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

Death, Ritual and Material Culture in South London

Scholars have advocated the importance of a long-term orientation to the sustainable management of organizations, but few have examined its sources. We develop more fully the concept of long-term o...

CEO long-term orientation and elite university education:

Mental health issues are affecting not only families worldwide but also numerous family businesses. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the uniqueness of the family business may be a double-edged swor...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1042258719837987

Mental Health in the Family Business: A Conceptual Model and a Research Agenda:

Broadening Our Horizons by Studying Family Businesses

Using agency theory we formulate hypotheses about the executive compensation practices among lone founder firms and family firms. We argue that compensation schemes reflect attempts to reduce the agency costs inherent in the different ownership structures. Hence, lone founder-owned firms where owner-manager incentive alignment and monitoring advantages are great will exhibit the lowest levels of total and incentive CEO compensation. By contrast, family-owned firms, while enjoying owner-manager agency advantages over other companies, face unique owner-owner agency conflicts as family owners may pressure their CEOs to serve the family instead of the firm. Higher levels of total and incentive CEO compensation thus were expected to be paid to reduce the impact on the CEO of such pressure. These expectations were borne out in our study of S&P 500 companies. However, we also found contrary to the above rationales that despite their higher compensation packages diffusely held firms did not benefit more from higher CEO compensation than founder- or family-owned firms, nor did they outperform. Moreover, CEO compensation was negatively related to performance in the former. It appears therefore that founder- and family-owned firms employ more efficient compensation packages than more diffusely held public firms.

Danny Miller

Papers

Death, Ritual and Material Culture in South London

CEO long-term orientation and elite university education:

Mental Health in the Family Business: A Conceptual Model and a Research Agenda:

Broadening Our Horizons by Studying Family Businesses

Frugal Principals, Lavish Agents: CEO Compensation in Family-, Founder- and Other Firms