Chapter 4

EVALUATING A COMPANY’S RESOURCES, CAPABILITIES, AND COMPETITIVENESS

From what I have learned in these four topic is how to evaluate the extent of the company's strategy worked. Besides that I also understand why the resources and capacity of the company is essential to the strategic approach and how to evaluate their potential to give the company a competitive advantage over competitors. I must also know to find a way to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the company based on market opportunities and external threats and understand how a company's value chain activities can affect the cost structure of the company and the customer. Last is how to understand how the overall assessment of the competitive situation can assist managers in making critical decisions about their next strategic move.   From this topic, we know the core concepts that means: ♦      Social complexity (company culture, interpersonal relationships among managers or R&D teams, trust-based relations with customers or suppliers) and causal ambiguity are two factors that inhibit the ability of rivals to imitate a firm’s most valuable resources and capabilities. ♦      Causal ambiguity makes it very hard to figure out how a complex resource contributes to competitive advantage and therefore exactly what to imitate. ♦      A resource bundle is a linked and closely integrated set of competitive assets centered around one or more cross-functional capabilities. ♦      The VRIN tests for sustainable competitive advantage ask if a resource is Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, and Non-substitutable. ♦      A dynamic capability is the ongoing capacity of a firm to modify its existing resources and capabilities or create new ones by: -Improving existing resources and capabilities incrementally -Adding new resources and capabilities to the firm’s competitive asset portfolio That all, Than you. Assalamualaikum.