STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT - Essay Example A business is said to have competitive advantage when it is able to utilize its resources as well as competencies to generate a value-creating strategy that its competitors find difficult to copy for their business (Fitzroy and Hulbert, 2005, p. 201). Competitive advantage is the influential power of a firm that in turn convinces the potential customers to buy its products or choose its services rather than its competitors’. Hill and Jones (2009, p. 74) argued that firm can be said to have attained competitive advantage when its profitability is greater than the average profitability of all companies in the industry and this become ‘sustainable’ when the firm is able to maintain above average profitability over a number of years. Fierce competition among firms resulted in varying levels of performance as individual firms may choose to pursue different objectives and strategies to gain increased profits, sales growth, better market share, and cash flow and so on. S trategy has got significant stance in the competitive business landscape and that has become the cornerstone to achieve competitive advantage. Successful firms are those that demonstrate long-term advantage over its competitors with their ability to do its core business activities better than how its rivals do in the market. As firms are highly focusing on achieving competitive advantage, they are attempting to find the best way to position itself against its rivals by using and implementing business-level strategies. Business-level strategy is the plan of action that managers adopt certain methods and ways to effectively use company’s resources and distinctive competences to gain competitive advantage over its counterparts in the market (Hill and Jones, 2011, p.119). Michael Porter, often credited as father of modern business strategy field, has profoundly impacted modern thoughts of management and business strategies through his works ‘competitive advantage’. H e wrote that competitive advantage is at the heart of any business strategy and it is extremely important for a firm to make a choice about the types of competitive advantage if it seeks to attain competitive advantage (Porter, 2008, p. 12). Michael Porter argued that firms, no matter they operate nationally or internationally, face an issue of strategic choice in relation to generic strategy. The basic generic strategy described by Michael Porter involved competing either on the basis of low-cost strategy or product differentiation strategy. He argued that a company’s position in its concerned industry can be determined by its competitive advantage and its competitive scope (Gilles, 1996, p. 214). He suggested that each of the generic strategies involved a basically distinctive route to achieving competitive advantage and he recommended a choice for type of competitive advantage a firm may consider for the strategic target. Michael Porter illustrated the combination of compe titive advantage and competitive scope through a two-by-two strategy choice matrix as illustrated below. The above depiction of the generic strategy illustrates that cost leadership and differentiation strategies pursue competitive advantage in quite a broader range of industry areas whereas focus strategies tend to vary largely from industry to industry since it represents narrow market segments. Since there are different strategies to achieve competitive advantage and all their routes are different from each other, it is very important that a firm should take a choice among them in order to see and implement the best appropriate strategy for the firm. Michael Porter stressed

Black community of America Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Black community of America - Essay Example Same applies to the political system. According to Professor Greenburg, there is a slight difference between white and black children, when it comes to political system, because the black children a they grow older become less supportive. The blacks are really 'invisible men' when it comes to political region. Possible racial differences in political socialization are persisting. Meredith v Jefferson had been an interesting case showing a small flaw in the policy of modern schooling. Education system in America over the years had been painstakingly non-racial. Americans have been happy over the education policies that treated the children equally, irrespective of class, region, creed and race. Minority children had not been marginalized in any way. Still, in Kentucky's Jefferson County, some Black children were subjected to long journeys up to three hours to reach schools and return, for the simple reason, because there existed a law saying that every public school should not have more than 50% black student population, but not less than 15%. The law existed not due to racial discrimination, but only because it was thought not to have too overwhelming a majority of any race. Only a minority number of students were affected due to this law, resulting in long journeys spending more time than they should to reach school and back home. It was also argued that ch ildren and their parents were kept out of the entire community because they go to a far off schools and that community could not belong to them as they were not part of it. "The current arrangement, instituted in 2001, has some students being bused cross-county, taking up more time per day than most students spend in transit in several weeks. It poses obvious logistical issues and detaches children and their parents from the communities they call home, parents say" http://docket.medill.northwestern.edu/archives/003698.php Parents were also upset about the long process of annual admissions to magnet and non-magnet schools, and brought a civil suit against the county in the US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. The claim was that their children's equality rights have been violated, and this particular act was against the 14th Amendment on the Equal Protection Clause and the District Court upheld this claim and gave the following ruling:"The 2001 Plan is a proper 'fit' because it is sufficiently flexible to determine school assignments for all students by a host of factors, such as residence, student choice, capacity, school and program popularity, pure chance and race." (ibid). It also opined that the plan was 'narrowly tailored' and should not have been based on race alone, which could give a discriminatory color to it, because America is not a separated society any more, like it was in the 1950s. The attorney representing the county argued that a small amount of inconvenience is negligible while comparing to the diversity that prevailed due to the plan in educational institutions. The plan came into existence in 1975 and under this plan, the Board maintained the same system for 25 years. POLITICAL