Competitiveness and gaining a sustainable competitive advantage are very important factors when analysing the success of companies involved in the aviation industry in South Africa. The success of these companies will depend on their ability to maintain technological capabilities in the areas of human resources and product development. Global aviation currently is concentrated in a few countries, with the USA being the largest contributor to an industry which is regarded as one of the fastest globalizing industries in terms of market structure and production systems. In South Africa, companies have managed to develop skills in aviation manufacturing. The opportunities that will be created, owing to changes in global production chains, will enable South African companies to establish themselves further as global suppliers. The aviation industry contains high risks, especially because it is considered to be the industry which acts as a driver for innovation. Complexity of production, the capital-intensive nature and high risks involved in developing new products and services have linked the industry to inevitable political influence and support. The industry can broadly be divided into two main sectors: military and commercial. Analysts predict that opportunities in the global aviation markets in future will increase considerably. This is attributed to more Asian, African and Latin-American regions capitalizing on opportunities that exist mainly within the commercial sector. They will form strategic alliances which will enable them to perform on low-cost platforms and offer exceptional services to major players in the aviation sector. To capitalize on these opportunities, companies need to analyse their external and internal environment. The main objective of this study is to analyse and to evaluate the competitive environment of a selected aviation company, to ensure that the best strategy is chosen and adopted and to confirm that the company can create and sustain a competitive advantage over competitors. The planning tools utilized in this study are the PEST and SWOT analyses. Both have been used in the strategic planning process of many other firms. These analyses have proved to be the key element needed to formulate an action plan to be and to stay competitive in the aviation industry. This study evaluates both of these planning tools and applies them to the company chosen for this case study. / MCom (Management Accountancy), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe the structure of a relationship between a dealer and its manufacturer in the Swedish marine industry from a strategic partnership perspective.   Design/methodology/approach: The research method is based on a deductive quantitative approach. A descripto-explanatory research design was applied and the research strategy was a combination of a case study and survey. A survey and three additional qualitative interviews have been conducted in order to gather the information.   Findings: The results of this research shows no outstanding factors influencing the strategic partnership between the manufacturer and its dealers in the marine industry. Limited managerial assumption were possible to be drawn for the case company Ryds.   Research Delimitations: The study was conducted in a three month period (March - June) in the spring semester 2016 therefore, the study was narrowed down to only one marine manufacture and its dealers in the Swedish market.   Future recommendations: For future researcher the presented study can be used as the foundation to further investigate the connection between applied theories of the Commitment- Trust Theory and Relational Marketing through the Key Mediating Variables. It will provide the researcher with insights about, which exact areas/items influence the relationship positively or negatively, resulting in the ability to generally state how strategic partnership is managed in the marine industry.

Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce adoption has become a necessity for most small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), allowing them to gain and sustain competitive advantage in a dynamic competitive environment. Accepting the fact that B2B is adopted at different levels based on different resources leads to the acceptance that competitive advantage is gained and sustained on a level consistent with the level of adoption. This study employs quantitative method based on the positivism philosophy and deductive approach. A questionnaire survey technique was used to collect the data from the American and Egyptian manufacturing SMEs. Moreover, it used structural equation modelling with a sample of 320 and 260 manufacturing SMEs in the United States of America and Egypt respectively. The structural equation modelling (SEM) findings revealed that each level of B2B e-commerce adoption was affected by different factors from another level of adoption. Besides, there was a significant difference between the issues which faced manufacturing SMEs in USA and Egypt. Furthermore, in Egyptian manufacturing SMEs, relative advantage and competitive pressure have a significant effect on adoption behaviour. On the other hand, when American manufacturing SMEs made their decisions to adopt B2B e-commerce, they considered the main factors to be relative advantage, top management support, firm size and government support. In addition, the findings revealed that the higher the level of B2B e-commerce, which an SME adopted, the higher the level of competitive advantage it gained. However, in developing countries such as Egypt, SMEs remained far behind their peers in developed countries. In terms of theoretical implications, the study could be considered to be a unique study in the field of B2B e-commerce generally and B2B e-commerce in Egyptian manufacturing SMEs in particular. This is because, by looking back at the literature review, is clear that empirical studies into B2B e-commerce issues, including manufacturing SMEs, remained embryonic in developed countries and rare in the developing countries. This is especially so in the Arabic countries. In addition, most previous studies focused on a broad and generic view of the SMEs’ adoption of B2B e-commerce or on the relationship between adoption of IT and competitive advantage. This study was conducted in a cross-country context; it considered the manufacturing SMEs’ adoption of B2B e-commerce from the perspective of the level of adoption. Therefore, it made an original empirical contribution towards the current body of knowledge on the adoption of B2B e-commerce through the identification of manufacturing SMEs adoption levels of B2B e-commerce; their impacts on competitive advantage; and the significant factors which influenced each adoption level of B2B e-commerce in USA and Egypt. In addition, this study used TOE as the theoretical framework in investigating the factors affecting B2B e-commerce in SMEs and focused largely on the factors affecting each level; this is a new contribution to the extant literature. Turning to the study’s practical implications, important implications for the manufacturing SMEs’ owner/managers can be drawn from the findings to help them to understand their environments as, in a cross-country business context, they move through the different stages of adopting B2B e-commerce. In addition to the implication for manufacturing SMEs’ owners/managers, this study presents important implications for governmental, nongovernmental organisations and other institutions linked to manufacturing SMEs. Similar to other studies, this study has a number of limitations. The main one is that it lacks the use of qualitative analysis to depict how SMEs understand the concept of competitive advantages and how this helps them to survive and grow.

