Competitive Advantage

Market imperfections can be in the form of monopoly, externalities or public goods, but sometimes defined as anything that interferes with trade (DeGennaro, 2005). The organizational competitive advantage can be achieved by adapting to the external trends and events and adapt to the changes in capabilities and resources. The organizations can make the competitive advantages by formulating and implementing strategies that help adapting and taking advantage of these changes (Ogrean, Herciu, & Belascu, 2009). Organizations can definitely take advantage of the market monopoly and keep up its position until another competitor force its market penetration. Externalities can be used as a competitive advantage when the organization anticipates and plan for the positive externalities. Over fishing in a place would increase the demand when the fish supplied to the market is less than the demand. The organizations can take care of this externality by anticipating the decrease in the supply and importing enough supply of fish for the consumer in the local market.

Rolls-Royce found out that its automobile business was not competitive and its jet engine market was booming. Rolls-Royce sold its automobile business and concentrated on leasing jet engines to the airline companies (Carpenter & Sanders, 2009). The leasing strategy made Rolls-Royce take larger share of the jet engine business (Carpenter & Sanders, 2009). Xerox had good innovations coming from its research center in Palo Alto, which could have been good competitive advantages. Innovations like personal computers, bit-mapped, desktop, icons, and the use of mouse and menus (Carpenter & Sanders, 2009; Rothkopf, 2000). Xerox did not use these competitive innovations and lost a good chance to be a leader in these markets (Carpenter & Sanders, 2009; Rothkopf, 2000).

References:

Carpenter, M. A., & Sanders, W. G. (2009). Strategic management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

DeGennaro, R. (2005). Market Imperfections. Journal of Financial Transformation, 14(2005), 107-117.

Ogrean, C., Herciu, M., & Belascu, L. (2009). Searching for sustainable competitive advantage– From tangibles to intangibles. Journal of US-China Public Administration, 6(4), 1-9.

Rothkopf, M. H. (2000). Under the Mike-R-Scope: What happened at Xerox PARC? Interfaces, 30(6), 91-94.