Much has been written about the change from business policy to business strategy (aka strategic management). I thought it would be interesting to look at that change over time. So, searching Google’s corpus of ngram books I’ve tracked the rise and fall of business policy and business strategy. You can use business policy and strategic …
I’m stepping down as the bibliographer of the strategy-as-practice website. That site is going through a redesign, and as part of that, the team is considering how/what to do with the bibliography. My own view is that a social bibliography, such as mine might be more useful than a stand alone bibliographic silo. As many …
There is a really nice four minute presentation of the SCP framework at “McKinsey”:http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Enduring_ideas_The_SCP_Framework_2169?pagenum=1#interactive_scp. Other _enduring ideas_ can be found “here”:http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Enduring_ideas_The_SCP_Framework_2169?pagenum=1#interactive_scp. All the enduring ideas aren’t ‘in place yet’, but McKinsey are slowly rolling them out.
In his HBR article _What Is Strategy_, Porter argues that operational effectiveness does not represent a strategy. In other words, planning to be the most “operationally effective” is not a strategy. But I wonder how true this is. Having looked at, and worked with, many SME (Small and medium enterprises), they often have low levels …
h2. A quick guide to the BCG growth-share matrix. I often find that students understand the concepts behind the BCG growth-share matrix, but don’t know what ‘numbers’ to use when ‘drawing’ it. So here we are … The BCG growth share matrix is a tool for the evaluation of the performance of a company that …
In a recent article Varoufakis (2008, p.1259–1260) says: bq.. To give an example, consider the following simple N-person game known as the Race-to-Zero. N players are asked to write on a piece of paper (in isolation from one another) a real number between 0 and 100 (inclusive). The player whose chosen number is nearest the …
I’ve just had my feedback from the MBA class _Integrating Strategy_. Everyone one seems pretty happy except one person who gave me very low ratings. I struggled to make sense of this disparity until I read the comments that the student had made. bq. * Robust framework * Some of the cases are so vague …
Paula Jarzabkowski (2004) has recently had one of articles published in Organization Studies. Her article is based on an earlier “working paper”:http://research.abs.aston.ac.uk/working_papers/0212.pdf she wrote a few years ago. Good on her for getting it in to a tier-one journal. As it happens, Paula will be visiting the “department”:http://www.business.auckland.ac.nz/comwebcontent/1/7/122/3579.html in November and will be giving a …
A few Porterian quotes taken from: *Harfield, T. (1997). Strategic management and Michael Porter: A postmodern reading. _Electronic Journal of Radical Oranizational Theory, 4_(1).* bq. Competitive advantage is hardly a new subject. … marketing, production, control, finance, and many other activities in a firm have a role in competitive advantage. … Competitive advantage cannot be …
I read a bit. One book I that had some interesting ideas was “The McKinsey way”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0070534489/103–4978139–4335007 by Ethan M. Rasiel. Many of the ideas are not new, the 80/20 rule, and elevator pitch, and so on, but it does talk about the need to be MECE (pronounced ‘me-se’) in writing and thinking. That is to …
I’ve just received the lastest edition of the “Journal of Management Education”:http://www.sagepub.com/journal.aspx?pid=181, and there is an element of sychronicity about it. The first article is: *Cunliffe, A. L. (2004). On becoming a critically reflective practitioner. _Journal of Management Education, 28_(4), 407–426.* In this article, she writes about many of the things I’ve discussed today, or …
Today, I gave a department seminar on my PhD topic _Strategising in professional service firms_. I’ve posted a copy of the “slides”:http://www.thereflectivepractitioner.org/ps/pdfs/Dept_Seminar.pdf in case anyone in interested. If found it strangely nerve wracking. As I said at the start of the presentation “How do I know what I think until I’ve said it”. With such …