Crafting & Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage: Text and Readings

by Arthur A. Thompson Jr., A.J. Strickland III, John E. Gamble

Thompson/Strickland has always included the most recent research in strategy in a way that students can understand and apply it to business cases and problems. In addition, Thompson offers more coverage of strategy implementation than most other texts, which many instructors think is critical if students are to understand the how and not just the what and why. Thompson's coverage of Michael Porter's classic 5-forces model is clearer and more detailed than in other texts, according to reviewers. With this edition the market leader looks better than ever before, offering a new 4-color design, improved writing style, and two new chapters on global and e-commerce strategy.

Genres: Business, Management, Textbooks, Nonfiction

620 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Kas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as a part of my strategic management class, which is required for my degree.

The book is intense! It is heavy with information, but is nicely presented with many graphs and illustrations to supplement the work.

The first 3/4 of the book are the chapters with content. This book goes through how to execute a business on a VP level, and goes through smaller businesses to multinational corporations with several SBUs and a global strategy.

The last quarter of this book is real life cases. This was my favorite part of the book. The cases show the financial and situational progress of several large companies. I presented and wrote about RIM, Apple, PepsiCo, Jet Blue and several others from this book.

Overall I very much enjoyed this book, especially for a text. 5 stars.

[Meghan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Truly despised. Incredibly dry, repetitive, and over complicated for simple business concepts which would easily be explained in a few bullet pointed online articles. The online tie ins were abysmal.

[Thava Sumanenthiran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended for strategy professional!

[Janella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy to understand strategic management concepts

[Nisrein Sh-Abbsogh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very heavy book that requires attention and patience, however it is a very interesting and educational book

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly a book you want to curl up with (unless you're looking to fall asleep) but I'll give it credit for being well laid out and easy to follow. It offers some good advice for basic strategy formulation, although I think they could have widdled down the chapters (some of them were rather repititous from one paragraph to the next). My favorite aspect of the book were the insight boxes. Concepts are much more interesting when you can apply them to actual companies, and they picked some of the more interesting examples availble.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the last three chapters about implementing the strategy. And Focusing on the diagrams, case studies and blue boxes which summarises the ideas for nearly each page in few sentences.
As most academics books, too much said with little new insights. But the Reading section had little more insights than other parts of the book.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good foundation, covers topics like competitive advantage, diversification and culture

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

READ SEP 2008

Good summary of core concepts and tactics to craft and implement organizational strategy.