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5-Forces Industry Analysis	A look at Porter’s 5-Forces Industry Analysis as a tool to assess the key success factors in the National Basketball Association. 2005
A Portfolio of Strategic Leaders	What is the relationship between a leader's personal characteristics and the life cycle stage of a business? How does a company's strategic competitive differentiator influence the effectiveness of the leader? When strategy changes, must leadership also change?
Achieving Measurable Performance Improvement in a Changing World	KPMG has released a white paper assessing how organizations are addressing the challenge of bringing insightful and reliable information into strategic decision-making. Pdf-file
Analysis of Business Strategy	This article defines strategy, explains how to identify a business strategy, and then discusses how to evaluate one.
Branching Out From The Core	IT can help companies identify growth opportunities and strategies outside the core business. 2004
Building a Customer-centric Company	Four experts to discuss how service works in a truly customer-centric company
Building and Sustaining Intellectual Assets	For most organizations, the most key element is the intangible we label "Intellectual Assets." These take the form of Competencies and Culture and are largely embodied in our people.
Building Digital Value Chains	The modern value chain is far more complex than those of even a decade ago. New levels of connectivity, a relentless focus on cost-cutting and core competency, and market demand for innovation have created monstrously complex interactions between enterprises. This is especially true with alliances and partnerships in a new category of value-chain relationships called "smart-sourcing." 2005
Champion, Citizen, Cynic? Social Positions in the Strategy Process	This study is focused on the social positions of individual organizational members in organizational strategy processes. Strategy is a social practice existent in a wide variety of different organizations, influencing, either directly or indirectly, a large number of organizational members. The objective of this study is to understand and illuminate the variety of social positions assumed by organizational members from the CEO to the operative employee level in organizational strategy processes.  Dissertation. pdf-file 2003
Chance favors the prepared mind	Spotting the leading indicators of change through Strategic Anticipation. Pdf-file 200 KB
Chance, Choice and Determinism in Strategy	Our discipline lacks a fundamental theory of causation, one that integrates strategic choice and deterministic perspectives and leaves room for chance. In reply, we venture beyond strategy and the organization sciences into intellectual history and complexity theory. pdf-file 2004
Channel Conflicts	Mapping the way to overcoming channel conflict. February 2001
Channel Conflicts II	New channel opportunities: The channel conflict strategy matrix. February 2001
Collaboration	Will you sell out or outsell? Collaboration can make the difference. Despite the considerable benefits promised by collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR), three primary fears keep many companies from tapping its potential. Weighing these fears against reality reveals a clearer picture of the benefits and risks associated with CPFR.
Competing for the Future: a means to intent	It has been suggested that Hamel and Prahalad's book Competing for the Future proposes a business paradigm where the ideas of strategic intent and core competences replace the notion of strategy advocated by Michael Porter. This paper explores the implied dichotomy in the former statement by teasing out the inherent ambiguities and irony that is strategy as a process.
Congruence Model	A roadmap for understanding organizational performance
Contextual Bundling: A New Angle when Strategizing for Higher Market Penetration	Bundling has emerged as a key issue in current marketing and business thinking. By extending contemporary conceptualizations, this article proposes a new approach to bundling for both marketing of products and services. pdf-file. 2005
Controlling the Choke Point	Chris Tchen explains why "choke-point" control is more vital to corporate success than ever before
Core Competencies in a Stakeholder View	pdf-file 2002
Corporate Development	Slide show on corporate strategy, portfolio management tools, new venturing and turnaround strategy
Corporate Strategy Development Process	Understanding the influences behind the choice of corporate strategy development process. Companies approach corporate strategy in many different ways.  Why? Pdf-file
Countering strategic risk with pattern thinking	How to identify tomorrow's profit zones before the competition. Pdf-File 300 KB
Creating Strategic Value by Balancing Risk and Opportunities	No risk - no reward? The old mantra of business seems to have lost its meaning: cut-throat competition, ever-emerging markets and a general loss of trust in economic stability has led many corporations to tread overly carefully. But help is on the way. In the last couple of years risk management tools and methodology from the financial services sector have been more and more transferred into everyday business. In this article Brecht and Bassler explain the foundations of this approach. pdf-file 132 KB. 2005
Critical Success Factors	This paper describes the concept of critical success factors as a method of addressing the managerial information needs that is important to success in goal achievement. Pdf-file
Critical success factors and competencies in standardisation strategy	In this paper, we try to give a little contribution in the study of applications of competence based management. We have studied the role of competencies in the success of standardisation strategy. Pdf-file
Customer Profitability	Consumer products companies compete fiercely for the business of large retailers. Customer profitability analysis can ensure that those efforts deliver positive return on investment. Pdf-file 2003
Cutting Costs at What Price?	When the short-term outlook says "cut back," what does that mean for the future? Companies that indiscriminately cut costs could end up struggling with shortages of skilled workers and experienced managers, low employee morale, poor customer relations, and a lack of infrastructure and resources.
