Strategy: A View From the Top - Softcover

Cornelis A. De Kluyver

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130083607 ISBN 13: 9780130083609

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2002

Synopsis

A short, up-to-date, practical and readable guide to strategy formulation, this book is designed for practicing executives who are getting ready to assume broader responsibilities. By focusing on strategic thinking and using real-life examples and historical references, this book is a must-read for the serious executive strategist. The first chapter defines strategy and its effect on a corporation's effectiveness; and then in subsequent chapters covers the external strategic environment, the analysis of a firm's physical assets, the development of a competitive strategy, different industry environments, corporate strategy and competition, different strategy choices, global strategy, and implementing and controlling a chosen strategic direction. For CEOs, senior executives, general managers, vice-presidents, divisional managers, and consultants.

About this title

About the Author

Cornelis A. (Kees) de Kluyver is the Henry Y. Hwang Dean and Professor of Management at the Peter R Drucker Graduate School of Management at the Claremont Graduate University. He is also Executive Director of the Peter F Drucker Research Library and Archives and a Governor of the Peter F Drucker Foundation for Non-Profit Management.

He has held prior academic appointments at George Mason University, at the University of Virginia, and at Purdue University, and for several years was a principal with Cresap Management Consultants, a Towers Perrin Company, in the firm's strategy and organizational effectiveness practice. In this position, he served a wide range of clients in the high technology and service industries on various international strategy issues including the impact of European unification on North American business and the globalization of multinational operations.

Dr. de Kluyver serves on a number of corporate, foundation, and advisory boards, is a frequent speaker to professional audiences, and holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Case Western Reserve, an MBA for the University of Oregon and undergraduate degrees from the University of Oregon and the Netherlands School of Business.

John A. (Jack) Pearce II holds the College of Commerce & Finance Endowed Chair in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at Villanova University. Twice the recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Professional Award, he received his Ph.D. degree from The Pennsylvania .State University. Professor Pearce is coauthor of 32 books, and has authored more than 85 articles and 150 professional papers. The first Chairman of the Academy of Management's Entrepreneurship Division, he has received outstanding research awards from the Business Policy and Strategy, Organizational Communications, and Managerial Consultation Divisions of the Academy of Management, and from the National Association of Small Business Investment Companies, and the Association of Management Consulting Firms.

Professor Pearce has been a principal on research funded for more than $2 million by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the U.S. Department of Justice, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the West Virginia Office of Economic and Community Development, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. A frequent leader of executive development programs and an active consultant, Professor Pearce's focus is on mission development, and strategy formulation, implementation, and control.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Corporate success is increasingly tied to the ability of senior executives to craft and implement effective strategies. There is a demonstrated link between executives' strategic choices and their companies' long-term performance. The benefits accrue because companies that enjoy a substantial competitive advantage over their rivals typically have a better grasp of what their customers prefer, how they can create value, who their competitors are, and how they behave.

Formulating a sound strategy requires both analysis and synthesis, and therefore is as much a rational act as it is a creative one. Successful strategies reflect a clear strategic intent and a deep understanding of an organization's core competencies and assets. Generic strategies rarely propel a company to a leadership position. Knowing where you want to go and finding carefully considered, creative ways of getting there are the hallmarks of successful strategy.

This book is designed for practicing executives who are getting ready to assume broader responsibilities and need a short, practical, highly readable guide to strategy formulation, and for MBA and EMBA students who aspire to top management responsibilities.

ORGANIZATION

The first chapter defines strategy as the act of positioning a company for competitive advantage by focusing on unique ways to create value for customers. It contrasts strategy with operational effectiveness, links strategy development to value creation and competitive advantage, and notes the importance of organizational learning in crafting an effective strategy.

Chapter 2 looks at the importance of changes in a firm's external strategic environment—driven by economic, technological, political, and sociocultural change—and the impact of the evolutionary forces that shape an industry environment on a company's strategy formulation. In particular, we focus on two key issues that every strategist must confront: how to assess change and uncertainty and how to deal with them.

