Wunder Essentials of Strategic Management

Effective Formulation and Execution of Strategy in the Era of Sustainability
2. aktualisierte und erweiterte Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-7910-5769-9
Verlag: Schäffer-Poeschel Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 620 Seiten, E-Book

Written in English, this practice-oriented textbook covers all stages of the strategy process. Besides strategic analysis, strategy formulation, and business model innovation, the true challenges of strategic management will also be explained in detail: strategy execution and transformation.  The context of strategy is currently experiencing radical changes in the world economy, planetary health, and socio-political foundations. In the era of sustainability, corporate leaders need to rethink their strategic management approach to effectively deal with these new and disruptive market situations. Sustainable strategizing is considered essential for future-proofing today's enterprises, transforming markets, and leading the way toward a sustainable future for both business and society.  As a response to these developments, this updated and expanded edition continues to present the essentials of contemporary strategic management, but it also identifies, explores, and integrates ecological and social sustainability considerations to a great extent. As a result, key concepts of sustainable strategizing from mindsets, impact, materiality, and purpose to business cases, sustainable business models, regeneration, and transformation have been embedded and enhanced in the entire book. Other advancements are in the areas of dynamic capabilities, organizational ambidexterity, open strategy, the business ecosystem perspective, and strategic control. - Including a wealth of real-life strategy practice examples and strategic snapshots - Including a hands-on 'strategy workout', exercises and review questions for students - Including teaching aids for lecturers In summary, students and practitioners will find many insights that will assist them in adding value to their organizations and society during the turbulent years ahead.

Dr. Thomas Wunder ist Professor für Strategisches Management an der Hochschule Neu-Ulm. Zudem entwickelt und leitet er Nachhaltigkeitsprogramme für Führungskräfte an der Executive School der EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht. Er ist Gründer und Geschäftsführer der SustainUp GmbH, mit der er Unternehmen unmittelbar bei ihrer nachhaltigen Strategiearbeit unterstützt. Seit 15 Jahren forscht, lehrt, publiziert und berät er vor allem zur Verknüpfung von Strategie und Nachhaltigkeit sowie den zugehörigen Transformationsprozessen in Unternehmen. Thomas Wunder hat mehrere Bücher und Artikel publiziert. Er hat Lehraufträge für strategische Nachhaltigkeit in Firmenprogrammen und an Universitäten im In- und Ausland. Vor seiner Zeit an der Hochschule war er Managementberater mit Schwerpunkt Strategie und davon 6 Jahre Geschäftsführer in den USA. Er promovierte auf dem Gebiet des Strategischen Management an der European Business School (EBS) und hat ein Diplom als Wirtschaftsingenieur (Maschinenbau) von der Technischen Universität Kaiserslautern.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wunder, Thomas

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Management Strategisches Management

Leseproben

Preface

Welcome to the 2nd edition of Essentials of Strategic Management—Effective Formulation and Execution of Strategy in the Era of Sustainability. The context of strategizing is currently experiencing radical changes in the world economy, planetary health, and social foundations. Climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation are leading to intense and cascading global challenges ranging from human crises including hunger and thirst to eroding human security regarding health and safety as well as migration and conflicts on the horizon. At this time in the 21st century, we are conducting business in the Era of Sustainability, or in the Anthropocene as some might say. This is indicated in the refined subtitle of the 2nd edition. Sustainability, resilience, and regeneration have become strategic issues to a degree where socio-ecological disruptions are mentioned in the same breath as technological disruptions. Corporate leaders need to rethink their approach to strategizing to either effectively deal with this new disruptive market situation or play an active and rewarding role in transforming the market toward a sustainable future for both business and society. Sustainable strategizing is considered essential for future-proofing today’s businesses.

As a response to these developments, this book continues to present the essentials of contemporary strategic management but identifies and explores ecological and social sustainability considerations for strategy at a greater and more comprehensive extent than in the first edition. As a result, the context of sustainable strategizing has been embedded and enhanced in the entire book, alongside other supplementations such as dynamic capabilities, organizational ambidexterity, and the business ecosystem perspective in various sections. The relevance of sustainability for strategy is highlighted at the beginning of this book.

As a major advancement in chapter 1, the section on corporate sustainability performance has been completely updated. It now includes the evolution of sustainable strategizing mindsets as well as the topics of sustainability performance and impact measurement in the context of the Anthropocene, Planetary Boundaries, and the Great Acceleration. Furthermore, behavioral sustainability considerations have been supplemented to the section on cognitive biases. In chapter 2, the stakeholder and materiality perspectives have been advanced. The topic of corporate purpose has been introduced to the strategic guideposts section in chapter 3, and the concepts of sustainable strategies have been added. The coverage of sustainable business models and associated business model patterns has been extended. In chapter 4, methods to drive organizational transformation toward sustainability have been supplemented. These are the main new features of this book which come with a variety of new strategic snapshots, strategy practice examples as well as minor adjustments and updates.

How this Book is Different from other Strategy Textbooks

Regardless of their position, career aspiration, role or department, most practitioners must deal with aspects of strategic management either in making or in supporting strategic decisions. This book provides the essentials to master this task successfully. It is written for students who are on their way to becoming practitioners as well as for practitioners who want to look—again or for the first time—at the most essential and practical aspects of strategic management.

