Business Strategy is becoming increasingly 'pluralist', drawing on the insights of different disciplines, and business practice in different parts of the world. This book brings together the work and ideas of leading international scholars working in the field under three main headings Technology, Strategy and Organization, and Regions. The purpose of the book is to explore from different perspectives the dynamic interplay between the technology of a firm; its strategies; organizational choices; and issues of place, region, and location. The contributors are Peter Hagström, Alfred Chandler, Takahiro Fujimoto, Richard Nelson, Nathan Rosenberg, Erik von Hippel, Cristiano Antonelli, Giovanni Dosi, Benjamin Coriat, David Teece, Gunnar Hedlund, Pari Patel, Keith Pavitt, Ikujiro Nonaka, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Lars-Gunnar Mattsson, John Cantwell, John Dunning, Michael Enright, Masahisa Fujita, Ryoichi Ishii, Allen Scott, Orjan Solvell, Ivo Zander, J-C Spender, and Michael Porter. Together they address the challenge of explaining the long-run competitiveness of firms in an ever more global world. This book will be a benchmark for anybody wanting to keep abreast of leading edge strategic thinking.

This volume is the final result of the research project ''Micro growth model", that was sponsored by the Central Research Pool of Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Apart from the University Council for this important financial support, I owe Prof. Dr. Fiet Verheyen very much for the way in which he introduced me into scientific circles and for the way in which he supervised and stimulated my work. Dr. Jan de Jong and Peter Janssen C. E. , Technical University of Eindhoven, piloted me safely through the mathe matics of optimal control theory and removed some technical barriers. Their help was indispensable for the success of this project. I would also like to mention the kind support of Prof. Dr. Jack Kleijnen, who gave me many valuable hints on how to present the results of this project. In this way I was able to contact with several resear chers inside and outside the Netherlands. Most grateful I am to Prof. Dr. Charles Tapiero, Jerusalem University, who commented on important parts of this book in a constructive way and who suggested many subjects for further research. Also Mr. Geert Jan vsn Schijndel, Tilburg University, should be mentioned here, because he closely read the work and I appreciated his remarks and corrections very much. Many collea gues have contributed to the results of this research project in a direct or indirect way. Especially I should like to mention my contacts with Prof. Dr.

Today’s leading authority on the subject of this text is the author, MIT Standish Professor of Management and Director of the System Dynamics Group, John D. Sterman. Sterman’s objective is to explain, in a true textbook format, what system dynamics is, and how it can be successfully applied to solve business and organizational problems. System dynamics is both a currently utilized approach to organizational problem solving at the professional level, and a field of study in business, engineering, and social and physical sciences.

Traditonal western forms of corporate organization have been called into question by the success of Japanese keiretsu. Firms, Markets and Economic Change draws on industrial economics, business strategy, and economic history to develop an evolutionary model to show when innovation is best undertaken. The authors argue that innovation is a complex p

This second volume consists of the sections: technologies for knowledge management, outcomes of KM, knowledge management in action, and the KM horizon.

This book aims to include the effects of a progressive personal tax into the deterministic dynamic theory of the firm. To this end the author investigates the impact of a progressive personal tax on the optimal dividend, financing and investment policy of a shareholder-controlled, value-maximising firm. More specifically, the principal aim is the justification of the thesis that during each stage of their evolution, firms will be controlled by investors in different tax brackets. With this aim in mind, the author develops a dynamic equilibrium and portfolio theory under certainty, which considers: - the market value of an arbitrary firm such that no excess demand for or supply of shares exists, - the portfolio selection of differently taxed investors, - the succession of differently taxed investors, who possess the shares of any value-maximizing firm, in the course of time, - the optimal resulting policy string and corresponding evolution of a firm in the course of time.

To create a competitive advantage, a company must commit itself to developing a set of capabilities superior to its competitors; But such commitments tend to be costly and hard to reverse. How then, should a company decide which broad path, or strategy, to commit itself to? And how are competition and uncertainty to be accounted for in that decision? In this brilliant reassessment of how companies gain and sustain competitive advantage, Pankaj Ghemawat consolidates contemporary research in economics and other disciplines into a comprehensive yet practical framework for comparing commitments to strategically distinct options. This framework will help managers address specific strategic choices such as entry, exit, vertical/horizontal integration, capacity expansion, and innovation, as well as choices of generic strategy. Step by systematic step, Ghemawat provides managers with the tools and techniques they need to improve the quality of the choices that they make. Specifically, Ghemawat discusses: * how to identify the choices that are truly strategic -- that involve commitment -- before rather than after the fact * how to analyze the short-run and long-run competitive positions implied by a particular strategic option * how to assess the sustainability of superior competitive positions over time * how to account for the flexibility afforded by a particular option in dealing with future uncertainties * how to deal with both honest mistakes and deliberate distortions in the process of choice This pathbreaking book will help managers invest in the future. Its logic applies to choices involving disinvestment as well as those involving investment -- and to choices that embody elements of both. Its logic can be used for diagnostic purposes, such as the valuation of business, and most broadly, it win force managers to think about important issues that they may have tended to ignore. Ghemawat's discussion of these important ideas is concise, studded with detailed examples, based on rigorous research and, above all, practical. It will become required reading for thoughtful practitioners as well as practitionersto-be in the 1990s.