Commitment: The Dynamic of Strategy [Hardcover]

Pankaj Ghemawat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 1991

The author examines "commitment" - the tendency of business strategies to persist over time - and demonstrates with actual company examples how current decisions are constrained by past decisions and future decisions by current ones. Topics covered include four business conditions facing managers who look to the future: "locked-in" - when a company maintains a strategy as a result of massive investment; "locked-out" - the cost of lost opportunities that can never be pursued again; "lags" - making it imperative to stick with a strategy until certain key results are achieved; "inertia" - the tendency of a company to preserve the "status quo". The text also attempts to explain why one company's performance differs from its competitors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

J. Roger Morrison Director, McKinsey & Company Ghemawat provides an invaluable guide and stimulus to all executives -- particularly those involved in industries requiring "big strategic bets" in advertising, product development/launch or capital expenditure. He shows how businessmen can analyze their decisions to improve their chances of achieving a successful outcome. Reading it won't make your next strategic decision easier, but it should make it more likely to be successful. -- Review

About the Author

Pankaj Ghemawat is professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School. He is the author of several widely influential articles on investment, disinvestment, and sustaining competitive advantage, and was formerly a consultant with McKinsey & Company.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 178 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 2nd Edition. edition (August 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0029115752
• ISBN-13: 978-0029115756
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #165,399 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Only an academic could love it, July 31, 2000

By 

Robert A. Giacobbe (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Commitment: The Dynamic of Strategy (Hardcover)

This book seemed a perfect match for my personal collection and knowledge base when I bought it. I have been a strategy consultant for one of the largest strategy practices in the world for a number of years, and I have both undergradudate and graduate degrees with concentrations in business policy and industrial economics. I am also an avid consumer of strategy content and material.

I am writing this review to set the record straight: do not purchase this book expecting a clear, engaging and pragmatic perspective on strategy design and implementation. Rather, what you will get is a muddled discourse on a fairly arcane theory of strategy ("commitment"), with some supporting content on how traditional strategic frameworks (i.e., success factors) have failed to deliver.

I'm not going to comment on the technical arguments Ghemawat presents to support the concept of "commitment;" the book is full of them, and I am sure they are probably right. What I will say is that, after I was about 50% through reading the book, I was still not excited, nor entirely convinved, that this "commitment" perspective was any profound revelation. As a matter of fact, I was quite bored. The book came across to me as the obligatory text a professor must write to maintain relevance in his field, yet in the process, he must also stretch an already-thin proposition ("commitment") too far to produce a 150-page book.

I mean, how revolutionary is the idea that the stickiness, and thus sometimes success, of a strategic position, is purely the result of the firm's inexorable "commitment" to the strategy.

Things I missed in this book and thought I would find: how truly relevant and correct is the concept of "sustainability" as firms develop, implement and switch strategies with ever-increasing speed; what is a robust and pragmatic framework for judging the relative defensibility of two strategic positions (kind of a 5-forces model for the 1990s); and, what are some new, novel ways to measure how business value accrues to the firm as a strict function of strategic design and implementation (as compared to the value generated from operational effectiveness).

This book was published in the early 1990's. The claim on the inside back cover states that the book "will become required reading for thoughtful practioners..." because of its value. I would say the resulting lack of interest in the "commitment" perspective, as evidenced in both the academic and popular business press, suggests that this statement will never come true.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A REAL WORLD CONSULTANT, February 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Commitment: The Dynamic of Strategy (Hardcover)

This is easily the most boring book ever written on Strategy! It adds little or no new value, whatsoever. Ghemawat, seems to specialize in taking extremely simple concepts and twisting them into unintelligent gibberish. I bought this book hoping that a famous Harvard Business School proffesor would have some insights; I was disappointed from page 2. Buy this book only if you are: (i) Billing your client while you learn the basics of strategy (and common sense) or (ii) a HBS student taking Ghemawat's class. In the latter case "May God be with you (because no consulting company will be!)."

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best strategy book since Porter's Competitive Strategy, December 25, 1995

By A Customer

This review is from: Commitment: The Dynamic of Strategy (Hardcover)

This book is so good that most readers without serious strategy or industrial economics background will not completely understand it. However, it's thesis is one of the few really new concepts in competitive strategy to come out since 1980. The book is not a theoretical work, but rather helps the reader understand how strategic committments can be used to sustain competitive advantage. A must for any well read businessperson, consultant, or MBA student.