For many industries, mergers and acquisitions have become the main pathway for reaching strategic objectives like growth, technological leadership, or efficiency in production and distribution. However, the success rate of most M&A deals is low - and flawed. Unrealistic synergies, wrong target selection, culture clashes and, most of all, weak post-merger integration processes pose huge challenges, and this book addresses the salient question of how to make M&A deals work.The author...

Recent financial crises have shown that firms need to create more robust business models. However, it seems that the task of developing resilience - a firm's ability to adapt, endure, bounce back and then thrive, despite the shock - appears on most managers' strategic issue list only after such a shock has occurred. Managers, through responsible leadership, can make explicit choices that will enhance their firm's resilience, increasing their chances of anticipating and avoiding these shock...

The organizational design of the Multinational Corporation (MNC) was a vibrant area of research in the field of International Business and Management during the 1970-1990's. However, since then this research has largely faded from our scholarship. This volume of AIM is designed to spark new life into the research on the organizational design of the MNC. The world - and environmental forces - has changed substantially in the last decades placing new constrains on the MNCs. External shocks h...

A new era of global banking and insurance is emerging, with leading banks eager to serve international markets. This book explores the issues that arise for banks in their strategic choices as they move into these new international markets. Building an International Financial Services Firm challenges conventional assumptions from the international management literature on topics such as the limits of globalization, the importance of cultural and institutional distance, the nature ...

A new era of global banking and insurance is emerging, with leading banks eager to serve international markets. This book explores the issues that arise for banks in their strategic choices as they move into these new international markets. Building an International Financial Services Firm challenges conventional assumptions from the international management literature on topics such as the limits of globalization, the importance of cultural and institutional distance, the nature ...

The Palgrave Student Companions offer undergraduates an innovative and highly designed one-stop print resource that provides essential information about the subject - and the course - they've chosen to study. Each one addresses the core components of study at degree level, covering basic study skills specific to the subject, key terms and concepts, influential theorists and theories, major studies and methodological approaches, comprehensive overviews of what to expect from the co...

Strategic alliances – partnerships between separate organizations to share resources collaboratively toward mutually beneficial goals – are an important management instrument, but one that is difficult for firms to manage. Among many desirable outcomes, alliances can reduce costs, provide access to new technology, and improve research and development endeavours, though collaborative arrangements come with risks, peril, and adversities. This renewed and re-worked text connects theory to pra...

At a time when corporate scandals and major financial failures dominate newspaper headlines, the importance of good risk management practices has never been more obvious. The absence or mismanagement of such practices can have devastating effects on exposed organizations and the wider economy (Barings Bank, Enron, Lehmann Brothers, Northern Rock, to name but a few). Today's organizations and corporate leaders must learn the lessons of such failures by developing practices to deal effective...

Find the right innovation modelInnovation is a much-used buzzword these days, but when it comes to creating and implementing a new idea, many companies miss the mark-plans backfire, consumer preferences shift, or tried-and-true practices fail to work in a new context. So is innovation just a low-odds crapshoot?In The Architecture of Innovation, Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner-one of the foremost experts on how innovation works-says in...

The Oxford Handbook of Project Management presents and discusses leading ideas in the management of projects. Positioning project management as a domain much broader and more strategic than simply 'execution management', this Handbook draws on the insights of over 40 scholars to chart the development of the subject over the last 50 years or more as an area of increasing practical and academic interest. It suggests we could be entering an emerging 'third wave' of analysis and inter...

Thinking about the Future, by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, distills the expertise of three dozen senior foresight professionals into a set of essential guidelines for carrying out successful strategic foresight. Presented in a highly scannable yet personable style, each guideline includes an explanation and rationale, key steps, a case example, and resources for further study. The 115 guidelines are organized into six sequential categories that mirror the phases of a strategic foresight ac...

How to answer the single most important question in business and lifeWhy should I choose you? That’s the question every customer asks every single time he buys a car, picks a shampoo, or chooses a distributor, a brokerage house, an animal hospital or a hairbrush. Sometimes the question is spoken out loud; other times it’s subliminal. But the fact is that every product, service or decision is a choice. And often it’s a choice we make within seconds.Ian Chama...