To remain competitive in the 21st century there are key pillars that an organization needs in order to be a leader in their industry and will enable it to value the needs for their customers globally. These pillars include an effective management style, diversity management and business ethics. These key pillars with a strong organizational culture will enable an organization to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. In order to be successful in the 21st century market, an organization must be able to identify and adapt to these pillars. How these pillars are connected to competitive advantage is what this paper is about. Measuring the values for these pillars will allow an organization to work in different cultural environments and come out strong and successful. They will enable a company to gain a competitive advantage in the global market. These pillars will be represented within a 100 year old corporation that has changed in order to adapt to the 21st century market United Parcel Service, UPS.
Introduction: Competitive advantage is something that we hear everyone talking about nowadays. From our CEO’S, teachers, managers, community leaders, small business owners, students, and people who are thinking of embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. The first thing we need to define is what exactly competitive advantage is and why is it so important in today’s world, the 21st century. Competitive advantage is “the ability of one organization to outperform other organizations because it produces desired goods or services more efficiently and effectively than they do” (Jones & George, 2010 p. 22). Knowing the definition of competitive advantage is not sufficient for managers to be able to apply a market based value driven management strategy. The authors intend to give the readers an overview of the key pillars that are necessary to develop and maintain competitive advantage globally within