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Building-blocks
Building-blocks of strategic of strategic
management management
A multi-dimensional, pan-theoretical
taxonomy of business strategies 5
Mark Fuller
St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Canada

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this conceptual paper is to address the lack of consistent means through
which business strategies are identified and discussed across theoretical perspectives in the field of
business strategy.
Design/methodology/approach – A stakeholder-based approach is used to facilitate the
standardized referencing of strategies at the business-level of analysis.
Findings – A taxonomy is developed that facilitates the identification and naming of business-level
strategies in a pan-theoretical manner. A standardized referencing system is offered to codify the
means by which strategies are identified.
Practical implications – Practitioners are provided a taxonomy for identifying stakeholder
strategies gaps and determining gaps and opportunities.
Originality/value – Key benefits to academics are the improved dialogue in the strategic
management field from empirical findings and conceptual discourse that employ a universal lexicon
for the identification and categorization of business-level strategies. Managers will benefit from a more
transparent strategic design process that reduces ambiguity, aids in identifying and correcting gaps in
strategic planning, and fosters enhanced strategic analysis.
Keywords Stakeholders, Strategic management, Classification
Paper type Conceptual paper

In architecture, great buildings do not appear as the massive edifices they will one day
become. Rather, their origins begin as individual building blocks that lack much
distinction from those employed in buildings of far less grandeur. How these basic
building blocks are connected with one another defines both the intrinsic value of the
structure and the extrinsic relationship to the world around it. One of the difficulties in
strategic management theory, particularly in relation to the comparative analysis of
business strategies, is the metaphoric absence of building blocks: clear, consistent
definitions of business strategies that are analyzable from different theoretical
perspectives. This absence is problematic in an academic sense because it contributes
to the theoretical fragmentation of the strategic management field; theorists from one
tradition may have difficulty expressing business strategies in terms that are
meaningful to those from a different theoretical perspective. It is also problematic in a
practitioner sense because it makes the formulation of business strategies
unnecessarily ambiguous; this ambiguity may inhibit the timely ability of Management Decision
Vol. 48 No. 1, 2010
pp. 5-16
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Dr David Wheeler, Dr Christine Oliver, 0025-1747
Dr Preet Aulakh and Dr Cyril Bouquet toward enhancing this work. DOI 10.1108/00251741011014427
MD practitioners to design strategies to create sustainable competitive advantages that
48,1 fully encompass the range of strategic alternatives available.
In response to these issues, this paper develops a pan-theoretical taxonomy of
business strategies based on a detailed review and synthesis of the extant literature.
This research offers a number of important implications to both researchers and
managers alike. Academic researchers will benefit from a consistent approach to the
6 recognition, identification and referencing of business strategies irrespective of the
theoretical lens employed. Business practitioners will develop better defined business
strategies in a more timely fashion: they will be able to more readily identify oversights
in their planning processes that will enable better formulated strategies which can be
comparatively evaluated within and between firms.
At present, the formulation of a particular business strategy is based upon an
author-specific frame of reference; when described by business academics, that
formulation is then couched in the descriptive norms of the researcher’s chosen
theoretical lens. The terms and language evoked by the researcher’s description may
be dissimilar to the lexicon employed by other researchers, especially those employing
competing theories, even though the tactics by which the strategy is operationalized
may be comparatively similar. A need exists to transparently and consistently define
and label business strategies in ways that are not theoretically contingent, but rather
pan-theoretical in nature.
This paper offers a descriptive taxonomy of business strategies which facilitates
pan-theoretical discussions in the strategic management field and is comprised of three
major sections. The first outlines the central construct of a pan-theoretical taxonomy of
business strategies. In the subsequent section, the taxonomy is leveraged to provide a
means of labelling business strategies in a pan-theoretical manner. The final section
offers a discussion of the incremental benefits of this particular taxonomy vis-à-vis the
extant literature and the contributions to managerial practice.

A taxonomy of business-level strategies


A four-dimensional cube is offered as the central construct of this paper to define the
set of strategies available to firms at the business unit of analysis. These dimensions
specify:
(1) the stakeholders upon which the tactical activities are focused (stakeholder
inclusion);
(2) the strategic goals of the activity (domain objectives);
(3) the form of tactics employed (domain tactics); and
(4) the type of competitive advantage pursued based upon the nature of the activity
(competitive environment).

