Competitive Advantage: Is It Sustainable or Temporary in Today’s Dynamic Environment?
Competitive Advantage: Sustainable or Temporary in Today’s Dynamic Environment?
Reginald M. Beal School of Business and Industry Florida A&M University Tallahassee, FL 32307 Tel: (850) 561-2339 Fax: (850) 599-3533 E-mail: rbeal@nettally.com
Competitive Advantage: Sustainable or Temporary in Today’s Dynamic Environment?
Spirited debate in the field of strategic management wages as to whether competitive advantage is sustainable or merely temporary in today’s highly dynamic environments. The objectivity of the debate, however, suffers from a lack of specificity regarding the terms “sustainable” and “temporary.” That is, the amount of time or duration of a sustained or temporary competitive advantage is never specified by a writer. This presentation offers an approach for determining the period of time that distinguishes sustained competitive advantage from temporary competitive advantage. The approach entails determining whether a competitive advantage denoted by a competitive strategy yields above-average returns in one or more industry life cycle stages – introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Competitive strategies providing above-average returns in only one stage are classified as temporary advantages while competitive strategies providing such returns in more than one stage are classified as sustained competitive advantages. Generic and combination competitive strategies are examined.
Competitive Advantage: Sustainable or Temporary in Today’s Dynamic Environment? Introduction Is competitive advantage sustainable or merely temporary in today’s dynamic, hypercompetive environments as many strategy researchers proclaim? Although this question is important to strategy researchers and managers, alike, we have no clear answer to it. Two major obstacles stand in the way of arriving at a definitive answer. First, there is no common definition of the concept of competitive advantage. Traditionally in the field of strategic management, competitive advantage
Reginald M. Beal School of Business and Industry Florida A&M University Tallahassee, FL 32307 Tel: (850) 561-2339 Fax: (850) 599-3533 E-mail: rbeal@nettally.com
Competitive Advantage: Sustainable or Temporary in Today’s Dynamic Environment?
Spirited debate in the field of strategic management wages as to whether competitive advantage is sustainable or merely temporary in today’s highly dynamic environments. The objectivity of the debate, however, suffers from a lack of specificity regarding the terms “sustainable” and “temporary.” That is, the amount of time or duration of a sustained or temporary competitive advantage is never specified by a writer. This presentation offers an approach for determining the period of time that distinguishes sustained competitive advantage from temporary competitive advantage. The approach entails determining whether a competitive advantage denoted by a competitive strategy yields above-average returns in one or more industry life cycle stages – introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Competitive strategies providing above-average returns in only one stage are classified as temporary advantages while competitive strategies providing such returns in more than one stage are classified as sustained competitive advantages. Generic and combination competitive strategies are examined.
Competitive Advantage: Sustainable or Temporary in Today’s Dynamic Environment? Introduction Is competitive advantage sustainable or merely temporary in today’s dynamic, hypercompetive environments as many strategy researchers proclaim? Although this question is important to strategy researchers and managers, alike, we have no clear answer to it. Two major obstacles stand in the way of arriving at a definitive answer. First, there is no common definition of the concept of competitive advantage. Traditionally in the field of strategic management, competitive advantage