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This book addresses major phases of strategic management, including environmental analysis, strategy formulation and development, strategy evaluation and control. By design, the book does not present theoretical concepts that cannot be applied in practice.

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The innovative and unique feature of this book is that it does not contain theoretical concept that cannot be translated into practice.
The model which introduces this volume sets the stage for addressing the major phases of the strategic management process: environmental analysis, strategy formulation and development, strategy evaluation and control. Its conceptual and operational structure is described in the first part, together with a practically oriented definition of strategy, and a brief discussion of the logic and benefits of the judgmental modeling approach to decision making.
The second part critically addresses the classical approaches to the analysis of the external and internal environmental factors, which have an impact on the "functioning" of the basic model, i.e. the structural characteristics of the industry context, and the companies´ technical, organizational, financial, and human resources, including the translation into operational models of otherwise rather theoretical concepts.

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Overview of the series and of the first volume.- Part I: Defining and understanding strategic management.- 1. What is strategy?.- 2. The source of the company´s wealth.- 3. The importance (and usefulness) of modeling .- 4. A simplified conceptual model.- 5. The S-shaped curve and the opportunity costs. .- 6. The relationship between investments and value: direct and indirect tools, and professional resources .- 7. Translation of the above concepts into spreadsheett models. .- 8 Structure and contents of the subsequent chapters .- Appendix I .- Part II: Environmental analysis .- 9. Environmental variables: internal, industry, social, stakeholders .- 10. SWOT analysis .- 11. Porter´s five forces .- 12. Industry and corporate value chain .- 13. RBW and distinctive competencies .- 14. Holdup and slack .- Appendix II .- Short introduction to the second volume .- References.

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