It is argued that at the business unit level of analysis, all strategic activity involves
multiple combinations of these four dimensions, which are integrated into ever more
specific and encompassing meta-strategies within the business unit, and across
business units at the corporate strategy level.
As indicated in Figure 1, the first dimension of the taxonomy is the stakeholder
inclusion dimension. It is posited that all strategic activity at the business-level of
analysis, regardless of the theoretical lens, is directed at one or more stakeholder
Building-blocks
of strategic
management

Figure 1.
A taxonomy for
categorizing
business-level strategies

groups. Simple strategies may be direct at a single stakeholder; more complex


strategies may involve interdependent relationships among multiple stakeholders. In
either scenario, a business strategy targets identifiable entities in order to employ
limited resources both efficiently and effectively in the pursuit of business objectives.
For example, according to the strategic positioning framework (Porter, 1979, 1980,
1985), strategies are directed toward achieving a defensible place in the market, which
consists of a definable group of buyers, distributors or consumers. In contrast, the
resource-based view places great emphasis on resource management and skill
development, the focus of which may be particular employees, an internal department,
or a specific supplier (Wernerfelt, 1984; Barney, 1991). Stakeholder theory
disaggregates the firm to the greatest degree in terms of identified actors whose
activities are to be given managerial consideration (Freeman, 1984; Wheeler and
Sillanpää, 1997) but as previously stated, stakeholders are an essential component of
all strategic management theories.
While the identification of a stakeholder provides an initial focal point for the
business strategy to be developed, still left unaddressed are the motivations behind the
emergent business strategy and the tactics through which the strategy will be pursued.
The next two dimensions – domain objectives and domain tactics – address these
issues. In writing on the motivations for business objectives, Baysinger (1984)
identified three classifications, which he referred to as strategic domains. He argued
that firms have three generic domain objectives that drive strategic action regardless of
the industry in which they operate:
MD (1) the growth or expansion of the firm’s activities (domain management);
48,1 (2) the defence or protection of its existing activities (domain defence); and
(3) maintaining the legitimacy of the processes by which the firm engages in
competition (domain maintenance).

