Management Strategy: Sustaining Competitive Advantage, 1st edition, by Alfred Marcus, is a strategy book which focuses on how making winning moves is dependent upon finding profitable patterns that repeatedly meet customer demands for solutions. Where many strategy books have lost sight of the purpose of strategy and fail to show how decisions actually affect business performance and ultimately, outcomes, Management Strategy focuses on the types of analyses the industry, environment, and a compan..y's internal resources require to make effective strategic moves. In eight chapters, this textbook builds upon the analysis process and demonstrates how strategy impacts an organization's position in comparison to its competitors, both in terms of the cost and quality of its products and the scope of businesses in which it is involved (vertical and horizontal integration), as well as its global versus domestic reach. The outcomes that come from analyzing an organization also determine the extent to which the organization will strive to be an innovator as opposed to being a follower.SUSTAINING COMPETITVE ADVANTAGE: The theme of sustaining competitive advantage gives this book a distinctive vision and structure.Each chapter begins with a profile of an executive or academic who has made a significant contribution to strategy (e.g. Andy Grove, Michael Porter, Michael Dell, Michael Eisner, Gary Hamel, and Bill Gates), or a short vignette or a situation that illustrates the main chapter theme (KFC goes to Japan). Main concepts of each chapter are portrayed through a case discussion involving two businesses that have been competitors for long periods of time (e.g. Intel vs. AMD, Amazon.com vs. Barnes and Noble, Best Buy vs. Circuit City)A supplement package including an Instructor's Resource CD and an Online Learning Center with PowerWeb. Eight simple, conceptual chapters designed for use in a case course where instructors independently choose, from their own sources, one or two cases for each chapter. The book is targeted to compete against Hunger and Wheelen's Essentials for upper-level undergraduate or MBA students.