The success of an enterprise is, to a considerable extent, dependent on its strategy and how it is implemented. Many firms failed and even went into liquidation not because their executives and staff were not working hard, or they were incompetent, but because their strategy was faulty, or though they had the right strategy, they made major errors in its implementation. This book on strategic management introduces you to the basic concepts of strategy and the essentials of strategy formulation and implementation. It helps you to systematically analyse your environment, your strengths and weaknesses, and put them together into a unique strategy that is the best for your organization. The concepts of strategy, as is the case with many areas of management, were primarily developed in the West, and this book is written for an Indian audience, on how to apply these concepts to the Indian context and environment. It does this through discussing the Indian context, and by providing numerous examples of Indian companies and situations.

About the Author

S. Manikutty Professor Manikutty is a professor in Business Policy and Strategy at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. His areas of interest include strategic management and competitive strategy, leadership, global competitiveness of industries, corporate governance and strategies for family businesses. His paper (coauthored with another person) won the award for the best paper on family businesses for 2003 awarded by the Family Firm Institute, Boston, U.S.A. His paper(coauthored) also won an award for the best empirical paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Small Business Institute, Clearwater Beach, Florida, February 11–15, 2004. He was the Chief Editor of Vikalpa, the journal published from IIM, Ahmedabad, and is the Regional Editor, Asia and Pacific of European Journal of International Management (EJIM). He is a regular reviewer of papers for the Academy of Management Annual Conferences in the Business Policy and Strategy (BPS), International Management Division (IMD) and the Management Education Division (MED), and has served as a reviewer for the journals Family Business Review and Vikalpa. His recent book on leadership based on literature, Essentials of Leadership: Explorations from Literature (Delhi: Macmillan), co-authored with Sampath P Singh, won the award for the best management book awarded by the Indian Society for Training and Development, in 2010. He served in the Indian Railways as a mechanical engineer for 21 years before joining academics. He has done extensive work in telecom sector. He has been a consultant to the World Bank and ODA, U.K. in the field of social development programs and has conducted training programs for several organizations some of which are Coca-Cola India, Ballarpur Industries, JSW Steel, Bharti Airtel, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, The Park Group of hotels and Tata Motors, and taught in the programs for many companies, some of which are Pepsi India, GAIL, Sterlite Industries, Apollo Tyres, Idea Cellular, Vijaya Bank, Pfizer India and Zydus Pharmaceuticals. Professor Manikutty was a visiting scholar at the Cornell University in 2000. He has written a number of cases, mostly dealing with issues in strategy, and published 13 papers in national and international journals. He is a visiting faculty at ESSEC, France, where he teaches a full-time course every year. He is a professional member of the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society.Professor Manikutty has been included in Marquis Who’s Who of the World for its 2012 issue.