Editor’s note

Citation

Healy, N. (2007), "Editor’s note", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 28 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs.2007.28828faa.001

Editor’s note

For the past four years, Journal of Business Strategy has been fortunate to have a column on corporate governance written by two distinguished scholars from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, Catherine and Dan Dalton. With obligations galore on their agendas, they have written their last column for JBS with this issue, and we will miss their insights, replete with humor and candor. Each of these outstanding scholars and teachers has a long list of credits. Dan was the Dean of the Kelley School from 1997 to 2004, and during that time gift income increased by $150 million. The school catapulted into top-20 status as well. Dan continues as an endowed professor of strategic management and director of the Institute for Corporate Governance. Catherine Dalton also holds an endowed chair at Kelley in strategic management and is editor-in-chief of Business Horizons, the journal of the Kelley school. She and Dan have both received many citations for excellence in teaching.

Patrick Marren, Stuart Jackson and Ajit Kambil all continue as columnists for JBS, each bringing a highly personal voice and new ideas to their pieces.

In this issue of JBS, three London-based partners from Bain & Company discuss the imperative for banks to become truly customer-led, describing the characteristics and strategies that provide the foundation for achieving this.

Next, the authors of a paper on M&A integration caution against smugness, even when things seem to be going well in post-merger activities. There is no room for complacency.

A scholarly team from Canada and Hong Kong joins forces on a paper examining whether small and medium-sized enterprises are better off partnering with a larger company or remaining completely self-reliant. It all depends, and factors such as industry specialization, geography and markets all affect the partnership decision.

While most JBS papers tend to focus on strategy in the corporate sector, this issue’s “Overcoming Change Fatigue” deals with radical change in the UK’s National Health Service, third on the list of the world’s largest employers, and Europe’s largest employer. The authors studied the NHS in Glasgow when it was going through massive organizational consolidation in record time and displacing hundreds of employees. Remarkably, the many-tentacled organization achieved the changes with surprisingly little dissension and dysfunction. Even the private sector took note of the process and agreed there was much to learn from how senior health service executives directed the effort.

Tony Jaques, an expert in issues management from Dow Chemical in Singapore, explains the difference between issues and problems in the corporate environment and how to deal with the former in a structured way to avert escalation to crisis level.

In this final issue of 2007 we wish our readers a wonderful holiday season and look forward to the New Year.

Nanci Healy