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The purpose of this paper is to present an interview with Professor Michael Porter of Harvard, the noted academic and consultant whose concepts are central to the practice of strategic management, and the answers to questions he is often asked by practitioners who solicit his advice.

For her new book, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy (2011), award‐winning author Joan Magretta edited this dialog with him which has been adapted for Strategy & Leadership.

Professor Porter delivers warnings on the most common strategy mistakes. When it comes to dealing with disruptive technology, he cautions managers to be sure they have rigorously identified the underlying source of the disruption. On the relentless pressure to find growth, he offers ways to approach it without damaging strategy and profitability. Futhermore he offers advice on managing the planning process itself.

Porter's advice on successful strategic planning: leaders need to bring together the whole team responsible for a particular business, and they need to do the plan together to think about the industry, the competitors, the opportunities, the value chain, and then ultimately make some choices about positioning and direction, and finally, develop the implications for action.

Porter revisits many of his core strategic ideas and gives managers advice on how to apply them to manage effectively in the current dynamic environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of simulators as pedagogical complements to traditional case studies. The research performs experiments with a case and its accompanying simulator to assess the additional learning attained by the use of a case with its simulator as compared to using the case alone. The paper also describes the development and proposed use of cases and simulators combined.

The paper describes the development of one companion simulators, it outlines its proposed use, and it shows the results of an experiment to assess marginal learning with the simulator.

The research finds that simulators increase the understanding of subjects when used to support a case study. Students and teachers perceive the use of companion simulators as valuable.

The research provides ground for developing a new generation of case studies in which the traditional case is enhanced and augmented by simulators developed for one particular case and intended to be used only with that case.

This research has practical implications in how management is taught and learned.

The paper has implications in terms of possible changes that can be introduced to the teaching of management in business schools.

This research provides one of the few extant assessments of the learning that can be attained with the use of simulators in management education. The research proposes the creation of a new entity, the “Case+Sim” that draws on the traditional strengths of managerial case studies to be used in educating managers, but complements the case studies with simulators, which provide an added value in permitting students to test their thinking using a realistic interactive learning environment.

The purpose of this paper is to identify what are the main causes that lead strategies to decline at execution phase.

The paper adopted the strategy of survey with the 69 Brazilian businessmen. The questionnaire was developed from 16 causes pointed out in the literature and the results analyzed using Cronbach’s α coefficient, multidimensional scaling, exploratory factor analysis and Pearson correlation coefficient.

The results of statistical analysis showed that the main causes are primarily associated to leaders’ defaults during execution strategies, lack of support and feedback of senior management, no involvement of the teams during the strategies formulation, failure of communication on the strategic objectives in all organizational levels, and others.

The 69 businessmen work in different sectors and there may be specific causes for each sector. The research presented by this paper did not have objectives to analyze specific sectors of the economy.

The results are extremely important and useful for managers during the implementation phase of the strategies and researchers in the field of business strategies.

There are no research with the same focus and objective presented by this paper about Brazilian companies.

This narrative inquiry examined the experiences of new urban principals as they transitioned into their role during their first year. The research questions focused on the challenges new principals faced and the types and effectiveness of support that were offered. Findings confirmed that principals addressed student behavior and campus appearance before shifting their attention to classroom instruction. Coaching, mentoring, and change of principal workshops were helpful district support.

Strategic management, HR Management, Change management, Marketing.

Potential audience. This case will serve to undergraduate students, master level students, in the subjects, entrepreneurship, managing change, marketing, H&R management, strategic management.

The Brunes Company was founded in 1994 by Gerond Cela and his brother, with the goal to provide quality products for bathrooms in the then-emerging Albanian market. During the next few years, it had grown into one of the biggest wholesale and retail chains in Albania, with huge portfolio of goods for home refurbishing. The beginnings were very humble. Armed only with the high school diploma in textile trading, born and raised in an ex-communist country without developed entrepreneurship culture, Gerond set off to Italy, a popular destination for young Albanians who were looking for an opportunity to escape the pitfalls of the post-communist transitional economy. Gerond recognized the huge gap in the market for imported tiles in his home country, so he began importing quality Italian tiles in 1994. Initially, he was doing the wholesale from his truck, due to the lack of retail stores. He focused on increasing customer satisfaction and built the company name as trustful provider of quality goods. This strategy brought him less profit, but his long-term goal was to build the company name and to establish it as a trustful provider of quality goods. In 1999, he bought 18,000 m² (for 50.000 euro) land on the highway Tirana-Durres, 7 km from the city centre, which proved to be extremely worthwhile in the long run because the price of the land had skyrocketed up to ten times during the next decade, due to the economic development of Albania. In 2004, Gerond and his brother epitomized their business idea. They entered the market of home furniture. In 2009, the company expanded further in country towns like Lezha, Saranda and Fier. After two decades of establishing his company as a market leader with approximately 30 per cent of market share, Brunes Company is at the crossroads. On one hand, it is pressured by very stiff competition in the form of their main competitor Delta Home, which succeeded in taking 10-15 per cent of the marketing just in one year. On the other hand, the company has been stagnating for some period without a concrete plan to overcome this problem, as well as without a clear strategy for the future directions of the expansion. To diversify the company’s portfolio, Gerond built a factory for tiling accessories which will cost 8 million Euros and employs about 30 workers.

Specific objectives of the case are as follows: to portray individuals who became successful primary through their leadership abilities, and to examine how their experiences and values contributed to the success of their business; illustrate the impact on operations of an increasingly competitive environment and how this environment affects the need for a change in strategy; identify the challenges of selling luxury goods in a competitive retail environment; to assist students to critically think about diversification strategy; to gain an understanding how to adapt to change; to discuss for issues that must be changed (culture, people, technology, values and philosophy of leadership, marketing, business model), to grow.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.