Determining where a product stands on the Product Life Cycle curve	It is sometimes difficult for managers to determine exactly where an existing product stands in the Product Life Cycle curve. This article explains why and gives recommendations on how managers can overcome this challenge.
Donating Intellectual Assets	Recently, a handful of corporate leaders pioneered a new way to mine unused technology: Donating undeveloped patents and copyrights to not-for-profit organizations, such as universities or medical research centers. Handled in the right way and for the right reasons, donations can create win-win situations for everyone involved, from shareholders to the public.
End of Life: Retiring a Product	Outdated software can turn into a monster. How do you discontinue a product that is no longer profitable? And how do you know that it's time?
Environmental Management	Sustainability, Eco-Efficiency, Life-Cycle Management and Business Strategy. This article outlines some of the rationale for integrating environment and sustainability issues into core business practises and provides some guidance on how companies can begin to take a strategic view when selecting environmental management tools. pdf-file
Escape The Founder’s Trap	If you are a successful entrepreneur, at some point you will be concerned about being caught in the founder’s trap. In 'Corporate Lifecycles'  Ichak Adizes uses that term to describe your inability to make the transition to an organization with strong administrative systems, and to supplement your personal drive and magnetism with professional management. The founder’s trap is a limit to your growth, and could spell the demise of your company. pdf-file
Experience Spillovers across Corporate Development Activities	This study develops a theoretical explanation for the existence of positive, as well as negative, experience spillovers across corporate development activities. The argument is used to understand how alliance experience influences the performance of acquisitions in the US commercial banking industry. pdf-file 2001
Exploring Strategy and Board Structure in Nonprofit Organizations	This research explores how nonprofit managers conceptualize their organization’s strategic orientation toward products and services and in what way the governing board is structured to match that orientation. pdf-file. 2004
Extending Product Life Cycle Stages	The Product Life Cycle (PLC) model is introduced and its merits and faults are addressed.  Considerations, ways and reasons to extend PLC stages are explained.  Examples are provided to show how product marketing and management strategies can be used at different PLC stages to help establish market dominance and drive sales.
From competitive advantage to value innovation	pdf-file
Guerrilla Tactics	Low-cost, creative strategies allow you to fight and win in today's marketplace.
Have We Run Out of Big Ideas?	As most corporations hunker down into cost-cutting mode, no one is touting their version of the Next Big Thing. But there's something out there that we all may be missing. 2003
Hidden champions	In Hidden Champions Professor Hermann Simon refers to a group of companies of medium to small size that are low profile and highly profitable. They are typically durable but wary of trumpeting their own success. And yet, most impressively, they are often a leader in a narrow or niche market sector. pdf-file (see our literature recommendation)
How are decisions made? Exploring the Strategic Decision-Making Process	In business, managers seem to make decisions and afterwards look for ways to justify the decisions. Why is business conducted this way? What is the process for decision-making? Abstract; pdf-file available for download.  2005
How companies can end the cycle of customer abuse	Customer abuse ranges from the trivial but annoying (rental car companies charging exorbitant rates to fill up the tank when you return a car) to the potentially life-threatening (pharmaceutical companies quashing negative findings on their drugs while trumpeting the benefits on television). The earnings that result from this kind of customer abuse are bad profits and too many companies are addicted. pdf-file 2006
How do you win the capital allocation game?	To remain competitive, a company needs to align its capital budgeting system with its overall strategy.
