Understanding Business Strategy: Concepts and Cases

The overall approach of UNDERSTANDING BUSINESS STRATEGY is process-oriented and applied. The authors of this text are known for their attention to detail and the currency of their research. Although the text maintains the same level of academic reliability as the authors other texts, the subject of strategic management will be studied at a more basic, fundamental level and with a greater effort to help students integrate and synthesize knowledge from prior business courses. This fundamental text overtly supports students’ efforts to master strategy, and features will be built in to create a tone that is tutorial, student- friendly and with a vision of the student as a future business practitioner. This text relies heavily on a model that will illustrate process, and that model is reiterated graphically across chapters, as well as providing an overarching framework, simply including “Vision, Strategy and Implementation.”

R. Duane Ireland is a University Distinguished Professor and holder of the Conn Chair in New Ventures Leadership in the Mays Business School, Texas A&M University. He teaches strategic management courses at all levels. He has more than 200 publications. His research, which focuses on diversification, innovation, corporate entrepreneurship, strategic entrepreneurship, and the informal economy, has been published in an array of journals. He has served as a member of multiple editorial review boards and is a former editor of the Academy of Management Journal. He has been a guest editor for 12 special issues of journals. He is a past president of the Academy of Management. Dr. Ireland is a fellow of the Academy of Management and a fellow of the Strategic Management Society. He is a research fellow in the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers and received an award in 1999 for Outstanding Intellectual Contributions to Competitiveness Research from the American Society for Competitiveness. He received the Falcone Distinguished Entrepreneurship Scholar Award from Syracuse University in 2005, the USASBE Scholar in Corporate Entrepreneurship Award from USASBE in 2004, and the Riata Distinguished Entrepreneurship Scholar award from Oklahoma State University in 2014. He received awards for the best article published in Academy of Management Executive (1999), the Academy of Management Journal (2000) and the Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship (2010). He received an Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award for Research from Texas A&M University (2012). In 2014, Dr. Ireland was listed as a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher (a listing of the world's most influential researchers) and he was also listed as one of The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds (a listing of the top cited researchers in science around the globe).

Robert E. Hoskisson is the George R. Brown Chair of Strategic Management at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Irvine. Dr. Hoskisson's research topics focus on corporate governance, acquisitions and divestitures, corporate and international diversification, and cooperative strategy. He teaches courses in corporate and international strategic management, cooperative strategy, and strategy consulting. He has coauthored 26 books, including recent books on business strategic and competitive advantage. Professor Hoskisson has served on several editorial boards for such publications as the Strategic Management Journal (current Associate Editor), Academy of Management Journal (Consulting Editor), Journal of International Business Studies (Consulting Editor), Journal of Management (Associate Editor) and Organization Science. His research has appeared in over 130 publications including the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Journal of Management, Academy of Management Perspective, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, California Management Review, and Journal of World Business.He is a fellow of the Academy of Management and a charter member of the Academy of Management Journal's Hall of Fame. He is also a fellow of the Strategic Management Society and has received awards from the American Society for Competitiveness and the William G. Dyer Alumni award from the Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University. He completed three years of service as Representative-at-Large for the Board of Governors of the Academy of Management and currently serves as past president and is on the Executive Committee of Board of Directors of the Strategic Management Society.

Michael Hitt is a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Texas Christian University. Michael received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. He has coauthored or coedited 26 books and authored or coauthored many journal articles. A recent article listed him as one of the 10 most cited authors in management over a 25-year period. The Times Higher Education 2010 listed him among the top scholars in economics, finance and management based on the number of highly cited articles he has authored. A recent article in the Academy of Management Perspectives lists him as one of the top two management scholars in terms of the combined impact of his work both inside (i.e., citations in scholarly journals) and outside of academia. He has served on the editorial review boards of multiple journals and is a former editor of the Academy of Management Journal and a former coeditor of the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. He received the 1996 Award for Outstanding Academic Contributions to Competitiveness and the 1999 Award for Outstanding Intellectual Contributions to Competitiveness Research from the American Society for Competitiveness. He is a fellow in the Academy of Management and in the Strategic Management Society, a research fellow in the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers and received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He is a former president of both the Academy of Management and of the Strategic Management Society and a member of the Academy of Management's Journals' Hall of Fame. He received awards for the best article published in the Academy of Management Executive (1999), Academy of Management Journal (2000), the Journal of Management (2006), and the Family Business Review (2012).