In the late 1950's, the American psychologists Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman, analysed the foundations of job motivation based on a large-scale literature review and a survey amongst 200 engineers and accountants from the Pittsburgh area. They challenged the traditional view that workers are only satisfied or dissatisfied with their...

Jan Johanson and Jan-Erik Vahlne published their internationalisation process model in 1977 after they had worked with Finn Wiedersheim-Paul at the Uppsala University beginning in the 1960s. They saw internationalisation as a learning oriented process and studied past empirical studies on market selection and entry forms. Their model emphasised the gradual...

Michael Porter published the Value Chain Analysis in 1985 as a response to criticism that his Five Forces framework lacked an implementation methodology that bridged the gap between internal capabilities and opportunities in the competitive landscape. This framework focused on industry attractiveness as a determinant of the profit potential of all companies...

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,...