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

A title of this nature invites the accusation of pretentiousness. This would
follow the juxtaposition of two terms, fashion and ontology, which
ordinary discourse would construct as opposing ends of a spectrum of
social phenomena. Fashion is often taken as the most superficial content
of social activities, ontology the deepest and the least susceptible to an
analysis as mere content. Fashion is therefore one of the least promising
candidates as a vehicle for ontology or even as having ontological
consequences. The juxtaposition of the two stakes the claims of this
paper, that is to equate modes of consumption with an understanding of
the fundamental nature of being.

Fashion and ontology in Trinidad

Changes to a scene often go unnoticed if the objects of the change are unattended, making change detection an index of where attention is focused during scene perception. We measured change detection in school-age children and young adults by repeatedly alternating two versions of an image. To provide an age-fair assessment we used a bimanual choice rather than open-ended verbal responses. The difference in detection speed and accuracy between 50-ms versus 250-ms blank screens between views indexed change detection in short-term visual memory independent of sensory and response processes. Younger children were significantly less efficient than older participants, especially when an object changed color or had a part deleted. Changes in object orientation were detected more readily. These results point to important differences in the perceptual reality of younger and older children.

The development of change detection.

A Theory of Virtualism

In the U.S., macroeconomic policy makers are concerned about how consumers will respond to falling incomes, nominal home prices, falling income, rising mortgage interest rates and tightening credit standards. In order to address these questions, we estimate and simulate a dynamic structural model of housing demand. In the model, consumers maximize expected discounted lifetime utility from housing services and a composite consumption good. The model allows for realistic features of the housing market including non-convex adjustment costs from buying and selling a home and credit constraints from minimum downpayment requirements. We use the forward simulation procedure of Bajari, Benkard and Levin (2007) to estimate the structural parameters, especially the elasticity of substitution between consumption and housing services, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Given the estimated model parameters, we simulate the partial equilibrium consumption and housing and

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A Dynamic Model of Housing Demand: Estimation and Policy Implications

We complement the work of Gagne et al. by discussing how an extended time dimension shapes organizational behaviour in family firms. Using insights from family dynamics, identity theory, and social identity theory, we show how early formative experiences in the family can influence commitment, conflict, and motivation in family firms. Then we examine how a family's intention to pass on the firm to later generations can impact leadership, human-resources practices, and corporate cultures.

Danny Miller

Papers

Fashion and ontology in Trinidad

The development of change detection.

A Theory of Virtualism

A Dynamic Model of Housing Demand: Estimation and Policy Implications

Temporal considerations in the study of family firms: Reflections on “the study of organizational behaviour in family business”