Michael J. Stahl

Cases in Strategic Management is designed to provide students with the best means for developing their decision-making skills. It contains 25 comprehensive, up-to-date cases featuring a wide range of organizations that are undergoing, or have undergone, strategic change. All the cases feature actual organizations, ranging in size from small businesses to Fortune "Global 500" industry giants. The emphasis of this casebook is on strategic decisions, particularly those involving quality issues and global competition. It may be used with the companion text, Strategic Management by Michael J. Stahl and David W. Grigsby, or with other texts or books of readings.

This introductory text for management students is exceptional in that it integrates quality as a theme throughout. Features include: * 18 chapters, making this text manageable for a one-semester course * Examples from over 125 international companies * Icons in the margins distinguishing US-based and none US-based company examples * Cases with TQM applications integrated throughout each chapter * A quality, international, ethics, and diversity exhibit in each chapter * Experiential learning excercises in each chapter * Critical thinking questions at the end of each major section within each chapter * Chapter summaries

This introductory text for management students is exceptional in that it integrates quality as a theme throughout. Features include: * 18 chapters, making this text manageable for a one-semester course * Examples from over 125 international companies * Icons in the margins distinguishing US-based and none US-based company examples * Cases with TQM applications integrated throughout each chapter * A quality, international, ethics, and diversity exhibit in each chapter * Experiential learning excercises in each chapter * Critical thinking questions at the end of each major section within each chapter * Chapter summaries

Many firms enter new markets each year in search of growth, but only a handful succeed. A major reason for failure is underestimation of market entry barriers and competitors' reactions to market entry. Thus the objective of this book is to help marketers make more informed market entry decisions. To that end, the authors provide a comprehensive discussion of market entry barriers in both domestic and international markets, as well as strategies for overcoming them.Chapter 1 provides an overview of the origins and nature of barriers, as well as a review of the existing literature on the subject. Chapter 2 concentrates on the differences between barriers in consumer and industrial markets in both early and late market entry situations. Barriers to entry in international markets are explained in Chapter 3. The timing of market entry is discussed in Chapter 4, where it is demonstrated that the nature of barriers changes in response to different stages of the product life cycle. Chapter 5 explores the relationship between exit and entry barriers and makes the case that the fear that market exit might be costly often plays an important role in market entry decisions. Chapter 6 examines the vital role of managerial consensus regarding market entry decisions. Chapter 7 explores profitability and other factors involved in early versus late market entry decisions. Strategies for overcoming barriers are covered in Chapter 8, and the book concludes with two Appendices that provide detailed market entry simulation exercises for domestic and international market.

This unique volume sets forth a managerial paradigm for helping companies to compete and prosper in a global market that is increasingly dominated by Japan, Germany and the emerging EEC. While emphasis on short-term profitability has been widely recognized as a serious handicap for companies that compete internationally, editors Stahl and Bounds reveal the full scope of the competitiveness problem. Traditional business theory, practice, and culture are deeply rooted in short-term, non-customer-oriented indicators such as stock price, volume of shipments, and quarterly earnings. These indicators, however, are no longer effective. According to Stahl and Bounds, companies need to structure themselves around net customer value--what the customer receives minus what the customer sacrifices. The book shows how organizations that focus on net customer value will ultimately enjoy more profits, market share, and customer loyalty than those based on short-term financial results. The contributors propose, as an alternative management model, a detailed, analytic paradigm that provides specific ways to identify, measure, monitor, produce, and improve customer value. Most importantly, they demonstrate why U.S. companies that want to survive and prosper in a competitive global economy will benefit from this management model.Delivering customer value involves all areas of business management. This book provides a significant methodological breakthrough by proposing new models for costing, product development, production and inventory control, process control, logistics management, marketing, finance, and human resources. With contributions by 42 authors from academia and business, this volume delineates structural systems and practical programs for obtaining better business results through improved quality and customer satisfaction. Many of the top Fortune 500 corporations are now training their managers in the customer value paradigm. Managers in competitive markets who do not fully understand the tenets, implications, and techniques of the customer value model set forth in this book face a serious barrier to business success.

This book examines strategic executive decision-making. Using data collected over a seven-year period, the author describes how some 1,500 executives actually do make strategic decisions--and how reality differs substantially from theories about executive decision-making. The author identifies and explains the limitations of much of the current research in strategic decision-making. He then offers a rigorous alternative that reflects what actually happens when executives grapple with strategic decisions involving joint ventures, market entry, diversification, acquisitions, project selection, and long-term goals. Management ReviewThis groundbreaking contribution to business literature examines executive decisionmaking behavior concerning corporate and competitive business strategy. In contrast to previous studies, Strategic Executive Decisions does not offer a prescription for executive decisionmaking. Rather, with the help of extensive data collected over a seven-year period, Stahl describes how some 1500 executives actually do make strategic decisions from the executives' self reports of their own priorities, showing how reality differs substantially from existing theories widely used to explain executive decisionmaking behavior. Required reading for students of management and finance, this book offers an important new methodological alternative to existing theoretical explanations of executive decisionmaking behavior.Based on the observed difference between theory and actual practice, Stahl identifies and explains the limitations of much of the current research in strategic decisionmaking. He goes on to offer a methodologically rigorous alternative that more closely reflects what actually happens when executives grapple with key decisions involving joint ventures, market entry, diversification, acquisitions, project selection, and long-term strategic goals. The bulk of the study is devoted to a detailed analysis of executive decisionmaking in practice. Stahl shows that the only reliable means of determining how strategic decisions are made is unbiased observation of several decisions followed by calculation of what is really important to the decisionmaker. Questionnaires or interviews with the executives, Stahl demonstrates, will often produce misleading information about how a particular decision was made.

One of the most widely accepted theories of motivation is a trichotomy of needs theory popularized by David C. McClelland of Harvard University. Many organizational behavior textbooks today discuss McClelland's need for achievement, need for affiliation, and need for power. The three needs have been found to possess predictive power in a wide variety of settings, particularly organizational ones. Impressed by the ability of the three needs to explain behavior, but aware of the measurement problems associated with the Thematic Apperception Test which is used to assess these needs, the author searched for an alternative measurement approach. This book reports on those design efforts, validation of the instrument, and use of the instrument in organizational settings.