Premium Essay

Michael Porter Contribution

In:

Submitted By sheltonti
Words 4555
Pages 19
Strategy requires an organisation to make trade-offs in competing with other firms by choosing what not to do. The business environment has now become so competitive requiring leaders to develop effective strategies that result in improved competitive. Technology has now made it so easy for competitors to match one’s product within a short space of time. Changes in customer tastes and preferences require robust systems and strategies to maintain current market share profitably and ensure growth. It is within this spectrum that Michael Porter has become a well-known contributor in the field of strategic management as he shades light on which elements to consider in coming up with a strategy for both domestic and international markets. A good strategy will result in the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities. Strategic position emerges from three distinct sources which are serving few needs of many customers, serving broad needs of few customers and serving broad needs of many customers in a narrow market. After positioning itself, an organisation must ensure that its strategic efforts results in creating “fit” among a company’s activities. Fit has to do with the ways a company’s activities interact and reinforce one another.

In his endeavour to build strategic intent within organisations, Michael Porter is well known for the following contributions in the field of corporate strategy: 1. Generic Strategies 2. Value Chain 3. Competitive Advantage 4. Porter’s Diamond 5. Five Forces Model

1. Porter’s Generic Strategies
Porter’s generic strategies is a frameworks used to outline the three major strategic options open to organizations that wish to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Each of the three options need to be considered within the context of two aspects of the competitive

Similar Documents

Free Essay

Porter’s Diamond of National Competitive Advantage

...The diamond model by Michael Porter 3 1.1 Introduction 3 1.2 Diamond model Theory 4 1.2.1 Factor Condition 4 1.2.2 Demand conditions 5 1.2.3 Firm strategy, structure and rivalry 5 1.2.4 Related and supported industries 6 1.2.5 The role of Government 6 1.3 Criticism of the framework 7 1.4 Practical Example 7 1.5 Conclusion 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. The diamond model by Michael Porter 1 1.1 Introduction According to Recklies (2001), increasingly corporate strategies have to be seen in global context and even if an organization does not plan to import or to export has to look at an international business environment, in which actions of competitors, buyers, sellers, new entrants of providers of substitutes may influence the domestic market and information technology has been reinforcing this trend. The classical models and theories related to international trade before Michael Porter’s Diamond theory, mainly proposed that the comparative advantage resides in the factors endowments that a country may be fortunate enough to inherit and these factors mainly consisted of land, natural resources, labour and the size of the local population but Porter argued though his diamond model that a nation can create new advanced factor endowments such as skilled labor, a strong technology and knowledge and knowledge base, government support and culture, in short Porter used a diamond shaped...

Words: 2779 - Pages: 12

Premium Essay

Michael Porter’s Theory

...Michael Porter’s theory on National Competitive Advantage, is the best theory to utilize when an internationalising firm wants to select one country over another for new entry The globalization has become a ubiquitous and potent symbol of the age since the early 1980s. The term globalization was used to describe strengthening interactions of people from various countries, which resulted from the emergency of numerous new technologies (Daniel, Radenbaugh & Sullivan, 2002). As the popularization of globalization, more firms prefer to enter the emerging markets, like China, to search for the higher return. However, resulted from the studies segment, there is not an exact theory or study can be regarded as guidelines for these internationalizing firms. Overall, Michael Porter’s theory on national completive advantage is a better theory to be adopted by the international firms which want to select a better country for new entry. The dominance of Porter’s theory are its comprehensiveness, the dynamic Diamond theoretical system and analysis form both inductive and deductive sides. Meanwhile, it is at a disadvantage in its assumption. Thus, this essay will explore both sides of Porter’s theory. Porter's model includes four key elements. The Diamond model is depicted as figure 1, where the four forces jointly constitute a firm's global competitiveness in a given industry ( Porter,1990) Source: Porter (1990) The Competitive Advantage of Nations. The first element...

Words: 1512 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Value

...Creating Shared Value. (Michael E. Porter & Mark R. Kramer) * What is your reaction to this article? Critically evaluate its content based on your personal and professional experiences and any additional research you might like to do. The article starts with a description of the cynicism surrounding capitalism and management, and also some of the reasons for such cynicism. My life’s first attitude towards capitalism and management was also marked by distrust and skepticism. I grew up in a small town that is surrounded by big factories that manufactured products such as steel, cement, flour and so on. Our town was victim of companies’ strategy to relocate their production plants where labor was cheaper. Article provides three concrete steps that management can take to achieving what they have dubbed as Shared Value, which is an attempt to meld together societal and economic progress, so that it creates societal value for the community in terms of making relevant contributions to their social realities, but not at the expense of economic value to the business. The three steps are as follows: 1) Reconceiving products and markets; 2) Redefining productivity in the value chain; and 3) Enabling local cluster development. In brief, reconceiving products and markets entails meeting needs in often underserved markets through redesigning products and/or distribution methods. The authors cite microfinance as an...

