Book Description
Thompson, Strickland and Gambles’, CRAFTING AND EXECUTING STRATEGY: The Quest for Competitive Advantage, 14e clearly conveys the central thrust of basic courses in business and competitive Strategy. This text presents the most recent research in strategy in a way that students can understand and apply to business cases and problems. This edition includes a streamlined presentation of the chapters and an all new chapter on Strategy, Ethics and Social Responsibility. Known for its cases and teaching notes, CRAFTING AND EXECUTING STRATEGY, 14e includes 37 new or updated cases that will spark student interest and generate lively classroom discussions.
Customer Reviews:
Informative business guide to strategy.......2006-08-23
I bought this book for a college class and kept it. While it is not the most exciting book, the case studies are an excellent guide to a wide range of business plans and strategies. The cases are divided into four categories: single business companies, diversified companies, implementing and executing strategy and ethics & social responsibility. The cases are very complete and interesting. The downside is the shelf life of the book - I would expect a new edition before long.
Student Review.......2005-12-10
I am a student majoring in Business Administration who recently used this text in an upper-level management course. The book's writing is utterly superfluous. Boredom was frequently my sentiment as I weeded through unnecessarily labyrinthine sentences. The ideas in the book were occasionally interesting, but were usually ideas I had already developed on my own via simple intuition. Perhaps the most valuable part of the text is the section of case studies. This closing segment of the book contains many great ideas for student projects. Overall, this text disappoints me as a student
Product Still to be Used.......2005-08-23
I will begin using this product next week, and will be in a better position to review it after my six week module.
Book Description
Tested-in-the-trenches competitive intelligence techniques used at today's top companies
This book brings together the best thinking and practices in competitive intelligence (CI) currently being used at many of today's most successful companies. Featuring contributions from leading industry executives, it covers CI strategies across a wide range of business functions, including marketing and sales, market research and forecasting, product development, and teams.
- The only book on the subject offering a comprehensive view of CI, from the CEO down to the tactical CI team
- Numerous case studies vividly illustrating cutting-edge CI techniques in action
Customer Reviews:
The Best Here is Amazingly Good.......2001-06-02
As with any anthology, some of the contributions are better than others. But the best case studies in this collection are of real value. In particular, I'd point to the case studies from Shell and other companies that describe how corporate intranets can be used to both collect competitive information from within your firm (sales reps, etc.) and then to make it availalbe firmwide, so that no one gets "blindsided." Any company that's not doing this doesn't understand, as one of the chapters puts it, the overriding importance of CI/Knowledge Management convergence.
I was also amazed by how forthright some of the contributors were, expecially the description of the organizational CI structures at firms such as P&G, Xerox and IBM. I don't know why they're sharing this, but these descriptions are worth the price of the book. Not that you'd want to copy them exactly, but it's vital to know how others organize their efforts in this regard.
And even the more "philosophical" contributions, include Robert Galvin's piece on CI at Motorola, were helpful.
No, it's not a really "how to" book, but it does reveal just how important CI now is to companies in the know, and why others should get onboard.
Nice Assortment of Articles, But Seen Them Before.......2001-04-29
This book is a decent one for your library shelf. It includes a fair variety of articles, quite often featuring widely known names in the CI field. The idea of "proven" and "strategies" may be a bit misleading however, as some of these so-caled proven strategies were really philosphies, tactics or concepts that worked for a short time but were shown to be difficult to sustain. Witness the recent public difficulties at Procter & Gamble or Daimler Benz for example and you'll understand this.
For those people who read or have seen the CI Review, you'll recognize that these chapters first appeared as articles in that venue. Some of the chapters are now several years old, stale, and the individuals, departments or companies involved have undergone major shifts in their approaches to CI and to the topics of these articles. I should note that this doesn't mean that the information is invalid, indeed, it is helpful more often than not. However, "proven" strategies are enduring... some of the ones highlighted here were "practiced" for sure, but "proven" may be a bit of a marketing stretch. I'd still recommend this book to those individuals new to the field, and those who haven't accessed this material before in its other forms.
