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Arthur A. Thompson The University of Alabama

Margaret A. Peteraf Dartmouth College

John E. Gamble Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi

A.J. Strickland III The University of Alabama

THE QUEST FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE:

Concepts and Cases | TWENTY-FIRST EDITION

Crafting and Executing Strategy

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CRAFTING & EXECUTING STRATEGY: THE QUEST FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE, CONCEPTS AND CASES, TWENTY-FIRST EDITION

Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright © 2018 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-259-73278-2 MHID 1-259-73278-9

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Thompson, Arthur A., 1940- author. Title: Crafting and executing strategy : the quest for competitive advantage: concepts and

cases / Arthur A. Thompson, The University of Alabama, Margaret A. Peteraf, Dartmouth College, John E. Gamble, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, A.J. Strickland III, The University of Alabama.

Description: Twentyfirst edition. | New York, NY : McGraw-Hill Education, [2018] Identifiers: LCCN 2016038849 | ISBN 9781259732782 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Strategic planning. | Strategic planning—Case studies. Classification: LCC HD30.28 .T53 2018 | DDC 658.4/012—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038849

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a website does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-Hill Education does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites.

mheducation.com/highered

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To our families and especially our spouses: Hasseline, Paul, and Kitty.

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Arthur A. Thompson, Jr., earned his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from The University of Tennessee, spent three years on the economics faculty at Virginia Tech, and served on the faculty of The University of Alabama’s College of Commerce and Business Administration for 24 years. In 1974 and again in 1982, Dr. Thompson spent semester-long sabbaticals as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School.

His areas of specialization are business strategy, competition and market analysis, and the economics of business enterprises. In addition to publishing over 30 articles in some 25 different professional and trade publications, he has authored or co-authored five textbooks and six computer-based simulation exercises. His textbooks and strategy simulations have been used at well over 1,000 college and university campuses worldwide.

Dr. Thompson spends much of his off-campus time giving presentations, putting on management development programs, working with companies, and helping operate a busi- ness simulation enterprise in which he is a major partner.

Dr. Thompson and his wife of 56 years have two daughters, two grandchildren, and a Yorkshire Terrier.

Margaret A. Peteraf is the Leon E. Williams Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. She is an internationally recognized scholar of strategic management, with a long list of publications in top management journals. She has earned myriad honors and prizes for her contributions, including the 1999 Strategic Management Society Best Paper Award recognizing the deep influence of her work on the field of Strate- gic Management. Professor Peteraf is a fellow of the Strategic Management Society and the Academy of Management. She served previously as a member of the Board of Governors of both the Society and the Academy of Management and as Chair of the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy. She has also served in various editorial roles and on numerous editorial boards, including the Strategic Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, and Organization Science. She has taught in Executive Education programs in various programs around the world and has won teaching awards at the MBA and Executive level.

Professor Peteraf earned her Ph.D., M.A., and M.Phil. at Yale University and held previous faculty appointments at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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John E. Gamble is a Professor of Management and Dean of the College of Business at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. His teaching and research for nearly 20 years has focused on strategic management at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He has con- ducted courses in strategic management in Germany since 2001, which have been sponsored by the University of Applied Sciences in Worms.

Dr. Gamble’s research has been published in various scholarly journals and he is the author or co-author of more than 75 case studies published in an assortment of strategic management and strategic marketing texts. He has done consulting on industry and market analysis for clients in a diverse mix of industries.

Professor Gamble received his Ph.D., Master of Arts, and Bachelor of Science degrees from The University of Alabama and was a faculty member in the Mitchell College of Busi- ness at the University of South Alabama before his appointment to the faculty at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi.

Dr. A. J. (Lonnie) Strickland is the Thomas R. Miller Professor of Strategic Management at the Culverhouse School of Business at The University of Alabama. He is a native of north Georgia, and attended the University of Georgia, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in math and physics; Georgia Institute of Technology, where he received a Master of Science in industrial management; and Georgia State University, where he received his Ph.D. in business administration.