The purpose of the study was to describe how networking can provide competitive advantage to facilitate growth when offering consultancy services toward the public sector. The majority of companies are looking to expand their business due to different reasons. With todays intense competiton on the market it is becoming increasingly important to outperform competitors in order to maintain the current customerbase aswell as it is to gain new businesses. Companies that work toward the public sector have special laws, directives and regulations that have to be taken into account when conducting business. Involvement with networks is based on different reasons, it can be due to gaining new customers, contacts and knowledge to name a few.   The authors have performed a qualitative case study with a focus on two companies. The empirical findings is based on information collected through interviews with these companies and through a quanitative self-completion questionnaire with a sample group of 16 repondents. By analysing the empirical information the authors have concluded that networking activities are important in order to prosper growth. However, there is a lack of networking strategies among the two companies of focus which constraint the firms to get the most out of the networks.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is the purpose of this study is to gain a more in-depth understanding of customer experience management and how it enables growth within an organization. Background: Customer Experience Management has been described as a process where the entire experience of a customer with a product/service and a company is strategically managed. It has been highlighted as a key area for organisations to focus on, yet, CEM is continuously being researched both by researchers and business practitioners as there is still a vague understanding on the topic. Nonetheless, CEM has been displayed as a successful process, however, very little research has gone into showing that it could enable organizational growth.

Aim: The aim of this research is to investigate whether CSR can be used as a marketing tool by the readymade garment suppliers in Bangladesh to attract international buyers. Method: This study is conducted by applying qualitative method. The data has been collected through semi-structured interview and using secondary data.   Result and Conclusions: The study reflects that that CSR implementation generates various benefits such as, creates good corporate image, reputation and opportunity for innovation and offers competitive advantage.  As international buyers’ foremost requirement is to verify suppliers’ social compliance, the CSR practices and benefits act as marketing instrument by the garments suppliers to attract international buyers and grab more business. Suggestions for future research: This study considered multiple large (1st tier) garments suppliers and multinational buying organization which calls for further research such as, a comparative study on taking both large and small scale suppliers as well as more international buyers. One of the findings indicates that buyers’ support is important in CSR implementation which can also be considered for further investigation. Contribution of the thesis: This study investigates suppliers’ CSR practices from the marketing perspective in relation to buyers in business to business context which has not been considered in previous literature. Further CSR as marketing tool has not been addressed in developing country context while this study includes empirical study on garment suppliers of Bangladesh. This study suggests that managers need to be aware of the significant role of CSR as marketing tool while designing and implementing CSR programs effectively to increase business. Moreover, CSR activities benefit both the company as well as other stakeholders (customer, employee, public, shareholder, government) of the society by way of meeting those stakeholders’ interest.

