By Henry Mintzberg
WHAT MAKES an organization effective? For a long time we thought we had the answer. Frederick Taylor told us about the “one best way” at the turn of the century, and organizations long pursued this holy grail. First it was Taylor’s time and motion studies, later the participative management of the human relations people, in [...]
By Howard Barich and Philip Kotler
AS MARKETS GROW more competitive, companies need to improve their understanding of their target customers’ needs, attitudes, and buying behavior. They must design their offers and their images to be competitively attractive. The target customers carry images in their heads about each supplier’s product quality, service quality, prices, and so on. The images are not [...]
By Abraham S. George and C. William Schroth
GENERALS PLANNING military action and CEOs plotting corporate strategy often start from the same point: they identify the key strengths and weaknesses of their position vis-à-vis their rivals and develop a strategy to exploit the strengths and protect the weaknesses. In the corporate world many factors come into play, including quality of product, service, and [...]
