Aims to discover how general managers are selected, what support they received in their first post, what their first significant actions are, and the current and future success criteria against which general managers could be measured. Uses a survey of 90 international senior managers and...

Records that a capable and effective top management team's CEO may be unprepared for team problems. Gives research details from in‐depth interviews with 23 chief executives based in both the USA and Europe, from a wide range of industries. Postulates that there appeared to be no correlation...

Concentrates on the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, using a number of sources, recreating the background, to provide an event diary (from the US perspective), and looking at lessons that could be drawn. Investigates how the events led up to the Bay of Pigs invasion and goes on to give in‐depth...

Describes an overview of a substantial body of theory, whose importance lies in the concept, not the detail. States one of the bugbears of joint ventures is the worry that a partner may have a hidden agenda. Posits many alliances are formed to gain access to specific assets, but access is...

Uses ‘The Prisoner's Dilemma’ (attributed to Albert Tucker) to explain game theory — showing achieving co‐operation is a fundamental management problem, which reveals itself clearly in alliances and joint ventures — each firm enters a joint venture unsure of how the other will behave....

Sets out to show that although strategic alliances do represent challenges for managers, they are a useful vehicle for international strategy. Finds that the average life span of a cross‐border alliance is about seven years but only about half of them are successful and, moreover, 66% of...

Regards East Asian dynamism as a world ‘locomotive’ to which the West should link its enterprise — even though there may be some suspicion involved. Fears an army of ‘juggernauts’ from the Pacific Rim will destroy Western companies and economies unless governments involved themselves...

Warns that managers who base strategic alliances on the popular marriage metaphor are mistaken — especially in fast‐moving markets. Bases research on consulting work in partnership alliances for British Aerospace, Moog Controls International and General Motors (Europe), in addition to...

Suggests that firms in the same industry adopt differing approaches to products, distribution and organizational structures and that these differences, within similar market environments, came to be known as strategies. Argues that, to be successful in a competitive free market, companies should...

Discusses how Womack and Jones' (1991) book, ‘The Machine that Changed the World’ found the gaps in productivity quality and time between Western and Japanese car firms, and showed a better way to organize and manage customer relations, the supply chain, product development and production...