Michael Porter regarded the selection of a defendable position within an industry as the end result of a competitive strategic analysis. He argued that successful, profitable companies generally choose to compete on either low costs or by differentiating their products to meet specific customer needs. Although these two strategic options are mutually exclusive,...

In the early 1980s, the American communication researchers, Steil, Watson & Barker, developed the SIER hierarchy of active listening based on their observation that people recall only about 50% of the message immediately after hearing it and only 25% after two days. Steil, Watson & Barker built upon Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver's general model...

Over his lifetime, the academic scholar and Nobel price winner, Herbert Simon, explored the boundaries of human decision making in dynamic environments and contributed significantly to management literature, economics, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. He questioned the assumptions behind the rational decision making process...

The Canadian academic, Henry Mintzberg, synthesised organisational design literature into five ideal organisational forms or configurations that do not exist in the real world, but provide consultants and managers a framework to understand and design organisational structures. Mintzberg defined organisational structure as "the sum...