Strategy

The book reviews the career of Lyndall Urwick, the dominant figure in British management between the late 1920s and the early 1960s, both in terms of his writings and his passion in pursuit of management as a scientific and systematic activity rather than the rule‐of‐thumb approach to decision‐making all too prevalent in Britain. He was greatly influenced by his experiences in the First World War and at Rowntree's, before becoming Director of the International Management Institute (IMI) between 1928–33 and then forming a very influential management consultancy, Urwick Orr and Partners (UOP), which he chaired for the rest of his career. He was also deeply involved with almost all the institutional developments in British management up to the 1960s, including the Management Research Groups (MRGs), the Institute of Industrial Administration (IIA), the British Institute of Management (BIM), the Administrative Staff College (ASC), and the management education side of the Anglo‐American Council on Productivity (AACP). In pursuit of what he called his ‘mission at large’, he gave hundreds of talks in his lucid and charismatic style, many of which were published as articles or booklets. These talks were not only in Britain but in Australia as well after his emigration there in 1961, in America, where he became the best‐recognized foreign exponent of management, and in a range of countries around the world. But he will probably be best remembered for his writings, not only on organization theory, where he is recognized as a great synthesizer and leader in the classical school, but also on a wide range of other topics, including the history of management, leadership, marketing, and management education and development. Truly he was a man of many parts.

Agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) — a way to simulate a large number of choices by individual actors — is one of the most exciting practical developments in business and government modeling since the invention of relational databases. It represents a new way to understand data and generate information that has never been available before — a way for businesses and governments to view the future and to understand and anticipate the likely effects of their decisions on their markets, industries, and territories. It thus promises to have far-reaching effects on the way that businesses and governments in many areas use computers to support practical decision-making. This book has three purposes: first, to teach readers how to think about ABMS, that is, about agents and their interactions; second, to teach readers how to explain the features and advantages of ABMS to other people; and third, to teach readers how to actually implement ABMS by building agent-based simulations. It aims to be a complete ABMS resource and also provides a complete collection of ABMS business and government applications resources.

As economic growth in Western countries shows signs of fatigue, companies are battling hard to discover how to generate and sustain corporate growth. The restructuring and reengineering processes of the early 1990s, and the massive lay-offs they brought about, have only given an additional boost to the need for expansion. Corporate efficiency is indispensable, but is not a sufficient condition for corporate survival. Firms need to think about their future growth. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon of corporate growth, offering a multi-functional, general management approach and a full discussion of main theories and approaches.

Multinational companies need to manage their relationships with multinational customers with a globally integrated approach. This book provides a systematic framework for developing and implementing such global customer management programmes. It draws on in-depth research at over twenty major US and European multinational companies, such as ABB, Bechtel, BP, Bosch, British Airways, Carrefour, Daimler–Chrysler, Hewlett–Packard, HSBC, IBM, Schlumberger, Shell, Siemens, Tesco, Unilever, Vodafone, Wal–Mart, and Xerox. The book teachers how to think about managing global customers in the context of their overall global strategy, develop effective global customer management programmes, overcome barriers to implementation and success, build better relationships with important customers, and get the entire company to engage with managing global customers. This book takes a strategic, total business, and not just sales, approach to managing global customers. It also takes a customer as well as a supplier perspective. The book provides guidance on both strategy and implementation. It takes a systematic and logic driven approach, yet provides many creative insights and practical advice. The book highlights the rewards of taking a step beyond global account management to create a Global Customer Management approach, integrating globally all aspects of the relationship between supplier and customer. The book gives a framework that guides international companies in using their relationships with global customers to their full potential.

The international dimension of business networks has remained relatively unexplored, mainly because international business writers focus upon multinational enterprises and network writers ignore international issues. This book bridges the literature on networks and multinationals by introducing the new concept of the flagship firm. In each business network strategic leadership is provided by the flagship firm, which is defined as a multinational enterprise. It has other partners: key suppliers; key customers; key competitors; and key partners in the non-business infrastructure. These business networks are usually located in the ‘triad’ regions of the European Union, North America, and Japan. There are strong cross-border network linkages within these regions, but less globalisation than regional economic integration. The theory of the flagship firm/five-partners model is applied to the telecommunications, chemicals, automotive, and electronics sectors, amongst others, and the book reports on both empirical studies and field research of the international competitiveness of these sectors.