These strategic domains are a necessary component of a taxonomy of business


8 strategies, as all strategies have at a fundamental level one or more of these objectives
as a rationale for a series of business tactics. When these domain objectives are
combined with targeted stakeholder groups, they define the competitive space in which
business strategies evolve and compete with the strategies of their rivals.
For each combination of stakeholder groups and strategic domains, there is a choice
among tactics by which stakeholders may be engaged in the pursuit of business
objectives. While the differences in theoretical doctrine are arguably the most notable
at the tactical level – market-oriented through leveraging aspects of a value chain
(Porter, 1979, 1980), resource and skill-focused according to the tenets of the
resource-based view (Wernerfelt, 1984; Barney, 1991; Collis and Montgomery, 1995), or
stakeholder-centred according to stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984; Wheeler and
Sillanpää, 1997) – there are means available to categorize the application of tactics in a
pan-theoretical manner.
Various authors have previously characterized tactics as either proactive,
accommodative or reactive in terms of the nature of the relationship between
participant stakeholders (Wilson, 1975; Carroll, 1979; Clarkson, 1995). This approach to
the classification of tactics is adopted here because it is both pan-theoretical and
descriptively informative. Whereas various theoretical traditions might focus tactical
business activities around sources of cost leadership or differentiation (Porter, 1979,
1980, 1985), resource acquisition and skill development (Wernerfelt, 1984; Barney,
1991) or a particular stakeholder (Freeman, 1984; Wheeler and Sillanpää, 1997), a
common means of categorizing these differing approaches is the nature of the
engagement between members of the firm and the recipients of the tactical action. This
approach is also descriptively useful as it can characterize ex ante, in situ or ex post the
nature of the interaction which may shape the behaviour of the firm’s actors with the
various parties involved. This enables each tactic to be focused on achieving a
particular strategic objective regardless of the strategic management theory one
employs. As a consequence, this taxonomy is an addition to, rather than a substitution
for, the work in various theoretical traditions within the strategic management field.
While the subject of a particular business strategy may be one or more stakeholders,
the focus of that activity is centred in one or more of the economic, political or social
realms which comprise the fourth dimension of the taxonomy: the competitive
environment. Traditional strategic management theories often place emphasis on
economic means of obtaining organizational goals with a lingering minimization of
alternative approaches, such as the pursuit of political or social advantages (Miles,
1993; Galbreath, 2006). One common example of economic-centric means of achieving
strategic objectives is the attainment of an attractive market position that achieves a
source of differentiation or cost leadership compared to the strategies employed by
rival firms (Porter, 1980, 1985). Similarly, the resource-based view emphasizes the
acquisition of inimitable, durable and competitively superior resources through which
the firm can eek out enhanced financial performance (Wernerfelt, 1984; Barney, 1991;
Collis and Montgomery, 1995). However, the economic realm need not be the only Building-blocks
environment in which competition among firms occurs: rivalry in the political and of strategic
social environments may enable firms to eek out distinctive market positions, acquire
strategically valuable resources or form important networks among similarly management
interested stakeholders (Fuller, 2009).
In contrast with economic-centric approaches to strategic competition, other authors
have discussed aspects of business-government and business-society relationships 9
whereby the goals are not economic but rather politically or socially based (Hillman
and Hitt, 1999; Woolcock and Naryan, 2000; Hillman and Keim, 2001; Keim, 2002; Wu
and Choi, 2004; Hillman, 2005; Galbreath, 2006). Examples of these goals may include a
shift in public policy or a call for action among community members. More complex
strategies may involve the multiple competitive environments as part of a series of
business goals (Fuller, 2009). The specification of the stakeholder(s) involved in a
business strategy highlights the subject of that strategy. With the additional
description of the competitive environment(s) in which the business activity occurs, the
focus of the activity is delineated.
This taxonomy enables the identification of four essential components of a business
strategy: the stakeholder(s) included; the objectives of the strategy; the tactics
employed; and the competitive environments in which the strategy is enacted. It also
exhibits the necessary characteristics of an effective classification system, based on the
criteria of Chrisman et al. (1988) and Meznar and Nigh (1993). First, it must define
entities into distinct groups: the taxonomy has mutually distinctive taxa within each
and across the four dimensions. Next, it must allow for the generalization of
information within each taxon: the proposed taxonomy is internally homogeneous
within each taxon allowing for comparisons to be made. Further, it must foster the
consistent identification and retrieval of information: tactical business activity may be
collectively exhausted through the use of the proposed taxonomy. In addition, each
taxon should be stable: reclassification of business tactics would only occur with a
change in the actual stakeholder focus, the competitive environment, the domain
objective, or the tactics employed. The taxa have also been appropriately named to
ensure consistency in classification.
The advantages of this taxonomy are that it facilitates comparative analyses within
and across strategic dimensions. Within-taxon comparisons allow practitioners to
consider different tactical options within the same strategic approach to a given
business issue, problem or opportunity. In contrast, across-taxon comparisons
facilitate managerial selection of different policy responses at the strategic level of
analysis. An additional benefit of such a classification system is that it enables the
standardized categorization of strategies from one firm to the next across industry and
geographic divides. A further benefit of developing this taxonomy is that it supports
the innovation of a referencing system for business strategies.

A referencing system for business strategies


One of the benefits of a standardized taxonomy is that it facilitates the development of
an index by which business strategies may be referenced. The ability to itemize these
strategies according to a referencing system and then retrieve similar business
strategies with an identical index reference enhances the ability to compare and
MD analyze business strategies within the firm, across firms, and across industries and
48,1 geographic boundaries.
There are four components to a strategic referencing system that are of importance:
(1) the stakeholder;
(2) the domain objective;
10 (3) the domain tactic; and
(4) the relevant competitive environment.

The specification of these four items allow for the identification of a business unit
strategy down to the tactical level of analysis. The stakeholder component associates
the intended business activity with a particular audience in the internal or the external
environment of the firm. The domain objective distinguishes between management,
defence and maintenance motives underlying the firm’s behaviour. The domain tactic
signals whether the action is a proactive, accommodative or reactive approach of the
firm. The competitive environment stipulates the intended basis of competition for the
particular strategy: an economic, political or social competitive advantage. Through
the specification of these four components, one can identify every strategic possibility
within the four dimensional cube as depicted in Figure 1; the total of these possibilities
representing the breadth of strategic alternatives available to a firm’s managers. A
business strategy is the sum of a firm’s individual stakeholder strategies and can be
formulated as follows:
Strategy ¼ S (Stakeholdersn1, Domain Objectivesn1, Domain Tacticsn1, Competitive
Environmentsn1)