Book Description
What fundamentally determines the profit potential of a business? What does a company do to protect its territory from another firm seeking to enter it? How is it able to forecast its future under shifting and uncertain conditions -- or predict how its rivals will behave under those same conditions?
Most firms must face strategic questions like these when planning their future. The decisions they make must be based upon a rigorous, thorough analysis of the competition. That analysis and those decisions are the subject of this broad and comprehensive casebook, the essential companion volume to Michael Porter's widely acclaimed Competitive Strategy. The focus here is the actual competitive strategies of companies in 18 important industries and the portrayal of the competitive situations they face.
The 26 indepth case studies provide the student with a laboratory in which to develop a working understanding of competition and the ability to identify the factors that shape the success or failure of a firm. Each case places the reader in a real-world business setting -- giving him the strategist's view of Kodak, for example, or General Electric -- and allows for the firsthand exploration of various problems involved in designing and implementing strategy. The reader must cope with making choices actual companies have faced.
A major theme of the book is that a firm can shape the roles of competition in its favor if it understands these rules in a sophisticated way.
Michael Porter first developed his ideas on competitive strategy in a famous course at the Harvard Business School. As described in Competitive Strategy, Porter finds three types of tools for strategy development. The first is the "general analytic techniques," applicable to any industry or competition, which allow an indepth analysis of such competitive issues as industry evolution, competition profiling, strategy toward suppliers and buyers, entry barriers, and market signals. The second is tools for analyzing "generic structure settings," or characteristic types of industry structures such as fragmented industries, global industries, and declining industries. The third is tools for making such strategic decisions as capacity expansion, integration, entry, divestment, and coalition.
Each of the 18 industries in Cases in Competitive Strategy provides an opportunity for analysis using these tools. The intent of the book is cumulative, building through successively complex situations to an overview of how, when, and why various offensive and defensive strategic decisions can and should be made.
Though the cases in Cases in Competitive Strategy are significant and informative when studied on their own, they were designed to be read and analyzed in combination with the companion volume, Competitive Strategy. Used this way, both the conceptual materials and the cases themselves are mutually reinforcing, establishing in the reader's mind the connection between the theory and the practice of competitive strategy formulation. No student of business strategy can afford to be without this broad-range series of applications of the most talked-about topic in business today.
Customer Reviews:
You think you are good enough to compete?.......2000-03-03
THis is a great book. It's best for peolple who are interested in economics, commerece or management. It introduced the mordern theory on competitive advantages which is developed by Michael E Porter who is a professor at Harvard Business school. In my opinion, I think Porter's theory really braoden my view of various competitive strategies. It's an excellent book for experienced management operator, specially CEOs.
Book Description
Within the next few years, "baby boomer" leaders and managers will be retiring in huge numbers. From the executive suite on down, the challenge to put the right person in place for every job is becoming acute. The potential shortfall means organizations must put succession planning at the top of their priority lists. Growing Your Company's Leaders offers the results of a study of five global leaders in succession strategy: Dow Chemical, Dell Computer, Eli Lilly, Pan Canadian Petroleum, and Sonoco. Readers will learn what these and sixteen other high-profile organizations are doing to identify, secure, and prepare the next generation of leaders.
This book examines:
* the link between succession management and business strategy * the architecture of good plans and how technology can make them better * the importance of individual employee development * why senior management support is crucial * how to monitor the effectiveness of the succession management system.
Customer Reviews:
Best practices in succession.......2007-02-08
Bob Fulmer was my dissertation supervisor when he was a professor at Georgia State University and I was in the doctoral program. I am a Board member for a $300 million portfolio of healthcare companies and was recently charged with succession planning. In my review of the literature, I ran across Bob's book and purchased it. It is a best practices study of the succession planning of six global companies and therefore oriented to the needs of large, if not multinational companies, rather than entrepreneurial, founder in control business, such as ours is. It is well researched and well written as I would have suspected.
Customer Reviews:
How cultural differencies can halt your business.......1998-11-15
An interesting approach to cultural differencies, and how they can upset management when trying to establish global initiatives. All american business managers who deal with international operation should read it.
