Readings and cases are arranged to provide students with a conceptual insight into actual business situations. The book integrates the various strands of the strategy process - strategy itself, strategy analysis, structure, power and culture - and shows how they operate in different businesses - entrepreneurial, innovative, diversified, specialized and established.
Strategy making is considered the high point of managerial activity. But bombarded by fads and fixes, most managers have been groping blindly to get their arms around the proverbial elephant. Now Henry Mintzberg, author of the award-winning "The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning", has teamed up with Bruce Ahlstrand and Joseph Lampel to create a powerful antidote: a comprehensive and illuminating-- as well as colorful-- tour through the fields of strategic management. Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel have shaped each of ten different approaches into a coherent school of strategy formation. In the process, the authors clarify the enormous amount of confusion that exists. The result is a tour de force: a brilliant, penetrating primer on business strategy that is, at the same time, immensely readable and fun. The authors provide a thorough critique of the contributions and limitations of each school-- from the design, planning, positioning, entrepreneurial, and cognitive schools to the learning, power, cultural, environmental, and configurational schools-- culminating in how they might combine to reveal that elephant. Unique, insightful, and essential, "Strategy Safari" is the indispensable guide for the creative manager.
SWOTed by strategy models? Crunched by analysis? Strategy doesn't have to be this way. Strategy is really all about being different. Thinking about it shouldn't make you reach for the snooze button. Strategy Bites Back brings you a provocative, imaginative and surprising mix of perspectives to help stimulate more creative strategic thinking and more enjoyable strategy making. From voices as diverse as and Lucy Kellaway, Mao Tse Tung and Jack Welch, even Michael Porter and Gary Hamel, you can enjoy exploring the sharper side of strategy. Strategy as a Little Black Dress Forecasting: Whoops! Management and Magic Strategy and the Art of Seduction The Soft Underbelly of Hard Data Strategy as destiny Jack Welch on Planning The Seven Deadly Sins of Planning Strategy One Step at a Time and many, many more. Why not have a good time reading a strategy book for a change?