Words: 495 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Porter and National Competitive Advantage

...discussions', 'critical discussions'] - “The contribution by Porter (1990) on the competitive advantage of nations has led to an extensive discussion among academics and practitioners on the sources of international competitiveness (Grant, 1991; Gray, 1991). However, in order to understand why so much emphasis is placed on the diamond framework in the management literature, this essay will discuss Porter’s concept of the Diamond and the factors that contribute to the development of national competitive advantage. This paper will begin with a theoretical approach followed by the reception of different authors and schools of thoughts who disagreed with his management thinking, and then goes on to consider empirical issues which have arisen subsequently, followed by a conclusion.” Theoretical Discussions (explain the 'main theory' [such as 'Late/Early industrialization', 'Managerial enterprise', 'Weber's theory about impacts of culture'] in this question) - “Porter’s theory of national competitive advantage is based upon a study of the characteristics of the national environment which identifies four sets of variables, and an additional two, which influences a company’s ability to establish and maintain competitive advantage within international markets. These interacting determinants are: factor conditions; demand conditions; related and supporting industries; and firm strategy, structure and rivalry and form what Porter refers to as the “national diamond.” The four main...

Words: 2872 - Pages: 12

Free Essay

Ethics

...opportunities. Correspondingly, concepts like this also provide insightful information for explaining the location choices which organisations have already made. One such framework is the so called Diamond Model introduced by Michael Porter in 1990. This essay tries to determine its advantages and disadvantages as a tool for the examination of  firm‟s home and host location decisions by focusing on two major MNEs: the world‟s second-largest high-street retailer –French Carrefour and UK‟s famous Marks & Spencer Porter s Diamond Model(1990: 73) argues that “nation‟s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade” and therefore is determined by a nation‟s level of productivity. From an organisational perspective this means that national competitive advantage depends on the nations ability to provide a home base for companies to sustainably improve their products and services in terms of quality, features, technology and so to successfully compete in highly productive industries internationally. Hence, the advantage of the framework is that it identifies four important, interrelated factors that create and illustrate the essential national environment where companies are born, grow and build sustainable competitive advantages (Porter, 1990: 78). The concept is then quite useful for companies to perform the necessary research and identify which countries would be most suitable for internationalisation. The first determinant, factor conditions, are...

Words: 2952 - Pages: 12

Premium Essay

Macro Environment

...2/27/12 Generic Competitive Strategies - eNotes.com Generic Competitive Strategies Generic Competitive Strategies Three of the most widely read books on competitive analysis in the 1980s were Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy, Competitive Advantage, and Competitive Advantage of Nations. In his various books, Porter developed three generic strategies that, he argues, can be used singly or in combination to create a defendable position and to outperform competitors, whether they are within an industry or across nations. Porter states that the strategies are generic because they are applicable to a large variety of situations and contexts. The strategies are (1) overall cost leadership; (2) differentiation; and (3) focus on a particular market niche. The generic strategies provide direction for firms in designing incentive systems, control procedures, and organizational arrangements. Following is a description of this work. OVERALL COST LEADERSHIP STRATEGY Overall cost leadership requires firms to develop policies aimed at becoming and remaining the lowest-cost producer and/or distributor in the industry. Company strategies aimed at controlling costs include construction of efficient-scale facilities, tight control of costs and overhead, avoidance of marginal customer accounts, minimization of operating expenses, reduction of input costs, tight control of labor costs, and lower distribution costs. The low-cost leader gains competitive advantage by getting...

Words: 3752 - Pages: 16

Premium Essay

Final Paper

...Ones and Dilchert’s article: the creation of organizational cultures. Here, we will develop the idea of how culture, value creation, and competitive advantage are linked to environmental sustainability. We will briefly illustrate our arguments with findings from our case-study research in the hospitality industry in 13 Iberoamerican countries.1 1. Ours is research in progress, based on qualitative and mixed research methods. It aims to analyze the role of sustainability in the hospitality sector in Iberoamerica: Spain, Portugal, and Latin America (concretely, in Chile, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic). Organizational culture and sustainability Sustainability and Organizational Culture There is a nascent body of literature that aims to understand how companies can embed sustainability in their organizational cultures (Howard-Grenville & Bertels, 2012). For these authors, culture has been conceptualized as shared norms or values (reinforced through the role of leaders and ‘‘champions,’’ the allocation of resources, the use of incentives, and the existence of corporate policies), as a frame or filter (that is, as recursive connections between people’s day-to-day actions and the meanings associated with them), and as a toolkit (made malleable by individual actors who use cultural resources in new ways). Among the myriad of conceptualizations available, Ulrich and Brockbank...

