At last – a systematic critique of the scientific discourse of strategic management. This fantastic book uncovers scholars' unquestioned assumptions and shows that by upholding these assumptions researchers obscure the paradoxical nature of strategic reasoning. To uncover the paradoxes of strategic management the author refers to the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. He delves into the internal contradictions that inevitably occur when theorizing about corporate strategy along the dimensions strategy context, process, and content and shows how these paradoxes can enrich future thinking about strategic problems.

At last – a systematic critique of the scientific discourse of strategic management. This fantastic book uncovers scholars' unquestioned assumptions and shows that by upholding these assumptions researchers obscure the paradoxical nature of strategic reasoning. To uncover the paradoxes of strategic management the author refers to the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. He delves into the internal contradictions that inevitably occur when theorizing about corporate strategy along the dimensions strategy context, process, and content and shows how these paradoxes can enrich future thinking about strategic problems.

Michael Porter is recognized as one of the top authorities on corporate strategy and business competition. The historical review of strategic management clearly shows that Porter’s research has bridged up two general paradigms (before and after the 1980s) thus helping both researchers and practitioners to better understand unanticipated global changes. His two generic strategies: costs and diversification, the two interdependent strategic options, are key in the context of the competitiveness of orthodox microeconomic theory. This is where Porter went further, constructing a popular value chain concept that provides the ability to disaggregate the key activities of business process in creating products and services in terms of cost analysis and value creation. This book is a collection of seven interconnected chapters that provides a coherent understanding of Michael Porter’s contribution to the field of strategic management. It addresses key changes and challenges in the global business environment. The value chain concept has become highly applicable in both theory and practice. In the book, the authors offer an original interpretation of the Porters’ research on strategic management in order to unravel or simplify his key theoretical concepts. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of strategic management and international business.

Over time, overemphasis and adherence to the same proven routines that helped your organization achieve success can also lead to its decline resulting from organizational inertia, complacency, and inflexibility. Drawing lessons from one of the best models of success, the evolutionary model, Inverting the Paradox of Excellence explains why your organization must proactively seek out changes or variations on a continuous basis for ensuring excellence by testing out a continuum of opportunities and advantages. In other words, to maintain excellence, the company must be in a constant state of flux! The book introduces the patterns and anti-patterns of excellence and includes detailed case studies based on different dimensions of variations, including shared values variations, structure variations, and staff variations. It presents these case studies through the prism of the "variations" idea to help you visualize the difference of the "case history" approach presented here. The case studies illustrate the different dimensions of business variations available to help your organization in its quest towards achieving and sustaining excellence. The book extends a set of variations inspired by the pioneering McKinsey 7S model, namely shared values, strategy, structure, stuff, style, staff, skills, systems, and sequence. It includes case history segments for Toyota, Acer, eBay, ABB, Cisco, Blackberry, Tata, Samsung, Volvo, Charles Schwab, McDonald's, Scania, Starbucks, Google, Disney, and NUMMI. It also includes detailed case histories of GE, IBM, and UPS.

Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Organizational Paradox is an innovative two-part volume that enriches our understanding about paradox. Part B continues the exploration of the why, how and where of interdisciplinary research within paradox theory by looking at the realms of social structure and expression.

This volume brings together various emerging perspectives in strategy research for further interaction and debate. Contributions address a range of issues related to the globalization of strategy research and chapters examine strategy theory, methods and research as well as strategy as practice, discourse and reflexive design.

The reality of everyday organizational life is that it is filled with uncertainty, contradictions and paradoxes. Yet leaders and managers are expected to act as though they can predict the future and bring about the impossible: that they can transform themselves and their colleagues, design different cultures, choose the values for their organization, be innovative, control conflict and have inspiring visions. Whilst managers will have had lots of experiences of being in charge, they probably realise that they are not always in control. So how might we frame a much more realistic account of what’s possible for managers to achieve? Many managers are implicitly aware of their messy reality, but they rarely spend much time reflecting on what it is that they are actually doing. Drawing on insights from the complexity sciences, process sociology and pragmatic philosophy, Chris Mowles engages directly with some principal contradictions of organizational life concerning innovation, culture change, conflict and leadership. Mowles argues that if managers proceed from the expectation that organizational life as inherently uncertain, and interactions between people are complex and often paradoxical, they start noticing different things and create possibilities for acting in different ways. Managing in Uncertainty will be of interest to practitioners, advanced students and researchers looking at management and organizational studies from a critical perspective.

The role of HRM in developing sustainable business organizations is increasingly attracting attention. Sustainability can be used as a principle for HRM itself and the tasks of Sustainable HRM are twofold. On the one hand it fosters the conditions for individual employee sustainability and develops the ability of HRM systems to continuously attract, regenerate and develop motivated and engaged employees by making the HRM system itself sustainable. On the other hand Sustainable HRM contributes to the sustainability of the business organizations through cooperation with the top management, key stakeholders and NGOs and by realising economic, ecological, social and human sustainability goals. This book provides a comprehensive review of the new area of Sustainable HRM and of research from different disciplines like sustainable work systems, ergonomics, HRM, linking sustainability and HRM. It brings together the views of academics and practitioners and provides many ideas for conceptual development, empirical exploration and practical implementation. This publication intends to advance the international academic and practice-based debates on the potential of sustainability for HRM and vice versa. In 19 chapters, 26 authors from five continents explore the role of HRM in developing economically, socially and ecologically sustainable organizations, the concept of Sustainable HRM and the role of HRM in developing Sustainable HRM systems and how sustainability and HRM are conceptualized and perceived in different areas of the world.

The dynamic interplay of routines, strategies and management allows companies to successfully move forward within their industries. This book contributes to a coherent conceptualization of strategy, organization and management from a practice perspective, identifying strategy as realized in the action. Simon Grand provides a theoretical framework and detailed exploration in the context of two attractive empirical cases. He discusses topics such as theorizing routine dynamics, managerial engagement and managing routines as strategies to provide a detailed exploration of the importance of organizational routines for strategy. This book will be of interest to researchers in the areas of organizational studies, strategic management, technological innovation and the creative industries. The empirical case studies will also be of use to students and scholars of various disciplines.

Public Sector Strategy explores how strategic decisions are developed and implemented in the public sector, and examines the psychology underpinning strategic decision-making. Combining knowledge from traditional perspectives with contemporary insights on strategic management, this book considers how managers make their decisions and provides key concepts and practical tools to aid delivery of strategy within highly institutionalised settings. This book provides theoretical grounding, real-life global cases, and practical examples of strategic decisions in an international public-sector context by working through the underpinnings of strategy, the influencing factors of strategic decision-making, strategic implementation, and strategic tools in practice. It should be a core textbook for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying public sector strategy and strategic management more broadly. It will also be of benefit for public sector managers, consultants, and private sector organisations who wish to interact with the public sector.