How to Prevent Legal Disasters in Today's Global Marketplace	Without taking additional precautionary measures, you forfeit your ability to control warranty and liability limitations, to restrict and manage overseas distribution and to fully protect your intellectual property. How can you control your liability ahead of time? Here are several steps to take.
How To Revolutionize Your Business	Sometimes the only way to avoid stagnation is to force your company in a direction it doesn’t want to go.
Integrity-Driven Performance: A New Strategy for Success	Read about a new strategy for achieving corporate success through integrated governance, risk and compliance management. 2004
Is Bigger always Better?	During the past two decades, some of the world’s most admired public companies have been explicitly built on the promise of dominant scale. But there are significant limitations to the advantages of size, and rather than focus on a scale-as-endgame strategy, high-performance businesses pay greater attention to achieving the right balance between scale and other key performance factors. 2004
Making Sense of Executive Pay	What is the right way of aligning executive pay and shareholder value? First, be clear about what really drives a company's value. Second, link pay to successful strategy execution, as well as to outperforming peers in the stock market. Pdf-file 2003
Management tools survey 2003	Usage up as companies strive to make headway in tough times. Pdf-file
Management tools survey 2005	Bain & Company's 2005 Management Tools & Trends survey finds that the influence of technology on management tools choices is taking hold.
Managing for Today & Tomorrow: Strategy & the High Performance Business	Accenture evaluated high performance in individual companies by both qualitative and quantitative measures. Despite their differences to the generalist eye, our research shows that these companies share common characteristics. 2004
Market Niche Entry Decisions	Competition, Learning and Strategy in Tokyo Banking, 1894-1936. pdf-file
Market Performance and Competition: A Product Life Cycle Model	The paper introduces a new simulation model of market dynamics by integrating several concepts of evolutionary economics. Pdf-file
Market-Driving Organizations: A Framework	The first section of this paper presents an overview of market-orientation, market-driven, and market-driving strategies. The second section provides a framework to better understand the process involved in creating and implementing a market-driving culture. Finally, the last section examines the relationship between market-driving strategies and business performance. 2004
Matrix Organizational Structure	The structure of choice among CEOs is the matrix. The secret to success is to build on its strengths while managing its weaknesses. Pdf-file
McKinsey Matrix	This article introduces the McKinsey Matrix / GE Matrix as a tool for portfolio management
Micro Strategy and Strategizing: Towards an Activity-Based View	The authors propose an acitvity-based view of strategy that focuses on the detailed processes and practices which constitute the day-to-day activities of organizational life and which relate to strategic outcomes. Pdf-file
Mintzberg's Taxonomy of Organizational Forms
New Metrics for Market Share: Lessons from the Airlines	Identifying a target market share is indispensable for strategic goal setting. Dramatic shifts in the airline industry show how certain time-honored measures can be misleading, even dangerously so. New metrics assessing exposure to disruptive competition are critically needed by old-line carriers if they are to meet the challenge of aggressive newcomers. The airlines' story is hardly an isolated one - it has lessons for consumer companies that might be similarly buffeted by a changing business environment. pdf-file 2006
Organizational Architecture: A Framework for Successful Transformation	This paper overviews the purpose of organizational architecture. Particular emphasis is given to a step-by-step approach an organization can take to discover or create its own organizational architecture. Pdf-file 115 KB
Organizational Theory: Determinants of Structure	The objective here is to understand why organizations have the structure that they do. By "structure" the author means things like degree and type of horizontal differentiation, vertical differentiation, mechanisms of coordination and control, formalization, and centralization of power.
Organizing for Performance	Modern firms improve the interplay between strategy and organization. BP offers a useful example.