Lonnie’s experience in consulting and executive development is in the strategic manage- ment arena, with a concentration in industry and competitive analysis. He has developed strategic planning systems for numerous firms all over the world. He served as Director of Marketing and Strategy at BellSouth, has taken two companies to the New York Stock Exchange, is one of the founders and directors of American Equity Investment Life Holding (AEL), and serves on numerous boards of directors. He is a very popular speaker in the area of strategic management.

Lonnie and his wife, Kitty, have been married for 49 years. They have two children and two grandchildren. Each summer, Lonnie and his wife live on their private game reserve in South Africa where they enjoy taking their friends on safaris.

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PREFACE

By offering the most engaging, clearly articulated, and conceptually sound text on strategic management, Crafting and Executing Strategy has been able to main-tain its position as the leading textbook in strategic management for over 30 years. With this latest edition, we build on this strong foundation, maintaining the attributes of the book that have long made it the most teachable text on the market, while updating the content, sharpening its presentation, and providing enlightening new illustrations and examples.

The distinguishing mark of the 21st edition is its enriched and enlivened presenta- tion of the material in each of the 12 chapters, providing an as up-to-date and engross- ing discussion of the core concepts and analytical tools as you will find anywhere. As with each of our new editions, there is an accompanying lineup of exciting new cases that bring the content to life and are sure to provoke interesting classroom discussions, deepening students’ understanding of the material in the process.

While this 21st edition retains the 12-chapter structure of the prior edition, every chapter—indeed every paragraph and every line—has been reexamined, refined, and refreshed. New content has been added to keep the material in line with the latest developments in the theory and practice of strategic management. In other areas, cov- erage has been trimmed to keep the book at a more manageable size. Scores of new examples have been added, along with 17 new Illustration Capsules, to enrich under- standing of the content and to provide students with a ringside view of strategy in action. The result is a text that cuts straight to the chase in terms of what students really need to know and gives instructors a leg up on teaching that material effectively. It remains, as always, solidly mainstream and balanced, mirroring both the penetrating insight of academic thought and the pragmatism of real-world strategic management.

A standout feature of this text has always been the tight linkage between the con- tent of the chapters and the cases. The lineup of cases that accompany the 21st edi- tion is outstanding in this respect—a truly appealing mix of strategically relevant and thoughtfully crafted cases, certain to engage students and sharpen their skills in apply- ing the concepts and tools of strategic analysis. Many involve high-profile companies that the students will immediately recognize and relate to; all are framed around key strategic issues and serve to add depth and context to the topical content of the chap- ters. We are confident you will be impressed with how well these cases work in the classroom and the amount of student interest they will spark.

For some years now, growing numbers of strategy instructors at business schools worldwide have been transitioning from a purely text-case course structure to a more robust and energizing text-case-simulation course structure. Incorporating a competi- tion-based strategy simulation has the strong appeal of providing class members with an immediate and engaging opportunity to apply the concepts and analytical tools covered in the chapters and to become personally involved in crafting and executing a strategy for a virtual company that they have been assigned to manage and that com- petes head-to-head with companies run by other class members. Two widely used and pedagogically effective online strategy simulations, The Business Strategy Game and GLO-BUS, are optional companions for this text. Both simulations were created by Arthur Thompson, one of the text authors, and, like the cases, are closely linked to the content of each chapter in the text. The Exercises for Simulation Participants, found at the end of each chapter, provide clear guidance to class members in applying the

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concepts and analytical tools covered in the chapters to the issues and decisions that they have to wrestle with in managing their simulation company.

To assist instructors in assessing student achievement of program learning objec- tives, in line with AACSB requirements, the 21st edition includes a set of Assurance of Learning Exercises at the end of each chapter that link to the specific learning objectives appearing at the beginning of each chapter and highlighted throughout the text. An important instructional feature of the 21st edition is its more closely inte- grated linkage of selected chapter-end Assurance of Learning Exercises and cases to the publisher’s web-based assignment and assessment platform called Connect™. Your students will be able to use the online Connect™ supplement to (1) complete two of the Assurance of Learning Exercises appearing at the end of each of the 12 chap- ters, (2) complete chapter-end quizzes, and (3) enter their answers to a select number of the suggested assignment questions for 7 of the 31 cases in this edition. Many of the Connect™ exercises are automatically graded, thereby enabling you to easily assess the learning that has occurred.

