Improving A Competitive Advantage Within The Organization

A core set of competencies are essential at all levels for management. Collaborative skill sets such as communication, collaboration, and relationship management are all necessary to running an organization and new requirements for such skills are more data driven than ever. Value based health care place demands on clinical integration, care management, business intelligence, and purchaser relationships. Additionally, value based health care has increased the need for administrators to drive organizational change (American Hospital Association, 2011; Boykins, 2014; Wagner, 2014).

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.

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.

1. What is competitive advantage, and how does it relate to a company’s business model?

Competitive advantage(CA) is an advantage competitors gain by providing or offering customers or consumers greater value for their money through product and service differentiation or through lower prices. Maintaining competitive advantage is crucial to many businesses or organizations' success in order to survive in the market. Competitive advantage is characterized by superior performance which could be an attribute to outperform the competitors whether current or potential; or gaining a higher market share in a particular industry thereby ensuring market leadership; or ultimately, maximization of profit.(JOBBER 2010)

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,

Strategic leadership entails making decisions across different cultures, agencies, agendas, personalities, and desires. It requires the devising of plans that are feasible, desirable, and acceptable to one’s organization and partners whether joint, interagency, or multinational. Strategic leadership demands the ability to make sound, reasoned decisions specifically, consequential decisions with grave implications. Since the aim of strategy is to link ends, ways, and means, the aim of strategic leadership is to determine the ends, choose the best ways, and apply the most effective means. The strategy is the plan; strategic leadership is the thinking and decision making required to develop and effect the plan.

Value-added service is a high priority because when medical personnel deal with patients, the ultimate goal of serving their needs has to be understood in order to provide the care. According to the New England Journal of Medicine article, Porter makes a compelling case for defining, measuring and rewarding value in health care. Porter states that the focus on value, simply defined as quality divided by cost, can lower costs and improve quality (Tobis, 2011). Organizational capabilities refer to an organization 's skill in combining its resources to produce goods and services. These capabilities are organized in a chain of

3. Identify the type of competitive advantage that the initiative enabled the organisation to achieve. Justify your answer. If you feel that there was more than one type of competitive advantage, identify (and justify) each of these that you think apply in

While resources are the source of a firm 's capabilities, capabilities are the main source of its competitive advantage. Capabilities are not evaluated in themselves, and they cannot be thought of as absolute values. They have to be evaluated relative to

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).

It is important to understand both strategic thinking and strategic planning in drawing conclusions of the contributions of strategic thinking on organisational performance; this is due to the similarities between the two. They must not be mistaken for one another and the results of one should not be contributed to the results of the other.

exists when the firm is able to deliver the same benefits as competitors but at a