Charting the Corporate Mind: From Dilemma to Strategy (Developmental Management)

by Charles Hampden - Turner (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $3.47

  This work argues that companies are now not in a race to produce, so much as a race to learn, and those who lead must learn most - and most quickly. The central pillar of this learning process is an organization's ability to resolve dilemmas that appear and reappear in constantly changing forms. The author asks: how reliable do you make your product before you undermine your own replacement market; do you standardize your product to provide it cheaply on a large scale or do you make it distinctive; do you compete on quality and demand a premium price or do you compete on low cost; how much value can you afford; is one feature best or a combination; should you try to attract the widest possible market by combining numerous features or target a more defined market sector? This book discusses the dilemmas facing business leaders. It shows what outstanding individuals in the private sector have achieved. The book presents a tried and tested learning system which different companies can adapt to fit their own circumstances. Successful users include Shell Oil, Apple Computer and Hanover Insurance. This book is designed as a challenge to accepted Western business assumptions and a major practical strategy statement for organizations determined to succeed.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1990

  $3.47

  At the core of a company's ability to learn, improve, and compete is the process by which it resolves dilemmas that appear and reappear in constantly changing forms, e.g. whether to pursue economies of scale or flexibility; whether to target broad or niche markets. In this book, Charles Hampden-Turner describes how managers at Shell International Petroleum Company, Apple Computer, Hanover Insurance, and six other major corporations resolve these recurring dilemmas by employing his renowned mapping scheme. By delineating on a chart, or a series of charts, a manager's inchoate, often metaphorical, forms of cognitive expression, Hampden-Turner shows how solutions, previously unrealized in the recesses of the manager's mind, become readily apparent.