In addition, both of the companion strategy simulations have a built-in Learning Assurance Report that quantifies how well each member of your class performed on nine skills/learning measures versus tens of thousands of other students worldwide who completed the simulation in the past 12 months. We believe the chapter-end Assurance of Learning Exercises, the all-new online and automatically graded Con- nect™ exercises, and the Learning Assurance Report generated at the conclusion of The Business Strategy Game and GLO-BUS simulations provide you with easy-to-use, empirical measures of student learning in your course. All can be used in conjunction with other instructor-developed or school-developed scoring rubrics and assessment tools to comprehensively evaluate course or program learning outcomes and measure compliance with AACSB accreditation standards.

Taken together, the various components of the 20th-edition package and the sup- porting set of instructor resources provide you with enormous course design flexibility and a powerful kit of teaching/learning tools. We’ve done our very best to ensure that the elements constituting the 20th edition will work well for you in the classroom, help you economize on the time needed to be well prepared for each class, and cause stu- dents to conclude that your course is one of the very best they have ever taken—from the standpoint of both enjoyment and learning.

DIFFERENTIATING FEATURES OF THE 21ST EDITION Seven standout features strongly differentiate this text and the accompanying instruc- tional package from others in the field: 1. Our integrated coverage of the two most popular perspectives on strategic

management—positioning theory and resource-based theory—is unsurpassed by any other leading strategy text. Principles and concepts from both the positioning per- spective and the resource-based perspective are prominently and comprehensively integrated into our coverage of crafting both single-business and multibusiness strate- gies. By highlighting the relationship between a firm’s resources and capabilities to

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the activities it conducts along its value chain, we show explicitly how these two per- spectives relate to one another. Moreover, in Chapters 3 through 8 it is emphasized repeatedly that a company’s strategy must be matched not only to its external market circumstances but also to its internal resources and competitive capabilities.

2. Our coverage of cooperative strategies and the role that interorganizational activ- ity can play in the pursuit of competitive advantage, is similarly distinguished. The topics of the value net, ecosystems, strategic alliances, licensing, joint ven- tures, and other types of collaborative relationships are featured prominently in a number of chapters and are integrated into other material throughout the text. We show how strategies of this nature can contribute to the success of single-business companies as well as multibusiness enterprises, whether with respect to firms operating in domestic markets or those operating in the international realm.

3. The attention we give to international strategies, in all their dimensions, make this textbook an indispensable aid to understanding strategy formulation and execu- tion in an increasingly connected, global world. Our treatment of this topic as one of the most critical elements of the scope of a company’s activities brings home to students the connection between the topic of international strategy with other topics concerning firm scope, such as multibusiness (or corporate) strategy, out- sourcing, insourcing, and vertical integration.

4. With a stand-alone chapter devoted to this topic, our coverage of business eth- ics, corporate social responsibility, and environmental sustainability goes well beyond that offered by any other leading strategy text. Chapter 9, “Ethics, Cor- porate Social Responsibility, Environmental Sustainability, and Strategy,” fulfills the important functions of (1) alerting students to the role and importance of ethi- cal and socially responsible decision making and (2) addressing the accreditation requirement of the AACSB International that business ethics be visibly and thor- oughly embedded in the core curriculum. Moreover, discussions of the roles of values and ethics are integrated into portions of other chapters to further reinforce why and how considerations relating to ethics, values, social responsibility, and sustainability should figure prominently into the managerial task of crafting and executing company strategies.

5. Long known as an important differentiator of this text, the case collection in the 21st edition is truly unrivaled from the standpoints of student appeal, teachability, and suitability for drilling students in the use of the concepts and analytical treat- ments in Chapters 1 through 12. The 31 cases included in this edition are the very latest, the best, and the most on target that we could find. The ample information about the cases in the Instructor’s Manual makes it effortless to select a set of cases each term that will capture the interest of students from start to finish.

