Strategic Management

Perhaps the most confounding characteristic of the competitive marketplace is that everyone wants a piece of the action. If a firm successfully enters a new market, creates a new product, or designs new innovations for an existing product, its just a matter of time before competitors follow suit. And the influx of competition inevitably places downward pressure on both price and profitability. But the speed at which competitors invade ones market is not the same in all industries; some are more resistant to the forces of competition than others. In 1979, Harvard economist Michael Porter theorized his Five Forces Model (updated in 2008). The Five Forces Model identifies the characteristics that can help insulate a firm from competitive forces. For the firm that seeks to put together a business plan, or for the firm that is considering opportunities for diversification, an understanding of the Five Forces Model is essential.

This book uses a balanced blend of frameworks and illustrations to teach you how to tackle the challenge of driving performance into the future. Existing strategy tools are no longer enough as they do not explain how to deliver your strategy powerfully over a sustained period.

Sustainable (and green) business seems to have become mainstream practically overnight. This growth in interest in sustainable business practices stems from changing societal expectations and a growing awareness that sustainability creates a win-win situation for the business and humanity alike.

So much change!! If you're confronted with the pressures to change anything in your company, let this book help you focus on building the change capacity of the entire organization with less stress and more effective outcome.

This book demonstrates how the effective capture, dissemination and management of knowledge throughout an organization can make it more competitive.

This book focuses on the business model that guides strategy selection. Business models are defined as the basics of how a company organizes itself for competing and selling its product and/or services.

This book outlines the needed evolution in leadership attitudes and behaviors in the key operational areas such as new product development, sales, operations, customer service, human resources, finance, and information technology.

Conceived less than 20 years ago, Knowledge Management (KM) is the business discipline about which managers perhaps know the least. Having spent pots of money investing in it, the benefits are still marginal. This is because practitioners are still feeling their way.

Intellectual Property Rights have been a part of the American pantheon of types of Property Rights since the beginning of the nation, but using the term to describe a particular type of property right is a new phenomenon dating to the second half of the last century.

This book outlines a cost-effective process for dynamic strategic planning in the domain of the small entrepreneurial firm.

This book is about using business intelligence as a management information system for supporting managerial decision making.

Mergers and acquisitions can be tumultuous for executives. Target companies can expect to lose close to 40 percent of their top management team within two years after acquisition.

Positive management (PM) motivates employees, increases productivity, and accomplishes important organizational goals by creating positive and upbeat relationships with employees.

In addition to the interface between family dynamics and the family's business, we will explore the key tasks in family business consultation: succession planning, selection of the successor, conflict resolution, defining the role of family members in the business, how to involve the management team in succession planning, determining what happens after succession and building a board of advisors.

For some time people thought that business and ethics constituted separate and mutually exclusive realms. Businesses that perpetuate such a belief or still hold that “business ethics” is an oxymoron are at risk. Indeed, managers are now being called on to actively promote ethical organizational integrity. This means understanding the principles that define and creating an organizational culture that measurably encourages ethical conduct. The reason for this shift in paradigm is clear. Ethical organizational integrity drives long-term company success and sustainable value production, serves to prevent illegal conduct, and best contributes to overall social welfare. This book provides a brief introduction to and general framework for managing for ethical-organizational integrity that will be useful to managers and business students alike.