The Strategic Manager provides a comprehensive, logical, and applied insight in strategic management. Unlike some more theory-heavy texts, this book focuses on how strategy works in everyday practice, taking readers’ expectations and understanding beyond that of strategy as a matter of planning only. It enables the reader to learn and reflect upon their practical skills and knowledge, and critically evaluate the strategy process and their own strategic decision-making.
The book is based around six different strategy theories, individually presented and supplemented with useful lists of questions that encourage readers to become competent strategic thinkers. This third edition has been fully updated throughout, including fresh case studies and examples from across Asia, Africa, and South America that bridge theory with practice, new strategy practice boxes considering the importance of cooperation and strategic alliances, and reflective questions to aid understanding.
Essential reading for postgraduate students of strategic management, MBA students, and those in executive education, this text will also be a useful tool for reflective managers trying to develop a better understanding.
Online resources include chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides.
1. Strategic Management Basics
2. Marketing-inspired Strategic Thinking
Case 2.1: Miele
3. The Industrial Organization Approach
Case 3.1: Spotify
4. The Resource-based View
Case 4.1: Macy’s
5. Agency Theory & Shareholder Value
Case 5.1: Judges Scientific
6. Stakeholders & Organizational Politics
Case 6.1: Inditex
7. Institutional Theory and Organizational Culture
Case 7.1: Waymo
8. Similarities, Differences and Underlying Assumptions
Case 8.1: De La Rue
Biography
Harry Sminia is Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Strathclyde, UK.
"At last, here is a book that simplifies and demystifies the strategy process. Starting with the primary concepts to in-depth expert analysis, this text is the catalyst that will enable students of all abilities to engage with the strategic management process whilst, concurrently, allowing them to critically evaluate the practical contribution of essential core concepts of the strategy process."Kevin Burt, Senior Lecturer in Strategy, University of Lincoln, UK
"The Strategic Manager provides readers with the broad underpinnings of strategic management and useful insights into its practice. By addressing six different theoretical approaches, this book enriches our understanding of what organizations should do not only to perform well, but also to do so consistently. Each chapter contains pertinent examples and ends with a practical case, thereby helping the reader to grasp the theories and concepts discussed in the text."
Fernando Muñoz-Bullón, Associate Professor, Department of Business Administration, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
"Regardless of background – profit, non-profit or public sector – at least one of Sminia’s six approaches to strategy performance and process will resonate with managers’ lived experience both in what matters and how strategy is carried out. The Strategic Manager provides the bridge between practice and theory that encourages critical thinking and broad-ranging debate amongst MBA and other strategy students."
Humphrey Bourne, Associate Professor of Management, University of Bristol, UK
