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

Daniel Miller spent 18 months undertaking an ethnographic study with the residents of an English village, tracking their use of the different social media platforms. Following his study, he argues that a focus on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram does little to explain what we post on social media. Instead, the key to understanding how people in an English village use social media is to appreciate just how ‘English’ their usage has become. He introduces the ‘Goldilocks Strategy’: how villagers use social media to calibrate precise levels of interaction ensuring that each relationship is neither too cold nor too hot, but ‘just right’.

Social Media in an English Village

Our collective bias has been to study large, publicly traded companies. Not only do these behemoths represent a tiny fraction of organizations, but they have also served as uninspiring role models driven by the short-run objectives of managers and owners alike. By contrast, outstanding family-owned or family-controlled businesses, to which we have devoted relatively little attention, often outperform by marching to the beat of a different drum. They are managed for the long run. Among the most durable and best performing family businesses, this long-run approach shows up as four priorities: continuity and persistence in pursuing a substantive rather than a financial mission, exceptional attention to the internal community of employees, unusually close connection to key external stakeholders, and courageous commanding leadership that resists pressures from shortsighted owners. We would do well to learn more about these types of organizations.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1056492606294519

Kicking the Habit: Broadening Our Horizons by Studying Family Businesses

Looking back on a Family Business Review article we published in 2006, we discuss its origins, publication challenges, apparent influence, and how we might build on it today. Much of this reflectio...

Looking Back at and Forward From: “Family Governance and Firm Performance: Agency, Stewardship, and Capabilities”:

Consumption studies as the transformation of anthropology

Conflicts in the family business literature abound due to the breed’s heterogeneity. However, a key aspect of heterogeneity has been ignored—a tendency for many family firms to gravitate toward unu...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1042258720964186

Danny Miller

Papers

Social Media in an English Village

Kicking the Habit: Broadening Our Horizons by Studying Family Businesses

Looking Back at and Forward From: “Family Governance and Firm Performance: Agency, Stewardship, and Capabilities”:

Consumption studies as the transformation of anthropology

Family Firms: A Breed of Extremes?: