Terms such as the 'new competitive landscape', 'hypercompetition' and 'inherent instability and change' have been used over the past decade to describe the changing global competitive environment. A plethora of strategic and operational measures have been used to enable firms to gain sustainable competitive advantage, with varying degrees of success. Yet we remain in largely uncharted territory with strategic preparation for the future becoming a critical activity. Strategy and Performance provides academics, practitioners and students with a highly focused approach to competing in the global marketplace.
Synthesizes a body of research and theories relating to the way firms can undergo transformation in order to remain competitive in a changing business environment. This book includes the coordination and alignment of a firm's business strategy.
Michael Gibbert presents a thoughtful theoretical framework allowing readers to critically think about imaginations related to strategy making. His research is based on a highly complex case and diversified context allowing us to understand the use of different theories in an integrated way. Gilbert Probst, World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland Putting imagination center stage in strategy making is a long overdue perspective, one that can renew the field. Michael Gibbert makes an important contribution through this integrative framing. Yves Doz, INSEAD, France If you can t imagine the future of your company, how are you supposed to shape it? This book helps appreciate and execute imaginative strategy making. Martin Hoegl, WHU Otto Beisheim Graduate School of Management, Germany Which strategy making approach works best in a crisis? In current literature, the recommendations oscillate between prediction, control, and practice, but this unique book focuses specifically on strategy making in a crisis. In a crisis, the business landscape is neither stable nor predictable, resources are scarce rather than abundant, customers disappear and shareholders revolt, all of which can make prediction and control very difficult. Drawing on evidence from philosophy, and on a multi-year case study of a major multinational, Michael Gibbert points to three different kinds of imaginations and proposes a three-step model for imaginative strategy making. Introducing new topics on this subject, Strategy Making in a Crisis will strongly appeal to top-level managers, including corporate development departments, and business-unit level strategy. Postgraduate students will also receive ideas for their own theses, not only from the content, but also from the approach which is deductive and integrates management theories using social science literature and methodology.
There has been a great deal of speculation recently concerning the likely impact of the 'Information Age' on warfare. In this vein, much of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) literature subscribes to the idea that the Information Age will witness a transformation in the very nature of war. In this book, David Lonsdale puts that notion to the test. Using a range of contexts, the book sets out to look at whether the classical Clausewitzian theory of the nature of war will retain its validity in this new age. The analysis covers the character of the future battlespace, the function of command, and the much-hyped concept of Strategic Information Warfare. Finally, the book broadens its perspective to examine the nature of 'Information Power' and its implications for geopolitics. Through an assessment of both historical and contemporary case studies (including the events following September 11 and the recent war in Iraq), the author concludes that although the future will see many changes to the conduct of warfare, the nature of war, as given theoretical form by Clausewitz, will remain essentially unchanged.
Neutrosophy as science has inclusive attributes that make possible to extract the contributions of neutral values in the analysis of data sets; it builds a unified field of logic for transdisciplinary studies that transcend the boundaries between natural and social sciences. Neutral philosophy seeks to solve the problems of indeterminacy that appear universally, to reform the current natural or social sciences, with an open methodology to promote innovation. The research products related in this special issue start from the premise that the difficulty is not the complexity of the social environment, but the instrumental obsolescence to observe, interpret and manage that complexity, there are bold approaches and proposals for valid solutions that come to enrich the universe of resolution through the use of neutral methods. In the last year, the use of tools related to neutrosophy and its application to the social sciences, modeling of social phenomena based on simulation agents, problems associated with health, psychology, education, environmental management and sustainability solutions and legal sciences has increased in the events organized by the Asociacion Latinoamericana de Ciencias Neutrosoficas (ALCN in Spanish). The methods of higher incidence are cognitive maps, neutral Iadovs, neutral Delphi, analytical hierarchy process methods, neutral statistics, neutral personality models, among the most significant. In this special issue, there is a predominance of research from Ecuadorian universities, demonstrating how neutrosophy and its methods are consolidated as instruments of analysis, inference and research validation.
This book presents various empirical analyses of cross border strategies adopted by global firms with a particular emphasis on the European and East Asian experiences. It also provides studies of the trends and prospects of regional economic integration, focusing mainly on East Asia. The book addresses the topic of economic integration from both a corporate perspective and a policy perspective.
Focusing on Business to Customer (B2C) internet business, and on firms that offer intangible products and/or services that can be directly consumed via the world wide web, Strategic Management and Online Selling also covers immaterial products and online news information or home banking. Considering how firms with similar specific characteristics are able to realize competitive advantages, this topical book discusses an area of particular contemporary importance and increasing academic study.
This book examines the political consequences of the economic crisis in Southern Europe from the perspective of a widening intergenerational divide. It focuses on the cases of Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain to fill the gap in the literature by examining various age-related rifts in post-crisis Southern Europe. Public discussion about the economic crisis of the late 2000s to mid-2010s in Southern Europe often refers to its impact on the region’s younger citizens, but not enough attention has been given to the political consequences of the crisis on the young. The comparative studies in the volume cover various thematic areas, such as electoral behaviour, political culture, democratic values, forms of political engagement and political representation. The overarching questions that the book attempts to answer are: a) to what extent and in what areas can one talk about an emergent generational divide in the region, and b) has the experience of the economic crisis been profound enough for young South Europeans to create a new ‘crisis political generation’? Many of the answers offered point to tangible effects of the crisis, but mostly in the sense of accentuating dynamics that already existed. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.
"Authoritative and convincing."—New York Times Book Review The classic reference on the theory and practice of war The essays in this volume analyze war, its strategic characterisitics, and its political and social functions over the past five centuries. The diversity of its themes and the broad perspectives applied to them make the book a work of general history as much as a history of the theory and practice of war from the Renaissance to the present. Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age takes the first part of its title from an earlier collection of essays that became a classic of historical scholarship. Three essays are repinted from the earlier book while four others have been extensively revised. The rest—twenty-two essays—are new. The subjects addressed range from major theorists and political and military leaders to impersonal forces. Machiavelli, Clausewitz, and Marx and Engels are discussed, as are Napoleon, Churchill, and Mao. Other essays trace the interaction of theory and experience over generations—the evolution of American strategy, for instance, or the emergence of revolutionary war in the modern world. Still others analyze the strategy of particular conflicts—the First and Second World Wars—or the relationship between technology, policy, and war in the nuclear age. Whatever its theme, each essay places the specifics of military thought and action in their political, social, and economic environment. Together, the contributors have produced a book that reinterprets and illuminates war, one of the most powerful forces in history and one that cannot be controlled in the future without an understanding of its past.
An illuminating insight into the work of Thomas Schelling, one of the most influential strategic thinkers of the nuclear age. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the United States' early forays into Vietnam, he had become one of the most distinctive voices in Western strategy. This book shows how Schelling's thinking is much more than a reaction to the tensions of the Cold War. In a demonstration that ideas can be just as significant as superpower politics, Robert Ayson traces the way this Harvard University professor built a unique intellectual framework using a mix of social-scientific reasoning, from economics to social theory and psychology. As such, this volume offers a rare glimpse into the intellectual history which underpins classical thinking on nuclear strategy and arms control - thinking which still has an enormous influence in the early twenty-first century.
