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In the author's experience, even veteran executives often make statements about competitive advantage that reflect either genuine misunderstanding or casual misuse of the term. This paper aims to offer a clear explanation of what constitutes competitive advantage so as to facilitate identification, assessment and strategizing.

The paper proposes a definition of competitive advantage that differs from that proposed by many textbooks. It is based on the idea that competitive advantage can only be defined in terms of customer value.

A number of cases are examined in the light of the customer value approach to identifying competitive advantage.

Company executives learn to periodically engage in systematic information gathering regarding customer‐perceived competitive advantages.

Organizations that adopt this customer‐perceived approach to competitive advantage can make better assessments of where to expend their efforts and resources to outmaneuver their rivals and improve profitability.

This research objective is to (1) examine the effect of organizational factors on quality performance, (2) examine the effect of quality performance on competitive advantage and (3) examine the mediating role of quality performance between organizational factors and competitive advantage.

The research sample includes 140 employees in the Windusari village-owned enterprise, in Magelang, Indonesia. Data are collected using 5-Likert scale questionnaires which follow Ferdousi et al. (2019). The dependent variable is a competitive advantage. The Independent variable is organizational factors which are top management support, employee empowerment, employee involvement, reward and recognition, training and customer focus. The mediating variable is quality performance. Data analysis uses path analysis provided by structural equation modeling.

Based on path analysis, organizational factors have a positive effect on quality performance, quality performance has a positive effect on competitive advantage and quality performance mediates the effect of organizational factors on competitive advantage. The results confirm the concept of quality management where continuous improvement of products and services can meet customer expectations and bring the organization to a better position in the industry to face other competitors.

This research extends the previous studies of the relationship between organizational factors and organizational outcomes by considering the effectiveness of the organizational process. This research also contributes to giving new evidence about the relationship between organizational factors, quality management and competitive advantage in the village-owned enterprise in Magelang, Indonesia. This research also contributes to updating the literature on the theory of quality management.

There is a paucity of empirical studies on the impact of entrepreneurial management on small and medium enterprises (SME) performance. Against this backdrop and drawing upon the resource-based view, this study aims to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial management and SME performance and the mediating role of competitive advantage in an emerging economy.

This study adopted a survey research design and a quantitative approach. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from a conveniently selected sample of 174 manufacturing SMEs in Nigeria. This study performed mediation analysis to test the proposed hypotheses using Hayes’ PROCESS macro v4.

The findings indicate that entrepreneurial management positively impacts competitive advantage and SME performance. Furthermore, competitive advantage has a positive impact on SME performance and plays a significant mediating role in the relationship between entrepreneurial management and SME performance.

This study only examines manufacturing SMEs in a single country, Nigeria; thus, the generalisability of its findings is limited.

The findings of this study offer practical implications for SMEs and SME owners or managers. The findings suggest that to gain a sustainable competitive advantage and achieve superior performance, SMEs should pursue opportunities regardless of the available resources, promote flat and flexible organisation structures, adopt fast growth orientation and strategies, reward employees based on the value they add to the organisation and foster an entrepreneurial culture.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence of the mediating effect of competitive advantage on the relationship between entrepreneurial management and SME performance in an emerging economy. This study demonstrates that implementing entrepreneurial management practices by SMEs can result in sustainable competitive advantage and superior performance.

This study explores the role of knowledge management capabilities (KMCs) in enhancing competitive advantage and organisational performance in fashion retailing. Employing the resource-based view (RBV) and knowledge-based view (KBV) perspectives, it investigates the interplay between managing knowledge effectively and fashion products’ complexity. The goal is to provide new insights into optimising KMC for greater agility and success in the fashion retail industry.

The study analysed survey data from 322 US fashion retail professionals using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The results revealed that knowledge infrastructure capability enhanced both competitive advantage and organisational performance significantly. In contrast, knowledge process capability did not significantly affect competitive advantage, it improved organisational performance. Importantly, product complexity moderated the relationship between competitive advantage and organisational performance negatively.

This study underscores the necessity for retailers in the fashion industry to enhance their KMC to bolster competitive advantage and organisational performance, while it also acknowledges product complexity’s effect on these strategies. These insights offer actionable guidance for industry leaders to optimise knowledge management to navigate the rapidly evolving retail landscape.

This research offers novel insights into the interplay of product complexity and KMC in fashion retail and highlights the unique effects on competitive advantage and organisational performance valuable for both academia and industry.

Our study proposes a resource environment view (REV) of competitive advantage by unpacking the environmental origins of a firm’s competitive advantage. The key tenet of the REV is that the heterogeneity and imperfect mobility of strategic factor markets and institutions across countries explain how firms based in different countries would likely both create and sustain a competitive advantage. In particular, our study introduces the notion of “the paradox of environmental embeddedness.” The paradox lies in the fact that the same environmental conditions – in terms of strategic factor markets and institutions – that enable firms to create a competitive advantage can paradoxically also create a situation in which it is more difficult for these firms to sustain an advantage. Another important aspect of our study is that, to enhance our understanding of how firms manage the paradox of environmental embeddedness, our study specifies the resource environmental conditions under which firms’ internal and external resource-oriented strategies – that is, the development of dynamic capabilities and interventions in the country resource environment – are more beneficial when managing the environmental paradox. Overall, our theorizing has important implications for strategic management theory and practice.

