The Strategy Process

excellent text. Purchase was straight forward and seemless with no delays. Received text ontime for immediate use.

The authors of "The Strategy Process..", produced a high quality textbook on strategic planning and management. The authors show the complexity of the subject and the need for managers to exercise caution in using prescriptive systems in the highly dynamic, uncertain and complex operating environment. The book avoids taking a simplistic view to the subject but take a realistic approach of presenting various approaches that managers can use depending on their peculiar circumstances. Having grasped the various concepts, leaders of organisations can then use their judgement to come up with appropriate decisions and actions. The book focuses on developing the ability of managers to make informed judgements based on analysis, synthesis, experience and intuition and harnessing the collective skills and expertise of their organisations. The book shows how strategy formulation and implementation are intimately intertwined as complex interactive processes in which politics, values and organisational cultures and management styles determine or constrain particular strategic decisions. Top managers have to make judgements on various unknown and difficult to predict factors and integrate external considerations about technologies, limited resources, competitions, markets, societal attitudes, cultural differences, government regulations and environmental issues. Internally, they have to make judgements on organisational structures, systems, staff, physical resources, existing and potential power bases and bureaucracies. The chief executive officer has the challenging task of mediating between the various aspects of the internal and external environment and exercises his skills, judicious exercise of power and often make highly qualitative (rather than quantitative) choices from a wide range of possible options. The book will enable the reader to understand the wide range of issues involved in strategy. The book has a wide range of cases and articles that give the reader the opportunity to develop and exercise judgements on strategic issues. Although experience is the best teacher, these case studies and articles shorten the training time of managers. The cases cover a wide range of issues and perspectives. The reader can practice their judgement that should develop an awareness of the complex and subtle issues typical in the business world. The cases should highlight the limitations and the reasoning behind various theories and the limitations of standard answers based on conventional wisdom. The book is recommended reading for those seeking a more in-depth insight into both the theory and practice of strategic management. For students embarking on advanced strategic planning, say at MBA or doctoral level, this is required reading and important reference material.

Great book and "great" price

As frightening as the volume of the book might see, it is written very well and it is very contemporary with the topics discussed in. The book is divided in several sections with general theory and implications disussed first and with some real cases presented afterwards. Each case is usually backed with some questions to think about and to extract the essence of it. The complete book feels like being a student in the class with authors performing as teachers (as they also do sometimes). Concepts of strategy are extremely tricky. It can hardly been negotiated if there is a strategy or if you just got to have the feeling or if there simply are people who earn 1 million US$+ a year that turn into gold everything they touch and you can't run a serious business without them. This book will help you understand that strategy exists, will teach you how to define it and set it through and how to predict the future and react on it. But as real life is, many things can happen. You get the driver's licence after you learn the basics of driving. But no one can tell after you get the licence if you will get involved into the crash and when. Many people expect from such books that they will get a broad pavement covered with roses to walk through their careers on simply by paying some 70 US$. How naive they sound sometimes. The pen alone doesn't write a book, it is just an instrument to success, behind which stands an enormous human effort. This wonderful book is only an instrument to avoid some crashes of company in your career. If it can therefore win you a job or a mere 100 US$ raise, it has paid back heavily, don't you think?

This is the kind of book that everyone who wants to be a business administrator should read. It is a compilation of diferents articles most of them from HBR and each unit has some real cases which explain the theme better.