Corporate Strategies in Recession and Recovery: Social Structure and Strategic Choice

by Richard Whittington

A discussion of corporate strategies in recession and recovery during the period 1979-85. Topics covered include recession strategies, taking the domestic appliance and office furniture industries as examples, details of how the research was carried out and social structure and strategic choice.

Contents:
Part 1 Strategic choice and recession: the problem of strategic choice; the 1979-85 recession and recovery; strategies in recession and recovery.
Part 2 Determinist accounts of strategic choice: action and environmental determinism.
Part 3 Towards strategic choice: antecedents to a theory of strategic choice; recent studies of strategic choice.
Part 4 Realism and agency: realism and society; structure and power; structure and actor.
Part 5 Social structure and strategic choice: complex structures; strategic choice and constraint.
Part 6 How and where the research was done: methodology; the domestic appliance industry; the office furniture industry.
Part 7 The domestic appliance companies: internal characteristics; the scope for strategic choice.
Part 8 The appliance companies in recession and recovery: recession strategies and their consequences.
Part 9 The office furniture companies: internal characteristics; the scope for strategic choice.
Part 10 The furniture companies in recession and recovery: recession strategies and consequences.
Part 11 Strategic choice or determinism?
Part 12 Concluding for strategic choice: strategies, performance and change; society and strategic choice. Appendices: domestic appliance companies' performances; office furniture companies' performances.

325 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1989

About the author

Richard Whittington is a prominent academic in the area of Corporate Strategy. Currently at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford, Whittington has been influential in the Strategy-as-Practice approach, a more sociological and less managerial approach to the study of business strategy[citation needed]. Whittington has two children: Georgina and Richard.