Making Strategy

Lucid and highly-accessible this text addresses the challenges of how to build a robust and implementable strategy. Strategy making is seen as something relevant to managers of departments, divisions, SMEs, as well as the top management teams of public and for-profit organizations. Four key routes to creating a strategy are discussed, both through original theoretical and conceptual grounding, and the practical requirements for implementing the concepts. These routes, when taken together, provide a powerful means for agreeing a negotiated strategy, and comprise: strategic issue management, agreeing organizational purpose, competitiveness from the exploitation and protection of distinctiveness, and the strategic management of stakeholders. These designs are usable by manager-facilitators, MBA student-managers, and consultant-facilitators. The designs have been used extensively, in a wide range of countries, by management teams in all types of organisations. This text is illustrated with cases and examples and accompanied by online material including instructors' notes and associated mapping software. Making Strategy is the ideal companion to postgraduate students studying strategic management and managers at all levels who wish to develop a strategy for their own unit. Making Strategy builds off, and updates, the two previous successful books by Eden and Ackermann: Making Strategy: the Journey of Strategic Management and Ackermann, Eden with Brown: The Practice of Making Strategy.