Journal of Business Strategy articles from July 2002

Journal of Business Strategy archives from July 2002

Reflections on fear and greed. (Publisher's Note).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Think back to the family cookout last July 4 weekend. Maybe you were grousing to the inlaws about the dips in your stock portfolio or 401k, or complaining about those options in danger of sinking underwater before you could exercise them. You...

War is hell. (Short Takes).(employee recruiting)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... Responding to a survey of Fortune 1,000 companies by Accenture, 73% of senior executives said the "war for talent" continues, 24% said they believed it was temporarily on hold, and 3% said the talent crunch was past. When asked to identify the...

Dim ideas. (Just the Facts).(business innovation)
July 1, 2002... Larry Keeley, president and co-founder of Doblin Inc., believes that, in most firms, innovation efforts achieve a track record on a narrow scale somewhere between pathetic and lamentable. Innovation success rates in the toy industry hover...

Numbers runners. (Just the Facts).(business performance statistics)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... PricewaterhouseCoopers "Trendsetter Barometer" found that 23% of fast-growth CEOs use a benchmarking database to compare their company's metrics against industry peers, to determine its relative competitiveness--advantages and performance gaps....

M&A update. (Just the Facts).(mergers and acquisitions)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... A Mercer Consulting Group study has found that the majority of recent large trans-Atlantic deals have been successful. Mercer analyzed trans-Atlantic deals undertaken between 1994 and 1999 and discovered that 82 of the 152 deals included in the...

What employees hate about their jobs. (Short Takes).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... Based on their employee surveys for clients, the Discovery Group has identified the following seven most common complaints: 1. There's no job security here: Half of all employees believe their jobs are not secure. 2. I don't trust...

The melding of strategy and tactics. (Strategy).(information technology)
July 1, 2002... From Total Access: Giving Customers What They Want in an Anytime, Anywhere World, by Regis McKenna, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2002. Business organizations too often divide tasks between those who think and plan (strategy) and...

Mistake identity. (Learning Organization).(employee errors)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... From Reinventing Strategy: Using Strategic Learning to Create & Sustain Breakthrough Performance, by Willie Pietersen, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2002. Dumb mistakes should be defined in advance and appropriately discouraged or...

The early days of telephone tag. (Marketing).(introducing new technology)
July 1, 2002... From The Social Life of Information, by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2002 (paperback issue). [Alexander Graham] Bell invited the shareholders to put their faith not in sophistication and...

Discretionary drug dollars. (Demographics).(lifestyle drugs)
July 1, 2002... From "The Biotech Explosion," by Douglas I. Kalish and Geoffrey S. Thompson, in The Milken Institute Review, Second Quarter 2002. ... [D]emand for "lifestyle" drugs on the part of age-anxious baby boomers is growing. Antibaldness drugs...

Warts and all. (Quality).(quality management)
July 1, 2002... From The New New Economy: Yet Another Clueless Business Manifesto for the Post-Digital Age, by Tim McEachern and Chris O'Brien, AMACOM, New York, 2002. One of the problem areas that business in the New New Economy will have to deal with is...

Power outages. (City Planning).(capital cities and politics)
July 1, 2002... From The Force of Finance: Triumph of the Capital Markets, by Reuven Brenner, Texere, New York, 2001. [T]here is a link between location and prosperity.... [I]t has to do with politics, rather than geography. Rulers tended to build their...

The future of strategy: historic prologue. (Real-Time Strategy).(business planning)
July 1, 2002... "The only thing about the future you don't know is the history you haven't read." Harry S Truman The world around us is changing at lightning speed, and the most common words found in CEO statements about the future are: "We are...

Selling brand America. (Marketing).(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... It is becoming more and more apparent that the war on terror will not be won on the battlefield. This war--like the Cold War--is primarily a battle of ideas. Success depends on building support in the global community for a positive vision of...

When more of the same isn't better. (Disaster Recovery).(technology disaster recovery)
July 1, 2002... The events of September 11 focused the information technology community on business continuity and disaster recovery planning. In the days and weeks following the attack, many IT organizations assessed their infrastructures and allocated a...

Business in the age of terrorism: September 11 changed the way strategic planners must look at their companies' futures. (Strategic Planning).
July 1, 2002... THE COVER STORY OF THE MAY 26, 2002 ISSUE OF THE New York Times Magazine contained the following statement, by Times senior writer Bill Keller: The best reason for thinking that a nuclear terrorist attack won't happen is that it hasn't...

Performance and greed: compensation committees are asking the wrong question. They should ask "what are we paying for?" not "how much must we pay?" (Special Focus).(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION TODAY HAS ALL THE MAKINGS of a great Greek tragedy, including as it does the fall from grace, the comments on major moral events, and miscalculation of reality. There's even a Greek chorus made up of media commentators...

The problem with equity compensation: a close look at a number of studies reveals that equity compensation is not a prescription for performance. (Special Focus).(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... ABOUT A DECADE AGO, SHAREHOLDER activists were up in arms. Executive pay was going through the roof and, the activists claimed, shareholders were footing the bill for rewarding greed, not performance. To correct the misalliance between...

The difference between rightsizing and wrongsizing: cutting staff is a common response during economic downturns, but if staffing plans aren't linked to business strategy, rightsizing can go badly wrong. (HR Strategies).
July 1, 2002... DECREASED SALES, INCREASED COMPETITION, ECONOMIC downturn, lost customers, cost-cutting mandates, and disproportionate workforces. These are some of the sad facts of business life today. In the response to these challenges, many businesses are...

Risk management in the shadow of Enron: taking risks off the balance sheet doesn't make them go away. (Risk Management).
July 1, 2002... RECENTLY, TWO VERY SENIOR EXECUTIVES OF WHAT HAD been one of America's largest firms made very public claims that they had little knowledge of a myriad of partnership and off-balance sheet transactions that had led to their company's demise....

Effect without affect. (Stack Attack).(leadership books)
July 1, 2002... This issue's Stack attacks the question of how leaders can move from what they want to achieve to actually achieving it through themselves, teams, peers, and their organizations. The most successful are Execution, First Among Equals, and The...

Advertising. (The Last Word).(quotations on advertising's effectiveness)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Advertising--is it a boon or a blight? While you make up your own mind, consider what others had to say. Advertising nourishes the consuming power of men. It sets up before a man the goal of a better home, clothing, better food for himself...