This book examines how firms adapt to the pressures of increasing international competition by testing both the arguments on ‘strategy specialization’ proposed in the competitiveness literature in general, and those offered by contributors to the ‘varieties of capitalism’ debate in particular. If different economies are characterized by distinct institutional arrangements — successful firms would be the ones that exploit their comparative advantages and specialize in the competitive strategies facilitated by national institutions. The book begins with an assessment of how many pharmaceutical firms in Germany, Italy, and the UK pursue strategies facilitated by national institutions governing financial markets, antitrust activities, and the labour market. Quantitative analyses reveal that deviant firms, competing through institutionally unsupported strategies, outnumber conforming firms by far. Not only does this finding run counter to the expectations of the competitiveness literature, it brings up a whole new line of inquiry. How can firms compete through strategies that are not supported by national institutions? To address this question, the book combines quantitative analyses with qualitative insights, showing that firms do not necessarily exploit comparative institutional advantages, but that they can successfully circumvent institutional constraints. International markets and individual collaboration on a contractual basis allow firms to compete despite comparative institutional disadvantages. These findings suggest that trade liberalization tends to foster strategy diversification rather than strategy specialization, depending on the inventiveness of entrepreneurs in developing individual approaches toward competing.

Knowledge is a very seductive, but elusive concept. Following the wider debate about the emergence of the information age and the knowledge society, recent years have seen an explosion of writings about organizational knowledge from different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Yet, theoretical development has not always been accompanied by sound empirical research. Methodologies for studying knowledge as an empirical phenomenon are still lagging behind. This book aims to fill the gap between theory, method, and practice by developing a phenomenological approach to the study of knowing in the context of organizing. The book contributes to the fields of strategy and organization in three ways. First, it provides a critical review of the concepts, debates, and epistemological assumptions underpinning existing theories of organizational knowledge. Second, it develops a methodological framework for studying knowledge processes as an empirical phenomenon that is based on three methodological lenses: time, breakdowns, and narratives. Third, drawing on the three-lens framework, the book presents a phenomenological enquiry on knowing and organizing processes within two large car-manufacturing plants at Fiat Auto, Italy. The book highlights the need to re-think organizational knowledge from an action-based perspective, and suggests a new vocabulary for understanding knowledge-oriented phenomena in organizations.

This book questions why organizations often do not function effectively, focusing on leadership, cultural change, and organizational design. It considers how organizations often espouse a particular objective and yet frequently employ means of implementation that contradict that objective. The book illustrates how dysfunctional behaviour abounds in organizations and conflict is frequently avoided rather than dealt with openly, with the same arguments erupting repeatedly. It argues that people who feel like victims at work are not trapped by some oppressive regime, but they are trapped by their own behaviour; they themselves are responsible for making the status quo so resistant to change. The book reflects on the controversies that previous researchers have encountered on the subject: on the one hand, there is substantial agreement that these traps are counterproductive to effective performance, but on the other hand, there is almost no focus on how organizational traps can be reduced. The book ultimately concludes that whatever theory is used to understand such situations, should be used to implement interventions that prevent them.

Questions relating to the existence and nature of firms have become major issues in economics in recent years. This book provides original explanations for many individual phenomena in this area. The analysis is set in the context of an integrative framework for analysing the boundaries and structure of the firm. The book analyses the firm as a complex system in which links composed of shared resources constitute basic building blocks. The evolution of the firm from simple beginnings to a complex system is then studied in a number of areas, including vertical integration, diversification, multi-national enterprise, joint venture, alliance, network, and internal organization.

What is the purpose of social science and management research? Do scholars/researchers have a responsibility to generate insights and knowledge that are of practical (implementable) value and validity? We are told we live in turbulent and changing times, should this not provide an important opportunity for management researchers to provide understanding and guidance? Yet there is widespread concern about the efficacy of much research: These are some of the puzzles/pressing problems which are addressed in this short book. This book questions many of the assumptions of organizational theory and research, and the investigation is not confined to academic analysis. It also scrutinizes that capacity for ‘unproductive reasoning’ (self-deception and rationalization) that is common amongst managers, consultants, and indeed generally. As well as engaging with the work of leading organizational researchers the book also ponders the work of the consultants, commentators, and accountants who endorsed Enron.