Hitt - Böcker

Since the early 1980s it has been recognized that a firm's resources, capabilities and competencies help it gain a competitive advantage, that in turn produces higher performance. This resource-based view of the firm has been an important development in the field of strategic management. It explains why some organizations perform better than others and shows that leveraging, both tangible and intangible, resources is necessary to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Bringing together contributions from multiple perspectives this book examines the management of strategic resources. First, the book discusses resource strategy and firm performance - how resources lead to competitive advantage and how firm resources interplay with the firm strategy to produce specific outcomes. Second, it addresses the development, commitment and governance of firm resources - how firms develop critical resources, including the especially difficult development of intangible resources such as tacit knowledge, internal networks and the creation of new intellectual capital. Finally, attention is focused on the problems involved in the transfer of resources and skills in cooperative strategies such as strategic alliances, and the allocation of resources to produce innovation. The resource-based view of the firm is a valuable way of analyzing and understanding firm strategies and performance. The contributions in this book provide an important in-depth view of how strategic resources can be developed and leveraged to create value in organizations.

Managing Strategically in an Interconnected World Business is now at a new frontier as managers face an increasingly interdependent and interconnected world. Sparked by the technological revolution and globalization of business, an exceedingly complex and challenging competitive landscape has been created which has been referred to as the 'third industrial revolution'. Firms face significant uncertainty, ambiguity and an increasing number of strategic discontinuities in this hyper-competitive world. The key to survival for the modern business manager is strategic flexibility. This strategic flexibility will require innovation, speed and the use of information and knowledge. Only then can managers consistently find new methods of achieving competitive advantage. The editors have selected contributions that address two major themes of this new business environment and the means of managing strategically within it. Part I: Interconnected World: The Global Environment, Uncertainty and Knowledge Development looks at the rapid and largely unpredictable changes that occur, exemplified by the recent economic shocks in Asia and Russia and the political changes in Eastern Europe. Chapters in this section range from a focus on the central European banking system (of vital importance in the forthcoming changes in the EU to a single currency), to the executive strategic orientations in Chinese state-owned enterprises and managerial strategies of western companies in Asia. Further chapters explain the development and sharing of knowledge to build strategic flexibility. They explore how firms learn and thereby develop dynamic capabilities and core competencies. Part II: Interconnected Firms: The Role of Cooperation, Trust, Governance and Technology begins by examining how cooperative strategies have become a significant strategic tool in recent years, but why there is still a high failure rate of strategic alliances (the most common form of cooperation). The development of collaborative know-how is explored as well as the entrepreneurial opportunities that can be created by alliances to increase resources and develop new capabilities. Developing these new capabilities requires that firms have the necessary absorptive capacity and build trust with their partners. Even with trust, higher risk collaborative ventures, particularly between international partners, require governance. Trust in and governance of interorganizational partnerships within several different international contexts including Europe, Asia and North America is also explored. Thus, Managing Strategically in an Interconnected World addresses a number of critical issues to successfully navigate in the new frontier and build sustainable competitive advantages.

New Managerial Mindsets Organizational Transformation and Strategy Implementation In order to make sense of the new frontier of business, which entails rapid and unpredictable changes, strategic discontinuities, economic uncertainties and hypercompetition, new forms of managerial thinking will be required. The new thinking, or 'managerial mindsets' need to be global in orientation and allow strategic and structural flexibility in an integrated way. A major part of staying ahead in the new business climate will depend on organizations having the capability to create and implement strategic and structural changes that entail continuous technological improvements, particularly in the area of IT. While the importance of IT to business is widely recognized and reported, organizations still have difficulty in harnessing its true potential, namely, the ability to transform industries and markets. Flexible organizational networks that build and share the knowledge of its employees, suppliers, customers and competitors and keep pace with technological advances are the way in which companies with completely new mindsets will stay one step ahead. The editors have selected contributions that address two major themes of this new business environment and the means of managing strategically within it. Part I: Interconnected Thinking: Managerial Mindsets, Information Technology and Organizational Change looks at the shared, interconnected mental framework required throughout a firm's managerial ranks. It is based on sensemaking that represents an intangible structure in the firm. IT supports sensemaking and, thus, managerial mindsets through linkages in a managerial network and the information that flows through this network. IT is particularly important for development and the implementation of strategy and provides a form of structure to organizations. As such, IT and strategy must be aligned. Through the structure and the information that IT provides, comes the need for a firm's strategic flexibility. Managerial mindsets oriented toward change and flexible IT architecture facilitate organizational transformations. Part II: Interconnected Perspectives: Strategies, Competencies and Performance raises the importance of integration between strategy formulation and implementation processes. For example, mission statements can provide useful guides for, not only the formulation, but also the implementation of strategy. Implementation processes are particularly important for successful strategic change. A key element in implementation of strategy and strategic change is the managerial reward system. Managerial compensation affects managerial actions (e.g. to promote resource sharing across business units) and the firm's ability to effect change. Similarly, managerial ownership in a firm is often used to align managers' interests with those of the shareholders. For example, increased managerial ownership stakes in Asian firms may lead to greater product diversification because of the less diversified portfolios of Asian investors. Many other intangibles affect implementation. Founding conditions can also affect resources, routines and competencies in later time periods. Therefore, New Managerial Mindsets: Organizational Transformation and Strategy Implementation addresses critically important topics relevant to firms' success in the changing global competitive landscape.

This volume introduces a new concept - strategic entrepreneurship - which integrates the insights of entrepreneurship and strategic management. This volume describes a new concept – strategic entrepreneurship – which fuses the insights of entrepreneurship and strategic management. The editors have invited the world's finest entrepreneurship and strategic management scholars to contribute chapters on key issues that are influencing research in both fields, and to integrate findings across the two. Investigates the overlap between entrepreneurship and strategic management in the context of six distinct domains: resources and organizational learning, innovation, alliances and networks, internationalization, strategic leadership, and growth. The contributors use both traditional and new theoretical approaches in order to further the reader's understanding of wealth creation in the current business environment.