Unit 4 - Business Level Strategy
Learning objective:
After reading this unit, you will be aware of the importance of competitive advantage and the organisational strategies geared to achieve the firm’s overall objectives. The manager will prioritize changes and ways for better value creation for the customers of the firm. A number of the general strategies which a firm may adopt based on Porter’s 5 Forces approach is reviewed and offers a useful framework for analysing competitive forces and formulating generic business strategies. In order to make practical use of this information, some examples, tasks and case studies are presented.
Estimated Time:
It will take about 90 minutes to go through this unit. The application of tools and exercises will require additional time.
Introduction
In this unit we present the organisational strategies geared to achieve the firm’s overall objectives, being aware that the essence of strategy is in the activities – choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than rivals (Porter, 1996). The manager will prioritize ways to create better value for customers of the firm based on the value chain analysis framework. We review the concept of competitive advantage and a number of the general strategies a firm may adopt based on Porter’s approach. His approach offers a useful support for analyzing competitive forces and formulating generic business strategies.
