Editor’s note

Citation

(2008), "Editor’s note", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 29 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs.2008.28829eaa.001

Editor’s note

Article Type: Editor’s note From: Journal of Business Strategy, Volume 29, Issue 5

Three of our feature papers in this issue revolve around what real business people think about strategy and how they use the principles and tools described in the prolific literature. Betsy Gelb and her co-authors discovered, in an online survey of managers about Peter Drucker’s concepts, that organizations and managers who displayed characteristics of flexibility were most likely to put strategic ideas into practice. In another survey, Paul Knott spoke to a handful of managers about what he broadly defines as “strategic tools,” which range from portfolio analysis modeling to the balanced scorecard, and found that managers want tools that are general, simple and accurate. This turns out to be an impossible combination to find in any one tool. Managers tend to use tools and concepts in unexpected ways, often applying concepts instinctively because they make sense rather than because they are a list of best practices to be adapted in pure form.

In our third paper on how managers adapt strategy to their workplace needs, Donald Hopkins and Tim Swift gathered information from over 350 domestic firms in the US, asking senior level people what their most serious strategic problem was. They agreed that the two most worrisome problems were new technology and new competition, which seem to be related. In a world where innovative technology debuts like clockwork, managers do not know what to expect, but they fear the unknown. Successful new technology may of course help their own businesses but it is just as likely to give a boost first to the competition or it may even create new competition.

Solutions to these concerns about strategy are not found by opening a textbook or journal on the subject. Besides, so many books and papers about strategy are virtually inaccessible to the working executive, in part because they are couched in dense academic prose that is of minimal interest to practitioners. Managers tend to find answers to strategy questions by applying a host of methods, cobbling together their adaptive strategies in unique ways.

Turning to our columnists, by coincidence two of them, Patrick Marren and Ajit Kambil, write about recession in this issue. Since they wrote their columns in June 2008 and we are publishing the issue in September, it should be interesting to see how their prophecies play out. Ajit Kambil offers pithy advice on managing in a recession and it probably will be just as valid in September as in June. He notes that managers and companies that take a less frenetic view of recession while planning for future growth when the downturn ends do much better than those who slash costs and lay off workers in a reactionary mode.

We also by coincidence have two papers on pricing: Stuart Jackson, our “Reaching for value” columnist, examines the pricing of pet hotels and other services, finding that pet owners really do have a stopping point. Rob Docters and his co-authors re-introduce the concept of demand curves as a critical business planning tool.

In an unusual case study of a French multinational food chain and manufacturer, Nicolas Rolland and Renata Kaminska-Labbe examine a networking program that encourages managers to share information actively. They can attend information markets (physical stands set up like exhibits) where their colleagues pitch solutions to business problems.

In many organizations, managers routinely keep information close to the vest as a way of ensuring that they alone get any credit for the value of the information. But in the French company under the microscope in this paper, everyone benefits from actively sharing solutions because company performance improved measurably as a result of specific exchanges of information.

Our final paper compares business to sport from a different perspective. It is not unusual for writers to apply sports analogies to business but in this paper the authors suggest that the best-performing organization is not always the winner. It takes a combination of performance and competitiveness to achieve bottom-line success.