Large, diversified firms face unique challenges as they compete worldwide, and corporate restructuring is one way multinationals strive for competitive advantage. Weighing the pros and cons of a variety of approaches to restructuring, Downscoping offers executives a clear, strategic path through the maze. The authors show that when a multinational conglomerate fails to compete effectively, too much diversification may be the culprit. Whether the result of weak corporate governance or poor corporate strategy, over-diversification can make managers, unfamiliar with some of the markets in which they compete, opt for safety over innovation. This risk-aversion and lack of long-range commitment to innovation lead inevitably to stagnation over the longer term. The answer is not downsizing--closing offices and laying off personnel--but downscoping: a strategic approach to restructuring. The options include incentive and compensation adjustments for executives, leveraged buy-outs and capital structure changes, focusing on core skills, diversifying internationally while focusing on businesses in which a firm has strong competencies, and buying and selling mature businesses where product development is not a great concern. Regardless of the approach, executives must exercise strategic leadership during and after restructuring, including providing strategic direction, exploiting core competencies, developing human capital, and sustaining the corporate culture. Based on systematic research rather than casual observation, Downscoping provides a strong description of restructuring alternatives and their resulting tradeoffs. Its specific guidelines for maintaining competitiveness will be essential reading for managers involved in corporate restructuring.

With an emphasis on global advantage, the text offers a comprehensive examination of regional and international issues to provide a complete, accurate and up-to-date explanation of the strategic management process. New coverage on environmental concerns and emerging technologies as well as examples and cases from Australia, New Zealand and Asia-Pacific serve to engage students while updated international content demonstrates how strategic management is used in the global economy. The text takes a 'resource-based' approach, which requires the examining of a firm's unique bundling of its internal resources. This text is appropriate for upper-level undergrad, usually third year; post grad in Masters courses.

Leverage the “serverless mindset” to build and deploy software faster, better, and with less expense. In this definitive guide, Joseph Emison shows how to leverage “serverless” for maximum customer value. He reveals why mindset is crucial to modern IT strategy and explains why and how to move toward a truly serverless mindset. Many organizations are falling short when it comes to leveraging the cloud. Drawing on his experience as a pioneering CTO across multiple industries, Emison shows why and how you can gain immense business value from the cloud. While many serverless adopters focus on converting and building apps on serverless compute platforms like AWS Lambda, Emison offers better ways to think about your tech stack, optimize build-or-buy decisions, choose the right vendor for each commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) or open-source solution, and draw on the industry's best managed services. To help you develop a serverless mindset, Emison includes a case study demonstrating a real-world enterprise transition to serverless. The author also provides an exclusive directory of current managed services with focused descriptions and concise explanations of each service and its role in modern application architecture. Many of these services are unfamiliar to enterprise architects, but they are enterprise tested and can radically simplify any serverless transition. Evolve your tech stack and mindset to gain the full benefits of the cloud Deliver software faster, better, and at lower cost with serverless Use serverless architectures and managed services to offload tasks that don't add value Follow a real-world case study taking you from where you are to where you want to be Explore an exclusive managed services directory to find resources to streamline your serverless transition Transform your mindset and organization by leveraging serverless architecture to change the game and win it. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

This text explains how firms achieve strategic competitiveness, emphasizing integration of resources and capabilities to obtain a sustained competitive advantage. The text integrates the resource-based view of the firm with the more traditional model.

This study examines the relationship between a firm's diversification and its competitiveness.