6. The text is now more tightly linked to the publisher’s trailblazing web-based assign- ment and assessment platform called Connect™. This will enable professors to gauge class members’ prowess in accurately completing (a) selected chapter-end exercises, (b) chapter-end quizzes, and (c) the creative author-developed exercises for seven of the cases in this edition.

7. Two cutting-edge and widely used strategy simulations—The Business Strategy Game and GLO-BUS—are optional companions to the 21st edition. These give you an unmatched capability to employ a text-case-simulation model of course delivery.

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ORGANIZATION, CONTENT, AND FEATURES OF THE 21ST-EDITION TEXT CHAPTERS ∙ Chapter 1 serves as a brief, general introduction to the topic of strategy, focusing

on the central questions of “What is strategy?” and “Why is it important?” As such, it serves as the perfect accompaniment for your opening-day lecture on what the course is all about and why it matters. Using the newly added example of Star- bucks to drive home the concepts in this chapter, we introduce students to what we mean by “competitive advantage” and the key features of business-level strategy. Describing strategy making as a process, we explain why a company’s strategy is partly planned and partly reactive and why a strategy tends to co-evolve with its environment over time. We show that a viable business model must provide both an attractive value proposition for the company’s customers and a formula for making profits for the company. A key feature of this chapter is a depiction of how the Value-Price-Cost Framework can be used to frame this discussion.We show how the mark of a winning strategy is its ability to pass three tests: (1) the fit test (for internal and external fit), (2) the competitive advantage test, and (3) the performance test. And we explain why good company performance depends not only upon a sound strategy but upon solid strategy execution as well.

∙ Chapter 2 presents a more complete overview of the strategic management pro- cess, covering topics ranging from the role of vision, mission, and values to what constitutes good corporate governance. It makes a great assignment for the sec- ond day of class and provides a smooth transition into the heart of the course. It introduces students to such core concepts as strategic versus financial objectives, the balanced scorecard, strategic intent, and business-level versus corporate-level strategies. It explains why all managers are on a company’s strategy-making, strategy-executing team and why a company’s strategic plan is a collection of strat- egies devised by different managers at different levels in the organizational hier- archy. The chapter concludes with a section on the role of the board of directors in the strategy-making, strategy-executing process and examines the conditions that led to recent high-profile corporate governance failures. A new illustration capsule on Volkswagen’s emissions scandal brings this section to life.

∙ The next two chapters introduce students to the two most fundamental perspectives on strategy making: the positioning view, exemplified by Michael Porter’s “five forces model of competition”; and the resource-based view. Chapter 3 provides what has long been the clearest, most straightforward discussion of the five forces framework to be found in any text on strategic management. It also offers a set of complementary analytical tools for conducting competitive analysis and demon- strates the importance of tailoring strategy to fit the circumstances of a company’s industry and competitive environment. The chapter includes a discussion of the value net framework, which is useful for conducting analysis of how cooperative as well as competitive moves by various parties contribute to the creation and capture of value in an industry.

∙ Chapter 4 presents the resource-based view of the firm, showing why resource and capability analysis is such a powerful tool for sizing up a company’s com- petitive assets. It offers a simple framework for identifying a company’s resources and capabilities and explains how the VRIN framework can be used to determine

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whether they can provide the company with a sustainable competitive advantage over its competitors. Other topics covered in this chapter include dynamic capa- bilities, SWOT analysis, value chain analysis, benchmarking, and competitive strength assessments, thus enabling a solid appraisal of a company’s cost position and customer value proposition vis-á-vis its rivals. An important feature of this chapter is a table showing how key financial and operating ratios are calculated and how to interpret them. Students will find this table handy in doing the number crunching needed to evaluate whether a company’s strategy is delivering good financial performance.

