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The strategy and change management fields have developed new perspectives in recent years. Studies show that a high percentage of strategic change efforts fail and it was argued that one problem was the unsuccessful communication of the vision and strategy to employees. This exploratory research studied the use of graphic facilitative methods within the context of an organisation's strategic change process. Phase one of the explorative study was carried out using the combination of interview data, workshops and literature to identify emerging themes and to develop a conceptual model. Phase two of the study was again exploratory but more focused on the themes that had emerged from the preliminary study. Data was collected through interviews, observational methods, survey and a more focused literature review. Through the combined findings of the preliminary and focused study and from the literature, the author established an understanding and theory of how the methods contribute to improved strategy communication. The research has re-enforced the view in literature that the strategy communication process will be more successful by ensuring the strategy is driven by the right people and the strategy development is realistic. The use of graphics, metaphors, stories and dialogue, in combination, can help to improve the strategy communication process by conveying a clear strategic message, by facilitating an interactive strategy communication process, by encouraging communication in an open and safe environment, and because they are new, innovative and different.

The business environment is perceived as becoming ever more turbulent. New strategic management theories point to a more organic and emergent strategy formation process, emphasising the paradox of control and questioning management’s role within the strategy domain. This research investigates the theoretical and empirical relationships between strategy formation, management’s role and the business environment within different organisations and at different times. Sixteen cases, representing insights of the strategy formation process in a large high technology company, are presented based on action research conducted over a nineteen month period. A theoretical framework, named the Strategy Formation Matrix, is developed to investigate the relationship between the strategy formation type and the management role. The model is validated and researched theoretically against the strategy literature and empirically in a multiple case study with six diversified companies. The framework is later extended to incorporate the business environment and these relationships are investigated based on a sample of seventeen diversified companies, who represent different industrial sectors and vary in size from small to medium to large. This research has developed new frameworks and models to describe the relationships between the business environment, the strategy formation process, management’s role and the size of organisation. In addition, it adds to existing models and challenges existing theories that link increased turbulence with a more emergent strategy formation process and a static business environment with a more intended strategy formation process.

O trabalho inicia apresentando a teoria econômica, incluindo as teorias empresariais e das estruturas de mercado e constrói um alinhamento entre estratégia de negócios e de formação de preços, explorando os principais conceitos derivados. Estes conceitos terão sua aplicabilidade verificada através de estudos de casos em empresas nacionais. Estes estudos exploram empresas de diferentes mercados com produtos ou serviços em diferentes estágios de ciclo de vida. As análises pretendem mostrar como alinhar as estratégias de negócio e competição das empresas e suas estratégias e táticas operacionais de formação de preços. Os resultados obtidos indicam que apesar das empresas procurarem alinhar seus objetivos estratégicos com os objetivos de formação de preço ainda há possíveis oportunidades no uso de técnicas e conceitos em dimensões estratégicas específicas de seu negócio, bem como oportunidades advindas da integração e estruturação destes processos. / The work initiates introducing the economic theory, including the managerial and market structures theories and builds an alignment between business and pricing strategies, exploring the main derived concepts. These concepts are to be verified through a multiple case study in Brazilian companies. These studies explore companies acting in different market structures with products and services in different life cycle stages. The analyses intend to show how to align company’s business and competition strategies with its pricing strategies and operational tactics. The gotten results indicate that despite the companies are looking for the alignment between its strategical and pricing objectives they still have improvements opportunities derived from the use of techniques and concepts in specific strategical dimensions of its business, as well as of the integration and organization of these processes.

Modern society faces complex problems of collective action that require the development of long-lived capital infrastructure to cope with issues such as population growth, energy shortages, rising sea levels, and migration to cities. These so called ‘megaprojects’ require collaboration between legally independent organizational actors including governments, public bodies and firms. However despite being an important element of a competitive society in both developed and developing countries megaprojects are frequently attacked by pundits in both the media and academia for failing to live up to performance expectations. This research seeks to advance the extant megaproject debate by answering three high-level sweeping questions – what are megaprojects, why are they perceived as performing so badly, and what can management do about it?In answering these questions the research makes a number of contributions. First, it argues that megaprojects are consensus-oriented organizational networks formed to develop large systems of non-decomposable components to be shared in use by many autonomous actors. Second, it finds that megaproject projects have ambiguous performance due to the co-existence of conflicting ‘performance narratives’ created by stakeholder groups. Further, it shows that these competing narratives stem from the evolution of the megaprojects organizational structure over time. And finally, the research proposes a sequencing strategy that aligns the growth of the megaproject network with the hierarchy of product design choices to improve the perceptions of performance.

Using the concept of dominant strategies, a method for reducing the strategy spaces of a game is developed. These results are used to reduce some infinite games of the Colonel Blotto type to finite matrix games which are then solved by the Snow-Shapley theorem. / Science, Faculty of / Mathematics, Department of / Graduate

Diploma thesis is a description of marketing strategy of Van Leeuwen Pipe and Tube, a distributor of steel pipes and other steel components.

Analysis of external surroundings, analysis of internal sources and company abilities and SWOT analysis of DHL Express. Divisions of DHL, its products and main competitors.

- Basic Principles of Internationalization - Business expansion strategy