Chapter 3 focuses on the analysis of a firm's strategic resources including its physical assets, its relative financial position, the quality of its people, and specific knowledge, competencies, processes, skills, or cultural aspects of the organization.

Chapters 4 and 5 address the development of a competitive strategy at the business unit level. The principal focus of business unit or competitive strategy is on how to compete in a given competitive setting. In Chapter 4, we begin this discussion by asking: What determines profitability at the business unit level? We look at the relative importance of the nature of the industry in which a company competes, of a company's competitive position within the industry, and of the drivers that determine sustained competitive advantage. We also introduce a number of techniques that are useful for generating and assessing strategic alternatives, such as profit pool, growth vector, gap, competitor, and product life cycle analyses.

Since business unit strategy is developed in a specific industry context, Chapter 5 discusses six different industry environments. Three represent different stages in an industry's evolution—emerging, growth, and maturity. We then discuss three additional industry environments that pose unique strategic challenges—fragmented, deregulating, and hypercompetitive. Because hypercompetition is increasingly characteristic of business-level competition in many industries, we then discuss two critical attributes of successful firms in dynamic industries: speed and innovation. We conclude this chapter by considering the importance of vertical integration and horizontal thinking in business unit strategy formulation.

Chapters 6 and 7 deal with corporate strategy, which is concerned with identifying the businesses in which a company should compete and how a parent company can add value to its business units. In Chapter 6 we look at the concept of economics of scale and scope—a fundamental underpinning of corporate strategy—and try to answer the question: When is it better to be bigger? Next, we turn to the context in which corporate strategy is developed and executed. In particular, we note the importance of the dispersion in the ownership of large corporations and of the emergence of the market for corporate control. With this background, we trace the evolution of strategic thinking at the corporate level. Three perspectives are identified—the portfolio, value-based, and resource-based points of view—and their relative merits are assessed.

Chapter 7 looks at the different strategy choice options at the corporate level. We discuss concentrated growth strategies, diversification issues, merger and acquisition activities, cooperative strategies including joint ventures and alliances, and sell-offs, spin-offs, and liquidations. Next, we look at the issue of corporate management and how a parenting style affects portfolio composition. We conclude the chapter with a discussion of how to evaluate strategy choices at the corporate level.

Chapter 8 deals with formulating a global strategy. We first look at the driving forces behind the emerging global economy and characterize globalization in greater detail as an economic, political, social, and technological phenomenon. Next, we discuss industry globalization. In this section we focus on such questions as: What factors drive the globalization of industries? What explains the dominance of particular countries or regions in global industries? In the third section, we identify the principal dimensions of global strategy and introduce a framework for global strategic thinking that links global strategy options to the nature of the global industry environment. A major tenet of this discussion is that global strategy, more than strategy at the corporate or business unit levels, increasingly is played out in two arenas—a market and a nonmarket arena. We conclude this chapter with a consideration of the various strategic risk factors associated with a global strategic posture.

In Chapter 9 we identify key issues associated with implementing and controlling a chosen strategic direction. To this end, we present a conceptual framework that relates a company's strategy to its ultimate performance. This model has three primary components; the first links strategy, leadership, and corporate purpose; the second describes the organization in terms of its structure, systems, processes, people, and culture; while the third component relates performance to control.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Writing a book about a vast subject such as strategy involves making compromises and trade-offs. This book is no exception. In choosing what to include, where, and at what level of depth, we were guided by the book's primary objective—as a guide for practicing executives, MBA and EMBA students, and corporate development courses. As a consequence, we kept the book relatively short, practical, and highly readable. We adopted a broad perspective, sometimes at the expense of depth and detail about particular techniques or analysis frameworks.

We focused on the process of strategy development—not on strategic recipes. We tried to give the reader a sense of context—through the use of real examples and, where appropriate, of relevant historical references. Finally, a fundamental premise underlying this book is that strategy formulation and implementation are a dynamic process. As committed as they are to excellence in strategic decision-making, executives must remain equally committed to change. Successful implementation therefore increasingly calls for the use of change management techniques.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0130083607
• ISBN 13: 9780130083609
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 142