where Stakeholders refers to the stakeholder(s) for which the strategy is targeted,
Domain Objectives indicates the domain management, domain defense or domain
maintenance goals of the strategy; Domain Tactics specifies the nature of the
engagement by the firm, e.g. proactive, accommodative or reactive; and Competitive
Environment signifies the type of competitive advantage the strategy is meant to
pursue (economic, political, or social).
Sample strategies from the taxonomy can be defined to illustrate the use and
benefits of a strategic referencing system. One example of a business unit strategy
might be the following:
.
Sample strategy 1: (investor, management, proactive, economic). This strategic
reference suggests a series of business activities that are aggressively focused
upon the investment community, the benefits of which are expected to have a
significant focus upon the economic basis of competition and to have an
important impact upon the firm’s economic position. The conversion of a
corporation into an income trust might be one indication of such a strategic
approach. Compare and contrast this strategy with the next strategic reference.
.
Sample strategy 2: (employee, management, proactive, economic). While the
stakeholder focus has changed, the domain objective, tactical method and basis
of competition remain unchanged. Yet the shift in stakeholders would likely
produce a much different series of business activities than that supported by the
previous strategic reference. As an example, such a strategy might involve the
move from a salaried compensation system to one in which commissions are the Building-blocks
primary form of remuneration. of strategic
.
Sample strategy 3: (employee, defence, proactive, economic). In this strategy management
example, the stakeholder component remains constant but the domain objective
has changed. While the scope of the strategy is unchanged, the scale may vary
with the change in motivation. One could conceive of a leading edge diversity
management system represented by this strategic reference. A proactive 11
approach to diversity, if effectively implemented, might not only serve as a
means to effectively retain employees and reduce the costs of turnover, but
provide additional economic advantages by enabling employees of diversity to
better engage with customer groups of similar diversity that also provide
economic benefits to the firm.
.
Sample strategy 4: (employee, defence, accommodative, economic). By changing
the domain tactic, one implicitly affects the scale and the intent of the business
activities that are expected to result from the strategy. Imagine an industry
where one firm develops a novel diversity management system, as per the
previous example, wherein the organization can significantly enhance how it
leverages the uniqueness of its employees. A rival firm may feel compelled,
perhaps at the behest of its employees, to adopt a similar approach. Yet if the
strategy originated as a result of accommodating the wishes of employees to
have parity in working conditions, rather than from management realizing the
strategic potential of diversity, the diversity initiative might be much less
extensive in scale than for the preceding firm, even though the other strategic
components are identical.
.
Sample strategy 5: (employee, management, proactive, political). A change in the
competitive environment can have a profound impact upon the nature of the
business strategy. When competing against a dominant economic presence in an
industry, rivals that are less competitive economically may resolve to compete
politically or socially (Fuller, 2009) lest they choose or are forced to exit the
industry (Porter, 1980, 1985). For the leading firm to remain dominant, the
challenge is one of maintaining that position across three fronts – economically,
politically and socially – which requires the continual expenditure of managerial
resources. These resources could alternatively be used to enhance the existing
economic dominance were the firm’s rivals not able to pursue political or social
means of uprooting them.

In the above illustrated strategic reference, an example may include the provision of
political sabbaticals to employees wishing to manage the grassroots electoral
campaigns of candidates competing in national elections. Volunteer campaign
managers with exceptional organizational skills that can spend a number of months
working long hours are chronically difficult to attract; the best ones may command a
salary that, while enabling the employee to take an unpaid leave of absence from work,
drain the election campaign of financial resources. Yet this form of grassroots activity
might enable a firm to develop a cadre of managers, that are supportive of the firm’s
corporate values, and through their voluntary political experiences, have elite
relationships with prospective governmental officials.
MD To summarize, the implementation of a referencing system to standardize the
48,1 identification of business strategies better enables comparisons among competing
alternatives in strategic designs. The formulation of strategic referencing is an
outcome of developing a common, pan-theoretical classification system for business
strategies. Together, these two contributions provide important benefits to the field of
strategic management and are a direct result of the taxonomy provided at the outset of
12 this paper. These contributions are intended to advance cross-theoretical discussions
by academic researchers while enabling practitioners to more readily identify areas of
potential competitive advantage in designing effective business strategies.