A general trend for textbooks on strategic management is that authors try to address all theories and research areas and skip nothing which is covered by other textbooks on this subject. Furthermore, the sustainability context is rarely fully integrated but typically covered in special literature or a separate chapter on this topic. Finally, there is a general tendency in mainstream strategic management textbooks to focus more on strategic analysis and on formulating strategies but less on executing them. This book takes a different approach in three ways:

• First, the guiding principle in deciding what to include and what to leave out is to answer two key questions. Is it actionable and does it have a significant impact? Instead of providing an overview over all theories and aspects of the academic field, the book provides a selection of scientifically grounded approaches, methods and ideas that promise to be practical and to make a difference in business and society.
• Second, the topic of ecological and social sustainability is covered in depth and integrated in various chapters throughout this book. This reflects the increased relevance of sustainable strategizing for achieving economic prosperity, ecological integrity, and social equity. In mainstream strategic management, there has been relatively little concern for a company’s impact on sustainability matters of the socio-ecological environment.
• Third, knowing that a great portion of strategies fail due to bad execution, great emphasis is put on this area. In practical strategy work and literature, strategy execution and transformation typically get relatively little attention—sometimes even viewed as »graveyard of strategy«—although it is one of the biggest strategic management challenges of today and key to make corporate transformation happen.

This book is intended to provide students and practitioners with a selection of practically applicable methods at a level of detail that is necessary to make a positive impact in their future or current job situations. With this focus, the book should be particularly relevant for students of applied sciences. For practitioners the book provides actionable approaches to deal with their strategic situations in a systematic and comprehensive, yet pragmatic way. I focus on the essentials of strategic management drawing from state-of-the-art literature and own experience aided by the fortune of spending more than 20 years supporting leaders of mainly large and medium size multinational companies to refine and execute strategies. Having spent more than half of my professional career in the United States of America, I had the chance to not only consult on the topic but to practice it myself at the helm of a small U. S. subsidiary where I had to develop and execute my own business strategy. For six years I was a direct report to the CEO of an international management consulting firm, from whom I learned many essentials about strategy and leadership.

During this time, I also had the opportunity to learn from two inspiring U. S. consulting firms we were affiliated with. Working two years in Lincoln, Massachusetts, surrounded by the excellent consultants of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative (later »Palladium Group«) helped me to understand how to innovate continuously and make intellectually highly sophisticated ideas actionable. Key management concepts for successful strategy execution originally developed by the two founders, Harvard Business School Professor Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, and further advanced by Horváth & Partners with some bestselling publications in Europe, are drawn on in the second part of this book. During another four years as an affiliate to the North Highland Company in Atlanta, Georgia, I was fortunate to learn what true customer dedication, sales excellence and effective business development are like. I was fortunate to gain a lot both professionally and personally being exposed to their unique company culture, their business spirit, and the outstanding strategic leadership skills of their CEO.

How this Book Works

The book is designed to be actionable and user-friendly. One of the most important principles that I learned during my career is the power of simplicity. When dealing with complex organizations and facing complex strategic challenges the worst thing to do is adding complex strategic management processes, tools, and methods. I tried to focus on the essentials and to illustrate many ideas with about 200 easy to understand charts. Throughout the book there are »Strategy Practice« boxes presenting real-life examples from globally renowned companies such as Apple, BAYER, Beiersdorf, BMW, Bosch, DB Group, FlixMobility, Henkel, Hewlett-Packard, Hilti, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, PUMA, Quiagen, Recaro, SAP, Siemens, Toyota, Unilever, Volkswagen, and ZEISS. I am grateful that many of those companies gave permission to present their examples in its original company format. This makes strategy approaches and methodologies tangible for readers and underlines their relevance and way of application in company practice today. Although many examples relate to large multinational firms, methods are generally applicable to businesses or non-profit organizations of any size and industry. Historical, anecdotal, more academic, or other adjacent elaborations that I consider helpful will be briefly explained in »Strategic Snapshot« boxes. If you are a student, these boxes are detailed enough to contain valuable information for a better comprehension of the topic or for encouraging further readings. If you are a time-lacked practitioner and want to focus fast on key methods that you need to consider for your strategy work, you might skip those boxes.

The book is based on the idea that people and organizations that engage in the essentials of a systematic strategic management process are generally more likely to outperform those that do not. The foundations...

Über Autor(innen)

Wunder, Thomas
Dr. Thomas Wunder ist Professor für Strategisches Management an der Hochschule Neu-Ulm. Zudem entwickelt und leitet er Nachhaltigkeitsprogramme für Führungskräfte an der Executive School der EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht. Er ist Gründer und Geschäftsführer der SustainUp GmbH, mit der er Unternehmen unmittelbar bei ihrer nachhaltigen Strategiearbeit unterstützt. Seit 15 Jahren forscht, lehrt, publiziert und berät er vor allem zur Verknüpfung von Strategie und Nachhaltigkeit sowie den zugehörigen Transformationsprozessen in Unternehmen. Thomas Wunder hat mehrere Bücher und Artikel publiziert. Er hat Lehraufträge für strategische Nachhaltigkeit in Firmenprogrammen und an Universitäten im In- und Ausland. Vor seiner Zeit an der Hochschule war er Managementberater mit Schwerpunkt Strategie und davon 6 Jahre Geschäftsführer in den USA. Er promovierte auf dem Gebiet des Strategischen Management an der European Business School (EBS) und hat ein Diplom als Wirtschaftsingenieur (Maschinenbau) von der Technischen Universität Kaiserslautern.

Thomas Wunder

Prof. Dr. Thomas Wunder is full Professor of Strategic Management at the Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Bavaria, Germany. He has been teaching strategy at globally recognized universities in Germany, France, Switzerland, and the USA. His research, lecturing and consulting activities are focused on the integration of business strategy with ecological and social sustainability and the corresponding transformation processes. Previously, he spent more than a decade of his career as a strategy consultant and business leader in both the EU and USA. He received his doctorate in the field of Strategic Management from the European Business School (EBS) in Germany.