Jeffrey R. Williams

How Sustainable is Your Competitive Advantage

Through strategy, a company seeks to sustain its competitive advantage. Yet only recently has the study of strategy begun to examine how long a specific advantage can be sustained. Based on a study of sustainability patterns in a number of industries, this article shows how the competitive pressures associated with product imitation can be predicted by identifying the core capabilities, or isolating mechanisms, that lie at the heart of a companys advantage. A number of these dynamic core capabilities are classified according to how fast they are duplicated. The imitation of capabilities shapes many strategic decisions in companies, indeed the distinctive character of companies, and that by thinking in these terms managers enhance their companys cohesiveness and responsiveness as they pursue their strategic mission in global markets.

Sources of Economic Rent in the Deregulated Airline Industry

THE airline industry has always captured the imagination, but never more so than during the current deregulatory period. To understand the sources of economic rents that are the driving forces for change in this industry, we employ an interdisciplinary analysis drawn from the economics and strategy literature. This analysis allows us to identify sources of rent that are geographically based (local monopoly sources) and others that stem from economies of scale-based advantages in providing nationwide service (oligopoly sources). We examine the economic and strategic characteristics of these diverse sources of rent and suggest some policy concerns about the emerging airline market structure. An interdisciplinary approach is taken because economic models normally assume that firms have identical factor costs and similar production opportunities. Yet much of our ability to frame the forces for change in the airline industry begins with the recognition that firms came into the deregulatory period with differing factor costs and differing locational endowments and, hence, differing production opportunities. Building on Portersl concept of strategic groups, we offer evidence that air carriers

Aligning CIM strategies to different markets

Abstract As the assembly line led to developments in management theory beginning with Taylorism—the standardization of product and process—so computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) is encouraging new developments in management and new ways of competing. Managers and academics are developing, along with the advancing technologies of CIM, an increasingly sophisticated perspective of what it means to view manufacturing operations strategically. In this paper we examine how successful CIM strategies are shaped by competitive forces beyond the shop floor. We do this by examining various CIM approaches through the Competitive Spectrum Model, a strategy perspective that emphasizes the different types of competitive markets the firm may face. We find that, in planning for manufacturing automation, the competitive relevance of CIM strategies are increasingly shaped by the different forces at work in markets.