Organizing for the Future	Conceptual Framework and empirical Evidence from Successful German Companies
Product Life Cycle Management	For a company to successfully manage a product’s life cycle, needs to develop strategies and methodologies, some of which are discussed in this paper. Pdf-file
Reflecting on the strategy process	In this article, Henry Mintzberg discusses the process of strategy making and the ten "schools" of strategy	TOP
Reinvent Your Company	At companies like GE Capital, Enron, and Schwab, billion-dollar business ideas bubble up from the ranks. Here are ten rules for designing a culture that inspires innovation.
Resource Based View	Is the resource based view a useful perspective for strategic management research?
Scenarios, Strategies and the Strategy Process	Describes strategy and the strategic process
Stakeholders and Strategic Management: The Misappropriation of Discourse	This paper critically examines the relationship between stakeholder theory and strategic management. The paper reveals how stakeholding can become a crude means of manipulation which provides a surface gloss to managerial decisionmaking but leaves fundamental inequalities unchanged. pdf-file
Strategic capabilities: Changing games	Leading Internet companies like embay, Amazon, NetZero and E*Trade created disruptive change. The capabilities they offer are not new, but they all changed the rules of the game by forming new coalitions, providing new information and changing the order of play for transactions. pdf-file
Strategic Deployment: A Key to Profitable Growth	Matching Capabilities and Plans to Customer Needs. Pdf-file
Strategic Game Theory for Managers	A set of slides for a lecture on game theory
Strategic Organization as an Interdisciplinary Agenda within the Field of Strategy	How Do Firms Change in the Face of Constraints to Change? An Agenda for Research on Strategic Organization. Pdf-file 2002
Strategic Purchasing	... will turn buyer - supplier confrontation into cooperation. Simon-Kucher conducted an international investigation of purchasing management. Several trends are emerging
Strategic Scanning and Learning in the New Competitive Landscape - A Learning Approach	In this paper we will attempt to throw new light on the increasingly relevant, albeit not new, subject of strategic scanning by applying a learning perspective to well-known theoretical approaches to strategic scanning and issue management. The reason for doing so is quite simple – in hyper-competitive markets, it has never before been more important to be able to scan the environment and learn from the signals of the scanning system. 2004
Strategic Thinking and Strategy Analysis in Business	A Survey on the Major Lines of Thought and on the State of the Art. 1999. Pdf-file
Strategy as strategic decision making	This article describes strategy as strategic decision making, especially in rapidly changing markets. Its underlying assumption is that "bet the company" decisions - those that change the firm's direction and generate new competitive advantages - arise much more often in these markets.	TOP
Strategy in Action	Strategy is all about creating value for your shareholders. A strategy map is your guide to getting there. Q&A with Robert Kaplan and David Norton. 2003
Strategy innovation and the quest for value	What will catalyze the emergence of new, viable strategies in a successful, but complacent, company? Article by Gary Hamel 1998
Strategy Is... A Lot of Things	Strategy Is Execution
Sunk Costs, Commitment, and Strategy	Commitment is a necessary prerequisite for gaining sustainable competitive advantage. The aim of the paper is to analyse potential trade offs between the advantages and disadvantages of commitment and to give an overview of the factors that influence the optimal timing and extent of irreversible investment. The analysis is based upon the concept of sunk costs. pdf-file
Surviving Supply Chain Integration:	Strategies for Small Manufacturers. Fulltext online version of the book, direct access to each chapter	TOP
The Bigger Picture	For CIOs, long-range planning is an increasing important challenge. Gary Hamel and four IT executives offer their views on doing it well.
The Contribution of Lateral Thinking to Strategy	This paper adopts the distinction between strategy and planning, and looks at the contribution of lateral thinking to strategy theory and practice. The paper surveys de Bono's published works which are dedicated to the idea and practice of lateral thinking, and looks at the distinction between lateral thinking and creative thinking.
The Core’s Competence	The case for recentralization in consumer products companies. 2005
The Deconstruction of Value Chains	The logic of value is undermined, patterns and implications of deconstruction; article by Carl Stern
The Dirty Little Secret of Strategy	A writer-turned-guru is applying himself to the mystery of how companies become revolutionaries.
