Overview

The eleven chapters that make up the body of this book complement and overlap each other in a variety of ways. Each piece first of all falls naturally into one of three categories; critiques, strategies and policies. In the critique section, four major bodies of work are reviewed and conclusions drawn that help set the context for analysis of strategy in Part II. In Part II, four major strategic issues are analysed; R&D strategy, diversification, multinational enterprise and collaborative activity. The third part builds on points that emerge from analysis of strategies in Part II and help provide a framework for analysis of the policy implications for corporate strategy in markets that are moving towards completion or liberalisation. While the discussion focuses on market completion in the European context, it has implications that are of relevance to other blocs that are liberalising their internal trade. In general, the chapters that make up the three parts are ordered in a temporal as well as a logical sequence, with the Schumpeter and Shackle critiques being written before the strategies chapters, and the three policy pieces following from, and stimulated by, the earlier strategy chapters. The later critiques of Williamson and Casson in Chapters 4 and 5 respectively break with this pattern.