Effectiveness Of A Competitive Advantage - 1156 Words

Increasingly, firms find themselves, either by design or circumstances, operating in business environments fraught with unprecedented, unparalleled, unrelenting, and largely unpredictable change. Retaining competitive advantage is a constant preoccupation for all companies. Millions of words have been written purporting to identify the principles and practices most likely to enable firms to gain competitive advantage and, thereby, enjoy superior profit margins. Despite all this study, management remains a testing ground where theory, experience, judgment and, sometimes, luck play a role. According to Glenn (2009), approximately 90 per cent of senior executives who took a survey by The Economist’s Magazine Intelligence Unit understand that their organizations have to be agile to thrive in the marketplace. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, to be agile is to have a â€Å"quick, resourceful and adaptable character† (Agile, 2016). Agility has classically been defined as simply the ability to change direction rapidly (Bloomfield, Ackland, Elliot, 1994; Clarke, 1959; Mathews, 1973), but also the ability to change direction rapidly and accurately (Barrow McGee, 1971; Johnson Nelson, 1969). In more recent publications, some authors have defined agility to include whole-body change of direction as well as rapid movement and direction change of limbs (Baechle, 1994; Draper Lancaster, 1985). Based on many researches done we can define organizational agility as aShow MoreRelatedCompetitive Advantage By Michael Porter975 Words   |  4 PagesMost businesses strive to attain competitive advantage, whether they explicitly realize this or not. The concept of competitive advantage was propagated by Michael Porter, in his landmark book Competitive Strategy. He defined competitive advantage as â€Å"Competitive advantage grows out of value a firm is able to create for its buyers that exceeds the firm s cost of creating it.† (Porter, 1985) The concept provided a new paradigm for looking at the role of competition in firm’s success or failure inRead MoreOperational Effectiveness Is Not Strategy1123 Words   |  5 PagesOperational Effectiveness is not strategy In the world of business today, rivals can quickly copy market position, and competitive advantage is temporary. The problem is the failure to distinguish between operational effectiveness and strategy. Operational effectiveness and strategy are very important but they work in very different ways. A company can outperform rivals only if they can deliver greater value to customers or create comparable value at a lower cost, or do both. We can have cost advantageRead MoreEfficiency And Change In Management870 Words   |  4 Pagesand world run efficiently by creating products and resources that help benefit consumers. Many of these changes have had big impacts on topics such as efficiency and management within businesses and big impacts on achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Without having these changes in management many companies would struggle to see themselves grow to their full potential and provide the utmost customer service they can provide t o their consumers, who play a large role inRead MoreEnvironmental Scan Paper1539 Words   |  7 Pagesfactors and use those factors to obtain a competitive advantage within the environment. The author will discuss how an organization creates value and sustains a competitive advantage through strategies. How an organization measures success to identify the effectiveness of a strategy. The author will identify the strategies of various companies and identify tactics that make the company successful. Competitive Advantage An organization that has a strategic advantage over its competitors that enables theRead MoreImproving A Competitive Advantage Within The Organization966 Words   |  4 PagesIn order to achieve a competitive advantage, an organization must have resources, competencies, and capabilities. Resources are what an organization utilizes to create value in the organization. Resources are imperative to the organizations value and are tangible and intangible. Tangible resources are financial, physical, and labor. â€Å"Robert Kaplan and David Norton point out that unlike financial and physical resources, intangible resources are hard for competitors to imitate, making them a powerfulRead MoreTaking a Look at Ben and Jerry1762 Words   |  7 Pagesconcentrated on the top level, the two founders and CEOs, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (Caruana, 1998). Rather than carrying out formal market research, Ben Jerry establishes new flavors solely depends on founders’ own ideas and tastes. Greater effectiveness can be achieved from centralization as it provides ability to control activities (Ruekert ,1985). Therefore, high centralization from the two founders leads to successful implementation of ideas on new line and flavor between 1992 and 1994 in orderRead MoreAdvantages Of Information Technology1743 Words   |  7 PagesInformation Technology, 5-Forces Model, Competitive Advantage, and Strategic Positioning a. In a highly competitive, globalized, flat world filled with challenges and opportunities identify and discuss THREE important reasons why businesses MUST invest in information systems and related technologies (See Laudon Laudon text). Businesses must invest in IT for numerous reasons; three of those reasons are to achieve operational excellence, gain competitive advantage and for the company’s survival. InformationRead Moreâ€Å"Critically Assess the View That Human Resource Management Practices Should Be Designed to Fit the Business Strategies and Objectives†Ã¢â‚¬Æ'1310 Words   |  6 Pagesview that human resource management practices should be designed to fit the business strategies and objectives†Ã¢â‚¬Æ' Dynamism is increasingly becoming a feature of the business environment, so what can businesses do to attain and sustain a competitive advantage? They need to set out clear goals and objectives and then ensure that all internal processes and activities are designed in a manner to attain these goals and objectives. Furthermore, some of these practices should be linked directly to theirRead MoreBus 430 Assignment 1: Lenscrafters Case Study1307 Words   |  6 Pageswhich you: 1. Evaluate LensCrafters’ operations strategy and explain how the organization seeks to gain a competitive advantage in terms of sustainability. 2. Analyze how operation management activities affect the customer experience. Select two (2) operation management challenges and provide the solutions for confronting them. 3. Examine LensCrafters’ value chain and evaluate its effectiveness to operations in terms of quality, value creation, and customer satisfaction. 4. Determine the differentRead MoreEnvironmental Scan Paper1138 Words   |  5 Pagesinfluences on the success of its strategies. The focus of this paper will be an environmental scan of the internal and external environments of two real-world firms, their competitive advantages and company strategies for creating value and sustaining competitiveness, measurement guidelines for verifying strategic effectiveness and their evaluation. Internal and External Environments Environmental scanning of the internal organizational environment focuses on company culture, employee-employee