THE QUEST FOR STRATEGIC GROUPS AND THE COMPETENCE-BASED VIEW

Abstract

The paper describes six major approaches within strategic groups research: the industrial organization perspective (the IO-view), the strategic choice perspective, the strategy types perspective, the cognitive perspective, the customer perspective, and the business definition perspective. The two most promising perspectives to make real advances in the strategic management discipline seem to be the cognitive view and the business definition perspective. The purpose of a grouping based on business definitions is to provide an insight, as objective as possible, of the industry’s substructure which also corroborates with the cognitive maps of the industry which the CEOs have in mind. From a practical point of view, the classification of firms in groups based on commonality in business definition (buyer scope, product scope, geographical scope and degree of vertical integration), allows managers to compare their own firms with comparable firms (the firms within the same group). The research concerning strategic groups in the Belgian beer brewing sector and the Belgian electrical wholesale sector is presented. The major problems within the strategic groups research are discussed.

Citation

Houthoofd, N. and Heene, A. (2005), "THE QUEST FOR STRATEGIC GROUPS AND THE COMPETENCE-BASED VIEW", Sanchez, R. and Heene, A. (Ed.) Competence Perspectives on Managing Interfirm Interactions (Advances in Applied Business Strategy, Vol. 8), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 189-232. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-6826(04)08009-6