Strategic management has been increasingly characterized by an emphasis on core competences. Firms are advised to divest unrelated businesses and return to core business. Moreover, competitive advantage is now increasingly seen as a matter of efficiently deploying scarce knowledge resources to product markets. Much of this change in emphasis has occurred because of the emergence of a unified and rigorous approach to strategy, often called the resource-based approach. This Reader brings together extracts from the seminal articles that created this dominant perspective in strategic management. It includes the pioneering work of Selznick, Penrose, and Chandler and more recent writing by Wenerfelt, Barney, Teece, and Prahalad and Hamel.

This book focuses on the relationship between business strategy and competition among Italian SMEs in the aftermath of the economic crisis. First examining business strategy and competitive advantage in a broader sense, Business Strategies and Competitiveness in Times of Crisis goes on to analyse the strategic behaviour of SMEs and the key factors that allow them to overcome the challenges they face. The book covers wide-ranging topics such as marketing and communication strategies, internationalization process and entry modes, access to credit, networking, innovation process and human resources enhancement. Referring to insightful case studies and surveys conducted between 2011 and 2014, it reflects on managerial implications for Italian SMEs and identifies their three main competitive challenges.

As the world is currently in the midst of financial and economic crises, this collection of expert contributions focuses on strategy formation and implementation at various organizational levels to address the challenges ahead. The latest economic turmoil and its ongoing impact on business performance are compelling top managers to develop effective business strategies and redefine the boundaries of their operational and strategic activities. On one hand, tremendous challenges in the competitive business environment have become a source of global threats for many small entrepreneurs. On the other, investors faced with today’s volatile economic conditions demand more gains on their capital investments to counter-balance the growing risk of global threats. This book explores the question as to whether it is possible to efficiently and effectively address these threats and obstacles. Are managers capable of planning and implementing strategic actions? What should the major managerial strategy be in order to overcome fluctuations in a market-oriented society? The strategies and practices recommended here are aimed to design continuous development competencies and contribute to the stability, recovery and sustainability of global business operations under volatile economic conditions. This refreshingly novel book seeks to establish managerial strategies and practices for effectively responding to challenges in the competitive business environment, as global volatility and fluctuations continue to worsen.

"This business guide presents theoretical and empirical research on the business value of information technology (IT) and introduces strategic opportunities for using IT management to increase organizational performance. Implementation management is addressed with attention to customer relationship outsourcing, decision support systems, and information systems strategic planning. Domestic, international, and multinational business contexts are covered."

This book on human resource management (HRM) research builds upon and extends the work of Professor David P. Lepak who was the Berthiaume Endowed Chair of Business Leadership in the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Professor Lepak was an internationally renowned HRM scholar who believed in giving back to his profession and was committed to introduce his research findings to students as well as the business community. In addition to being a tribute to Professor Lepak and his work, this volume aims to help organizations and managers understand how to use human resource management to benefit employees while achieving organizational effectiveness. The chapters in this volume focus on strategic management of human capital resources, strategic HRM and multilevel HRM —areas of research that were central to Professor Lepak’s academic contributions. These chapters together provide important theoretical and practical implications for understanding how organizations can use HRM to generate and utilize their strategic human capital resources and how HRM interacts with internal and external factors to influence important employee and organizational outcomes. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Resource Management.

The growing awareness of the crucial role that knowledge can play in gaining competitive advantage has lead businesses to confront how to build competitive business strategy around a firm's intellectual resources and capabilities, and how to define and guide the processes and infrastructure for managing organizational knowledge. Knowledge Management and Business Strategies: Theoretical Frameworks and Empirical Research provides researchers and practitioners fundamental business and management knowledge by exploring relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in the area of knowledge and knowledge management strategies and their formulation and alignment with organizations' competitive business strategies.

Describes the principles and methodologies for crafting and executing a successful business-aligned IT strategy to provide businesses with value delivery.

The work is a practical examination of fundamental strategic issues confronted by firms competing in newly opened markets. It covers emerging markets in East Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and the new states of the former Soviet Union.

Strategy and Human Resource Management is concerned with examining how HR strategy impacts on an organisation's chances of survival and its relative success, and with understanding how it varies across important organisational, industry and societal contexts. It takes an analytical approach, which examines and explains what managers do and why they do it before offering any sort of prescription for what the authors think they should do. This approach is grounded in research but is brought to life with examples, cases and vignettes to offer a practice-orientated analysis of the subject. As well as explaining important general principles in strategic HRM, critical features of the different contexts in which they are applied are examined. For this fifth edition, there is increased coverage of contemporary topics, including capital markets and increasing financialisation, Industry 4.0, the shaping of employee voice under different varieties of capitalism and the effects of austerity. Strategy and Human Resource Management retains, however, the classic sources that are fundamental to the subject while also including important theoretical advances and the best new studies of strategies in the world of work and people.

While characteristically "Austrian" economic themes are clearly relevant to the business firm, Austrian economists have said little about management, organization and strategy. The 12 chapters in this work seek to advance the understanding of these issues by drawing on Austrian ideas.