Please find the attachment for assignment details. Word count: 2000 Due date: 15th Jan Please choose question 2. Use HUAWEI as good organisational example, and CISCO as bad organizational example....

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Competitive Advantage in the Firm
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Introduction
In the present era, operating business in the global market has become a crucial and
difficult task for the business organizations due to unpredictable changes and dynamic business
environment. According to Argote and Ingram (2000), the all the business firms are seeking to
have some unique capabilities and resources to create a tough competition for others. In this
direction, all the firms work to create competitive advantage for other in terms of its resources
and capabilities such as cost, differentiation in the product range and so on. The concept of
competitive Advantage refers to a superior position that a firm occupies due to some factor,
function or activity against its competitors.
However, Porter (1985) stated that in order to build competitive advantages, the firms
should have to make a choice about the type of competitive advantages according to the scope of
the business firm. On the basis of this, three different generic strategies are described by Porter,
which can be implemented in the firm to build a competitive advantage. Therefore, the main
purpose of this essay is to present a critical evaluation of the three generic strategies with the
help of different research and organizational examples.
Three Generic Strategies to Attain Competitive Advantages
Currently, efficient utilization of resources and capabilities of the firm helps in producing
innovative and unique strategies and actions, which enables the companies to build competitive
advantage. „Competitive Advantage‟ is delineation that the company and its products both are
doing something better than their competitors in a way that could benefit the customers
(Jurksiene and Pundziene, 2016). Similarly, Sioutis and Anagnostopoulos (2016) also mentioned
that A competitive advantage exists when a firm is able to deliver the same benefits as its
competitors are providing but at a lower cost or deliver benefits that exceeds the competing
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products. Thus the competitive advantage enables the firm to create superior value for its
customers and superior profits to itself.
Porter has also argued that strengths and capabilities of the company fall into two
concepts such as cost and differentiation. A company can use its available resources and
capabilities to manage cost and differentiation (Rahman, 2014). The available resources and
capabilities of the firm can be applied in both narrow and broad scope and can give results to
enjoy cost leadership or differentiation strategies. Along with this, one more strategy is the focus
strategy, which is used by the firms to attain competitive advantage. All of these strategies are
known as the generic strategy (As explained the given figure 1). Gregory (2016) also asserted
that generic strategies are considered as the competitive strategies because these facilitate the
firms to attain a most advantageous position in the industry and develop unique capabilities over
others. As per the given figure, these three generic strategies can be implemented successfully
with a high commitment and arrangements of the organization.
Figure 1: Porter Generic Strategy Framework (Source: Sadler, 2003)
Cost Leadership: According to Jaradat (2013), cost leadership strategy basically
persuades the behaviour of management to offer lower cost for product and services in
comparison to the competitors, so that consumers prefer, company‟s product rather than
competitors. McDonald‟s is one of the prominent examples of the cost leadership. The company
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
COMPETITIVE
SCOPE
Lower Cost Differentiation
Broad
Target
Narrow
Target
1. Cost Leadership 2. Differentiation
3A. Cost Focus 3B. Differentiation
Focus
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has implemented this strategy to target a broad market and retain them for long term to ensure
competitive advantages over its competitors. In order to maintain high profits and low cost,
company has reduced its operating expenses by ordering material in bulk, producing a high
number of units and serving a large range of consumers (Hill and Jones, 2011).
Southwest Airline is another example of competitive advantage, which has a source of
cost leadership in airline industry. This airline company is popular in the industry due to its low
cost services. The key value of the company is to offer high quality services to customers, with
ethical standards and high respect within as low cost as possible. This strategy is also supported
by quality because company has implemented a collaborative procurement process. Through this
process, company decreases the cost of the transaction, procuring goods, monitors supplier‟s
performance, train employees to serve satisfaction services to customers, etc. which increase
satisfaction level of customers and reduce operating expenses of firm (Hill and Jones, 2011).
Differentiation: The generic strategy of product differentiation is a marketing process to
distinguish a product from others in order to make it more attractive for a particular target
market. According to the study of Banker, Mashruwala and Tripathy...