STRATEGY FOR ACTION I - THE LOGIC AND CONTEXT OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

The innovative and unique feature of this short series on strategic management (two conceptually related, but independent volumes), which sets it apart from the myriad of books on the subject, is that it does not contain one single theoretical concept that cannot be translated into practice. Its aim is providing university students and practitioners with a practical, decision-making, and action-oriented overview of the strategic management process. The objective is reached through the adoption of a set of logical and judgmental models, which show the operational interrelationships among the relevant factors that have an impact on firms’ competitiveness and that are or can be translated into spreadsheet frameworks. Contrary to the approach adopted by most textbooks on strategy, that start with the discussion of strategic management in multiple businesses, suggesting various conceptual models for managing the so-called ‘‘portfolio’’ of the firm’s activities, and devoting the largest part of their attention to these issues, the first part of this first volume will be mainly focused on strategically managing a single business. Actually, the firm’s competitive success and wealth are the result of a sum of individual transactions with the market, and the logic and profitability of each transaction depend on the type of relationship between the firm and an individual customer, within the context of a well defined and very specific ‘‘strategic business unit’’ (SBU) or product/market combination: how can we address the issue of managing strategically the firm’s presence in multiple SBUs, discussed at the end of the first part, if we do not understand in depth, first of all, the logic of the monobusiness interaction that represents the basic ‘‘brick’’ of the entire firm’s construction? Obviously, doing business will also imply a number of interactions with many other players and stakeholders, and will be affected by numerous factors, both external and internal: however, most of these aspects, discussed in the second part of this volume, will inevitably be seen from the perspective of a relatively homogeneous industry and company context