Strategy Synthesis

Conventional strategic management education is dominated by a strong industry recipe that: limits the number of perspectives presented; uses an overly simplistic step-by-step strategic planning approach; reworks original material into consistent and bite-size pieces of text; and leans heavily towards the authors' own domestic context in terms of the choice of perspectives, theories, examples and cases.

This second edition of De Wit and Meyer's Strategy Synthesis takes a strikingly different approach. The fundamental differences of opinion within strategic management are not ignored or smoothed over. Instead, the authors carefully guide the students through the many, often conflicting, perspectives in the field of strategy, in order to help them become critical and creative strategic thinkers.

CLASSIC FEATURES:

• Presents strategy as a debate. A range of different and often conflicting perspectives and theories on strategy is presented to illustrate the diversity of the subject, and to encourage students to actually think about strategy.
• Adopts a 'key issues' structure, focussing on the key strategic questions with which strategists must deal in practice, bringing relevance to the classroom.
• Original articles from classic thinkers are presented throughout, offering students a firsthand account of the key ideas, rather than simplistic sound-bites.
• Provides a genuinely international focus throughout, introducing students to the issues of adapting approaches to strategy in an international context.
• Includes a wealth of case material, including three international short cases, from a variety of industries, to enable a more detailed study and provide a practical illustration of the issues at hand.

FEATURES OF THE NEW EDITION:

• New integrating framework within chapters to enhance readability and allow students to gain an immediate overview of the debate.
• New and expanded topics give a more comprehensive coverage of key strategic management issues, including strategic leadership, corporate governance, strategic renewal, disruptive technologies, industry development, multi-business synergy, post-acquisition integration, strategic alliances, business ecosystems, and strategy implementation,
• Two new example boxes per chapter highlight well-known international companies employing the opposing strategy perspectives discussed, real-life business examples of how a particular strategy perspective is used.
• Many new short cases provide an excellent illustration in practice of the issues at hand and a number of new readings fully represent the new developments in the strategy field.