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 article addresses the consequences of theory in social science. It suggests that theory has become fetishized and contributes to class differentiation as most people are excluded from its incr...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1367877921994574

A theory of a theory of the smartphone

Structural Dynamics and Control for NGST - A Preliminary Study

The perils of success, or failure, where is thy sting? A comment on Whyte, Saks and Hook

L’auteur s’interroge sur la facon de penser une rue et ses commerces dans le Londres cosmopolite d’aujourd’hui. Il privilegie l’« ordinaire » par rapport au « particulier » ; cela le conduit a choisir comme terrain d’etude une rue la plus « quelconque » possible, avec pour paradigme ce qu’il nomme « empirisme radical ». Contre toute attente, seuls deux petits commerces, le coiffeur et le quincaillier, parviennent a donner du « sens a la rue », c’est-a-dire a devenir un lieu de sociabilite intense. Le reste des boutiques est en declin. Les habitants des couches populaires ne s’identifient pas a ces magasins qui restent, a leurs yeux, trop chers. Ils aspirent a consommer dans les supermarches plus eloignes geographiquement et socialement. Les classes moyennes ne frequentent pas regulierement les petits commerces. Pourtant, elles les defendent comme services de proximite pour les classes plus modestes. Elles preferent se rendre dans les boutiques selectes de galeries commercantes plus huppees. Elles y trouvent un decor victorien qui suscite de la nostalgie, a partir de laquelle elles construisent un imaginaire. L’auteur analyse cet imaginaire comme un mythe – au sens anthropologique – c’est-a-dire un recit susceptible de resoudre des contradictions ideologiques. Ce recit est aussi une esthetique urbaine qu’il est necessaire d’etudier pour comprendre le « sens de la ville ».

Une rue du nord de Londres et ses magasins : imaginaire et usages

Bayesian methods constitute an alternative to null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). This article briefly reviews the concept of Bayesian methods, describes its differences with NHST, and discusses the potential of Bayesian methods to advance family business research and practice. We argue that Bayesian methods are well suited to take into account the significant heterogeneity that exists within the population of family firms. The article closes with a short guide for how to use Bayesian methods and report their results. The focus of the article is on regression models.

Danny Miller

Papers

A theory of a theory of the smartphone

Structural Dynamics and Control for NGST - A Preliminary Study

The perils of success, or failure, where is thy sting? A comment on Whyte, Saks and Hook

Une rue du nord de Londres et ses magasins : imaginaire et usages

Bayesian Methods in Family Business Research