COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter's groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into 'activities', or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage. Now an essential part of international business thinking, COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE takes strategy from broad vision to an internally consistent configuration of activities. Its powerful framework provides the tools to understand the drivers of cost and a company's relative cost position. Porter's value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. He shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. That the phrases 'competitive advantage' and 'sustainable competitive advantage' have become commonplace is testimony to the power of Porter's ideas. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE has guided countless companies, business school students, and scholars in understanding the roots of competition. Porter's work captures the extraordinary complexity of competition in a way that makes strategy both concrete and actionable.

Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance

Theorists in various fields have discussed characteristics of top managers. This paper attempts to synthesize these previously fragmented literatures around a more general “upper echelons perspective.” The theory states that organizational outcomes—strategic choices and performance levels—are partially predicted by managerial background characteristics. Propositions and methodological suggestions are included.

Upper Echelons: The Organization as a Reflection of Its Top Managers

The primary purpose of this article is to clarify the nature of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct and to propose a contingency framework for investigating the relationship between EO and firm performance. We first explore and refine the dimensions of EO and discuss the usefulness of viewing a firm's EO as a multidimensional construct. Then, drawing on examples from the EO-related contingencies literature, we suggest alternative models (moderating effects, mediating effects, independent effects, interaction effects) for testing the EO-performance relationship.

Clarifying the Entrepreneurial Orientation Construct and Linking It To Performance

It is argued that (a) social identification is a perception of oneness with a group of persons; (b) social identification stems from the categorization of individuals, the distinctiveness and prestige of the group, the salience of outgroups, and the factors that traditionally are associated with group formation; and (c) social identification leads to activities that are congruent with the identity, support for institutions that embody the identity, stereotypical perceptions of self and others, and outcomes that traditionally are associated with group formation, and it reinforces the antecedents of identification. This perspective is applied to organizational socialization, role conflict, and intergroup relations.

Social Identity Theory and the Organization

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

The objective of the research was to discover the chief determinants of entrepreneurship, the process by which organizations renew themselves and their markets by pioneering, innovation, and risk taking. Some authors have argued that personality factors of the leader are what determine entrepreneurship, others have highlighted the role played by the structure of the organization, while a final group have pointed to the importance of strategy making. We believed that the manner and extent to which entrepreneurship would be influenced by all of these factors would in large measure depend upon the nature of the organization. Based upon the work of a number of authors we derived a crude typology of firms: Simple firms are small and their power is centralized at the top. Planning firms are bigger, their goal being smooth and efficient operation through the use of formal controls and plans. Organic firms strive to be adaptive to their environments, emphasizing expertise-based power and open communications. The predictiveness of the typology was established upon a sample of 52 firms using hypothesis-testing and analysis of variance techniques. We conjectured that in Simple firms entrepreneurship would be determined by the characteristics of the leader; in Planning firms it would be facilitated by explicit and well integrated product-market strategies, and in Organic firms it would be a function of environment and structure. These hypotheses were largely borne out by correlational and multiple regression analyses. Any programs which aim to stimulate entrepreneurship would benefit greatly from tailoring recommendations to the nature of the target firms.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2630968

The Correlates of Entrepreneurship in Three Types of Firms

Summary Two very difJerent nmodels oJ pr-oduct innovation ar-e postulated and tested. The con rvative m-odel assumes that ininov-ation is peijormed reluictanitly-, mainl/ in r-esponise to serious challenges. It therefore pr-edic-ts that innoration will co rrelate positively with environmental, injformation processing, structlural and decision nmaking variables that represent, or help to recognize antd cope with these challenges. In conitrast, the entrepreneurial modlel supposes that innovation is alwavys aggressiv-ely plursued and w-vill be very high unless decision makers are warned to slow down. Thus negative correlations are predicted between innovation and the v-ariables that cant provide such warning. Co}rrelationial and curv ilinear regression anialyses revealed that each mi1odel wvas suppor ted by conservative and entrepreneurial sub-samples, respectively, in a diverse sanmple oj 52 Canadian firmns.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2485899.pdf

Innovation in Conservative and Entrepreneurial Firms: Two Models of Strategic Momentum

Whereas much is known about the relationships between strategy and structure, and between environment and structure, too little is known about a third link—the relationship between strategy-making and environment. An empirical study was conducted upon two distinct samples of firms. We hypothesized that increases in environmental dynamism, hostility and heterogeneity should be related to specific changes in the amount of analysis and innovation which characterizes strategy-making activity. Most of these relationships tended to be much stronger in successful than in unsuccessful samples of firms.

Strategy-making and environment: The third link

Part 1 Objectification: Hegel and objectification Marx - objectification as rupture Munn - objectification as culture Simmel - objectification as modernity. Part 2 Material culture: material culture artefacts in their contexts. Part 3 Mass consumption: the study of consumption object domains, ideology and interests towards a theory of consumption.

Material Culture and Mass Consumption

This article continues to operationally define and test the resource-based view of the firm in a study of the major U.S. film studios from 1936 to 1965. We found that property-based resources in th...

Danny Miller

Papers

The Correlates of Entrepreneurship in Three Types of Firms

Innovation in Conservative and Entrepreneurial Firms: Two Models of Strategic Momentum

Strategy-making and environment: The third link

Material Culture and Mass Consumption

The Resource-Based View of the Firm in Two Environments: The Hollywood Film Studios From 1936 to 1965