Words: 1601 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Business

...Assignment The Value Chain in Your Life Write a (minimum two but no more than three page) paper (not including title and reference pages) describing the value chain in your life. There is an already APA formatted template in Doc Sharing for you to use as your starting point for this assignment. If you use references in your paper to support your content, be sure to apply the APA in-text reference citation format. Any item listed on the References page must also be applied and cited within the paper. If you use verbatim quotes, put them within quotation marks, cite the reference and include a page number. This assignment is an opportunity for you to relate what you learned about the value chain in Unit 1 to your own life. For example, one element of a value chain is the focus on competitive advantage, so you might wish to elaborate on this aspect. Submit your completed paper into the Unit 1 Dropbox. Value Chain Analysis - Problem-Solving Training from MindTools.com You are here: > Home > Strategy Tools > Value Chain Analysis ... Value Chain Analysis is a useful tool for working out how you can create the greatest ..... Personal Goal Setting: Planning to live your life your way · How Good Is Your Time ...www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_10.htm Value Chain Analysis Achieving Excellence in the Things That Really Matter Value should be added at each link. © iStockphoto/melhi Value Chain Analysis is a useful tool...

Words: 1828 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

How Companies Could Achieve Sustainable Competitive Advantage

...BIS5101 Strategic IT-Management Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Rau WS 2013/14 Term Paper Topic: How Companies Could Achieve Sustainable Competitive Advantage Gahn, Philip MACFA, ID# 309601 gahnphil@hs-pforzheim.de Kominek, Lukas MACFA, ID# 300953 komluk@hs-pforzheim.de Wenz, Eugen MACFA, ID# 300636 weneug@hs-pforzheim.de th Submission date: November 2 2013 2 Table of Contents 1  Purpose and Structure ......................................................................................... 5  2  Definition and Origin of Competitive Advantage .............................................. 6  3  Approaches and Methods to Achieve Competitive Advantages......................... 8  3.1  The Traditional Approach According to Porter ........................................... 8  3.1.1  Cost Leadership ................................................................................. 10  3.1.2  Focusing on Priorities ........................................................................ 10  3.2  Modern Approaches .................................................................................. 10  3.2.1  The Strategy as a Compilation of Simple Rules ................................ 11  3.2.2  The Blue Ocean Strategy ................................................................... 12  4  Ways to achieve Sustainable Competitive Advantage...................................... 13  5  Conclusion ............................................................................

Words: 3103 - Pages: 13

Premium Essay

Broadway Cafe

...The Broadway Cafe Advantage Exercise One: The Broadway Café This exercise will develop a competitive Advantage for the Broadway Café.   The café has been in business since 1952 and has never had a single competitor in the neighborhood.   Now that the café may have a competition will affect the business.   Therefore the café need to develop a new strategic direction to bring the café into the 21st century.    • Describe your strategy for addressing your employees’ concerns, building loyalty among your customers, and remaining competitive in a changing market? Developing a strategy will help to communicate goals and priorities to employees.   It would also improve manages and employees’ abilities to make the right decisions in their day to day work.   Inform the employees of the upcoming challenges and let them know that the company values their opinions and concerns regardless of the economic.   As owner of the Broadway café would have to have conversation with the customer will be essential to build their trust and loyalty, so that they continue to shop at café.   The best way to keep the customers inform is to make sure that they are inform of all the changes in the café.   To keep customers updated and engaged will had to get up-to-date with the technology by acquiring a computer get engage in the new social networks like Facebook and Twitter are essential to build a communication with the current and future customers.   Update Facebook and Twitter on occasion asking...

Words: 1633 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Creating Shared Value

...Creating Shared Value Global Economic Environment Shirl Williams Unit 3: Creating Shared Value Unit 3: Creating Shared Value 2 Many companies came about out of a need or a means for products to be sold and or obtained, but often companies could not thrive on their own. Many companies were able to help the community grow by supporting and patronizing one another. So if a restaurant needed fresh produce it would use the local farmer or produce market to obtain the produce in turn the farmer might eat at the restaurant. The farmer and the restaurant might hire locals and neighbors to help the community. That would not only build each others business but build the community. Porter and Kramer advise, “A shared value perspective, focuses on improving growing techniques and strengthening the local cluster of supporting suppliers and other institutions in order to increase farmers’ efficiency, yields, product quality, and sustainability. This leads to a bigger pie of revenue and profits that benefits both farmers and the companies that buy from them.” (p. 5) When you have the support of those who are around you and share those same values, it’s difficult for all not to grow. Shared value raises the income level of society. There is a saying that states, “Where there is unity there is power.” That is a shared value system. Someone else said, “If everyone does a little, no one has to do a lot.” The problem may be in the...

