This book offers a fresh approach to strategy by examining the idea of Optionality. Optionality is the right, but not the obligation, to take an action. Built on historic military tactics, static engineering principles, and equilibrium-seeking economics, conventional strategic-thinking suffers some weaknesses, principal of which is its inability to deal with conditions of high uncertainty. This book begins by dividing the business landscape into three distinct domains; (1) Fragile, (2) Robust, and (3) Long-shot (FRL), which alert us to the context-specificity of strategy tools, before suggesting that theoretical lenses are required to understand and implement strategy in VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) domains. The authors explore the concept and methodology of Optionality in order to demonstrate how it can be used in conjunction with existing strategy tools in order to achieve competitive success. It will be of great interest to academics and students of strategy and innovation.

In the past, corporate investment decisions were cut and dried. Buy a new machine that is more efficient, make more products costing a certain amount, and if the benefits outweigh the costs, execute the investment. Hire a larger pool of sales associates, expand the current geographical area, and if the marginal increase in forecast sales revenues exceeds the additional salary and implementation costs, start hiring. Need a new manufacturing plant? Show that the construction costs can be recouped quickly and easily by the increase in revenues the plant will generate through new and improved products, and the initiative is approved. However, real-life business conditions are a lot more complicated. Your firm decides to go with an e-commerce strategy, but multiple strategic paths exist. Which path do you choose? What are the options you have? If you choose the wrong path, how do you get back on the right track? How do you value and prioritize the paths that exist? You are a venture capitalist firm with multiple business plans to consider. How do you value a start-up firm with no proven track record? How do you structure a mutually beneficial investment deal? What is the optimal timing to a second or third round of financing? This chapter provides a novel approach to applying real options to answering these issues and more.

Current modern companies, which are also the key factors of a global economy, are subject to increasing pressures to conduct their business in an environmentally responsible manner, due to social and environmental problems. Improving long-term environmental performance can bring economic benefits to those companies that are innovative and environmentally sensitive, especially by integrating environmental information into their business strategies. Considering all the changes, sustainability reporting, management, and financial accounting becomes a powerful information tool for executives, managers, and employee teams to gain insights and make better decisions. Along with concepts such as ethical, controlling, auditing, management, and financial accounting, reporting provides value with the decision-making process. All these debates underline the major responsibility of users when configuring accounting and finance models and thereby in modelling business information. Sustainability Reporting, Ethics, and Strategic Management Strategies for Modern Organizations proposes an interdisciplinary perspective and explores various theoretical and practical approaches of ethical standards, management accounting, and their impact in the 21st century on different areas of activity. It contrasts external financial accounting for government regulators and the investment community with internal management accounting for managers to leverage for decision making. In addition, the book examines the role of management accounting and sustainability reporting from other points of view such as ethical standards, corporate social responsibility, creative accounting, green accounting, environmental indicators, e-accounting, KPI, lean accounting, controlling, auditing, reporting, etc., offering a number of new insights into management accounting. It is intended for chief financial officers, financial controllers, business analysts, financial planners, financial analysts, budgeting managers, executives, managers, academicians, researchers, and students.

"Mun demystifies real options analysis and delivers a powerful, pragmatic guide for decision-makers and practitioners alike. Finally, there is a book that equips professionals to easily recognize, value, and seize real options in the world around them." --Jim Schreckengast, Senior VP, R&D Strategy, Gemplus International SA, France Completely revised and updated to meet the challenges of today's dynamic business environment, Real Options Analysis, Second Edition offers you a fresh look at evaluating capital investment strategies by taking the strategic decision-making process into consideration. This comprehensive guide provides both a qualitative and quantitative description of real options; the methods used in solving real options; why and when they are used; and the applicability of these methods in decision making.

A new paradigm for balancing flexibility and commitment in management strategy through the amalgamation of real options and game theory. Corporate managers who face both strategic uncertainty and market uncertainty confront a classic trade-off between commitment and flexibility. They can stake a claim by making a large capital investment today, influencing their rivals' behavior, or they can take a “wait and see” approach to avoid adverse market consequences tomorrow. In Competitive Strategy, Benoît Chevalier-Roignant and Lenos Trigeorgis describe an emerging paradigm that can quantify and balance commitment and flexibility, “option games,” by which the decision-making approaches of real options and game theory can be combined. The authors first discuss prerequisite concepts and tools from basic game theory, industrial organization, and real options analysis, and then present the new approach in discrete time and later in continuous time. Their presentation of continuous-time option games is the first systematic coverage of the topic and fills a significant gap in the existing literature. Competitive Strategy provides a rigorous yet pragmatic and intuitive approach to strategy formulation. It synthesizes research in the areas of strategy, economics, and finance in a way that is accessible to readers not necessarily expert in the various fields involved.

More efficient credit portfolio engineering can increase the decision-making power of bankers and boost the market value of their banks. By implementing robust risk management procedures, bankers can develop comprehensive views of obligors by integrating fundamental and market data into a portfolio framework that treats all instruments similarly. Banks that can implement strategies for uncovering credit risk investments with the highest return per unit of risk can confidently build their businesses. Through chapters on fundamental analysis and credit administration, authors Morton Glantz and Johnathan Mun teach readers how to improve their credit skills and develop logical decision-making processes. As readers acquire new abilities to calculate risks and evaluate portfolios, they learn how credit risk strategies and policies can affect and be affected by credit ratings and global exposure tracking systems. The result is a book that facilitates the discipline of market-oriented portfolio management in the face of unending changes in the financial industry. Concentrates on the practical implementation of credit engineering strategies and tools Demonstrates how bankers can use portfolio analytics to increase their insights about different groups of obligors Investigates ways to improve a portfolio’s return on risk while minimizing probability of insolvency

Managing risk in and across organizations has always been of vital importance, both for individual firms and for the globalized economy more generally. With the global financial crisis, a dramatic lesson was learnt about what happens when risk is underestimated, misinterpreted, or even overlooked. Many possible solutions have been competing for international recognition, yet, there is little empirical evidence to support the purported effectiveness of these regulations and structured control approaches, which leaves the field wide open for further interpretation and conceptual development. This comprehensive book pulls together a team of experts from around the world in a range of key disciplines such as management, economics and accounting, to provide a comprehensive resource detailing everything that needs to be known in this emerging area. With no single text currently available, the book fills a much needed gap in our current understanding of strategic risk management, offering the potential to advance research efforts and enhance our approaches to effective risk management practices. Edited by a globally recognized expert on strategic risk management, this book will be an essential reference for students, researchers, and professionals with an interest in risk management, strategic management and finance.