∙ Chapter 5 sets forth the basic approaches available for competing and winning in the marketplace in terms of the five generic competitive strategies—low-cost provider, broad differentiation, best-cost provider, focused differentiation, and focused low cost. It describes when each of these approaches works best and what pitfalls to avoid. It explains the role of cost drivers and uniqueness drivers in reducing a company’s costs and enhancing its differentiation, respectively.

∙ Chapter 6 focuses on other strategic actions a company can take to complement its competitive approach and maximize the power of its overall strategy. These include a variety of offensive or defensive competitive moves, and their timing, such as blue-ocean strategies and first-mover advantages and disadvantages. It also includes choices concerning the breadth of a company’s activities (or its scope of operations along an industry’s entire value chain), ranging from hori- zontal mergers and acquisitions, to vertical integration, outsourcing, and strategic alliances. This material serves to segue into the scope issues covered in the next two chapters on international and diversification strategies.

∙ Chapter 7 takes up the topic of how to compete in international markets. It begins with a discussion of why differing market conditions across countries must neces- sarily influence a company’s strategic choices about how to enter and compete in foreign markets. It presents five major strategic options for expanding a com- pany’s geographic scope and competing in foreign markets: export strategies, licensing, franchising, establishing a wholly owned subsidiary via acquisition or “greenfield” venture, and alliance strategies. It includes coverage of topics such as Porter’s Diamond of National Competitive Advantage, profit sanctuaries, and the choice between multidomestic, global, and transnational strategies. This chapter explains the impetus for sharing, transferring, or accessing valuable resources and capabilities across national borders in the quest for competitive advantage, connecting the material to that on the resource-based view from Chapter 4. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the unique characteristics of competing in developing-country markets.

∙ Chapter 8 concerns strategy making in the multibusiness company, introducing the topic of corporate-level strategy with its special focus on diversification. The first portion of this chapter describes when and why diversification makes good strategic sense, the different means of diversifying a company’s business lineup, and the pros and cons of related versus unrelated diversification strategies. The second part of the chapter looks at how to evaluate the attractiveness of a diversi- fied company’s business lineup, how to decide whether it has a good diversifica- tion strategy, and what strategic options are available for improving a diversified company’s future performance. The evaluative technique integrates material con- cerning both industry analysis and the resource-based view, in that it considers the relative attractiveness of the various industries the company has diversified into,

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the company’s competitive strength in each of its lines of business, and the extent to which its different businesses exhibit both strategic fit and resource fit.

∙ Although the topic of ethics and values comes up at various points in this text- book, Chapter 9 brings more direct attention to such issues and may be used as a stand-alone assignment in either the early, middle, or late part of a course. It con- cerns the themes of ethical standards in business, approaches to ensuring consis- tent ethical standards for companies with international operations, corporate social responsibility, and environmental sustainability. The contents of this chapter are sure to give students some things to ponder, rouse lively discussion, and help to make students more ethically aware and conscious of why all companies should conduct their business in a socially responsible and sustainable manner.

∙ The next three chapters (Chapters 10, 11, and 12) comprise a module on strategy execution that is presented in terms of a 10-step framework. Chapter 10 provides an overview of this framework and then explores the first three of these tasks: (1) staff- ing the organization with people capable of executing the strategy well, (2) building the organizational capabilities needed for successful strategy execution, and (3) cre- ating an organizational structure supportive of the strategy execution process.

∙ Chapter 11 discusses five additional managerial actions that advance the cause of good strategy execution: (1) allocating resources to enable the strategy execution process, (2) ensuring that policies and procedures facilitate rather than impede strategy execution, (3) using process management tools and best practices to drive continuous improvement in the performance of value chain activities, (4) install- ing information and operating systems that help company personnel carry out their strategic roles, and (5) using rewards and incentives to encourage good strategy execution and the achievement of performance targets.

∙ Chapter 12 completes the framework with a consideration of the roles of cor- porate culture and leadership in promoting good strategy execution. The recur- ring theme throughout the final three chapters is that executing strategy involves deciding on the specific actions, behaviors, and conditions needed for a smooth strategy-supportive operation and then following through to get things done and deliver results. The goal here is to ensure that students understand that the strategy-executing phase is a make-things-happen and make-them-happen-right kind of managerial exercise—one that is critical for achieving operating excel- lence and reaching the goal of strong company performance.

