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Strategy - Miscellaneous Articles on Strategy

These articles cover a wide range of aspects, such as competition, competitive advantages, strategy implementation, different strategic approaches, organizational issues, strategic management, strategic portfolios and more.

Directory

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 Dangerous Time to Be a Niche Player	Friendly and unfriendly takeovers are around every corner, and it doesn't take an acquisition to put a niche company out of business. This excerpt, from Beating the Global Consolidation Endgame: Nine Strategies for Winning in Niches (McGraw-Hill, 2008), offers tips for surviving industry consolidation.
Ain’t it “Suite”? Bundling in the PC Office Software Market	Our paper examines the importance of bundling for the evolution of the PC office software market. Using a discrete choice model of product differentiation, our empirical results suggest that word processors and spreadsheets are complements. We also find empirical support for economies of scope for these products. These factors provide incentives for firms to bundle these products.
Branching Out From The Core	IT can help companies identify growth opportunities and strategies outside the core business. 2004
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
Comparative strategy process research: A methodological approach	Today, there is no generally accepted concept for the comparative empirical exploration of strategy processes. The paper proposes a methodological approach that combines a number of established research methods.
Competitive Strategy and Social Responsibility: A Process Perspective	This paper provides a process perspective on the relationship between competitive strategy and social responsibility. It provides the results of an exploratory study that addresses three questions. First, is there a separation in how a company enacts social responsibility? Second, how does social responsibility affect competitive strategy? Third, how is social responsibility integrated into corporate strategy?
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
Corporate Development	Slide show on corporate strategy, portfolio management tools, new venturing and turnaround strategy
Countering strategic risk with pattern thinking	How to identify tomorrow's profit zones before the competition. Pdf-File 300 KB
Creating New Jobs and Value with Private Equity	Forget what you might have heard about Private Equity (PE). Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that PE destroys companies and employment.Is it time for traditional firms to reconsider their strategies? Yes. Because every firm can enhance value creation and reach new levels of excellence.
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
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.
Differentiation, Niche and Cost Leadership Strategies: A Hotelling Based Analysis	Costs are an important determinant of prices charged by firms. The primary purpose of this paper is to study the impact of costs associated with differentiation and niche strategies on firm’s positioning and pricing decisions in a horizontally differentiated market.
Does the Balanced Scorecard make a difference to the strategy development process?	A number of studies have been published examining which are the most popular tools; however there is little empirical evidence on how their utilisation influences the strategy process. This paper is based on a large scale international survey on the strategy development process, and seeks to examine the impact of a particular strategy tool, the Balanced Scorecard, upon the strategy process.
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
Evaluating Strategy Tools Through Activity Lens	While hundredts of different strategy tools are available, reports concerning their usefulness remain ambiguous. This paper takes a new approach to evaluating strategy tools by focusing on strategizing activities.
Executive Use of Strategy Tools:	Building Shared Understanding through Boundary Objects. This article presents an empirical study of over 250 company executives. The study focuses on their use of strategy tools (management tools that support strategy-work).
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
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
Generic Verticalization Strategies in Enterprise System Markets: An Exploratory Framework	In recent years, enterprise system (ES) software markets have been very dynamic. While contemporary customers are increasingly seeking ES solutions that require less and less customization and implementation effort, it is unclear whether all ES providers should take the "vertical" path of offering functionality tailored to specific industries.
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)
Hidden Flaws in Strategy	Can insights from behavioural economics explain why good executives back bad strategies?
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 to Fit Your Product Strategy to Small & Medium-Sized Businesses	Opportunities abound for the small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) market to adopt technologies that will advance their operations and expand their sales capabilities. This article suggests steps to take to successfully move your product line from the enterprise to SMBs. pdf-file. 2006
Manage Costs to Advance Strategic Objectives	Taking costs out of an organization carries significant risks as well as opportunities. How companies approach cost reductions now will help determine their financial health and competitive position when the recovery takes hold.
Management tools and trends 2007 - Summary of the Survey	Results are in for Bain's global Management Tools and Trends survey. This year's survey of 1,221 global executives found four strong themes: Sharpened customer focus, Outward bound, Beyond cost cutting, and Establishment of power tools. Today, executives around the world are using more tools than when last surveyed in 2004.
Management Tools and Trends 2009	As executives shift gears amid economic worries, they are changing the tools they use to manage their businesses.
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.
Management Tools survey 2007: An Executive's Guide	To help inform managers about the tools available to them, in 1993 Bain & Company launched a multiyear research project to gather facts about the use and performance of management tools. Every year or two since, we've interviewed senior managers and conducted research to identify 25 of the most popular and pertinent management tools. 2007
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
McKinsey Matrix	This article introduces the McKinsey Matrix / GE Matrix as a tool for portfolio management
Mining hidden gems often pays dividends	Confronting the need to redefine their core, many management teams find themselves tempted by big-bang solutions: dramatic, transformative mergers or aggressive leaps into sexy new markets. But seemingly bold moves like these rarely pay off.
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 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
Power Strategy Formation in a Human Service Organization Undergoing Turbulent Change	The present research examines power strategy formation of employees in a mental health organization that went through a long separation from a psychiatric hospital. The central questions addressed were: What kinds of strategies emerge when there is turbulent organiza-tional change? How do the employees deal with the turbulent events in terms of power strategies? How are their power strategies similar or different? What relational power pat-terns emerge around the power strategies?
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
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 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
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 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
Sustainable strategic management: construct, parameters, research directions	Much of the management scholarship on the strategy performance relationship has focused primarily on the economic, short- and intermediate-term outcomes associated with an organisation's strategies. Recently, however, a largely disparate group of researchers has challenged the long-term viability of many such strategies, primarily from environmental and ecological points of view.
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 Core’s Competence	The case for recentralization in consumer products companies. 2005
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 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 Joint Influence of Control Strategies and Market Turbulence on Strategic Performance in Sales-Driven Organizations	The effect of management control efforts on organizational actors’ participation in the strategy process is investigated. Results from a survey of sales-driven organizations indicate that self, professional, activity, and output control systems have varying effects on participation in strategic activity.
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 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: General, Corporate & Competitive	There are at least three basic forms of strategy in the business world and it helps to keep them straight. The objectives of this brief paper are to clarify the general concept of strategy and draw attention to the importance of distinguishing among three forms 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 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 to Do When Traditional Diversification Strategies Fail	A Study on Diversification and Asset Correlation in Up and Down Markets.	new
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.
Why Strategy Matters	Exploring the link between strategy, competitive advantage and the stock market. pdf-file
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