Some original material for this book was published in 2010 under a Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license by a publisher who requested that they and the original authors be unnamed. We express gratitude for their contributions.

This version has been adapted and significantly updated by: Reed Kennedy, with Eli Jamison, Joe Simpson, Pankaj Kumar, Ayenda Kemp, Kiran Awate, and Kathleen (Katie) Manning. Editorial oversight and project management was provided by Anita Walz with Kindred Grey and Kathleen (Katie) Manning. Production was manged by Robert Browder with Grace Baggett and Lauren Holt.

Primary Contributor and Content Expert Coordinator

Reed B. Kennedy, Associate Professor of Practice
Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech
Reed B. Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Management Practice in the Management Department, where he teaches management courses. He began his career as a naval officer before entering his primary career in healthcare administration, where he served in senior executive roles in various hospitals for over 20 years. He then worked as a business consultant for the Small Business Development Center for the New River Valley at Radford University. His education includes a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, a Masters of Healthcare Administration from Medical College of Virginia / Virginia Commonwealth University, a Masters in Public Health and a Graduate Certificate in Global Planning and International Development from Virginia Tech. Reed served as the chief textbook reviser on this project. He worked with the contributor and editorial teams from project start to completion.

Reviewers and Contributors

Eli Jamison, Assistant Professor of Practice
Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech
Eli completed her Ph.D. in Virginia Tech’s ASPECT program (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought) in 2015 with concentrations in social and political thought and earned the Women and Gender Studies (WGS) Graduate Certificate. Previously, she earned her M.B.A. at Vanderbilt University with dual concentrations in Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior. Eli has over twenty years of experience across public, private, and nonprofit sector organizations in the fields of leadership and organizational development working in internal and external consulting roles. Currently, she is a member of the Roanoke City (VA) School Board. Her research focus has centered on questions at the intersection of corporate social responsibility, power networks, and their potential for impacting social justice outcomes for marginalized communities. Eli made significant edits and revisions to the text and contributed extensive original text.

Joseph Simpson, Collegiate Assistant Professor
Department of Management, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech
Joseph Simpson is a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Management and Director of the Integrated Security Education and Research Center (ISERC). An Army veteran, his experience includes ten years of military special operations and nuclear weapons security. For the last six years, he has served on a few boards of directors and owned multiple businesses including two outpatient treatment facilities and a real estate holding company. His research focuses on security and its effect on attitudes, decision-making and firm outcomes. He received his Ph.D from the University of Texas. He teaches Strategic Management and other security related courses. Joe reviewed and made edits in all the chapters and contributed some original text.

Pankaj Kumar, Assistant Professor
Department of Management, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech
Pankaj Kumar is an assistant professor in the Department of Management at the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business, where he teaches Strategic Management. He received his Ph.D. in business administration from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His research interests lie at the intersection of strategy and organization theory, with a focus on innovation, interfirm relationships (networks), strategic alliances, and geography. He has published in the Academy of Management Journal. Pankaj worked as a CFO at Universidad Veritas in Costa Rica and was a member of board of directors of CPI Panama. He also worked as a consultant for the Bain and Co. affiliate Mesoamerica in Costa Rica and as an assistant manager for Larsen and Toubro in India. Pankaj was the primary developer of the revised outline of the textbook, deciding what content to add and what to delete, and reviewed the textbook upon completion.

Ayenda Kemp, Assistant Professor
Department of Management, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech
Ayenda Kemp is an assistant professor in the Department of Management at the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business. He received his Ph.D. in international management from the Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests lie at the intersection of strategy and organization theory, with a focus on understanding how firms may structure intrafirm and interfirm relationships (networks) to best enhance organizational learning, innovation, and performance outcomes. His work appears in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings. Prior to joining academia Ayenda worked as a forecasting analyst in the energy industry. As a teacher of Strategic Management, he helped with the development of the textbook outline and reviewed the book when completed.

Kiran Awate, Assistant Professor
Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech
Kiran’s research interests lie at the intersection of organizational learning and innovation. His dissertation examines how firms learn from failures during the drug discovery process in the pharmaceutical industry. His work highlights that failures help firms reconsider their existing beliefs and seek out better and more refined theoretical explanations. He won the best research presentation award twice at the Hayes Research Forum and his work was nominated for the best paper award at the Academy of International Business annual conference. He taught undergraduate course in international business at the Ohio State University. Before PhD, Kiran worked in the software technology industry for about nine years where he got an opportunity to experience diverse cultures from countries such as the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea. Kiran teaches Strategic Management and helped develop the outline and reviewed the textbook.

Kathleen (Katie) Manning, Research and Editorial Assistant
Pamplin College of Business and University Libraries, Virginia Tech
Kathleen Manning is a recent graduate of the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech where she majored in Accounting and Information Systems. She started her professional career at Deloitte in Fall 2020 in their Risk and Financial Advisory practice. Having recently completed Virginia Tech’s capstone course in Strategic Management, Katie served as a student reviewer of the text, and became an indispensable part of both content development and editorial processes. She identified significant areas for improvement in content and provided context to greatly improve relevancy of the text for today’s students. In addition to identifying numerous short videos, case studies, and examples of recognizable brands and companies, she also completed the painstaking process of transferring newly drafted text from a collaborative writing environment into the Pressbooks publishing software, and followed through with the detailed work of formatting, editing, collaborating on image selection, and proofreading. Kathleen’s contributions have made the text much more usable and relatable for today’s students.