Articles

Brands have become increasingly difficult to manage. As many brands become more global, for instance, they are expanding beyond relationships just between manufacturers and customers to relationships that include employees, the investment community, the media, suppliers, governments & #8212; even competitors. Thus, the meaning of a brand is not merely the result of a dialogue between buyer and seller; it instead arises from a multilogue. Indeed, brand management has become a complex undertaking, requiring new approaches and models. To that end, the authors have developed a theoretical framework that companies can use to manage their brands more effectively. Specifically, the authors propose the concept of a brand space, which is based on two dimensions: the degree of abstraction (whether the brand has become independent from its associated product) and the degree of enactment (whether the brand focuses more on the meaning of a product or its functionality). By understanding the various dynamics of the brand space, companies can make wiser branding decisions, particularly as they confront escalating competition and rapidly changing markets.

A framework for gaining a clearer understanding of customer preferences.

In recent years, large companies have invested a great deal of money & #8212; and faith & #8212; in process-enabling information technology, IT that facilitates the execution of entire business processes rather than individual tasks. But all too often, such investments fail to pay off: The new systems fail to live up to expectations, register a measurable financial impact, improve work processes or bring about organizational change. Technical snafus, a scarcity of good advice for managers and failure to follow such guidance are not the problems. The fundamental issue is that managers usually follow what amounts to a universal checklist, one that assumes that all implementations are basically alike. Taken as a whole, the list is merely a collection of undifferentiated findings and conclusions rather than a synthesis that would help with the particular implementation effort at hand. The executive in charge of the effort is left to discern which findings apply, under what circumstances and why. Instead of a longer or different list, this article offers a synthesis that highlights how big IT implementations differ from one another and how managers should handle the differences in order to realize the full promise of technological change.

In an article written well before Enron became a euphemism for corporate irresponsibility, the authors make the case that such misdeeds, so prevalent in recent months, are symptoms of a syndrome of selfishness that has taken hold of our business institutions, our societies and our minds. Drawing on history, literature, philosophy and management thinking, they argue that the syndrome is built on a series of half-truths & #8212; or fabrications & #8212; each of which has driven a debilitating wedge into society. Our narrow view of ourselves as “economic man” has driven a wedge of distrust between our individual wants and our social needs. A distorted view of shareholder value has driven a wedge of disengagement between those who create economic performance and those who harvest it. Our obsession with heroic leadership has created a wedge of disconnection between leaders and everyone else. The glorification of the “lean and mean” organization has driven a wedge of discontinuity between short-term and long-term goals. And the convenient, widely held notion that “a rising tide lifts all boats” has ratified a wedge of disparity between the prime beneficiaries of stock-price increases and the large numbers of people disadvantaged by the corresponding actions. The authors challenge and deconstruct each of these flawed premises and offer an alternative. Real prosperity, they say, combines economic development with social generosity & #8212; and that requires a new philosophy of social and managerial engagement.

Executives make few moves more critical than their decisions about which technology-infrastructure investments will promote future strategic agility. To pinpoint best practices, three IT experts marshaled 10 years of data from 89 leading enterprises. One finding was that when companies describe their IT-infrastructure capabilities as services instead of equipment (say, the provision of a fully maintained laptop computer with access to all company systems and the Internet), they do a better job of putting a value on what they are buying. Understanding the 70 IT-infrastructure services that emerge consistently from the research can help executives identify which investments will make sense for which strategic business initiative. And understanding whether the contemplated initiative is supply-side, internally focused or demand-side can help managers decide whether to make the infrastructure investment on a business-unit level or enterprisewide. The authors find that leading companies are making regular, systematic, modular and targeted IT-infrastructure investments on the basis of overall strategic direction. If other companies can learn to recognize which IT-infrastructure capabilities are needed for which kinds of initiatives, they can have some assurance that the investments they make today will serve the strategies of tomorrow.

All organizations sense competitive pressure intuitively, but most, says the author, do not do a good job of managing it. That is, in part, because it is often difficult to see the overall pressure system & #8212; a complex, shifting pattern of overlapping contacts among rivals that continually alters the climate of an industry by changing the incentives for players to compete, mutually forbear or even formally cooperate. This article illustrates how pressure systems can be mapped and controlled to a significant extent. A map based on measured pressures has important implications for an organization’s market’ and competitor selection, growth plans, product-portfolio and diversification strategy, resource-allocation priorities, competitive-intelligence system, merger-and-acquisition strategy, and scenario-planning process. In any industry, companies can develop competitive strategy by using a pressure map to answer two critical questions: If the current pressure pattern continues, what position will my company ultimately hold? How can my company stabilize or shift the direction of pressure to reduce (or enhance) the predicted impact of the current pressure system? Through detailed discussion of the airline, automobile and European wireless-telecom industries, among others, the author demonstrates how pressure maps can reveal the underlying competitive dynamics of an industry. He then offers a variety of mechanisms by which organizations can and do affect their competitive landscapes & #8212; stabilizing or destabilizing them to greatest advantage.