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

This paper argues that, contrary to his own claims, Callon's work amounts to a defence of the economists' model of a framed and abstracted market against empirical evidence that contemporary exchange rarely if ever works according to the laws of the market. I start with an example from an Indian village, which shows how other societies also try to frame particular genres of exchange to protect themselves from other varieties of exchange. But both there and within capitalism the frame is precisely a moral system of how exchange ought to be carried out. I then use the example of car purchasing to suggest the highly entangled world of actual exchange within capitalism both between the exchange partners and also between consumers and commerce more generally. Indeed, the actual case studies in Callon's The Laws of the Markets seem to support this conclusion rather than the model put forward in his own introduction and conclusion. These studies, as others cited here, suggest the centrality of entanglements also for higher-level exchanges, such as stock markets and corporate take-overs, and not just for shoppers or other individual actors. As an alternative to Callon I briefly summarize an argument published elsewhere, called 'virtualism', in which I examine the increasing ability of economists and other agents of abstract models such as audit and consultancy to transform the world into closer approximations of their theories and models. I suggest this provides a more fruitful way of understanding the growth and power of abstraction in the contemporary economy.

Turning Callon the right way up

Preface PART ONE - PORTRAITS 1) Marriage Dun Mash Up 2) Avatar 3) For Whom the Bell Doesn't Toll 4) The Book of Truth 5) It's Who You Know 6) Community 7) Time Suck 8) Cultivating FarmVille 9) It Was Just Sex 10) Getting the Word Out 11) Picking BlackBerrys 12) The History Woman Lagniappe The Philosophy of Doubles PART TWO - The Anthropology of Facebook A) The Invention of Fasbook. B) The Fame of Facebook. C) 15 theses on what Facebook might just be. Glossary and Acknowledgements

Tales from Facebook

The effectiveness of different approaches to changing organization structure is examined. Two dimensions of structural change are explored. The findings show a tendency for quantum change, that is,...

Structural Change and Performance: Quantum Versus Piecemeal-Incremental Approaches

There has been much debate concerning the performance of family firms and the drivers of their performance. Some scholars have argued that family management is to blame when family firms go wrong; others claim that family management removes costly agency problems and encourages stewardship. Our thesis is that these disagreements can only be resolved by distinguishing among different types of family firms. We argue that family CEOs will outperform in smaller firms with more concentrated ownership and underperform in larger firms with more dispersed ownership; they will do neither where firms are smaller and ownership is more dispersed or firms are larger and ownership is more concentrated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Is family leadership always beneficial

Summary


1 In this review, we first summarize how hydrologic connectivity has been studied for riverine fish capable of moving long distances, and then identify research opportunities that have clear conservation significance Migratory species, such as anadromous salmonids, are good model organisms for understanding ecological connectivity in rivers because the spatial scale over which movements occur among freshwater habitats is large enough to be easily observed with available techniques; they are often economically or culturally valuable with habitats that can be easily fragmented by human activities; and they integrate landscape conditions from multiple surrounding catchment(s) with in-river conditions Studies have focussed on three themes: (i) relatively stable connections (connections controlled by processes that act over broad spatio-temporal scales >1000 km2 and >100 years); (ii) dynamic connections (connections controlled by processes acting over fine to moderate spatio-temporal scales ∼1–1000 km2 and <1–100 years); and (iii) anthropogenic influences on hydrologic connectivity, including actions that disrupt or enhance natural connections experienced by fish



2 We outline eight challenges to understanding the role of connectivity in riverine fish ecology, organized under three foci: (i) addressing the constraints of river structure; (ii) embracing temporal complexity in hydrologic connectivity; and (iii) managing connectivity for riverine fishes Challenges include the spatial structure of stream networks, the force and direction of flow, scale-dependence of connectivity, shifting boundaries, complexity of behaviour and life histories and quantifying anthropogenic influence on connectivity and aligning management goals As we discuss each challenge, we summarize relevant approaches in the literature and provide additional suggestions for improving research and management of connectivity for riverine fishes



3 Specifically, we suggest that rapid advances are possible in the following arenas: (i) incorporating network structure and river discharge into analyses; (ii) increasing explicit consideration of temporal complexity and fish behaviour in the scope of analyses; and (iii) parsing degrees of human and natural influences on connectivity and defining acceptable alterations Multiscale analyses are most likely to identify dominant patterns of connections and disconnections, and the appropriate scale at which to focus conservation activities

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Danny Miller

Papers

Turning Callon the right way up

Tales from Facebook

Structural Change and Performance: Quantum Versus Piecemeal-Incremental Approaches

Is family leadership always beneficial

Hydrological connectivity for riverine fish: measurement challenges and research opportunities