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

Common syndromes of business failure

Creative Chaos versus Munificent Momentum: The Schism between Normative and Academic Views of Organizational Change

O presente artigo questiona pressupostos sobre a distincao, comum na pesquisa de Internet, entre on-line e off-line. Varias pesquisas presumiram a "virtualidade", bem como uma forte divisao entre o on-line e o off-line como sendo um dado e um ponto de partida metodologico e analitico em pesquisa. Argumentamos que quando se aborda o uso de fato da Internet a partir de uma abordagem etnografica, uma tal distincao se revela como um feito social altamente contingente: alguns atores empregam grandes habilidades para estabelecer uma distincao clara entre on-line e off-line em suas praticas de Internet; em outros, tal distincao nao tem sentido, ou nao e desejavel, e tais distincoes nao sao de fato estabelecidas. Utilizamos uma comparacao entre cibercafes em Trinidad para demonstrar essa variabilidade e a ampla gama de diferentes relacoes on-line/off-line que sao realmente observadas. Nos relacionamos esse material com a questao mais geral de se estabelecer "contextos" na pesquisa etnografica.

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Etnografia on e off-line: cibercafés em Trinidad

Institutional logics, family firm governance and performance

Volume I: Theory and Issues in Consumption Founders, Modern Theory and Approaches, Ethics and Dilemmas. Volume II: The History and Regional Development of Consumption Early History, Europe, Americas, Far East, South Asia, Africa, Melanesia and Australia. Volume III: Disciplinary Approaches to Consumption Cultural Studies, Media, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Business Studies, Geography. Volume IV: Objects, Subjects and Mediations in Consumption Objects, Clothes, Food, House, Other, Subjects, Class, Gender, Mediations.

Danny Miller

Papers

Common syndromes of business failure

Creative Chaos versus Munificent Momentum: The Schism between Normative and Academic Views of Organizational Change

Etnografia on e off-line: cibercafés em Trinidad

Institutional logics, family firm governance and performance

Consumption : critical concepts in the social sciences