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Competitive Strategy Dynamics

Kim Warren (Author)

9780471899495, Wiley

Hardback, published 8 July 2002

352 pages
25 x 17.7 x 2.6 cm, 0.737 kg

"...many valuable ideas..." (Long Range Planning, Vol 37 2004)

This book offers a practical, fact-based approach to explain how enterprises deliver performance over time. Rigorous methods explain how to quantify the growth, decline and interdependence within the organisation's resources and capabilities as well as the continuous interactions with competitors and other external factors. These methods create clear and practical pictures of the strategic architecture driving earnings and other performance outcomes, not just for commercial firms, but for non-profit cases too. Management is then well-equipped to answer three crucial questions in their strategy development : why has the business performed as it has to date? where is performance headed in the future if we carry on as now? and how can we alter this future for the better? The book provides the basis for an entire course on the time-based perspective on competitive strategy, connecting strongly to established static frameworks. Alternatively it offers a vital missing component for existing courses in strategy and general management, as well as a key reference text for professionals in corporate development, consulting and business analysis.

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

Part I Getting Started 1

1 The Critical Path—the Meaning of ‘‘Dynamics’’ 3

Strategic resources and performance 7

The problem of valuing businesses and their strategies 10

Industry factors and firm performance 12

2 Strategic Resources—the Fuel of Firm Performance 15

A sharper focus on strategic resources 15

What is already known about resources and sustained performance 17

SWOT analysis—a poor basis for sound strategy 19

Winning and keeping resources 21

Defining and measuring resources and their flows 25

3 Getting Specific—Quantifying Change 31

Get quantitative!—the importance of scale, rates of change, and time charts 31

Adding ‘‘lumps’’ of resource 34

Stimulating and exploiting potential resources 36

Developing resources within the business 41

Using time charts to estimate resource development 44

An illustrative scenario for staff development 45

Developing resources beyond the firm 46

The failure of correlation methods to explain business performance 47

4 Building the Machine—Reinforcing Feedback between Resources 51

Current approach to linkages within and beyond the business 51

‘‘To he who hath shall be given’’—the strength of complementary resources 53

Resource interdependence—an example of self-reinforcement in brand building 55

Reinforcing feedback—the magic of exponential growth (but dangers of collapse) 61

Completing the resource-system in brands—adding limits to potential resources, resource losses, and management decisions 63

Most resources need not be depleted to build others 65

Be clear where revenues and costs arise 66

Resource dynamics and value-chain analysis 68

A practical example—rejuvenating a knitwear brand 70

5 Removing the Brakes—Balancing Feedback Holds Back Growth 75

Recognizing balancing feedback 75

Further developments of the banking example 82

Self-balancing resources 83

A note on spreadsheets, system dynamics, and simulation modeling 85

6 The Strategic Architecture—Designing the System to Perform 89

Industry example—new product development in car manufacture 90

A seven-step process for capturing the Strategic Architecture 91

Strategic Architecture: diagnosing performance challenges 105

Part II Further Concepts 115

7 The Hard Face of Soft Factors—the Power of Intangible Resources 117

Features and impact of intangible resources 119

Measuring intangible resources 120

‘‘Indirect’’ resources, reflecting people’s feelings or expectations regarding issues that concern them 121

Resource attributes 134

Integrating intangible resources into the strategic architecture 149

8 Into Battle—the Dynamics of Rivalry 157

Type 1 rivalry: developing potential customers 158

Type 2 rivalry: capturing rivals’ customers 175

Type 3 rivalry: competing for sales to shared customers 181

Simplifying multi-competitor dynamics: Strategic Groups 196

Extending rivalry to resources other than customers 198

9 Building the Capability to Perform 207

Measuring capabilities 210

Learning as capability building 212

A process for dealing with capabilities in analyzing performance dynamics 223

The impact of capabilities on performance of the entire business 225

From team learning to organizational learning 231

Leadership team competence 238

10 Keeping the Wheels on the Road—Steering the Dynamics of Strategy 243

Managing a single resource—the ‘‘goal and control’’ structure 244

Dissecting interference between policies 256

Conflicting goals 264

Limits to human decision making 271

Interference between goals and policies 272

Goals, controls and the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) 276

Illustration of valuing a strategic initiative 279

11 Further Developments on Existing Strategy Concepts 283

Other firm-level strategy frameworks 284

Industry-level approaches to strategy 289

The strategy process 301

Further opportunities from a resource-system approach—corporate-level strategy 303

Appendix 307

References 317

Index 319

Subject Areas: Business & management [KJ]

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