Why The David Text Is Different/Better Than Other Strategic-Management Text
The David text is by far the most practical, skills oriented strategic management textbook on the market. This text is designed to enable students to learn “how to do strategic planning,” rather than focusing on seminal theories in strategy. Students using this text follow an integrative model that appears in every chapter as the “process” unfolds. Students learn how to construct strategic planning matrices, such as the SWOT and BCG, and learn how to perform strategic planning analyses, such as EPS/EBIT and Corporate Valuation. The focus throughout this text is on “learning by doing.” This overarching, differentiating aspect has been improved with every edition and has led this text to be arguably the leader globally, now available in ten languages. The practical, skills oriented approach is manifested through eight specific features:
1. A Cohesion Case that appears after Chapter 1 and more than 60 end-of-chapter assurance of learning exercises, many of which apply to the Cohesion Case, so students get practice constructing matrices and performing analyses for a case company – as the Chapters unfold. No other strategic management textbook provides a Cohesion Case.
2. A strategy formulation analytical framework in Chapter 6 that integrates nine widely used planning matrices (IFEM, EFEM, CPM, SWOT, BCG, IE, SPACE, GRAND, and QSPM) into three stages (Input, Matching, and Decision), which guide the strategic planning process in all companies. Firms gather strategic information (Input), array key external with internal factors (Matching), and then make strategic decisions (Decision).
3. A far wider coverage of strategy topics than any other strategic management textbook, for two primary reasons: 1) As firms formulate and implement strategies, a wide variety of functional business topics arise, and 2) as the capstone course in nearly all Schools of Business, strategic management entails students applying functional business skills to case companies.
4. This text provides 30 comprehensive, exciting, exceptionally up-to-date cases designed to apply chapter concepts as students develop a strategic plan for the case companies. For example, every David case includes a) the company’s vision/mission statements (if the firm has one), b) the company’s by-segment revenue breakdown (since allocating resources divisions is perhaps the key strategy decision made by firms), c) the company’s organizational chart (since structure is a key strategy topic), and d) the company’s financial statements so students can show the impact of a proposed strategic plan on a firm’s financial statements. The cases thus take a total firm approach, which by definition is the nature of strategic management. In addition, this text offers end-of-chapter mini-cases to further apply chapter concepts – and the cases are supported by a 750-item Case My Lab battery of questions that enable assurance of learning of chapter concepts through the cases.
5. This text offers more coverage of business ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability than any other strategic management textbook, including topics such as bribery, workplace romance, devising codes of ethics, taking a position (or not) on social issues, and preserving wildlife – topics that other textbooks do not mention, even though companies continually face strategic decisions in these areas.
6. This text offers more overage of global/international issues than any other strategic management textbook, including topics such as how business culture and practice vary across countries, as well as how taxes, tariffs, political stability, and economic conditions vary across countries – all framed from a strategic planning perspective.
7. This text offers a conversational, concise writing style supported by hundreds of current examples, all aimed at arousing and maintaining the reader’s interest as the “process” unfolds from start to finish. The unique writing style, and approach, is in stark contrast to other strategic management books that seemingly randomly present strategic management theory and research for the sake of discussion, rather than material being presented in a logical flow that emulates the actual practice of strategic planning among companies and organizations.
8. This text is supported by outstanding ancillaries, including an author website at www.strategyclub.com that offers practical author developed videos, templates, sample case analyses, special resources, and even a Facebook page for the text. Pearson Education also offers outstanding support materials, including the My Management Lab learning modules for both the chapters and cases.
Why Adopt This Text
The David textbook is trusted around the world to provide managers the latest skills and concepts needed to effectively formulate and efficiently implement a strategic plan—a game plan, if you will—that can lead to sustainable competitive advantage for any type of business. The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) increasingly advocates a more skills-oriented, practical approach in business books, which the David text provides, rather than a theory-based approach. This textbook meets all AACSB-International guidelines for the strategic-management course at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and previous editions have been used at more than 500 colleges and universities around the world. We believe you will find this sixteenth edition to be the best textbook available for communicating both the excitement and value of strategic management. Concise and exceptionally well organized, this text is now published in English, Chinese, Spanish, Thai, German, Japanese, Farsi, Indonesian, Indian, Vietnamese, and Arabic. A version in Russian is being negotiated. In addition to universities, but also hundreds of companies, organizations, and governmental bodies use this text as a management guide.
Eric N. Sims, a professor who uses the David book for his classes at Sonoma State University in California, says:
“I have read many strategy books. I am going to use the David book. What I like—to steal a line from Alabama coach Nick Saban—is your book teaches ‘a process.’ I believe at the end of your book, you can actually help a company do strategic planning. In contrast, other books teach a number of near and far concepts related to strategy.”
A recent reviewer of this textbook says:
“One thing I admire most about the David text is that it follows the fundamental sequence of strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. There is a basic flow from vision/mission to internal/external environmental scanning, to strategy development, selection, implementation, and evaluation. This has been, and continues to be, a hallmark of the David text. Many other strategy texts are more disjointed in their presentation, and thus confusing to the student, especially at the undergraduate level.”
Contact Dr. Fred R. David with any Questions or Comments – 910-612-5343 or freddavid9@gmail.com