For much of its history, the academic literature in strategy has focused on the actions and decisions of top managers. The argument of Building Strategy From the Middle is that rapidly developing technologies and competitive dynamics heighten needs for enhanced organizational competencies, which puts a premium on new ideas generated at the operating level and creates a shift in the strategic responsibilities within organizations. Strategic leadership now occurs not only at the top, but at all levels of the organization. This ground-breaking new book reframes the perspective taken in most strategy research in two key ways: by describing organizational renewal from a middle-level perspective and by reconceptualizing the theoretical basis for strategy process research. Part I of the book (Foundations) reviews the existing literature on the strategy process, including recent literature on strategic change renewal. Part II (New Theoretical Horizons) builds the theoretical basis for a middle level perspective, focusing on knowledge development, social network analysis, and organizational trust. Part III (Middle Level Perspective) moves from synthesizing existing research toward the development of a model for conducting research from a middle-level perspective.

Get competitive by learning to think strategically.The inability to set good strategy can sink a company¿and a leader¿s career. A recent Wall Street Journal study revealed that the most sought-after executive skill is strategic thinking, but only three out of ten managers have this skill set.Horwath explains the three keys to strategic thinking, breaks them down into simple, attainable skills, and gives you practical tools to apply them every day, providing managers with a clear path to mastery of the three disciplines: 1. Acumen¿generate critical insights through a step-by-step evaluation of your business and its environment2. Allocation¿focus your limited resources through strategic trade-offs 3. Action¿implement a system to guarantee effective execution of strategy at all levels of your organization Based on new research with senior executives from 150 companies and the author¿s experience as a thought-leading strategist, Deep Dive is the first book to focus on the most important level of strategy¿you. Armed with this knowledge and dozens of effective tools, you can become a truly strategic leader for your organization.--Rich Horwath is the president of the Strategic Thinking Institute, a former chief strategy officer, and professor of strategy at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. As a thought-leading strategist, he has worked with such giants as Adidas, Amgen, and Pfizer. He is the author of four books and more than fifty articles on strategic thinking and has been profiled in business publications around the world, including Investor¿s Business Daily.

Explains how companies must pinpoint business strategies to a few critically important choices, identifying common blunders while outlining simple exercises and questions that can guide day-to-day and long-term decisions.

Bookshelves abound with theoretical analyses, how-to guides, and personal success stories by famous corporate leaders, public officials, even athletic coaches, expounding on how to lead from the top. But what about those in the middle who are increasingly tasked with trying to reshape, reorient, or recreate the capabilities of an organization? Leading Change from the Middle takes you on the journeys traveled by Kurt Mayer, an information technology executive in the Department of Defense trying to build a new IT system in record time with limited resources, and Stephen Wang, a mid-level leader in city government trying to build a capability for supporting commercial agriculture. Kurt and Stephen have to navigate complex organizational and stakeholder landscapes in which they often have few decision rights and few resources—a common scenario for mid-level leaders. One succeeds; one does not. While following Kurt and Stephen, the book introduces a new approach for increasing the likelihood of successfully leading change. This new approach breaks down into three core strategies: First, identify all relevant stakeholders and partition them into four categories: superordinates, subordinates, customers, and complementors/blockers (those who control needed resources but over whom the leaders have no authority). Second, for each stakeholder category, identify Communications, Strategies, and Tactics (referred to as CoSTS). Third, don’t stimulate negative emotions that make people DEAF—Disrespect, Envy, Anger, and Fear—to efforts to produce change. As the book follows the journeys of Kurt and Stephen, it walks through the details of each strategy. In presenting this material in a concise, accessible, and applicable format that translates theory to practice, Nickerson provides an important service for leaders trying to build extraordinary capabilities for their organizations—from the middle.

This book approaches strategy-making in a way that is designed to assist most organizations develop strategy appropriate to their size, purpose and resources. It provides a much-needed guide to the strategy-making process by: elaborating the key concepts and theories of strategic management; by illustrating through case vignettes the issues inherent in the process of strategy-making; and by providing extensive and detailed practical guidelines on the methods, techniques and tools employed in the case vignettes. Key themes explored are: the crucial significance of political feasibility; the role of participation; emphasis on stakeholder management; thinking about alternative futures within the overall process of stra

An exceptional job of refocusing the middle manager's role?a mustread for practitioners and educators alike. --Jack Viega, editor, The Academy of Management Executives In their quest to become leaner, flatter, and reengineered,organizations have systematically cut out the very positions thatonce made them successful?mid-level managers. In The StrategicMiddle Manager,management experts Steven Floyd and Bill Wooldridgedraw on a decade of research involving over 250 middle managers todemonstrate that the success of future organizations restsdecisively on strong middle management. The authors present the tools managers need to: * Redefine their roles * Increase their strategic value * Secure their futures * Identify the top performers in the ranks...and much more! Far from lacking perspective, middle managers have a unique,pivotal perspective that places them at the forefront oforganizational change. They can play the role of champion,synthesizer, facilitator, and implementer--and this book gives theadvice needed to energize management. A must-read for trainingprofessionals, managers, and top executives, Floyd and Wooldridge'swork will radically redesign--and drastically improve--yourorganization's effectiveness.

Strategic Management (2020) is a 325-page open educational resource designed as an introduction to the key topics and themes of strategic management. The open textbook is intended for a senior capstone course in an undergraduate business program and suitable for a wide range of undergraduate business students including those majoring in marketing, management, business administration, accounting, finance, real estate, business information technology, and hospitality and tourism. The text presents examples of familiar companies and personalities to illustrate the different strategies used by today's firms and how they go about implementing those strategies. It includes case studies, end of section key takeaways, exercises, and links to external videos, and an end-of-book glossary. The text is ideal for courses which focus on how organizations operate at the strategic level to be successful. Students will learn how to conduct case analyses, measure organizational performance, and conduct external and internal analyses.