Words: 597 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

U3A2 Summary

...Business Review and written by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer on January 1, 2011. The article deals with the idea of innovating the purpose of a corporation and their relationship to the social environment in order to identify unknown customer needs and to expand the relationship with the communities in order to be mutually dependent. Porter and Kramer urge leaders to recognize that "shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success". They advocate that creating shared value will drive the next wave of innovation and growth in the global economy (Porter & Kramer, 2011). Several large corporations have already started implementing a shared value initiative – such as Google, IBM and Wal-Mart (Porter at el, 2011). Shared value creates economic value for the corporation through innovations that address society's needs and challenges. Companies create shared value in three ways: 
 1. By redefining products and markets 
 2. By redefining productivity in the value chain 
 3. By enabling local cluster development 1Arguably, products and markets are the greatest unmet needs in the global economy (Porter at el, 2011). Too many companies fail to reevaluate their strategy and ask themselves if their product is right for the customer. 2A company’s value chain is definitely affected by – numerous societal issues, such as natural resources and water use, health and safety (Porter at el, 2011). Opportunities to...

Words: 490 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Learn About Sm and Aldi

...organization’s ability and incentives for growth especially in international market. Investigations reveal there is immense growth potential in the bottle water market across the world. According to Hubbard’s 5Qs and Porter’s Generic Strategies Cooroy is following a growth and differentiation strategy currently in its business level. Due to product development, geographical expansion, etc. the report recommends restructuring organizational structure to a divisional structure for effective management and success of the business as organizational structure must align with organizational strategies. In the entrance to the foreign market the report suggests a Global strategy to the firm as its corporate level strategy according to the findings of Porters’ Diamond and incentives for international expansion. Finally the paper recommends establishing in China initially with a Wholly Own Subsidiary entry mode with future prospects of growth and expansion in Asia Pacific Region. Moreover, the report’s action plan for strategy formulation presents a guideline for effective strategy implementation. The report also investigates the fact that the analysis conducted has limitation in doing an effective analysis of the water bottle market across the world. However, Appendix E will assist in development of further analysis. Table of Content 1. Introduction 3 2. Findings 5 2.1 Current Strategy 5 2.2 Appropriateness of organizational structure 9 2.3 Incentives to use an international...

Words: 741 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Strategic Vision

...Vision Statement for Dynamic I.T Services MGT 450: Strategic Planning for Organizations Instructor: Carol Hooper-Boyd 13 January 2014 Vision Statement for Dynamic I.T Services Dynamic I.T services is the first corporate I.T service contractor and as such intends to establish an industry with itself seated at the top, encouraging others to enter the industry while still setting trends and being the standard which all other persons in the industry follow. Dynamic I.T services will effectively establish a corporate I.T services contracting agency offering various dedicated technical support services and establishing various offices housing call centers and deployable technicians in key north eastern cities that house the most concentrated corporate work centers. Within 10 years Dynamic I.T Services will have offices on a dynamic scale with detachment offices being offered to organizations with a higher need for readily available technicians. As new technologies emerge, Dynamic I.T Services will ensure that its technicians remain on the cutting edge by ensuring that training and education is readily available for its members ensuring that its customers still receive the best service while never hearing a technician say “I don’t know how to do that”. As Dynamic I.T Services introduces new technology and implements new business practices other organizations in the industry will follow suit, as Dynamic I.T Services intends to stay ahead of the curve and be the first to introduce...

Words: 403 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Competitive Advantage by Michael E Porter

...Competitive Advantage Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance Author: Michael E. Porter Michael E. Porter's Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm. Porter's groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into "activities," or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage. Giving readers a comprehensive understanding of business strategy and how to create a sustainable competitive advantage for their organization, Porter explores how a firm can put the generic strategies of cost leadership, differentiation and focus into practice. This essay will explore Competitive Advantage and the underlining theory that to compete in any industry, companies must perform a wide array of discrete activities that are narrower than traditional functions. It will analyze the real core of the book which is to determine whether companies profit from creating value for customers, or whether that value is competed away.   INTRODUCTION “Competitive Advantage is at the heart of a firm’s performance in competitive markets. After several decades of vigorous expansion and prosperity, however, many firms lost sight of competitive advantage in their scramble for growth and pursuit of diversification. Today the importance of competitive advantage could hardly be greater. Firms throughout the world face slower growth as well as domestic and...

Words: 3639 - Pages: 15