In this latest edition, we have put our utmost effort into ensuring that the 12 chapters are consistent with the latest and best thinking of academics and practitioners in the field of strategic management and provide the topical coverage required for both under- graduate and MBA-level strategy courses. The ultimate test of the text, of course, is the positive pedagogical impact it has in the classroom. If this edition sets a more effective stage for your lectures and does a better job of helping you persuade students that the discipline of strategy merits their rapt attention, then it will have fulfilled its purpose.

THE CASE COLLECTION The 31-case lineup in this edition is flush with interesting companies and valuable lessons for students in the art and science of crafting and executing strategy. There’s a good blend of cases from a length perspective—15 of the 31 cases are under 15 pages

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yet offer plenty for students to chew on; 11 are medium-length cases; and the remain- der are detail-rich cases that call for more sweeping analysis.

At least 28 of the 31 cases involve companies, products, people, or activities that students will have heard of, know about from personal experience, or can easily identify with. The lineup includes at least 15 cases that will deepen student understanding of the special demands of competing in industry environments where product life cycles are short and competitive maneuvering among rivals is quite active. Twenty-three of the cases involve situations in which company resources and competitive capabilities play as large a role in the strategy-making, strategy executing scheme of things as industry and competitive conditions do. Scattered throughout the lineup are 16 cases concerning non-U.S. companies, globally competitive industries, and/or cross-cultural situations. These cases, in conjunction with the globalized content of the text chapters, provide abundant material for linking the study of strategic management tightly to the ongoing globalization of the world economy. You’ll also find 11 cases dealing with the strategic problems of family-owned or relatively small entrepreneurial businesses and 21 cases involving public companies and situations where students can do further research on the Internet.

The “Guide to Case Analysis” follows the last case. It contains sections on what a case is, why cases are a standard part of courses in strategy, preparing a case for class discussion, doing a written case analysis, doing an oral presentation, and using financial ratio analysis to assess a company’s financial condition. We suggest having students read this guide before the first class discussion of a case.

A number of cases have accompanying YouTube video segments which are listed in the Instructor’s Manual.

THE TWO STRATEGY SIMULATION SUPPLEMENTS: THE BUSINESS STRATEGY GAME AND GLO-BUS

The Business Strategy Game and GLO-BUS: Developing Winning Competitive Strategies—two competition-based strategy simulations that are delivered online and that feature automated processing and grading of performance—are being marketed by the publisher as companion supplements for use with the 21st edition (and other texts in the field). ∙ The Business Strategy Game is the world’s most popular strategy simulation, hav-

ing been used by nearly 3,000 different instructors for courses involving some 800,000 students at 1,185+ university campuses in 72 countries. It features global competition in the athletic footwear industry, a product/market setting familiar to students everywhere and one whose managerial challenges are easily grasped.

∙ GLO-BUS, a newer and somewhat simpler strategy simulation first introduced in 2004 and freshly revamped in 2016 to center on competition in two exciting product categories--wearable miniature action cameras and unmanned camera- equipped drones suitable for multiple commercial purposes, has been used by 1,685+ different instructors for courses involving over 240,000 students at 730+ university campuses in 53 countries.

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How the Strategy Simulations Work In both The Business Strategy Game (BSG) and GLO-BUS, class members are divided into teams of one to five persons and assigned to run a company that competes head- to-head against companies run by other class members. In both simulations, companies compete in a global market arena, selling their products in four geographic regions— Europe-Africa, North America, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Each management team is called upon to craft a strategy for their company and make decisions relating to plant operations, workforce compensation, pricing and marketing, social responsibility/ citizenship, and finance.

