Customer Reviews

Fundamental Issues in Strategy

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book resulted from a conference held in Napa valley a few years before the book's publication. The editors and contributors examine critical issues in strategic management. Ten years later, these issues remain unresolved. This is because these issues are complex and enduring. Anyone interested in understanding enduring competitive advantage will benefit greatly by reading this book. One of its major contributions is that it delineates the boundaries of current understanding. To those looking for immediate help to their organizational problems this volume will offer few solutions. For those wanting to understand how firms behave, adapt, and organize for sustainable advantage this book will be a great start.

The thesis of the book is that research in strategy needs to be directed at fundamental questions, like "Why are firms different (despite attempts to imitate one another)?" The writers don't even bother to discuss the popular sillyness of advising firms to be "quick" or "invest in IT" and so on. Rather, there is a real attempt to describe what is known and not known about fundamental issues, like imitability.

The book's strength is the quality of the 22 authors involved. It is the strongest showing of intellectual talent on this subject ever assembled. The weakness is that it was written just before the rise of "competence-based" views of strategy, so that it offers little perspective on that literature.

Twelve years after the papers in this book were written, it remains an essential reference to research in strategy. MBAs and business people looking for the newest guru ideas should stay away---there are plenty of guru books out there to satisfy their needs for cool hip ideas ("seek chaos!").

This book is not recomended for undergraduate, you must thinking hardly to understand the "soul" of this book. Read it carefully, once you read it, you will understand why the titled is
"Research Agenda", but anyway, this is usefull book for a reference in research or comprehensive analysis in area of strategy.

The depth of knowledge of the authors and the complexity
of the agenda covered is so remarkable. This book enbles
the reader (who should be well versed in strategic studies) to
get their mind around the subject in a comprehensive light.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone
in with a strategy background.

This is a collected volume of presentations held 1990 by leading academics in the field of strategic management. It was a very good state of the academic field when the book was published in 1994. It was never supposed to be read by practitioners. Of course, the book is no longer a cutting edge description of the field. Still there might be a number of useful ideas in this book for doctoral students or students of management history. For those categories still four stars. For all others, this is a one star book.

This is a great book for anyone interested to understand key questions on Strategy Research. It also provides the archaeology of the Strategic thinking and explains how different schools and approaches tried to design.

I was introduced to this book when I was completing my MSc and it was a key reference to provide a context of my research on Game Theory (which is related to a key strategy question: "how firms behave?"). As a practitioner in Strategy Consulting this books helped me in some areas especially on articles on firms heterogeneity and insights firms structure and the search for efficiency ("economizing" versus "strategizing").

This is not a book for beginners, I must say, it provides you depth on the subject without trying to provide a definite answer. It is not a toolset book either, but it helps you to understand why some strategy tools were adopted in the first place and why some of them are very limited (eg GE cash cow / star matrix, SWOT analysis, etc).

On a negative side, the articles in the book seem to be too wordy and perhaps they could have an "abridged version" in the future.

Anderson Arante

The thesis of the book is that research in strategy needs to be directed at fundamental questions, like "Why are firms different (despite attempts to imitate one another)?" The writers don't even bother to discuss the popular sillyness of advising firms to be "quick" or "invest in IT" and so on. Rather, there is a real attempt to describe what is known and not known about fundamental issues, like imitability.

The book's strength is the qulaity of the 22 authors involved. It is the strongest showing of intellectual talent on this subject ever assembled. The weakness is that it was written just before the rise of "competence-based" views of strategy, so that it offers little perspective on that literature.

Twelve years after the papers in this book were written, it remains an essential reference to research in strategy. MBAs and business people looking for the newest guru ideas should stay away---there are plenty of guru books out there to satisfy their needs for cool hip ideas ("seek chaos!").

This book is a thorough study about Strategy. It conveys you all the great knowledge about Strategy that has been accumulated over the last decades. All the great strategists put their two cents, and that is why this is a great work.

This book isn't worth the paper it's written on. It's a lengthy reader with tons of references and little creative thinking or new inspiring ideas. The content is rather basic and doesn't go beyond summarizing history and restating what's written in other books. What we need is not someone who can repeat what was written by others in another 600 pages - we need new thoughts and ideas. Don't make the same mistake I made in wasting money and time on this book!