MEANINGFUL CONTENT OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN ACHIEVING STRATEGIC GOALS

Abstract

The article seeks to explore the contemporary issues of meaningful content of a competitive advantage in achieving strategic goals. The study offers an attempt to provide a deeper understanding of competitive advantage origin and generation and suggests two patterns:  competitive advantage as an outcome of effective resource management and the performance efficiency (activity success) as an outcome of gaining a competitive advantage. The relationship between the organizational knowledge categories and enterprise strategy is presented. It is argued that innovative knowledge shapes a favourable environment for building competitive advantages. The literature review on modern approaches to building company competitive advantages has allowed identifying three main areas: market-based approach, resource-based approach and partnership-based approach. It is suggested to differentiate each of the above approaches to generating competitive advantages from the three basic perspectives: in terms of the source of competitive advantage, barriers to imitation of competitive advantages and from the position of the company strategic goals. A retrospective analysis of the meaningful content of a competitive advantage concept contributed to providing the author’s interpretation of this category with an emphasis on the relevance of its consideration within three projections – market position, unique resources / opportunities and partnership interaction with further focus on specific drivers of competitive advantages as an impetus for partnership collaboration in the business environment. Among the factors able to boost competitive advantages the study considers the following: innovative knowledge exchange possibilities and building the capacity to create additional resources / opportunities (tangible and intangible). A competitive advantage within the scope of this study is viewed as company's ability to respond quickly to market demands through the effective use of unique resources / opportunities (own and derived from partnerships in the current business environment) in order to most effectively meet the customer needs and expectations.