Company co-managers are held accountable for their decision making. Each com- pany’s performance is scored on the basis of earnings per share, return-on-equity invest- ment, stock price, credit rating, and image rating. Rankings of company performance, along with a wealth of industry and company statistics, are available to company co- managers after each decision round to use in making strategy adjustments and operating decisions for the next competitive round. You can be certain that the market environ- ment, strategic issues, and operating challenges that company co-managers must con- tend with are very tightly linked to what your class members will be reading about in the text chapters. The circumstances that co-managers face in running their simulation company embrace the very concepts, analytical tools, and strategy options they encoun- ter in the text chapters (this is something you can quickly confirm by skimming through some of the Exercises for Simulation Participants that appear at the end of each chapter).

We suggest that you schedule 1 or 2 practice rounds and anywhere from 4 to 10 regular (scored) decision rounds (more rounds are better than fewer rounds). Each decision round represents a year of company operations and will entail roughly two hours of time for company co-managers to complete. In traditional 13-week, semester- long courses, there is merit in scheduling one decision round per week. In courses that run 5 to 10 weeks, it is wise to schedule two decision rounds per week for the last sev- eral weeks of the term (sample course schedules are provided for courses of varying length and varying numbers of class meetings).

When the instructor-specified deadline for a decision round arrives, the simulation server automatically accesses the saved decision entries of each company, determines the competitiveness and buyer appeal of each company’s product offering relative to the other companies being run by students in your class, and then awards sales and market shares to the competing companies, geographic region by geographic region. The unit sales volumes awarded to each company are totally governed by: ∙ How its prices compare against the prices of rival brands. ∙ How its product quality compares against the quality of rival brands. ∙ How its product line breadth and selection compare. ∙ How its advertising effort compares. ∙ And so on, for a total of 11 competitive factors that determine unit sales and market

shares. The competitiveness and overall buyer appeal of each company’s product offer-

ing in comparison to the product offerings of rival companies is all-decisive—this algorithmic feature is what makes BSG and GLO-BUS “competition-based” strategy simulations. Once each company’s sales and market shares are awarded based on the

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competitiveness and buyer appeal of its respective overall product offering vis-à-vis those of rival companies, the various company and industry reports detailing the out- comes of the decision round are then generated. Company co-managers can access the results of the decision round 15 to 20 minutes after the decision deadline.

The Compelling Case for Incorporating Use of a Strategy Simulation There are three exceptionally important benefits associated with using a competition- based simulation in strategy courses taken by seniors and MBA students: ∙ A three-pronged text-case-simulation course model delivers significantly more

teaching-learning power than the traditional text-case model. Using both cases and a strategy simulation to drill students in thinking strategically and applying what they read in the text chapters is a stronger, more effective means of helping them connect theory with practice and develop better business judgment. What cases do that a simulation cannot is give class members broad exposure to a vari- ety of companies and industry situations and insight into the kinds of strategy- related problems managers face. But what a competition-based strategy simulation does far better than case analysis is thrust class members squarely into an active, hands-on managerial role where they are totally responsible for assessing market conditions, determining how to respond to the actions of competitors, forging a long-term direction and strategy for their company, and making all kinds of operat- ing decisions. Because they are held fully accountable for their decisions and their company’s performance, co-managers are strongly motivated to dig deeply into company operations, probe for ways to be more cost-efficient and competitive, and ferret out strategic moves and decisions calculated to boost company performance. Consequently, incorporating both case assignments and a strategy simulation to develop the skills of class members in thinking strategically and applying the con- cepts and tools of strategic analysis turns out to be more pedagogically powerful than relying solely on case assignments—there’s stronger retention of the lessons learned and better achievement of course learning objectives.

To provide you with quantitative evidence of the learning that occurs with using The Business Strategy Game or GLO-BUS, there is a built-in Learning Assurance Report showing how well each class member performs on nine skills/ learning measures versus tens of thousands of students worldwide who have com- pleted the simulation in the past 12 months.

