A Modelling Relationship between Firm Strategic Advantages and Organizational Edge

Abstract

The paper show the relationship between firm-specific-advantages (FSA) and how these can aid gaining an organization’s competitive edge in the present turbulent business environment. These firm specific advantages FSAs include Human Capital, Organization Culture, and Organization Structure (Verbeke 2009) and how these can lead towards organizational edge, and to provide a conceptual framework for the analysis of human capital management in learning organizations. Discourse on competitive advantage is of wide prevalence, clear definitions are rare and it is often used interchangeably with concepts like distinctive competence (Day and Wensley, 1988). Advantage is a relative concept (Hu, 1995; Kay, 1993), only meaningful when compared to another entity or set of entities. A competitive advantage, then, is an advantage one firm has over a competitor or group of competitors in a given market, strategic group or industry (Kay, 1993) and this Firm-Specific Advantages is discussed in this paper.

Keywords: Human Capital, Competitive Edge, Organization culture, Organization structure