Ron Sanchez

A Competence Perspective on Strategic Learning and Knowledge Management

The growing prominence of accelerating change in the environments of organizations has brought processes for managing change within firms into the forefront of concerns in strategic management. As competition between firms increasingly takes on the character of a contest to identify, create, and leverage new competences (Hamel and Heene, 1994; Heene and Sanchez, 1996; Sanchez, Heene and Thomas, 1996a), effecting significant organizational change increasingly requires changing both the knowledge base within a firm and the way the firm uses its existing knowledge to compete more effectively. Consequently, improving a firms strategic flexibility (Sanchez, 1993, 1995; Sanchez and Heene, 1996) to create new competences in response to environmental change is likely to require rethinking the ways a firm can create and acquire new knowledge and may require entirely new concepts for applying new knowledge to greatest strategic effect.

Distribution Equity: Creating Value through Managing Knowledge Relationships with Distribution Channels

We introduce the concept of distribution equity torepresent the asset value of a distribution relationship. Distributionequity is characterized as the increase in options value ofmarketing opportunities that result when a firm effectively utilizesits knowledge relationships with an existing distribution channelpartner to create and market its products. By providing a frameworkcharacterizing various forms of knowledge in a channel partnerrelationship and the ways in which they can increase the optionsvalue of a firms product development and marketing opportunities,we provide a framework for improving the management of distributionequity.

Introduction: identifying, building, and linking competences

Part I of this issue begins with a paper by Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann on “Competences, distinctive competences, and core competences.” Eden and Ackermann draw on their extensive work with top management teams in workshops focused on identifying the competences of an organization. They describe an interactive process of engagement with managers through which an organizations competences are identified, some of which are further judged to be “distinctive competences” of the organization. Analysis of the interrelationships among a firms identified competences then leads to the discovery of a pattern of competence interactions in which some competences appear to be at the “core” of the organizations distinctive competences. The paper presents an interesting perspective on how the capabilities and competences of a firm are often interrelated in ways that invite special attention and development by managers. Further, the paper explains the systems methodology that the authors have developed for use with managers to help identify and assess an organizations competences.