Sustainable Competitive Advantage

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requirements of the specific firm. Successful companies develop strategies in emerging markets that are different from those they use at home, and often find novel ways of implementing them too (Khanna, Palepu & Sinha, 2005). In the changing context of the business environment from the early days of eighties until today, the strategic viewpoints on the firm growth perspectives have significantly changed. The resource view concept has combined the power of Porter's internal and external perspectives with collective learning embedded in an organization, and management's ability to marshal those (Collis & Montgomery, 2008). According to Porter (2008), industry structure drives competition, profitability, not whether an industry is emerging or…show more content…
Later, Hamel and Prahalad (1989) and Dickson (1992) discussed the need for firms to learn, how to create new advantages that will keep them one-step ahead of competitors. The idea of sustainable competitive advantages (SCA) surfaced, when Day and Wesley (1988) suggested types of strategies that may help to sustain the competitive advantage. The insight given by Porter (1985) through various competitive strategies, low cost and differentiation, and later Barney (1991) brought out the closest definition of sustainable competitive advantages creation through resource view. Understanding the sources of sustainable competitive advantages (SCA) of a firm has been major research areas in the field of strategic management (Porter, 1985; Rumelt, 1984). Over the years, most of the researches on sustainable competitive advantages have focussed on the firm's responses to opportunity and threats (Porter, 1980, 1985), and describing its weakness and strengths (Hofer & Schendel 1978; Penrose, 1958; Stinchcombe, 1965). According to Barney (1989), a firm is said to have a competitive advantage, when it is implementing value created strategy not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors. Barney, further clarifies that, a firm is said to have a sustainable competitive advantage; when it is implementing value created strategy not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors, and when these other firms are unable to duplicate the benefits of the strategy. These two definitions clearly suggest that, competitive growth strategy will be sustained, depending upon the possibilities of competitive duplication (Rumelt, 1984). In another school of thought, some authors have explained that, a firm's sustainable competitive advantage is simply competitive
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