Business Strategy Assignment
This essay will follow the course of identifying the key areas of the core competency theory that the article entitled ‘The Core Competence of the Corporation ', written by Prahalad and Hamel, explores as well as positioning the concepts in the wider debate of theory, comparing and contrasting with other ideas from strategic theory. Secondly, this piece will look at some underlying assumptions of the business world that the article formulates when looking upon its concepts, and how these assumptions fit with other theoretical work. Thirdly, I will go on to look at the overall strengths and weaknesses of the article and its foundations.
‘Resources are an organisation’s assets and are thus the building blocks
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Dierickx and Cool (1989) propose a more wholesome resource based view as a means to competitive advantage by stating that resources used in the production of products must be strongly linked to the firm, with their origins lying in organisational skill and learning. This therefore supports the assumption that developing company specific core competencies, heavily reliant upon the knowledge of integrated systems and departments working together to create a ‘high component of immobility’ (Dierickx and Cool 1989 p83) from one company to another, will lead to sustained competitive advantage.
Another assumption of the article is that those companies with more traditional management styles require radical change to be able to keep apace with the technological advancements of the future. Dr. Frank L. Douglas (2004), executive vice president of Aventis, suggests that ‘traditional management practices – reporting structure, incentives - do little to support most knowledge work’ (p1). Douglas advocates a sustained period of observation over teams of which you are responsible for. This is to understand how the knowledgeable workers in the company like to operate and therefore to gain an understanding of the direction of the team. He also implies that everyone in the innovation process must take part in the evaluation practice so the team can progress sufficiently and become a ‘Hub for Innovation’ (p1). From this, strategists implementing core
All companies have core competencies that they use to differentiate their company, product, or service from the competition, Sears is no exception. Also, it is common for a company’s core competencies to change, as their industry progresses through phases and shifts its emphasis between product and process innovations (Regis University, 2011), Sears is no exception. Yet, when a company’s core competencies become misaligned and no longer supports their strategic intent the business is in danger of becoming obsolete (Regis University, 2011), as their customers no longer perceive the unique benefits the company has
The objective of the Cisco executives is to emphasis consideration on competencies that truly affect its competitive advantage. Cisco core competency comes from the precise group of talents and manufacturing practices that bring extra value to the. These competencies allowed Cisco to enter an extensive range of markets.
Selecting a business strategy that details valuable resources and distinctive competencies, strategizing all resources and capabilities and ensuring they are all employed and exploited, and building and regenerating valuable resources and distinctive competencies is key. The analysis of resources, capabilities and core competencies describes the external environment which is subject to change quickly. Based off this information a firm has to be prepared and know its internal resources and capabilities and offer a more secure strategy. Furthermore, resources and capabilities are the primary source of profitability. Resources entail intangible, tangible, and human resources.
Core competencies are the capabilities that are critical to a business achieving competitive advantage. The starting point for analysing core competencies is recognising that competition between businesses is as much a race for competence mastery as it is for market position and market power. (Prahalad and Hamel)
Barney, J. (2004). Firm resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Strategy: Process Content Context: an international perspective, de Wit & Meyer , 285-292.
He suggested that sustained competitive advantage derives from the resources and capabilities a firm controls that are valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and not substitutable. He further added that the resources and capabilities can be viewed in form of tangible and intangible assets. There are four different categories of resources financial, physical, human, and organization.
Core competence is one of the important concepts that were introduced for the understanding of product
Wal-Mart is a company that has taken its core competencies, which are the capabilities the firm emphasizes and performs especially well while pursuing its vision (Ireland, Hoskisson, Hitt, 2008), and turned them into competitive advantages. Core competencies must satisfy four characteristics in order to be a competitive advantage. These advantages, according to our text, include: *valuable, *rare, *difficult to imitate,*nonsubstitutable.
For a business to be successful and have a competitive advantage, it is important to evaluate the company’s resources and capabilities (Pitt & Koufopoulos, 2012). Resources in a company are the productive assets owned (tangible or intangible) whereas capabilities are what the company can do with this (Grant, 2010). “Establishing competitive
Through an internal environment analysis, companies can identify and understand their own unique resources, capabilities, and competencies that are required for their sustainable competitive advantage. Resources, capabilities, and core competencies are the foundation of competitive advantage. There is no competitive advantages are permanently sustainable in any companies, so they have to consist on their current advantages and develop new advantages by internally understanding and analyzing their resources and capabilities. Competitors have their own unique resources, capabilities, and core competencies to create values for their customers. Both tangible and intangible resources, which include individual, social and organizational phenomena, are combined to generate capabilities. In turn, company’s capabilities are used to build core competencies. Also, core competencies are as a source of competitive advantage for a company to win in the competitive market.
This strategy emphasizes the use of an organization’s resources and capabilities to achieve a core competence that cannot be imitated by competitors. Furthermore, the resource based school argues that if an organization distinctively improves its internal capability; that is being able to have effective inside machinery to deliver products and services to customers, the organization will enjoy a massive advantage in the market. This school also argues that in order to have a competitive advantage, an organization must have resource and capabilities that are sophisticated to those of competitors (QuickMBA,
Resources are the source of the firm’s capabilities. Resources are bundled to create organisational capabilities. Some of a firm’s resources are tangible and intangible. Tangible resources are assets that can be seen and quantified. Intangible resources include assets that typically are rooted deeply in the firm’s history and have accumulated over time. Intangible resources are relatively difficult for competitors to analyse and imitate. The four types of tangible resources are financial, organisational, physical and technological. And the three types of intangible resources are human, innovation and reputational (Hanson, D., Hitt, M., Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R. E., 2011, pp. 75-78).
Competitive advantage is explained by Mahoney and Pandian (1992) as the function of industry analysis, organizational governance and the firm’s effects in the form of resource advantages and strategies. In order for a firm to be competitive it must adapt to the volatile business environment and through strategic management decisions establish a competitive advantage that will ultimately produce superior performance relative to its competitors (Akimova 2000).
Core competency is said to resource allocation, capabilities, knowledge, skills, and expertise along side price chain. It wants 3 elements: skills, resources and processes, and it is communication,
For transforming a short-run competitive advantage into a sustained competitive advantage we require resources that are heterogeneous in nature and not perfectly mobile. This translates into valuable resources that are neither perfectly imitable nor substitutable without great effort. If these conditions are fulfilled then the bundle of resources can sustain the firm's above average returns.