Thomas C. Lawton speaking in a boardroom workshop, standing beside a flipchart, with participants seated in the foreground.
Thomas C. Lawton

Professor of Strategy and International Business

When politics changes the rules of competition.

I work on how companies handle geopolitics, regulation, and power. Nonmarket strategy: how firms see change coming, and what they do when the rules move.

Books Speaking About
Thomas C. Lawton, chest-up portrait in a navy suit, white shirt, and striped tie, photographed in a light corridor.

I am Co-Editor-in-Chief of Long Range Planning, author or editor of nine books, and managing director of Rockbarra. Professorships in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The writing and the boardroom work are the same inquiry, in different rooms.

Books

Nine books.

Author or editor, 1997 to 2027. Three jackets here. Each title goes to its publisher, not a shop.

Cover of the Cambridge Handbook of Nonmarket Strategy in a Global Context, navy jacket. Cambridge Handbook of Nonmarket Strategy in a Global Context Cambridge University Press · forthcoming January 2027 Cover of Aligning for Advantage, Oxford University Press, red cube on white. Aligning for Advantage Oxford University Press · 2014 Cover of Breakout Strategy, McGraw-Hill, exploding light bulb. Breakout Strategy McGraw-Hill · 2007
All nine
Thomas C. Lawton standing beside the Long Range Planning Elsevier banner.

LRPLong Range Planning

Since 2022

Co-Editor-in-Chief

I help steer the field’s oldest journal of strategic planning. Findings that matter for practice often surface there first.

The journal

Articles

Selected papers.

Thomas C. Lawton with an executive cohort in a tiered lecture hall.

Speaking

Rooms that have to decide.

Keynotes, board briefings, and the design of multi-day executive programmes. Research-led, often senior, measured by what the room does next.

Speaking

Practice

The other door.

Rockbarra is the advisory practice. I am managing director. Boards and leadership teams go there when a still-competent market plan has met a political shift. The retained work lives on that site, not here.

Rockbarra Advisory here

Contact

Write to info@rockbarra.com.