Strategic Management (Modern Management Collection · Textbook Series)

Author: Chen Bingfu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-07
Features: The theory of strategic management does not study general rules that most enterprises must follow, but rather how enterprises can achieve success in their competitive environment. This success can manifest as rapid growth within a certain period or as a stable market position and supernormal profits. Under the guidance of this success-oriented approach, the discipline of strategic management is endowed with three fundamental characteristics:
First, research on strategic management theory is primarily exploratory. On one hand, the forms of enterprises in reality are diverse, encompassing numerous internal factors and an external environment that is constantly changing. Past success models are difficult to extend to the future. On the other hand, success is merely the performance of some enterprises relative to others. Failing enterprises cannot achieve strategic breakthroughs simply by imitating or copying the success models of leading firms. Therefore, strategic management theory cannot present universal, eternal truths that apply everywhere, while continuously exploring the paths to success in new eras and environments remains an eternal topic in the field of strategic management.
Second, strategic management is a highly practical discipline. The theory of strategic management originates from practice, primarily from the practical experience of successful enterprises. Even research on the external environment requires empirical proof that it can indeed enhance an enterprise's adaptability before it becomes a method in strategic analysis. The practical nature of the strategic management discipline also poses challenges to theoretical research in this field. Researchers can only obtain meaningful results if they truly understand the subject of their study.
Third, the value of strategic management theory lies mainly in its ability to enrich and inspire the thinking of enterprise managers. Like other branches of management science, strategic management theory gradually emerges through systematic analysis of its research objects. Although these theories always attempt to provide systematic explanations for enterprise success, it does not mean that enterprises can directly derive strategic plans by applying these theories. In fact, the success of enterprises in the real world is an extremely complex phenomenon. Even for a few well-known successful enterprises, the theoretical research of strategic management has far from revealed all the reasons for their success. Simply applying strategic management theory to some enterprises and asserting how they should or should not act is unlikely to achieve practical guidance.
This textbook is written for graduate students in business administration. To help students more easily grasp the theoretical framework of strategic management and gain an understanding of new theories and perspectives that have emerged since 1990, the book follows the common structure of most strategic management textbooks, with strategic management as the main thread, environmental analysis as the focus, and attention to incorporating new research findings in this field. The editors hope that some of the content in the book will also provide reference for business managers.