Strategic Flexibility: Managing in a Turbulent Environment

Moving towards the zenith of the technological age brings with it an ever-increasing amount of uncertainty, change and flux. Academic, business and consultative commentators around the world have for years been speculating on the divergent courses we may take through the information maze, and on the different possibilities we may attain when we get there. What is needed now is not another set of possibilities, but an entirely new way of looking, seeing and responding. The worldwide turbulence will require different perspectives on organizations, different styles of leadership, and perhaps most important, the strategic flexibility on which this volume focuses. This is summed up by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad: "Developing a program of ideas
new ideas, new theory, new applications, new concepts
that are relevant to a manager facing the new millennium? To do that we need to escape old constraints, old thinking, old questions, and address everything that is new. We hope that—we can work together to help set the research agenda for the field of strategic management in the year 2000 and beyond. Let's break out of old paradigms; let's challenge received dogma; let's have the courage to ask new questions; let's rekindle our passion for relevance."

Strategic Flexibility Managing in a Turbulent Environment Edited by Gary Hamel, London Business School, UK C. K. Prahalad, University of Michigan, USA Howard Thomas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Don O’Neal, University of Illinois at Springfield, USA Published in association with the Strategic Management Society, The Wiley Strategic Management Series aims to illustrate the ‘best in global strategic management’ for academics, business practitioners and consultants. This book looks at five main issues:

• Innovation — moving from a strategy of low-cost leadership to one of innovation, utilizing pockets of innovation, technological development from R&D consortia, and the influence of strategic trajectories on technological innovation.
• Organization — deliberate and emergent corporate cultures, value-creation as a function of organizational form, strategic reengineering as a framework for understanding industries, and changing organizational structure to enhance organizational knowledge.
• Leadership — good ethics vs. good business, the role of leaders in managing knowledge, the influence of corporate headquarters on organizational learning, measuring board performance, and where strategic ideas come from.
• Partnership — managing supplier relationships, and understanding the knowledge structures of European managers.
• Competence — a renewed model of competence, determining optimal organizational form in MNCs, an empirical analysis of the value of having/developing core competences, and mechanisms for matching firm-level competences with industry-level sources of competitive advantage.

About the Editors Gary Hamel is Professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School. He was formerly visiting Professor of International Business at the Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Michigan. Gary Hamel teaches on corporate senior executive programmes, and is a consultant to various American, European and Japanese multinationals. He is on the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal and is a member of the Global Business Network. He is author of Competing for the Future with C. K. Prahalad. C. K. Prahalad is Harvey C. Fruehauf Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Corporate Strategy and International Business at the Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Michigan. He has consulted with many multinational firms including Motorola, AT&T, Philips, Honeywell and Eastman Kodak. He is co-author with Gary Hamel of the McKinsey Award winning article, The Core Competence of the Corporation. Howard Thomas is Dean of the College of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and James F. Towey Professor of Strategic Management at UIUC. He became Dean in May 1992. Prior to this he was Foundation Professor of Management at the Australian Graduate School of Management, New South Wales, and Director of the Doctoral Program at London Business School, England. He is internationally recognized as one of the leading experts in the field of strategic management theory. He serves on the editorial boards of various management journals and is President for the Strategic Management Society and has published widely in the areas of corporate and competitive strategy. He has an international reputation as a consultant in strategy and serves on a number of boards. Donald O'Neal, MBA and PhD (Business Administration), University of Illinois is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Illinois at Springfield. After a successful business career, including management positions in engineering and sales, and, latterly, as Vice President of Human Resources he studied for a doctorate in strategic management at the UIUC. In addition to teaching his interests include research in corporate governance and consulting in the areas of strategy and leadership.