Redefining Global Strategy
by Pankaj Ghemawat
(HBS Press)
Why do so many global strategies fail despite companies’ powerful brands and border-crossing advantages? In this “semiglobalized” world, one-size-fits-all strategies don’t stand a chance. Differences matter. Professor Ghemawat provides tools for assessing differences between countries at the industry level; tracking the implications of particular border-crossing moves for a company’s ability to create value; and creating superior perfor-mance with strategies optimized for adjusting to, overcoming, and exploiting differences. Examples show how Cemex, Toyota, Procter & Gamble, and other firms adroitly managed cross-border differences and how others failed at this challenge.
From Higher Aims to Hired Hands
by Rakesh Khurana
(Princeton University Press)
Associate Professor Khurana argues for a moral and intellectual rejuvenation of business school education. Drawing on archival material from business schools, foundations, and academic associations, he traces how university-based business schools, founded to train a professional class of managers similar to doctors and lawyers, have capitulated in the battle for professionalism and become mere purveyors of a product, the MBA, with students treated as consumers. Moral ideals that once inspired business schools have been replaced by the view that managers are merely agents of shareholders, beholden only to the cause of share profits.
Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector
by Jane Wei-Skillern, James E. Austin, Herman Leonard, and Howard Stevenson
(Sage Publications)
This book presents HBS research and cases about international and U.S. organizations in the nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors. It explains the critical components of social entrepreneurship — including start-up, funding, growth, alliances and collaboration, and performance measurement — to help readers gain an in-depth understanding of the distinctive characteristics of the social enterprise context and organizations.
Who Killed Health Care?
by Regina Herzlinger
(McGraw-Hill)
Professor Herzlinger exposes the motives and methods of figures in the insurance, hospital, employment, governmental, and academic sectors that have crippled the U.S. health-care system. She proves how the current system, organized around payers and providers rather than users’ needs, is eroding patient welfare and pushing costs out of the reach of millions. Herzlinger outlines a plan for a consumer-driven system that puts insurance money in the hands of patients, removes the middleman in the doctor-patient relationship, and gives employers cost relief.
