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...

In the mid-1980s, Professor Michael Porter of Harvard Business School developed a framework to assess the competitiveness of regions, states and nations.In the early 1980s, U.S. industry saw its economic competitiveness eroded by Japanese and European competitors. Porter concluded that classical international trade theories, which mainly focused...

Dr. Howard V. Perlmutter is a world authority on globalisation and pioneer on the internationalisation of firms, cities and other institutions. Trained as a mechanical engineer and as a social psychologist, Perlmutter joined Wharton’s faculty in 1969. He specialised in the evolution of multinational corporations (MNCs) making predictions to how their viability...

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,...