New books

This news item offers you a brief summary of books published by CBS faculty since our previous issue. For a complete list of book titles included in the research database, Research@CBS, in 2010, please follow the concluding link.

Return on Strategy - How to Achieve It!
By Michael Moesgaard Andersen, Morten Froholdt and Flemming Poulfelt
Routledge, 2010.

Why is it that many companies meticulously following recipes on management and strategy fail? Did Google, Skype, Ryanair, Huawei and a number of other successful companies buy into a well thought out strategy and adhered to that over time? How do companies deliberately opting out of the recipe game and opting into the out-of-the-box-thinking fare? In short, why is it that some companies achieve a higher Return on Strategy than others? Whereas Return on Investment (RoI) has attracted increased attention over the last couple of decades, little, if any, attention is being paid to whether companies do at all achieve Return on Strategy (RoS) and how.

This book provides an overview of contemporary strategy literature and recipes brushed up with a view to identifying explanations as to how recipes has seldom worked as intended. One out of several reasons rests on the fact that recipes do not take the so-called X-factor into account. With the X-factor as the starting point the book examines a sample of 50 global companies of which some has achieved a remarkable high Return on Strategy and others failed. The 50 companies covers most continents as some are from the North America, some are from the European continent and others are from different parts of the emerging Asian region – threatening companies from the Western hemisphere.

The book explains the reason behind success and failures and provides practical tools as to how companies may increase their Return on Strategy. In the toolbox, you will find a framework on how to increase the Return on Strategy as well a number of dynamic positioning tools, road maps and bearing points. Invariably, more and more companies - including consultants, business leaders and MBAs - now work diligently in order to increase their Return on Strategy and the best of them are here to stay successfully - are you?

Michael Moesgaard Andersen is an adjunct professor at CBS.
Morten Froholdt is a PhD-fellow at International Center for Business and Politics.
Flemming Poulfelt is professor at Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy.

Read an interview with Flemming Poulfelt on the website Lederne.dk (the interview is in Danish).

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Buy the book at Academic Books

Brand Society - How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle
By Martin Kornberger, guest professor at CBS.
Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Brands are a fait accompli: they represent a mountain range of evidence in search of a theory. They are much exploited, but little explored. In this book, Martin Kornberger sets out to rectify the ratio between exploiting and exploring through sketching out a theory of the Brand Society. Most attempts to explain the role of brands focus on brands either as marketing and management tools (business perspective) or a symptoms of consumerism (sociological perspective). Brand Society combines these perspectives to show how brands have the power to transform both the organizations that develop them and the lifestyles of the individuals who consume them. This holistic approach shows how brands function as a medium between producers and consumers in a way that is rapidly transforming our economy and society. That's the bottom line of the Brand Society: brands are a new way of organizing production and managing consumption. Using an array of practical case studies from a diverse set of organizations, this book provides a fascinating account of the way in which brands influence the lives of individuals and the organizations they work in.

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Buy the book at Academic Books

Managing the Contemporary Multinational : The Role of Headquarters
Edited by Ulf Andersson, CBS, and Ulf Holm, Uppsala University
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010.

Managing the Contemporary Multinational explores the role of headquarters in different structures of multinational firms and shows how this role is affected by the complexity of contemporary research.

This topical book illustrates that contemporary research has added complexity to the attributes of the multinational, with implications for the role of headquarters. It examines claims that subsidiaries contribute to the overall competitiveness of the corporation, that they are organized in corporate networks spanning country borders, and that they depend upon specific relationships in the external network. It is stressed that headquarters' knowledge of the multinational and its business environment is crucial, but also problematic. The eminent contributors question whether headquarters have become more or less important given the complexity of contemporary research, and argue that the answer to this question depends on the theoretical foundation adopted in the multinational.

Based on empirical studies, this invaluable book will be a captivating read for students and researchers interested in international business and international management.

Ulf Andersson is a professor at Center for Strategy and Globalization.

Buy the book at Academic Books

This is a listing of all the new books registered in Research@CBS in 2010.