Contributions to theory
The taxonomy above is significantly different from conventional models of the firm.
As suggested by Donaldson and Preston (1995), traditional models are premised upon
variants of the production function: the conversion of raw materials into finished goods
with outcomes that are moderated by the influence of stakeholders such as investors
and employees. However, there are a number of disadvantages to such a
conceptualization. Among them are an economic-centric notion of value creation and
the limited consideration of ways in which various stakeholders may impact the
strategic value of the firm.
The traditional notion of valued added production undermines consideration of
non-economic motives for strategic activity such as political and/or social motivations.
In a world that is becoming increasingly globalized, the importance of these
considerations is intensifying. With the expansion of business beyond domestic
markets, additional external stakeholders – such as foreign governments, regulators,
market analysts and social interest groups – are affecting the firm in a myriad of ways.
Where the firm’s actions have the potential to affect external parties, stakeholder
responses have often included direct engagement with the firm, and indirect
engagement through the firm’s customers, investors or other stakeholders (Freeman,
1984; Wheeler and Sillanpää, 1997; Svendsen, 1998). The impact of the firm on these
external stakeholders, and their subsequent impact upon the firm, is not well reflected
in classic input-output based models.
Various alternative models have been offered which place greater emphasis upon
the stakeholder as the source of strategic value creation. Among these competing
models is that of Donaldson and Preston (1995), whom employ a spider web approach
of external stakeholders encapsulating the firm. While their critique of input-output
models has merit, there are some conceptual concerns toward this prospective
replacement. In contrast to the work on effective taxonomies (e.g. Chrisman et al., 1988;
Meznar and Nigh, 1993), the stakeholder grouping in the Donaldson and Preston work
creates uncertainty about whether each stakeholder belongs to a mutually distinctive
taxa. For example, in their model, employees are an exogenous agent of the firm but the
work is silent upon what then constitutes an endogenous stakeholder of the firm. If
employees are also intended to be endogenous actors within the firm, as they are in
common understanding and according to stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984; Wheeler
and Sillanpää, 1997; Svendsen, 1998), then a conflict arises with the taxonomy criteria
which requires that each stakeholder be classifiable by a single taxa.
The related issues of the lexus of control and the pattern of interaction are
additional concerns with competing stakeholder models. The lexus of control either
implicitly or explicitly defines where the bulk of strategic value is created in the model. Building-blocks
The pattern of interaction illustrates how that value is leveraged by various of strategic
stakeholders. In spider web models, of which the Donaldson and Preston article
(Donaldson and Preston, 1995) is an example, the firm is given a central placement and management
all interactions among stakeholders are mediated by the firm. However, this not only
imbues the firm with an unnecessary centrality, but does not fully reflect the extent to
which strategic value may be created. Suppliers, for example, may collaborate with one 13
another in joint ventures or strategic alliances to develop new products or processes
that add value to first mover firms which adopt them. Accordingly, spider web models
of stakeholder relationships may fail to depict the full range of potential patterns of
interaction among the firm’s stakeholders. Models wherein the firm is not assumed to
have a central mediating function – such as models other than either input-output and
spider web designs – represent a broader continuum of potential stakeholder
interaction and may capture a fuller range of organizational behaviour at a more
strategic level. The development of these kinds of models can make an important
contribution to both the strategic management literature as well as to stakeholder
theory.

