Editor's note

Citation

(2007), "Editor's note", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 28 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs.2007.28828aaa.001

Editor's note

Graham Beaver has extensively researched small business enterprises and what makes them successful. The original research on which he based the JBS paper is derived from exploring strategic management in 87 small businesses in six industry sectors based in the UK Midlands. The author has adapted his scholarly research for the practitioner in this paper that explains why strategy is essential for the smaller enterprise.

It is safe to say that business war games were not a female invention. As if real war were not enough, consultants invented “fake” war where casualties might comprise dead companies or dead deals rather than lifeless bodies. Mark Chussil’s paper on war games makes it all seem very agreeable. A new experience for many business managers, war games are gaining in popularity, and more managers are likely to participate in these exercises in the future.

Pieter Jagersma, who has written several articles for JBS in the past, has contributed a paper on corporate aspirations that complements Morgan Marzec’s paper, “Telling the corporate story: vision into action.” Having a corporate aspiration statement is part of the corporate story, and may even be viewed as step one in the process. Professor Jagersma, in discussing how to craft corporate aspirations, notes that “great leaders have the ability to tell and retell a convincing story that carries shared meanings, a story that affects the thoughts, feelings and actions of individual employees. If leaders are to be effective, they must embody the story in their own lives. Discrepancies between the values in the corporate aspiration and top management’s behavior will have a disproportionately damaging effect on the usefulness of the aspiration.” This seems to be a clear reference to the bad, often criminal, behavior of too many corporate leaders who have made headlines in the past few years.

Morgan Marzec deals in her paper with a broader concept than aspiration, although aspiration is arguably the basis for the entire corporate story. Employees today are seemingly less engaged than ever, in part because companies have failed to mobilize their potentially most ardent fans – their own employees. Corporate management has, despite spending millions on marketing and public relations, too often not conveyed its story to employees and other key stakeholders. Morgan Marzec carefully lays out the reasoning behind corporate story development and explains how to harness its power to bring stakeholders on board, ready to act on the vision.

Caroline Firstbrook, a London-based Accenture executive in strategy, consults on cross-border mergers and acquisitions before they turn into crises, although not always. In this paper she presents four best practices for successful planning, implementation and execution of cross-border deals, in particular the difficulties in addressing cultural issues and local due diligence.

Stuart Jackson, starting in the next issue of JBS, will write a column on strategic marketing. In this issue, he contributes a full-length article on the surprisingly large differences in profitability among companies within almost every industry sector. A top performer in a particular sector can be 200, 300, or even 1,000 percent better than the sector’s worst performer. The top performers, maintains the author, have learned how to determine their strategic market position and make investments that increase overall positioning and drive long-term value.

Jonathan Ezer and Dionysios Demetis go out on a limb with their contention that short-term thinking may be more valuable than long-term, or strategic, thinking. But perhaps they are primarily reacting to the reverence accorded by scholars and consultants alike to the importance of thinking strategically above all else. The authors cite a company that shoots from the hip, meets its targets, and prospers. Readers will find this contrarian perspective on strategy refreshing.

Dan and Catherine Dalton, our experts on corporate governance, present the first part of a two-part column in this issue on a series of changes in the governance environment in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) era. Boards now have to consider additional factors in CEO succession. (The title of their column, “CEO succession: the times they are a-changin’,” as non-American readers may not realize, refers to a 1964 Bob Dylan song that could probably serve as the theme song for the entire issue, especially the lines, “For he that gets hurt/Will be he who has stalled”).

With this first issue of JBS in 2007 we begin the 28th year of JBS. We look forward to comments and criticisms from readers.