Implementing Strategic Changes to Generate Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Abstract

This study examines fifteen business cases, focusing on change management in ten countries on three continents between 1996 and 2007. The companies are from different sectors (industrial and services), sizes (from 30 to 10,000 employees; from 1 million euros turnover up to 1,000 million euros), and different cultural and ethnographic backgrounds. The research, based in case studies and action research, introduces a model to implement strategic change in order to generate sustainable competitive advantage in companies under situations of deep change or crisis. From the conceptual point of view this model breaks some of the basic principles of strategy formulation. The model does not begin with a strategic diagnosis that influences the implementation of planned strategic decisions. The model begins instead after the detection of a need for deep strategic change, and forces outside the organization have already determined some of the required changes (market recession, for instance). The model is also atypical regarding the basic principles of implementing strategic change, because existing literature ignores competitive advantage during crisis management, probably because the firm’s executives assume that the firm has no competitive advantage, and only after the implementation of the required changes will conditions exist to create a competitive advantage. Nevertheless, the model introduces competitive advantage as a central element when managers implement change, and takes the long-term strategic requirements into consideration without forgetting the challenge for short-term management brought about by deep crisis.

Citation

Llop, R. and García-Arrizabalaga, I. (2014), "Implementing Strategic Changes to Generate Sustainable Competitive Advantage", Field Guide to Case Study Research in Business-to-business Marketing and Purchasing (Advances in Business Marketing and Purchasing, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 191-210. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1069-096420140000021006