The standout features of this Second Edition of Essentials of Strategic Management are its concisely written and robust coverage of strategic management concepts and its compelling collection of cases. The text responds to growing requests by business faculty for a concise, conceptually strong treatment of strategic management principles and analytic approaches that features straight-to-the-point discussions, timely examples, and a writing style that captures the interest of students. This edition was crafted with four objectives in mind:

1. To fully engage students in the task of learning what every aspiring manager needs to know about the theory and practice of strategic management.

2. To provide an attractive set of contemporary cases that involve headline strategic issues and that give students ample opportunities to apply what they read in the chapters.

3. To complement the use of a business strategy simulation.

4. To simplify the task of demonstrating student learning through course-embedded assessment.

Changes, Improvements, and Differentiating Features

As in any substantive revision, the chapter coverage has been trimmed in some areas, expanded in others. The most easily recognized changes include the order of the chapters, which have been reorganized to match the organization of the 17th edition of our full-length text, Crafting & Executing Strategy, and the addition of a new chapter examining business strategies used to supplement the chosen competitive strategy. As always, much effort has gone into refining the explanations of core concepts and analytical tools, updating and refreshing the examples, and including the latest research findings pertinent to a first course in strategy. The fundamental character of the Second Edition of Essentials of Strategic Management is very much in step with the best academic thinking and contemporary management practice.

Complementing the text presentation is a truly appealing lineup of 15 diverse, timely, and thoughtfully crafted cases. All of the cases are tightly linked to the content of the 10 chapters, thus pushing students to apply the concepts and analytical tools they have read about. Nine of the 15 cases were written by the coauthors to illustrate specific tools of analysis or distinct strategic management theories. The six cases included in the text not written by the coauthors were chosen because of their exceptional linkage to strategic management concepts presented in the text. We are confident you will be impressed with how well each of the 15 cases in the collection will work in the classroom and the amount of student interest they will spark.

This book by no means “requires” parallel use of a simulation but it fits the needs of simulation users perfectly. The relatively short length of each chapter gives students more time for exploring how best to utilize and apply the chapter material in operating their simulation company, actually crafting a strategy for their company, and becoming more savvy about making good strategy related decisions. In addition, each chapter contains an Exercise for Simulation Participants designed to drive home the linkage between the strategic management concepts presented in the chapter and the decision-making challenges of running a simulation company in a globally competitive marketplace.

Through our experiences as college of business faculty members, we also fully understand the assessment demands on faculty teaching strategic management courses. In many institutions, capstone courses have emerged as the logical home for assessing student achievement of program learning objectives. Essentials of Strategic Management includes a number of interesting Assurance of Learning Exercises at the end of each chapter that you can use as a basis for class discussion or to demonstrate student learning through written assignments and/or team presentations. Instructors can easily pair the Assurance of Learning Exercises with instructor-developed scoring rubrics to assess course or program learning outcomes.

And there's an array of support materials in the Instructor Resources package to equip you with enormous course design flexibility and a powerful kit of teaching/learning tools. We've done our very best to ensure that the Second Edition package will work especially well for you in the classroom, help you economize on the time needed to be well prepared for each class, and cause students to conclude that your course is one of the very best they have ever taken—from the standpoint of both enjoyment and learning.

Differentiation from Other Texts

There are three noteworthy traits that strongly differentiate this text from others in the field:

1. The coverage of resource-based theory of the firm in the Second Edition is unsurpassed by any other leading strategy text. RBV principles and concepts are prominently and comprehensively integrated into our coverage of crafting both single-business and multi-business strategies. In Chapters 1 through 8 it is repeatedly emphasized that a company's strategy must be matched not only to its external market circumstances but also to its internal resources and competitive capabilities. Moreover, an RBV perspective is integrated into the presentation on strategy execution (Chapter 10) to make it unequivocally clear how and why the tasks of assembling intellectual capital and building dynamic capabilities and core competencies are absolutely critical to successful strategy execution and operating excellence.

2. The coverage of business ethics, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability is unsurpassed by any other leading strategy text. In this new edition, we have embellished the highly important chapter on “Ethical Business Strategies, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Environmental Sustainability” with fresh content so that it can better fulfill the important functions of (1) alerting students to the role and importance of ethical and socially responsible decision making and (2) addressing the accreditation requirements of the AACSB International that business ethics be visibly and thoroughly embedded in the core curriculum. Moreover, discussions of the importance of high ethical standards is integrated into portions of Chapters 2 and 10 to further reinforce why and how considerations relating to ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability should figure prominently into the managerial task of crafting and executing company strategies.

3. The caliber of the case collection in the Second Edition is truly top-notch from the standpoints of student appeal, being eminently teachable, and suitability for drilling students in the use of the concepts and analytical treatments in Chapters 1 through 10. The 15 cases included in this edition are the very latest, the best, and the most on-target that we could find. The ample information about the cases in the Instructor's Manual makes it effortless to select a set of cases each term that will capture the interest of students from start to finish.