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

Examining some of the new and emerging issues in strategic management, Loizos Heracleous offers a fresh approach to the established ideas of strategy. Beginning with the historical development of the strategy field, including the influence of industrial organisation and the resource-based view, he develops a new perspective labelled an 'organisational action' view of strategy. This approach is theoretically underlain by organisation theory and takes seriously such issues as the role of agency, the need for a longitudinal focus on process, the complexities of strategy implementation, and organisational facets such as strategic choice, organisational culture, organisational discourses and learning. Combining theoretical subtlety with an applied orientation, Heracleous examines topical areas such as corporate governance, inter-organisational networks, and organising for the future. With original research and extensive surveys of the strategy literature, combined with a strong practical orientation, this book is ideal for MBA students, strategy researchers and the more thoughtful practitioner.

Management Strategy: Sustaining Competitive Advantage, 1st edition, by Alfred Marcus, is a strategy book which focuses on how making winning moves is dependent upon finding profitable patterns that repeatedly meet customer demands for solutions. Where many strategy books have lost sight of the purpose of strategy and fail to show how decisions actually affect business performance and ultimately, outcomes, Management Strategy focuses on the types of analyses the industry, environment, and a company's internal resources require to make effective strategic moves. In eight chapters, this textbook builds upon the analysis process and demonstrates how strategy impacts an organization's position in comparison to its competitors, both in terms of the cost and quality of its products and the scope of businesses in which it is involved (vertical and horizontal integration), as well as its global versus domestic reach. The outcomes that come from analyzing an organization also determine the extent to which the organization will strive to be an innovator as opposed to being a follower.

Kim Warren presents a complete framework in the field of Strategic Management. The book combines theory with clearly illustrated examples to examine the concept of financial performance and the tools that can be used to improve it.

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy clarifies the muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world. Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader. A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for—overcoming the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect. Yet, Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” In Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, he debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.” He introduces nine sources of power—ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth—that are eye-opening yet pragmatic tools that can easily be put to work on Monday morning, and uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors, from the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, from a small local market to Wal-Mart, from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, from the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, from Cisco Systems to Paccar, and from Global Crossing to the 2007–08 financial crisis. Reflecting an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of the human character, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt’s decades of digging beyond the superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.

Examines the special characteristics that make services and the management of service organizations successful. Provides a comprehensive framework for service oriented businesses that stresses a streamlined service management system, the key components of which are market segment, service concept, service delivery system, image, and culture. Growth strategies and the nature of innovation are analyzed and amply illustrated. The role and principles of good leadership in service organizations form a crucial area of discourse. Topics such as the use of image and culture as management instruments, effective and persuasive communications, and ``high social technology'' are also explored.