当前战略管理的趋势(英文版).pdf25

INTRODUCTION
Let us cast our minds back to January 1, 2000. Despite all the hoopla surrounding
the beginning of a New Millennium – for most people the transition
from the twentieth to the twenty-first century had little real significance.
What a difference four years can make! In retrospect it is clear that the beginning
of the new millennium marked a watershed – both for business and for
the world. On March 10, 2000, the NASDAQ hit its all-time high of 5,132.
Over the next two years it lost 62 percent of its value. In the vanguard of the
stock market decline was the meltdown of the high-flying internet stocks. As
the dot.com bubble rapidly deflated, a new category of stocks emerged – the
Ninety-Five Percent Club – those that had lost more than 95 percent of their
value. The declining stock market was closely linked to developments in the
real economy. During the latter half of 2000, growth, productivity and profits
all went into decline. On January 3, 2001, the Fed announced the first in
a sequence of interest rate cuts. Faith in the wonders of the “New Economy”
soon dissipated. Opinion became divided between those who viewed the period
of IT-led productivity growth as over and those who claimed that the New
Economy had been a mirage from the start.
The economic rumblings of 2000 were soon overshadowed by events on a
larger scale. The September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center
inaugurated a new era in world history. During the next two years, US-led
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq established new governments in both countries.
Meanwhile, the institutions that had dominated international relations
for over half a
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