Strategic Management Dynamics - Chapter Outline

Award winning author Kim Warren presents his new book: Strategic Management Dynamics - a complete framework in the field of Strategic Management.

Strategic Management Dynamics builds on, and goes substantially beyond the existing strategy textbooks with its focus on understanding and managing how organisations perform over time. Based on simple but powerful underlying principles, the book both lays out a comprehensive approach to strategy analysis, design and delivery, and connects with established frameworks in the field.

In Strategic Management Dynamics Kim Warren provides a valuable teaching resource, which can be used as a core textbook to bring strategy to life. With numerous examples from different sectors, the book is supported by a rich variety of simulation-based learning materials that are essential if strategy principles are to be experienced, rather than just discussed.

For those who have already learned about strategy, this book provides an important update and extension of their knowledge.

A fundamentally different approach to strategy …Strategic Management Dynamics starts with understanding how an organization’s resources behave and drive performance [whether in corporate, public-service or non-profit settings]. It addresses competitive dynamics and implications for profitability. It offers an important extension to existing frameworks and teaching materials via an over-riding focus on the key concern in Strategy – improving organizations' performance over time. It features:

• development of established strategy frameworks to demonstrate principles of time-based performance
• numerous simulation models to demonstrate dynamic principles, ideal for class exercises and assignments (many of these are relevant in marketing, human-resource policy, operations management and other topics as well as in Strategy)
• a detailed worked example, built up from chapter to chapter, illustrating the key frameworks of strategy dynamics analysis in a well-known sector - airlines - allowing the book to be used with the many popular cases in the field.
• end-of-chapter questions and exercises, supported by detailed worksheets – these are also available in a software package purpose-built for modelling strategy and performance over time.

Chapter 1: Performance Through Time'

Business value reflects future earnings.
The management imperative: Building performance into the future.
Non-financial performance measures, especially in public-service and voluntary organisations.
Appropriate objectives: Achievable, but developing the full opportunity
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Chapter 2: Resources Drive performance

The need for rigorous causal explanations of performance.
From performance outcomes to the resources that drive demand and supply, revenue and costs.
Measures of performance for a whole time-period vs. quantities of resources at an instant in time.
Critical importance of tracking numbers over time, including non-business cases and functional challenges.
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Chapter 3: Resource Accumulation

The inescapable and critical behaviour of resources - building up and draining away over time
Understanding the math of how resource flow-rates determine resource levels.
Seeking explanations for what causes the rate at which resources are won and lost.
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Chapter 4: The Strategic Architecture

Complementary resources: why growth depends on existing and potential resources.
How interdependence causes feedback that can both drive growth and constrain it.
Mapping the interactions amongst resources to complete the ’strategic architecture’ that drives organisations’ performance over time.
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Chapter 5 - Resource Attributes

The attributes possessed by resources that describe their quality and determine their contribution to performance
Understanding how those attributes improve and deteriorate as resources are added or lost
Implications for developing human resources, product range, and other functional issues
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Chapter 6: Resource Development

Recognising that resources contribute differently to an organisation as they move through different stages
The importance of knowing and controlling the rates at which resources develop – customers, staff, products and assets
Resources that deteriorate rather than improve as they develop, such as items of equipment
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Chapter 7: Rivalry

Type-1 rivalry – capturing new customers, especially in growing markets.
Type-2 rivalry – stealing customers from competitors, especially in mature markets.
Type-3 rivalry – fighting for share of sales to non-exclusive customers.
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Chapter 8: Goals and Controls

The many different categories of decision that arise in different stages of strategy
The interrelated issues of evaluating strategic opportunities, choosing between them, and designing a path that might deliver success
The critical importance of good policy to steer strategy as time passes
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Chapter 9: Intangible resources

Classifying resources and capabilities to give a clear specification of intangible resources
Three main classes of intangibles affecting the tangible heart of the strategic architecture: psychological factors, information-based resources, and quality-related items
The distinction between current quality driving behavior for current customers vs. reputation influencing potential customers
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Chapter 10: Keeping the Wheels on the Road – Steering the Dynamics of Strategy

Capabilities as activities groups are good at doing, that can be and often are deliberately identified and developed.
The importance of clear terminology and specification for capabilities
Most important capabilities concern acquiring, developing or retaining resources, so can be found at each resource flow in the strategic architecture
Small differences in capability explain large differences in performance, with no need to invoke complex, abstract concepts
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