Contemporary Strategy Analysis – Text Only

This edition also places a greater emphasis on strategy implementation. Establishing competitive advantage in a complex and unpredictable business environment requires that firms reconcile scale economies with entrepreneurial flexibility, innovation with cost efficiency and globalization with local responsiveness. This creates new challenges I have maintained an integrated approach to strategy formulation and strategy implementation recognizing their codependence. A strategy that is formulated without regard to its implementation is likely to be fatally flawed. It is through the process of implementation that strategies adapt and emerge. As well as emphasizing the fundamentals of strategy analysis, I draw upon promising new approaches to strategy analysis including the role of complementarity, the use of real options to analyze flexibility, the nature of complexity and the potential for self-organization, and the role of legitimacy and its relevance to corporate social responsibility.

There is very little in this book that is original—I have plundered mercilessly the ideas, theories and evidence of fellow scholars. My greatest debts are to my colleagues and students at the business schools where this book has been developed and tested— notably Georgetown University and Bocconi University. This edition has also benefitted from feedback and suggestions from professors and students in other schools where Contemporary Strategy Analysis is used. I am particularly grateful to Andrew Campbell for assisting with Chapters 16 and 17. With the enhanced Web- based support being provided by the publisher, I look forward to closer interaction with users. The success of Contemporary Strategy Analysis owes much to the professionalism and enthusiasm of the editorial, production and sales and marketing teams at John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. I am especially grateful to Steve Hardman, Deborah Egleton, Catriona King and Rosemary Nixon.