Strategic Management and Business Policy, Ninth Edition
Tom Wheelen | J. David Hunger | David Hunger


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1 Common sense for those that know business concepts well...
Although one may learn new terms, most of the concepts laid out in this book are fairly common sense, if you've had any type of job in your life where you had to do payroll, forcast sales, or any other "strategic" processes of doing business. This is not to talk down at the book....it is an excellent book that covers the topic(s) that it set out to quite well. In the real business world, you would always try to figure out the most cost effective way to increase profits, decrease costs, and simultaneously maintain workplace efficiency. I didn't really need a textbook to tell me that.

I originally bought this book on the advice of bain4weeks.com which recommended this as the text of choice to successfully test out of the Excelsior College Exam ECE Business Policy and Strategy. While I merely scanned through a few of the pages, I ended up getting a "B" on what was supposed to the the "capstone" business degree class. The test was all essay response, which made it sound hard, but to be honest, it was probably one of the easiest tests I've taken. It took all 3 hours, but it was kind of hard to fail that exam. AS LONG AS you put something down for an answer, and it made sense to the senario. It was very open-response and more or less asked for your opinion on the best way to solve the particular case study.

I strongly recommend anyone wishing to get 3 required upper level semester credits in Business Policy/Strategy to register NOW for that ECE exam; it will be discontinued in Sept 2004. Grab the Strategic Management book if you feel you'll need a good review of what would be unfamiliar business concepts for you. TECEP does have a version of the Business Policy test as well . But I'd try to take the Excelsior version while I can. outlines the whole credit-by-examination process and how to finish your degree a lot faster.
2 See your business as an integrated whole
I originally used an older version of this book in 1991 when I took Wheelen's class "Strategic Management and Business Policy". The value of this book is Wheelen's methods of taking all the parts of a business and integrating them into a workable whole--the physical tool to enable such a transformation is the strategic business plan. I was only 20 when I read this book, and I was awestruck.

This was the most valuable book I read in college.



    Sunday, 12-Oct-2008 08:50:18 CDT
    Quote of the Day:
    
    
    The ark lands after The Flood.  Noah lets all the animals out.  Says he, "Go
    
    and multiply." Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals.
    All are doing fine except a pair of snakes. "What's the problem?" says Noah.
    "Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes. Noah follows
    their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again.
    Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy. Noah asks, "Want to tell me how
    the trees helped?" "Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need
    logs to multiply."

    An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows
    he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great
    restraint.
    As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment
    after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next
    time." Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect,
    with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems,
    is ready to build a second system.
    This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
    When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
    confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
    and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
    are particular and not generalizable.
    The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
    all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
    one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile."
    -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"