The Economic Modeling of Strategy Process: “Clean Models” and “Dirty Hands”	The authors argue that their model of learning in alliances (Khanna, Gulati and Nohria, 1998) is an economic model of strategy process. They discuss implications of this view for the strategy process versus content debate, for the appropriate testing of models of strategy process, and for the role of economics in helping understand strategy process. pdf-file 2000
The e-Corporation	In Fortune's cover story, Gary Hamel and Jeff Sampler explain how the revolution of consumer buying over the Web changes the model for all businesses.
The Effect of Corporate Strategy and Regulation on the Risk of Electric Utilities	Very little is known about the influences of corporate strategy and regulation on the risk of regulated firms. The current study addresses this gap by examining the relationship among the level of diversification, the regulatory environment, and risk levels of regulated electric utility companies. pdf-file
The Grey Haired Revolution	What have Monsanto, GE Capital and Marks & Spencer got in common? They're creative and adaptable enough to meet Gary Hamel's definition of 'gray haired revolutionaries'.
The Invisible Market	Why settle for single-digit margins, asks C.K. Prahalad, when there's greater game afoot? Interview with the author on his book 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits' (see our literature recommendation)
The link between ownership structure and firm performance	This thesis explores the link between ownership structure and firm performance among Sweden’s listed companies. The data collected for this research is for the period 1999-2003 and the sample consists of 87 companies. Abstract; pdf-file available for download.  2005
The Necessary Evil of Hierarchies	In achievement-oriented democracies, people complain about the inefficiency of top-down-managed organizations, but ultimately they can’t live without them. 2005
The Quiet Giant Speaks	Warren Staley, CEO of Cargill, shares his insights on the privileges of privacy. June 2004
The Relation between Firm's Competencies and Strategic Orientation	This paper analyzes a unique data set of over two hundred strategic marketing plans with respect to firms’ strategic orientation and the extent to which competitive advantages are based on competencies rather than assets. Pdf-file
The seeds of Destruction	Can successful companies overcome complacency, competitive threats, and shifting markets?; article by Michael Silverstein
The Strategic Enterprise	Organizational Architecture for Sustainable Growth : the value created by common ownership and management of businesses that are strategically linked
The Strategic Management Response to the Challenge of Global Change	This article describes the whole process of strategic management: external and internal analysis, strategic direction, strategic planning, implementation, tools for external analysis
Three Forms of Strategy	Corporate, Competitive an Strategy in General, by Fred Nicklos, provides a good overview on the concepts of strategy
Tools for inventing organizations	Toward a handbook of organizational processes. This paper describes a novel theoretical and empirical approach to tasks such as business process redesign and knowledge management.
Turning Business the Upside Down	Mintzberg on Management (and leadership and strategy and organizations). Pdf-file 2002
Turning Your Business Upside Down	Management expert Gary Hamel talks with Anheuser-Busch’s August Busch III and Enron’s Ken Lay about what it’s like to launch a new strategy in the real world.
Value Creation	Introducing the new Value Creation Index - Statistically, the real intellectual-capital drivers are not what most people think, article by Geoff Baum, Chris Ittner, David Larcker, Jonathan Low, Tony Siesfeld, and Michael S. Malone
What is Strategy?	By Michael E. Porter. Article in Harvard Business Review from 1996. pdf-file
What's a Business Case?	Cost of ownership, ROI and cost/benefit analysis; ways to summarizing a business case; after tax vs. before tax business cases. Pdf-file
When Mega-Mergers don't make Sense	Last year more than 20,000 U.S. companies paired up to add value. The result? They're barely surviving the morning after. CEO Peter Skarzynski explains.
Windfall Economics	When an unexpected success falls into your lap, do you know how to handle it? Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury offers a few lessons. July 2003
Winning strategies for locally-owned businesses in Central Europe	May 2004 will mark a historic step in the political and economic reunification of Europe. Ten new countries will join the European Union (EU), presenting major opportunities and challenges for all businesses in the candidate countries. So how are local firms in the accession countries progressing with their preparations for enlargement? PricewaterhouseCoopers has carried out extensive research to find out more. 2003