Editor’s note

Citation

Healy, N. (2008), "Editor’s note", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 29 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs.2008.28829aaa.001

Editor’s note

Last year, 2007, was a good one for the Journal of Business Strategy. Published by Emerald, which produces almost 200 journal titles, JBS was the best-performing title among all the journals. We had the most new subscriptions, the most requests for sample copies and the most inquiries in general. In 2006, the latest year for which figures are available, more than 56,000 separate papers were downloaded from JBS. We are probably doing something right but it is easy to take a misstep. If you have kindly taken the time to read this editor’s note, maybe we can persuade you to tell us what you would like to see in the future in JBS. Criticisms and compliments are welcome, but the former more so because they tell us whether to change or revise our content.

In this debut issue of 2008, our first paper takes a very realistic approach to repairing mergers and acquisitions that have gone astray. The authors’ advice applies particularly to those deals that may be two or three years out and in serious trouble, not a rare circumstance. For managers in denial, the authors provide guidelines to identify companies needing repair. They then describe the steps necessary to get the company back on track.

While data banks may be the purview of information technology managers, strategic data banks are a new development of interest to managers of all persuasions. Anyone who needs to plan needs access to a useful data bank for strategic decisions. Michael Allio shows how to design a strategic data bank and engage all the stakeholders in the process.

A former Nokia manager, Raul Carral, now a professor in Mexico City and a faculty fellow at MIT Sloan, and the current director of corporate strategy at Nokia’s Finland headquarters, Markus Kajanto, team up in a case study that describes how Nokia realized early on that their niche in the telecommunications industry was headed for a downturn. Most valuable, the authors explain how Nokia acted on their industry analysis to make the operating and strategic adjustments necessary to stay competitive and profitable.

As businesses expand in every corner of the globe, they often have to find a physical site for new operations. Three executives from Cushman & Wakefield, the large international real estate firm, offer advice on what to consider before signing on the dotted line. Especially in “hot” markets like China, where it seems everyone is opening an office or a plant, it is important to research the supply not only of labor but such commodities as water or gas and electricity. These newly popular markets are seeing what the authors call “oversubscription” of resources, developments that could cause major problems for expanding businesses.

Three authors from the UK co-author a paper on taking a somewhat holistic view of transformational change. Their paper is a bit more theoretical than the others in this issue and therefore provides a balance to the more pragmatic articles that we have included.

Our columnists in this issue, Stuart Jackson, Ajit Kambil and Patrick Marren, offer a range of approaches from a case study (Jackson on Snapple) to humor (Marren on jargon) and abstraction (Kambil on business networks). We hope you have a chance to read all three, as they are each thought-provoking in a unique way.

Nanci Healy