This paper proposes a holistic, resource-based strategy framework for design-oriented industries consisting mainly of small firms. It consists of three main concepts: (1) sources of competitive advantage, especially core competencies, (2) competitive advantage, and (3) competitive strategy. The idea behind the framework is that sources of competitive advantage form the competitive advantages of firms, and these together influence the choice of competitive strategies. The proposed framework was developed on the basis of interview results from the jewellery industry in Finland. A total of 44 small firms each employing less than 25 people were interviewed. Respondents felt that the two most important core competencies were in the area of manufacturing. They were the abilities to design and manufacture products of high technical quality and to offer a broad range of products and attractive models. For the jewellery industry, competitive advantage was largely achieved through various aspects of design. The competitive strategy type most employed was the differentiation-based strategy. The proposed framework should be of value in integrating some of the diverse research in this area and suggesting specific relationships that might be the focus of future empirical studies.

This study examines the association between the use of strategic management accounting (SMA) practices and competitive advantage and the moderating role of four aspects of organisational culture – teamwork orientation, outcome orientation, innovation orientation and attention to detail orientation – on this association. Online survey data were collected from 408 accountants in Australian business organisations, and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data. The results indicate a positive association between the use of SMA practices and competitive advantage with such an association positively moderated by one cultural dimension, teamwork orientation. Specifically, the findings indicate that the positive effect of SMA practices on competitive advantage is dependent upon the fit between the use of SMA practices and teamwork orientation with more (less) teamwork-oriented organisations exhibiting a stronger (weaker) association between the use of SMA practices and competitive advantage.

The main aim of the chapter is to propose a conceptual approach for the creation, exploitation and building of a competitive advantage through which it would be possible to create a unique place from tourism space. In the chapter we present theoretical basement for the issue of competitive advantage at the level of places, its types, factors and approaches for its creating, building and exploiting. In the chapter we specify one main hypothesis and one research question. They are verified through several scientific, statistical and mathematical methods. These methods are used for the evaluation of primary and secondary research results. In the final part of the chapter, a conceptual approach for identification and exploitation of competitive advantage aimed at building unique and competitive places was proposed.

The study examines the intricate interplay between supplier relationship management (SRM), procurement performance, supply chain responsiveness (SCR) and competitive advantage. Additionally, the study examines the mediating role of procurement performance and SCR in the link between SRM and competitive advantage.

A research model grounded in the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theory (DCT) was developed and tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Data were obtained from 122 firms in Ghana.

The study revealed that SRM has a positive and significant effect on procurement performance, SCR and competitive advantage. Additionally, SCR has a positive and significant effect on competitive advantage; however, procurement performance has a negative and insignificant effect on competitive advantage. It was also revealed that SCR partially mediates the relationship between SRM and competitive advantage but fully mediates the relationship between procurement performance and competitive advantage. Also, it was also revealed that procurement performance does not mediate the relationship between SRM and competitive advantage.

The study contributes to literature by highlighting the mediating role of SCR in influencing the effect of SRM and procurement performance on competitive advantage.

Practically, the study findings highlight the need for firms to seek, build and manage meaningful relationships with their suppliers in order to enhance their competency and capability to influence their competitive position in the marketplace.

To the best of the researchers' knowledge, no prior study has examined the effect of SRM on procurement performance and SCR. Additionally, no previous study has examined the mediating role of procurement performance and SCR on the link between SRM and competitive advantage.

This article aims to examine the impact of multiple suppliers on competitive advantage by exploiting digital capabilities.

The author propose a structural equation model with the adopted measure from the literature. Hence, the study conducted an online survey in Indonesia with 450 qualified respondents involving managers and owner-managers.

The results indicate multiple suppliers help the firms to exploit digital capabilities, which foster them to achieve competitive advantage. Hence, different level of market turbulences determines the impact of numerous suppliers on competitive advantage. Specifically, the multiple-suppliers approach is more effective in supporting buyer firms to gain a competitive advantage during high market turbulence than low market turbulence.

This study offers empirical evidence with unit analysis of buyer firms that seek competitive advantage by exploiting digital capability. However, this approach focusses on a single unit analysis, which is buyer firms. Hence, there is an opportunity to adopt qualitative approach to explore the suppliers and end-users from different perspectives from other supply chain players.

This article contributes to the growing literature on the resource-based theory by examining the relationship between the multiple-sourcing model and competitive advantage. The authors also discuss the intersection between resource-based, dynamic capability and stakeholder theory.