∙ The competitive nature of a strategy simulation arouses positive energy and steps up the whole tempo of the course by a notch or two. Nothing sparks class excite- ment quicker or better than the concerted efforts on the part of class members at each decision round to achieve a high industry ranking and avoid the perilous con- sequences of being outcompeted by other class members. Students really enjoy taking on the role of a manager, running their own company, crafting strategies, making all kinds of operating decisions, trying to outcompete rival companies, and getting immediate feedback on the resulting company performance. Lots of back- and-forth chatter occurs when the results of the latest simulation round become available and co-managers renew their quest for strategic moves and actions that will strengthen company performance. Co-managers become emotionally invested in running their company and figuring out what strategic moves to make to boost their company’s performance. Interest levels climb. All this stimulates learning

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and causes students to see the practical relevance of the subject matter and the benefits of taking your course.

As soon as your students start to say “Wow! Not only is this fun but I am learn- ing a lot,” which they will, you have won the battle of engaging students in the subject matter and moved the value of taking your course to a much higher plateau in the business school curriculum. This translates into a livelier, richer learning experience from a student perspective and better instructor-course evaluations.

∙ Use of a fully automated online simulation reduces the time instructors spend on course preparation, course administration, and grading. Since the simulation exercise involves a 20- to 30-hour workload for student teams (roughly 2 hours per decision round times 10 to 12 rounds, plus optional assignments), simulation adopters often compensate by trimming the number of assigned cases from, say, 10 to 12 to perhaps 4 to 6. This significantly reduces the time instructors spend reading cases, studying teaching notes, and otherwise getting ready to lead class discussion of a case or grade oral team presentations. Course preparation time is further cut because you can use several class days to have students meet in the computer lab to work on upcoming decision rounds or a three-year strategic plan (in lieu of lecturing on a chapter or covering an additional assigned case). Not only does use of a simulation permit assigning fewer cases, but it also permits you to eliminate at least one assignment that entails considerable grading on your part. Grading one less written case or essay exam or other written assignment saves enormous time. With BSG and GLO-BUS, grading is effortless and takes only minutes; once you enter percentage weights for each assignment in your online grade book, a suggested overall grade is calculated for you. You’ll be pleasantly surprised—and quite pleased—at how little time it takes to gear up for and admin- ister The Business Strategy Game or GLO-BUS.

In sum, incorporating use of a strategy simulation turns out to be a win–win propo- sition for both students and instructors. Moreover, a very convincing argument can be made that a competition-based strategy simulation is the single most effective teaching/ learning tool that instructors can employ to teach the discipline of business and com- petitive strategy, to make learning more enjoyable, and to promote better achievement of course learning objectives.

A Bird’s-Eye View of The Business Strategy Game The setting for The Business Strategy Game (BSG) is the global athletic footwear industry (there can be little doubt in today’s world that a globally competitive strategy simulation is vastly superior to a simulation with a domestic-only setting). Global market demand for footwear grows at the rate of 7 to 9 percent annually for the first five years and 5 to 7 percent annually for the second five years. However, market growth rates vary by geographic region—North America, Latin America, Europe- Africa, and Asia-Pacific.

Companies begin the simulation producing branded and private-label footwear in two plants, one in North America and one in Asia. They have the option to establish production facilities in Latin America and Europe-Africa, either by constructing new plants or by buying previously constructed plants that have been sold by competing companies. Company co-managers exercise control over production costs on the basis of the styling and quality they opt to manufacture, plant location (wages and incentive compensation vary from region to region), the use of best practices and Six Sigma

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programs to reduce the production of defective footwear and to boost worker produc- tivity, and compensation practices.

All newly produced footwear is shipped in bulk containers to one of four geographic distribution centers. All sales in a geographic region are made from footwear inven- tories in that region’s distribution center. Costs at the four regional distribution cen- ters are a function of inventory storage costs, packing and shipping fees, import tariffs paid on incoming pairs shipped from foreign plants, and exchange rate impacts. At the start of the simulation, import tariffs average $4 per pair in Europe-Africa, $6 per pair in Latin America, and $8 in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the Free Trade Treaty of the Americas allows tariff-free movement of footwear between North America and Latin America. Instructors have the option to alter tariffs as the game progresses.