Book Description
Do you know how to get the competitive advantage? STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: BUILDING AND SUSTAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE shows you in detail how the world's top companies build, extend, and sustain a competitive advantage. How do they do it? Through distinctive competence, quality, globalization, change, and ethics. And because this business textbook is rich with study tools, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: BUILDING AND SUSTAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE gives you the competitive advantage on the test as well!
Customer Reviews:
One of the worst textbooks that I have ever used.......2002-10-31
This textbook is the required text for a graduate level business course in which I am currently enrolled. My opinion, as well as nearly all of my classmates, is that this book offers very little for those in business wanting to learn about strategic management.
An example of what I mean is the following sentence taken from the book: "Firms that have built substantial sources of competitive advantage often enjoy high levels of profitability." Really? The text continues to state obvious points such as this.
This book contains about 10 % of material and 90 % filler. It could probably have been condensed to about 20 pages of bullet points without losing any of the content. Many textbooks have a problem with lack of brevity, however this book is the worst that I can remember since my days in high school.
As a business professional who values his time, I do not have time to waste reading filler. This book is so poor that if it wasn't being used to teach the final course in my program I would have dropped the course.
Strategic Management (2nd Edition) by Pitts & Lei.......2001-04-06
Pitts & Lei's (revised) 2nd edition is a solid, well-written strategic management textbook. Topical coverage is both traditional and well informed. The only exception to the foregoing is Chapter 11 that seems to be slightly "muddy" and confusing. From my perspective, as an instructor who has taught strategic management for the last fifteen years and actually practiced strategic management for fifteen years in industry, the only "missing element" is a chapter on "network" or virtual organizations. Chapter 12 (Managing Strategic Change) and Chapter 13 (Redefining Advantage) are excellent, both in terms of content and exposition.
The book includes cases (suitable for classroom discussion) and review questions in each chapter. Each chapter also has an excellent set of references. The ancillaries are complete with the exception that no test bank is provided for an instructor's use. I recommend this text to anyone teaching undergraduate strategic management and also to any reader interested in learning what strategic management is all about.
This book compares quite favorably to several of the much more expensive strategy texts like David, Thompson and Strickland and Pearce and Robinson. The book is good value for the money.
Average customer rating:
- Comprehensive, Brilliant, Practical, Useful
|
Managing Quality: The Strategic and Competitive Edge
David A. Garvin
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Strategy & Competition
| Management & Leadership
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Industrial
| Management & Leadership
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Quality Control
| Management & Leadership
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
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Out of the Crisis
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Deming management method
ASIN: 0029113806 |
Book Description
David A. Garvin rocked the foundations of U.S. manufacturing when his devastating indictment of American product quality first appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 1983 and subsequently in newspapers around the world. Garvin had analyzed a representative global industry -- room air conditioners, a product with basic, unchanging technological requirements -- and irrefutably documented American failure rates which were 500 to 1,000 times greater than those of Japanese competitors. Now, building on that shocking study, Garvin's new work combines theory and practice to show how a more sophisticated understanding of quality can lead U.S. companies to a strategic approach to quality management, which is necessary to compete in today's world marketplace.
This seminal work is essential reading for managers, particularly since widely held assumptions and a growing mythology about quality have not produced the expected revolution in U.S. quality performance -- with few products able to match the quality and reliability levels of their overseas competitors. Garvin begins with a superb review of quality history in this country and an incisive analysis of what Japan has done with the same concepts and ideas -- and done demonstratively better -- revealing the hard facts that prove quality is the best competitive weapon to dramatically increase profits and cut losses.
Here is the actual evidence relating quality to such variables as price, market share, advertising, cost, productivity, and profitability as hammered out by Garvin in a point-by-point comparison of quality management in U.S. and Japanese plants. His focused study of seven Japanese companies and eleven U.S. factories makes extraordinarily clear what the Japanese have done to better even the best U.S. companies. He looks to the underlying sources of superior quality and identifies both the practices long associated with excellence, such as reliability engineering and precise information systems, and those that have rarely appeared in the literature, such as limited bumping, order of assembly operations, and narrow product lines. Finally, he demonstrates with unmistakable bottom-line figures the all-important need for top managers to become involved in quality activities.
