual health and intervention to enhance spirituality at work.This volume will be of interest to corporate libraries, advanced students in management and administration, economists, and labor studies specialists. It is the official publication of the Center for Advanced Studies in Management

Strategic Leadership
Strategic Leadership

Author: Sydney Finkelstein

Publisher: Strategic Management

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0195162072

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This book integrates and assesses the vast and rapidly growing literature on strategic leadership, which is the study of top executives and their effects on organizations. The basic premise is that in order to understand why organizations do the things they do, or perform the way they do, we need to deeply comprehend the people at the top-- their experiences, abilities, values, social connections, aspirations, and other human features. The actions--or inactions--of a relatively small number of key people at the apex of an organization can dramatically affect organizational outcomes. The scope of strategic leadership includes individual executives, especially chief executive officers (CEOs), groups of executives (top management teams, or TMTs); and governing bodies (particularly boards of directors). Accordingly, the book addresses an array of topics regarding CEOs (e.g., values, personality, motives, demography, succession, and compensation); TMTs (including composition, processes, and dynamics); and boards of directors (why boards look and behave the way they do, and the consequences of board profiles and behaviors). Strategic Leadership synthesizes what is known about strategic leadership and indicates new research directions. The book is meant primarily for scholars who strive to assess and understand the phenomena of strategic leadership. It offers a considerable foundation on which professionals involved in executive search, compensation, appraisal and staffing, as well as board members who evaluate executive performance and potential, might build their tools and perspectives.

Leading Organizations
Leading Organizations

Author: Gill Robinson Hickman

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 697

ISBN-13: 1412939089

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The Second Edition of Leading Organizations offers an expanded focus on the fluid roles of leaders and participants (followers) and their mutual responsibility for organizational leadership. Like the first edition, this text contains chapters on implementing the organization's mission, structure, culture and strategy written by leading scholars in the fieild. New features include: - Strategic leadership - Virtual leadership - Leadership, organizational change, and conflict - Building a culture of leadership

Computational Analysis of Firms’ Organization and Strategic Behaviour
Computational Analysis of Firms’ Organization and Strategic Behaviour

Author: Edoardo Mollona

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-09-13

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 1136959947

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This book addresses possible applications of computer simulation to theory building in management and organizational theory. The key hypothesis is that modelling and computer simulation provide an environment to develop, test and articulate theoretical propositions. In general, computer simulation provides an experimental environment where researchers are able to play with symbolic representations of phenomena by modifying the model’s structure and activating or deactivating model’s parameters. This environment allows to both generating hypotheses to ex post explain observed phenomena or to ex ante generate distributions of unrealized events thereby envisioning areas for further empirical investigations. Under a methodological perspective, the volume investigates logics and techniques to design a research strategy grounded on computer simulation. In particular, the articles in the book concentrate on two different techniques, and philosophies, to set up a simulation study: System Dynamics, which is grounded on differential equations and feedback theory, and agent-based modeling. The book describes how computer simulation helps to look into research issues typical to strategic management and organizational theory. In this respect, such themes as firms’ diversification strategies, competitive strategy, rivalry and the impact of role dynamics on organizational performances are explored through the lenses of computer simulation models.

Competitive Advantage
Competitive Advantage

Author: Michael E. Porter

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-06-30

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 1416595848

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Now beyond its eleventh printing and translated into twelve languages, Michael Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations has changed completely our conception of how prosperity is created and sustained in the modern global economy. Porter’s groundbreaking study of international competitiveness has shaped national policy in countries around the world. It has also transformed thinking and action in states, cities, companies, and even entire regions such as Central America. Based on research in ten leading trading nations, The Competitive Advantage of Nations offers the first theory of competitiveness based on the causes of the productivity with which companies compete. Porter shows how traditional comparative advantages such as natural resources and pools of labor have been superseded as sources of prosperity, and how broad macroeconomic accounts of competitiveness are insufficient. The book introduces Porter’s “diamond,” a whole new way to understand the competitive position of a nation (or other locations) in global competition that is now an integral part of international business thinking. Porter's concept of “clusters,” or groups of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and institutions that arise in particular locations, has become a new way for companies and governments to think about economies, assess the competitive advantage of locations, and set public policy. Even before publication of the book, Porter’s theory had guided national reassessments in New Zealand and elsewhere. His ideas and personal involvement have shaped strategy in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Portugal, Taiwan, Costa Rica, and India, and regions such as Massachusetts, California, and the Basque country. Hundreds of cluster initiatives have flourished throughout the world. In an era of intensifying global competition, this pathbreaking book on the new wealth of nations has become the standard by which all future work must be measured.