Strategic Management: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT explores how firms build, extend, organize, and sustain a competitive advantage, focusing on five key themes: distinctive competence, quality, globalization, change, and ethics. This text takes an applications-oriented approach in which a company's strategic position or dilemma is dissected and analyzed in such a way that all key concepts and ideas are brought to light. Filled with current real-world applications, this book also includes mini-cases within each chapter.

Robert A. Pitts is professor of Strategic and International Management at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania since 1986, Robert Pitts has authored a wide range of successful strategy texts, articles, and case studies during his 27 years of teaching. His teaching and research focus also includes the field of corporate finance. Prior to Gettysburg, he taught for 13 years in the management department at Penn State University. Pitts has been a visiting professor at the Sasin Graduate Institute in Bangkok, Thailand and IMEDE Management Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland, among others. Before entering academia, he worked in industry as an Investment Analyst for Prudential, a Plant Manager in Thailand, and as a US Peace Corps volunteer. Pitts holds degrees from Harvard (DBA), Columbia (MBA), and Yale (BA).

David Lei received his PhD at Columbia University in Marketing/Management of Organizations and is now an Associate Professor of Business Policy at Southern Methodist University. His area of expertise is in Strategic Alliances, Corporate Strategy, Manufacturing Technology, and Global Communication. Lei's current research interests are investment technology and strategic alliances, he also consults with various companies in financial services and technology-intensive firms. Professor Lei has written numerous journal articles and served as an ad-hoc reviewer for several academic journals.