Outlines three metaphors which can be used to help understand the strategy process. These are “the jigsaw puzzle”, “the ice skater” and “the jazz band”. The suggestion is that the first two suffer from a number of limitations which the third attempts to address. The “jazz band”...

Leadership is a Humpty Dumpty word which people use in widely different ways. Argues that, on examination, there appear to be three main ways in which managers may exercise leadership. Two of them are specific to the manager′s nominal position. Strategic leadership, of the head, is concerned...

Major downsizing efforts are now taking place in multinational business firms in virtually every corner of the world, despite the economic recovery that seems to be occurring in many countries. Those multinational firms that have been turned around most effectively through downsizing activities...

Strategic alliances and networks have become an integral part of contemporary strategic organizational thinking. Their spread seems to correspond with the increasing rate of joint venture formations and outsourcing endeavours that have dominated the business arena in the past decade or so....

Presents some millennial thoughts on the appropriateness of the ature of work and organizational life in a future we can only sense rather than predict. It seems that it is of critical importance to question the core paradigms with which organizations and society currently identify. On this...

Examines the nature of business environments and reports on the potential danger they have for organizations operating unresponsively from unrealistically safe views of reality. Argues that these organizations need to adopt an objectively rational view of their position in their environment, and...