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Competitive Advantage

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Competitive Advantage
Tajsha Cheeks
BUS 201 Principles of Management
Instructor Glenda Riley
February 27, 2012

Competitive Advantage
The world has been chaining more rapidly than ever before, managers and other employees throughout an organization must perform at higher and higher levels. One of the most important lessons for managers and organizations to learn if they were to reach and remain at the top of the competitive environment of business is to achieve and build a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is the ability of one organization to outperform other organizations because it produces desired goods or services more efficiently and effectively than its competitors. If company’s follow the four building blocks of competitive advantage, there’s no doubt in my mind their company will be superior to others (Jones, 2011).
The four building blocks of competitive advantage consist of efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to customers. In today’s competitive environment, organizations continually search for new ways to use their resources to improve efficiency. Organizations increase their efficiency when they reduce the quantity of resources they use to produce goods or services. For example, many organizations are training their workforces in the new skills and techniques needed to operate heavily computerized assembly plants. Also, cross-training employees gives them the range of skills they need to perform many different tasks, and organizing employees in new ways allows them to make good use of their skills (Jones, 2011).
Training up employees is an important step in the effort to improve productivity. Japanese and German companies invest far more in training employees than American or Italian companies. It’s a must for managers to improve efficiency for their organizations to compete with others overseas like Mexico, China,

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