Garvin's credo throughout is, "If quality is to be managed, it must first be understood." In this landmark work, he provides that comprehensive and lucid understanding of quality in a way that can readily be transferred to a wide variety of industry environments. The result is a damning, yet enlightening analysis that specifically illustrates how America must improve product quality to win back lost markets and gain long-term competitive advantage.
Customer Reviews:
Comprehensive, Brilliant, Practical, Useful.......1999-02-14
I was surprised to find that no one had written a review for this book. I came across it while writing my thesis for MBA on the subject of quality. This book is an extension of his McKinsey award winner article in HBR. Garvin expounds that there are 8 dimensions of quality, such as reliability, aesthetics, durability, etc. He begins by explaining different definitions and perceptions of quality; for example, engineering has a different definition than marketing, which in turn has a different interpretation than manufacturing. Through case study comparison of Japanese and American companies he demonstrates how quality management impacts the end product and profitability. Although, it is less engineering/statistical than the works of Juran and other quality gurus, Managing Quality is probably the most comprehensive book on quality; ideal for a manager/executive. Garvin's research is exhaustive; his writing style lucid.
Book Description
Contemporary research in strategic management, with an emphasis on conceptual tools and skills created by scholars and practitioners in the field are evident throughout this 12-chapter text-only book. Formulation, Implementation, and Control of Competitive Strategy is the softcover, text-only version of Pearce and Robinson’s STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT. Pearce and Robinson presents a unique pedagogical model created by the authors. Instructors who desire quantitative analysis will like the financial data available here. The new, strong coverage of Business Week material provides a currency and uniqueness to the text.
Customer Reviews:
Book Review.......2005-10-22
Pearce & Robinson have put together a very informative book with very current issues that managers today are dealing with.
An Unpleasant Overview.......2003-11-13
I used this book in a graduate business class, and found it to be generally unpalatable, as did the rest of my class. My problem is largely in the self important, stilted writing style which is particularly notable in Chapter 3 under ecological factors (in which some popular, but scientifically questionable, theories seemingly influence the author's thinking detrimentally). As an aside, but a very distracting one, the layout of the book is absolutely horrid. There are numerous inserts, fact boxes, exhibits, and case studies scattershot throughout the book seemingly at random, which substantially breaks up the text. Additionally, many of the text boxes and examples involve copious texts and backgrounds in blue ink, which I am sure raised the production costs of this already very expensive book needlessly (not providing increased value to the end user...you would think they would read their own book).
Largely the chapters are enormous lists with overly wordy jingoistic explanations. The section on "SWOT Analysis" is particularly annoying. It tries to sound like it is based on highly scientific principles, whereas, in reality, it is still a bunch of subjective value judgments. (Guesses, mostly, in actuality.) The terminology rarely cuts through to the central point, making the book enormously long and unwieldily. Likewise, it is very difficult to look up things as much of the information is scattered in seemingly illogical places.
Overall, I obviously did not like this book, but gave it two stars despite it's faults due to some of the interesting case studies it contains. There are some excellent, thought-provoking cases examined. Unfortunately, there is insufficient discussion of these cases, which would have proven beneficial. The case studies aren't totally unbiased, either, as they largely are lifted directly from 'Business Week' (whose name and logo even appear on the cover) so is 'Business Week' didn't think it important, there is probably a dearth of information in the book on that subject.
Great Book, Great Class...........NOT.......2000-06-12
This book is as jaded and contrived as Dr Peirce's class. There is only one chapter worth reading #7, the rest of the book serves absolutely no value. Furthermore, I agree with the previous reviewer that Dr. Peirce makes some very strong statements in his class. However, why didn't the put them in his book? I guess other professors in the field would have laughed at him. Do not buy this book..........and save yourself 15 weeks of torture by not taking his class at Nova............MBA99
Required reading for a Class.......1998-11-27
This book is a good general overview of strategic management but lacks well thought out insight into what makes a strategy successful. For example in class Dr Pearce calls SWAT analysis worthless. If that is the case then why doesn't he say that in this book? Furthermore, chapter 7 is the only worthwhile chapter in the book. But even then it lacks sufficient depth to be useful to a student or practitioner of strategic management.
