Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases: Competitiveness and Globalization

Book Preface

Our goal in writing each edition of this book is to present a new, up-to-date standard for  explaining the strategic management process. To reach this goal with the 12th edition of  our market-leading text, we again present you with an intellectually rich yet thoroughly  practical analysis of strategic management.

With each new edition, we work hard to achieve the goal of maintaining the standard  that we established for presenting strategic management knowledge in a readable style.  To prepare for each new edition, we carefully study the most recent academic research  to ensure that the content about strategic management that we present to you is up to  date and accurate. In addition, we continuously read articles appearing in many different  and widely read business publications (e.g., Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek,  Fortune, Financial Times, Fast Company, and Forbes, to name a few). We also study postings through social media (such as blogs) given their increasing use as channels of information distribution. By studying a wide array of sources, we are able to identify valuable  examples of how companies are using (or not using) the strategic management process.

Though many of the hundreds of companies that we discuss in the book will be quite  familiar, some will likely be new to you. One reason for this is that we use examples  of companies from around the world to demonstrate the globalized nature of business  operations. To maximize your opportunities to learn as you read and think about how  actual companies use strategic management tools, techniques, and concepts (based on  the most current research), we emphasize a lively and user-friendly writing style. To  facilitate learning, we use an Analysis-Strategy-Performance framework that is explained  in Chapter 1 and referenced throughout the book.

Several characteristics of this 12th edition of our book are designed to enhance your  learning experience:
■ First, we are pleased to note that this book presents you with the most comprehensive  and thorough coverage of strategic management that is available in the market.
■ The research used in this book is drawn from the “classics” as well as the most recent  contributions to the strategic management literature. The historically significant  “classic” research provides the foundation for much of what is known about strategic management, while the most recent contributions reveal insights about how to  effectively use strategic management in the complex, global business environment in  which firms now compete. Our book also presents you with many up-to-date examples of how firms use the strategic management tools, techniques, and concepts that  prominent researchers have developed. Indeed, although this book is grounded in the  relevant theory and current research, it also is strongly application oriented and presents you, our readers, with a large number of examples and applications of strategic  management concepts, techniques, and tools. In this edition, for example, we examine  more than 600 companies to describe the use of strategic management. Collectively,  no other strategic management book presents you with the combination of useful and  insightful research and applications in a wide variety of organizations as does this text Company examples you will find in this edition range from large U.S.-based firms such  as Apple, Amazon.com, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Walmart, Walt Disney, General Electric,  Intel, American Express, Coca-Cola, Google, Target, United Technologies, Kellogg,  DuPont, Marriott, and Whole Foods. In addition, we examine firms based in countries  other than the United States such as Sony, Aldi, Honda, Tata Consultancy, Alibaba, IKEA,  Lenova, Luxottica, and Samsung. As these lists suggest, the firms examined in this book  compete in a wide range of industries and produce a diverse set of goods and services.

■ We use the ideas of many prominent scholars (e.g., Ron Adner, Rajshree Agarwal,  Gautam Ahuja, Raffi Amit, Africa Arino, Jay Barney, Paul Beamish, Peter Buckley,  Ming-Jer Chen, Russ Coff, Rich D’Aveni, Kathy Eisenhardt, Gerry George, Javier  Gimeno, Luis Gomez-Mejia, Melissa Graebner, Ranjay Gulati, Don Hambrick, Connie  Helfat, Amy Hillman, Tomas Hult, Dave Ketchen, Dovev Lavie, Yadong Luo, Shige  Makino, Costas Markides, Anita McGahan, Danny Miller, Will Mitchell, Margie  Peteraf, Michael Porter, Nandini Rajagopalan, Jeff Reuer, Joan Ricart, Richard Rumelt,  David Sirmon, Ken Smith, Steve Tallman, David Teece, Michael Tushman, Margarethe  Wiersema, Oliver Williamson, Mike Wright, Anthea Zhang, and Ed Zajac) to shape  the discussion of what strategic management is. We describe the practices of prominent executives and practitioners (e.g., Mary Barra, Jack Ma, Reed Hastings, Howard  Schultz, John Mackey, Yang Yuanqing, Angela Ahrendt, Marilyn Hewson, Jeff Immelt,  Ellen Kullman, Elon Musk, Paul Pullman, Li Ka-Shing, Karen Patz, and many others)  to help us describe how strategic management is used in many types of organizations.

The authors of this book are also active scholars. We conduct research on a number  of strategic management topics. Our interest in doing so is to contribute to the strategic  management literature and to better understand how to effectively apply strategic management tools, techniques, and concepts to increase organizational performance. Thus,  our own research is integrated in the appropriate chapters along with the research of  numerous other scholars, some of whom are noted above.

In addition to our book’s characteristics, there are some specific features and revisions  that we have made in this 12th edition that we are pleased to highlight for you:
■ New Opening Cases and Strategic Focus Segments We continue our tradition of  providing all-new Opening Cases and Strategic Focus segments! Many of these deal  with companies located outside North America. In addition, all of the company-specific examples included in each chapter are either new or substantially updated.
Through all of these venues, we present you with a wealth of examples of how actual  organizations, most of which compete internationally as well as in their home markets, use the strategic management process for the purpose of outperforming rivals  and increasing their performance.
■ Twenty Cases are included in this edition. Offering an effective mix of organizations  headquartered or based in North America and a number of other countries as well,  the cases deal with contemporary and highly important topics. Many of the cases have  full financial data (the analyses of which are in the Case Notes that are available to  instructors). These timely cases present active learners with opportunities to apply the  strategic management process and understand organizational conditions and contexts  and to make appropriate recommendations to deal with critical concerns. These cases  can also be found in MindTap.
■ New Mini-Cases have been added that demonstrate how companies deal with  major issues highlighted in the text. There are 13 of these cases, one for each chapter,  although some of them can overlap with other chapter content. Students will like  their conciseness, but they likewise provide rich content that can serve as a catalyst  for individual or group analysis and class discussion. Each Mini-Case is followed by a  set of questions to guide analysis and discussion

■ More than 1,200 new references from 2014 and 2015 are included in the chapters’  endnotes. We used the materials associated with these references to support new  material added or current strategic management concepts that are included in this  edition. In addition to demonstrating the classic and recent research from which we  draw our material, the large number of references supporting the book’s contents  allow us to integrate cutting-edge research and thinking into a presentation of strategic management tools, techniques, and concepts.
■ New content was added to several chapters. Examples include the strategic ecosystem  such as the one used by Apple with its “ecosystem of app producers” (Chapters 1 and  4), sustainable physical environment (Chapter 3), mentoring new CEOs (Chapter 12),  strategic leadership in family owned/controlled companies (Chapter 12), and acquisitions and innovation, open innovations, and managing the innovation portfolio  (Chapters 4 and 13).
■ Updated information is provided in several chapters. Examples include the stakeholder host communities (Chapter 1), all new and current demographic data (e.g.,  ethnic mix, geographic distribution) that describe the economic environment  (Chapter 2), the general partner strategies of private equity firms (Chapter 7),  information from the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Report regarding  political risks of international investments (Chapter 8), updates about corporate  governance practices being used in different countries (Chapter 10), updated data  about the number of internal and external CEO selections occurring in companies today (Chapter 12), a ranking of countries by the amount of their entrepreneurial activities (Chapter 13), and a ranking of companies on their total innovation output (Chapter 13).
■ An Exceptional Balance between current research and up-to-date applications  of that research in actual organizations located throughout the world. The content has not only the best research documentation but also the largest number  of effective real-world examples to help active learners understand the different  types of strategies organizations use to achieve their vision and mission and to  outperform rivals