Week 1
Week 1 – Assignment: Analyze Organizational Capability Toward Competitive Advantage -
For this week’s assignment, you will read the articles and watch the video on competitive advantage. Your assignment this week is to record a video discussing what you learned about competitive advantage.
A voiceover of your voice as you share no more than five (5) PowerPoint slides. You will include the references used in proper APA format in one page at the end of your transcript document. There is no need for you to cite the sources within the content of your video verbally.
You will use Kaltura CaptureSpace for this assignment. To access the video capturing tool, follow the tutorial found in Resources for this week. You should not read directly from the slides, and your presentation should be presented in a comfortable conversational manner.
You will be expected to submit a transcript of the dialogue with your video submission. Your video should include a logical progression of ideas that would allow your audience to achieve a basic understanding of this important business principle with just the information in your video.
Please consider that your audience for the presentation will be undergraduate business school students, who do not yet understand what competitive advantage is. You may choose to address the topic in general terms and concepts, or you may wish to use a specific company and demonstrate what strategic advantage is to your selected company.
Length: Your video should be no more than 5 minutes.
References: Include at least 4 scholarly resources, but no more than 2 from the weekly readings.
Your video should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts that are presented this week and provide new thoughts and insights relating directly to this topic. Your response should reflect graduate-level understanding and presentation.
Week 1
Measuring, Assessing, and Strategy
If you ask ten business professionals to define the term competitive advantage, you are likely to get ten different answers. The problem for the person seeking to define and refine the term is that some definition of competitive advantage is needed as it influences strategic efforts (Cegliński, 2016). The first academic definition of competitive advantage was by Ansoff (1965 as cited in Sigalas, 2015). Ansoff’s definition while singular still serves as an essential and usable definition and is the foundation used in this course. It states that competitive advantage is “the isolated characteristics or particular properties of individual product markets which gave a firm a strong competitive position” (Sigalas, 2015, p. 2005). One could argue that the means of achieving a competitive position of strength may come through the application of a lot of different resources. It can come by technology, employees, pricing, agility, and a multitude of other elements, and they would all be correct. However, those component elements are, by definition, still isolated characteristics as defined by Ansoff. In the end, the point is that whatever may be used to attain a competitive advantage must be understood, measured, and used strategically to ensure the highest probability of organizational success. It is not so much that one unique element may provide an advantage, but what an organization does strategically with an element or a mix of elements that result in a competitive advantage.
An idea that may help to solidify this concept is data. A single point of data provides very little useful value. A single data point may be combined with other data to create information, but without a measure, for that information, it continues to provide very little value. The isolated characteristics or elements of strength noted in an organization are a lot like data or information without a measure. Unless they are analyzed against some measure, they have little value and do not really result in understanding an organization’s competitive advantage. The assessment of information, just like the assessment of strengths is only relative when measured against something that measures trends and comparisons. When organizational decision-makers begin to assess organizational strengths, they use tools like the SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) or PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technology) analysis. These tools help decision-makers to measure against internal and external measures respectively, and thus competitive advantage can be assessed. In Week 2, you will use these tools to assess an organization. For now, note that these tools are rules by which organizations can measure themselves and how they compare against themselves and their competitors; thus competitive advantage emerges. For organizations to be successful and have sustainable operations, they must plan to measure, actually measure, and then use their strengths towards open opportunities. Knowing, using, and measuring the success or failures of organizational efforts is the entire purpose of strategic planning. Organizational leaders who know what their strengths are can strategize how to capitalize on their strengths, know how to diminish weaknesses and work toward organizational sustainability and growth.
Be sure to review this week's resources carefully. You are expected to apply the information from these resources when you prepare your assignments.
References
Cegliński, P. (2016). The concept of competitive advantages. Logic, sources, and durability. Journal of Positive Management, 7(3), 57-70.
Critical issues in business: Success and failure [Video file]. (2012). Segment 5. Maintaining Competitive Advantage.
Sigalas, C. (2015). Competitive advantage: The known unknown concept. Management Decision, 53(9), 2004-2016.