Book Description
The Six Rules Jack Welch Lives By:
Control your destiny or someone else will.
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it were.
Be candid with everyone.
Don't manage, lead.
Change before you have to.
If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete.
Customer Reviews:
Reads like a fiction with Jack Welch as the Hero.......2005-10-02
Hero worship this book is without shame. Sure, the book calls Jack Welch an "As***le" but it is spoken as a compliment. This highly antagonistic, argumentative, determined, intelligent, and energetic hero is indeed a first class "As***le" without apologies. He is the consummate proof that one needs to be an excellent "As***le" to be considered as a great CEO\manager. If you are one of the nice guys who wants to be gentle, cheerful, and sympathetic to your 80+hr/week working employees, forget it, you can't be a successful manager at GE. You need to be like Jack, and take all the credit for the hard work your underlings, and if any of them complain, you kick their fatass during their review which you are required to cut at least 5% of your staff.
Be a tough, bottom-line demanding, reality driven, confrontation seeking, slave driving, and kick assing manager. Otherwise, you will get your butt kicked by other first class manager\as***les. This is the primary lesson of "Control your destiny or someone else will".
On the business side, I found Jack's view on competitiveness ("if you don't have competitive advantage, don't compete") and productivity (productivity is the engine that drives profitability, job security, competitiveness, and higher pay) quite refreshing.
The title is somewhat misleading........2005-04-04
This is maybe a 4 Star book - IF, and ONLY if, this is the first book on Jack Welch and GE you have picked up. If you have already read "Jack" skip it. There is nothing here that hasn't already been said elsewhere. I was disappointed how little "new" information was presented in this book.
If you are looking for something on the topic of controlling your own destiny this title is somewhat misleading.
Decent read, lessons to be learned........2004-04-04
This book looks dauntingly thick when you pick it up, but some brief exploration will show that including the interviews only 311 pages are the Jack Welch story-- the rest of the book is Afterword, GE Timeline, GE Shareholder Reports, Bibliography and finally a section meant to be applied to your own business. I suppose that there are readers out there who wanted that level of completeness in their history of GE. I did not. I stopped reading after the afterword.
The book covers GE during the period of Jack Welch's reign. Specifically, it charts his efforts in five major initiatives: Services, Six Sigma, Digitization, Succession, and the Honeywell acquisition.
I found it interesting and readable, although I was left with the feeling (despite the author's best efforts) that these were very difficult achievements to duplicate if you did not happen to be Jack Welch. Although ostensibly a business biography, I still had much more of a feel of personality than facts when I was done. I would have been pleased to have a less broad-ranging treatment which delved a little bit more deeply into some specific numbers and consequences. Although this information might have been contained in the investor reports, I had no patience to page through it and find the information.
An educational, yet entertaining, read.......2001-12-19
I came into this book assuming a book on the history of Jack Welch's early years with GE. It ended up being much more and I was pleasantly surprised at the overall educational value of the book.
The book is broken down into three "acts" which recount the years of Jack Welch - when and how he was made the CEO with GE, the early years of layoffs, the early resistance to his ideas, reorganization of GE, the need for globalization, and eventual acceptance of his ideas as he empowered GE's employees. Welch's ideas of empowering the employee encompassed such things as "boundarylessness", strong values, leadership, simplicity, and productivity. As the book progresses, the reader is provided with the real world GE examples that qualified Jack's ideas and their results. Nor does the book hold back from describing Jack's missteps and describes the lessons learned.
Overall the book was a good read. The examples read as stories that both entertain and educate. Welch's ideas, as presented in Control Your Destiny, are probably now considered common sense business practices. The ideas seem simple today, yet were revolutionary for that time as you'll read.
The end of the book provides a manual that can be used to carry out a similar revolution with your business and employees. I didn't really work my way through it - it seemed more appropriate for larger organizations.
Terrific.......2001-11-09
Tichy is a guru of all gurus and he has a winner with this book. Highly recommended.
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