FOURTH WEEK : STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

For this week lecture, we learn about evaluating a company's resources, capabilities and competitiveness. i like to start the discussion with the quotes from James Brian Quinn that said “If a company is not ‘best in world’ at a critical activity, it is sacrificing competitive advantage by performing that activity with its existing technique.”

For the objective of this chapter we will discuss how a company use resources and capabilities to attain the company's strategy approach for giving a company competitive advantage edge over rivals. Beside that we will also analyze a company value chain towards it's consumers and as well as how company making critical decisions about their next strategic moves.Best indicators of a well-conceived, well-executed strategy is the firm is achieving its stated financial and strategic objectives and also the firm is an above-average industry performer.Moreover, the company also need to identifying the components of a single-business company’s strategy. 

There also some key indicators of how well the strategy is working. These include growth in firm’s sales and market share,acquisition and retention of customers,strengthening image and reputation with customers,increasing profit margins, net profits and ROI,growing financial strength and credit rating,leadership in factors relevant to market\industry success,continuing improvement in key measures of operating performance.A company competence is the product of organizational learning and experience and represents real proficiency in performing an internal activity. A core competence is a well-performed internal activity that is central (not peripheral or incidental) to a company’s competitiveness and profitability. A distinctive competence is a competitively valuable activity that a company performs better than its rivals. A company consists of all the activities and functions it performs in trying to deliver value to its customers. A company’s value chain shows the linked set of activities, functions, and business processes that it performs in the course of designing, producing,  marketing, delivering, and supporting its product or service and thereby creating value for its customers. A company’s value chain consists of two types of activities which are primary activities (where most of the value for customers is created) and second support activities that are undertaken to aid the individuals and groups engaged in doing the primary activities.