Contributions to practice
Unlike traditional models of firm behaviour that attempt to depict flows of business
activity, information or the like, taxonomies are a classification system that enables the
categorization of information. Taxonomies can be especially useful when applied to
business strategy due to the ability to consistently identify and categorize firm
strategies. What differentiates the taxonomy offered here from other models of firm
behaviour is the ability of managers to transparently identify, at the business unit of
analysis, actual strategies which may then be descriptively compared to the intended
strategies of the firm and actual strategies of rivals. As a result, weaknesses in the
strategic planning processes of the firm, relative to internal firm objectives or the
planning processes of rivals – can be self-initiated, identified and corrected. This
ability is especially important to managerial practice because it can further enhance
real world benchmarking activities and the comparative analysis of business
strategies.
Three forms of comparative strategic analysis are possible as a result of developing
the taxonomy and the standardized referencing system. The first is historical analysis
whereby the evolution of a firm’s business strategies can be documented; this explores
issues involving intrafirm variability in stakeholder management over time
(Shropshire and Hillman, 2007). The advantage to the practitioner of this ability is
to identify and document key success factors from prior strategies and opportunities
for improvement in present strategies through a chronological review.
The second form of analysis involves future-oriented strategic planning. Among the
useful features of the taxonomy is that it guides the business manager in deciding
among competing choices in business strategy. At its most basic level, each strategy
consists of four building blocks: a stakeholder, a strategic domain objective, a tactical
approach to the stakeholder and a competitive environment in which the action is
focused. While the number of stakeholders is variable – depending on the application
by a particular firm in a particular industry, the other three constructs are of a finite
size:
MD (1) three categories of domain objectives;
48,1 (2) three categories of domain tactics; and
(3) three competitive environments.

Even the simplest of business strategies therefore involves a choice among 27 strategic
alternatives (three domain objectives x three tactical approaches x three competitive
14 environments) for each selected stakeholder. Combinations of these basic strategies
can yield a nearly infinite variety of ever more complex business-level strategies. This
provides a much greater degree of specificity for designing business strategies than
that which is provided by alternative approaches such as the three generic strategies –
differentiation, cost leadership and focused strategies –offered by Porter (1980, 1985).
Additionally, practitioners are now able to comparatively assess the virtues of two or
more strategies at a more granular level prior to committing to a particular action.
These comparisons can be from different strategic groupings across the taxonomy, or
through precise analysis, from among different implementations within the same
strategic taxon.
The third form of strategic analysis for practitioners involves comparisons with
other firms in the industry. Cross-sectional analysis is made possible through the use of
the standardized referencing system that was described previously. Managers can
readily identify strengths or weaknesses in their strategies vis-à-vis those of their rivals
based upon the presence or absence of any of the four dimensions for each strategy.
This is particularly useful for practitioners when combined with a theoretical
perspective on business strategy. Analysts can use the extant strategic management
literature, in combination with the taxonomy, to better select the means of achieving a
more sustainable competitive advantage than that of their rivals. In so doing, the
possibility of an oversight in the intended strategic design should be greatly reduced.

Final thoughts
This paper has identified a weakness in the strategic management literature: the lack
of a pan-theoretical taxonomy of business strategies. This weakness is significant
because it inhibits management academics of one theoretical perspective from
effectively describing strategies in terms that are understandable and consistently
analyzable from another theoretical tradition. In also impairs the ability of
practitioners to formulate business strategies because the range of strategic choice
may seem ambiguous and ill-defined without the guidance of a management academic
or consultant. The purpose of this paper has been to address this important issue in a
manner that would enhance the dialogue across theoretical perspectives within the
strategic management field.
A taxonomy of business strategies has been developed in order to address this gap
in the literature. The central construct of this paper employs categorical dimensions
that are pan-theoretical in nature; ones which do not needlessly impinge on any
strategic management perspective. This taxonomy, and the referencing system that
enables the standardized labeling of business strategies, supports enhanced discussion
within our research discipline of differing theoretical approaches to the field. Empirical
and experimental researchers can better compare the application of a particular
strategy in multiple organizational contexts and/or multiple strategies in a given
context. Conceptual researchers can continue to employ their preferred theoretical
approaches while expanding the degree of cross-theoretical discussion by invoking the Building-blocks
standardized referencing system. Practitioners have greater descriptive clarity through of strategic
which business strategies – including potentially overlooked avenues for achieving
competitive advantages – may be identified and pursued. Collectively, both management
researchers and practitioners may use these basic building blocks of business
strategy in ways best suited to their individual needs while enabling a common
understanding by those from differing theoretical traditions. 15
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About the author


Mark Fuller is an Assistant Professor in Strategic Management at the Schwartz School of
Business at St Francis Xavier University. Previously, he lectured extensively at the DeGroote
School of Business, McMaster University and the Schulich School of Business, York University
in Ontario, Canada. His professional experience includes serving as a banker with the Royal
Bank Financial Group, as an export development analyst with the Canadian Embassy in
Washington, DC, and as a management consultant. A past candidate for elected office, he has
also served on a number of charitable boards of directors. Mark Fuller can be contacted at:
mfuller@stfx.ca

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