management and leadership

Jay B. Barney has written an enduring, understandable user's guide to corporate strategy that is a must read for any business student. Barney helps would-be business leaders frame their strategic decision-making process. Barney first explains to his audience the concepts of strategy and performance, and their relevance to the corporate organization both internally and externally. Barney then explores the different strategies that the corporation can adopt in dealing with its competitive environment: Cost leadership, product differentiation, tacit collusion, and alliances. The author does a very good job in demonstrating to his readers that the four strategies are not mutually exclusive but occasionally complementary. Finally, Barney explores how a company can structure itself across markets over time. He successively addresses the issues of integration, diversification, mergers and acquisitions, and globalization. Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage has been one of the most influential business textbooks that I have ever been asked to read.

This is a great book - more for what it organises than what it adds as new ideas.

Barney sets a model for Competitive Advantage (VIRO) and them compares strategic models as potential sources. It places many of the modern attempts in perspective. Without this starting understanding, the modern gurus (Hamel) are almost impossible to apply as their ideas lack the perspective on the role of strategy within an organisation and within all of the other management tools.

It places Michael Porter within a framework where his work can be better used.

For managers and post graduates, this book sets out the fundamentals of strategy and where it can take you.

Not cheap (by a long way) but a fair price for the knowledge.

This is a very concise and interesting book on competitive and corporate strategies. It compiles all the main issues regarding studies on competitive advantage withouth losing focus on the specifics of each different kind of strategy.

I would recommend using the book only after a review of microeconomic concepts. This will allow graduate business students coming from other areas (like engineering) to grasp the strategy concepts more easily.

One suggestion: it would be nice if the authors included cases at the end of each chapter. Since the book presents the theory from a basic up to a more advanced level, this would let students to quickly fix the concepts by applying them in real world situations.