在今日瞬息萬變的產業環境裡，策略學者Porter (1980)所提出的五力分析只能告訴我們在某個時點中企業是否具有競爭優勢。但是，我們卻無法解釋企業的競爭優勢從何而來？又該往哪裡去？Hamel & Prahalad (1990)認為企業應該以未來的表現作為主要競爭的舞臺，建立核心競爭力來進行創新與變革才是企業獲取長久競爭優勢的主要手段。 Teece (1997)進一步提出動態能耐的概念，探討廠商在動態環境中，進行變革所需的能耐。Zott (2003) 利用電腦進行了寡佔的競爭賽局模擬，証實了動態能耐的三個屬性：組織執行力、變革成本、學習效應，是影響組織具有超額利潤的重要關鍵。 本研究另外引用其他文獻，如Jovanovic & MacDonald (1994)、Klepper (1996)、Winter (2003)，重新建構了理論模式以進行電腦模擬。我們將模擬的架構做出以下修正：增加廠商數目、有淘汰廠商的機制、產品創新與製程創新之間會互相影響、增加學習效應的種類，並修正目標函數與動態過程，讓模擬更符合實際狀況，來了解以下三個問題： 一、在動態能耐的屬性高低皆相同的情形下，廠商是否會有超額利潤？ 二、不同程度的執行力對競爭優勢有何影響？ 三、不同種類的學習效應對廠商競爭優勢有何影響？廠商的學習效應除了從事變革時的學習外，還有在執行變革的過程中從事學習的情形。我們將會模擬擅長不同學習效應的廠商，那一方能獲得超額利潤。 根據我們的實驗，本研究的結論如下： 一、動態能耐是產業內出現不同利潤表現的因素之一，當廠商動態能耐的強弱相同時，創新的策略思是影響競爭優勢的原因。我們發現最成功的廠商會在產業初期提升產品創新，在產業成熟之後大量投入製程創新，與Klepper (1996)的發現相同。 二、組織執行力會影響超額利潤。但是必須在所有廠商的變革成本處於較低的狀態，或有較好的學習效應時，執行力較高的廠商才會有明顯的競爭優勢。 三、如果廠商的組織執行力相同，注重在執行變革的學習效應，能幫助廠商獲得競爭優勢。相對地，注重在尋找變革策略上的學習，對競爭優勢的幫助較為有限。 本研究不僅展現了動態能耐對競爭優勢多方面的影響，並提供一個架構來闡述一家公司從策略到能耐的競爭結構。要怎麼結合這個架構與策略地圖是我們後續可以研究的方向。 / In the dynamic environment of competitive industry, we have problem to know how a company will perform in the future with Five-Force-Model (Porter 1980). Five-Force-Model can tell us the competitive advantage of a company at that time, but we can’t explain how the company got that competitive advantage and whether it could be kept or not in the future. The theory of Core Competence (Hamel & Prahalad 1990) notifies that company should compete for future, and accumulate its core competence for innovation to keep the competitive advantage. Basing on Resource Based View, Teece (1997) further discussed the Dynamic Capability which is needed by enterprise in dynamic competition. Zott (2003) simulate a Cournot Game to study the attributes of dynamic capability. He finds that execution, strategic switching cost and learning ability affect the superior profit of firms of intra-industry. This research rebuilds the simulation of Zott (2003) and modifies the simulation by incorporating the insights from Jovanovic & MacDonald (1994), Klepper (1996) and Winter (2003). We increase the number of firms, set up the mechanism which can shake out the less competitive firms. We also remodel the settings of innovation and learning and modify the dynamic process and profit function to investigate the following question. First, when the level of dynamic capability is the same, will firms in an intra-industry perform differently? Second, could execution ability affect the superior profit? Third, is the learning effect of switching strategy more important than the learning effect of implementing strategy? Three propositions can be drawn from this simulation. First, when all firms have equal dynamic capability, the strategy of innovation will affect the competitive advantage. We find that the most successful firm will increase production innovation at first then put more resources into process innovation, which is compatible with the empirical study of Klepper (1996). Second, execution ability will affect the superior profit in some condition. When all firms have low strategic switching cost or good learning ability, the firms which have higher execution ability earn superior profit in simulation. Third, when all firms have the same execution ability, the firms which have higher learning ability of implementing strategy will earn the superior profit. In contrast firm’s learning ability of switching strategy does not make great difference. This research not only demonstrates the various impacts of dynamic capability, but also provides a framework to depict the competitive structure of a firm. The integration of this framework and strategy map deserves the further research.

台灣資訊科技產業發展迅速，目前已在國際中居重要地位，不論在IC封裝、測試、TFT- LCD 與光碟機的表現都是數一數二。也同時是筆記型電腦、電腦主機板、伺服器等產值全球第一的國家。然而在此亮麗的成績背後，台灣電子資訊業雖有完整的垂直分工模式與產業聚落，也累積了許多專業技術。但廠商為了擴大下單，持續壓低代工價格，導致獲利一路下滑，無法脫離「紅海競爭」。 本研究探討台灣資訊科技產業代工廠目前的競爭優勢，以5家台灣IT廠商作為個案研究對象，評估可行之未來發展策略，以脫離價格競爭的紅海。研究問題如下： 一、台灣資訊科技產業廠商目前擁有哪些競爭優勢？面臨哪些困難？ 二、代工廠商如何在「紅海競爭」中維持領導優勢且持續成長？ 研究發現，台灣代工廠商擁有健全的產業供應鏈與全球佈局、優秀的研發能力與人才，最重要的是具有很高的成本優勢，且生產製造效率很高。然而面臨產業競爭度高導致的殺價競爭、利潤降低的困難，規模雖然坐大，卻稀釋了核心資源的足夠深度。而代工廠商發展品牌不易，需在通路出口的投資和關鍵零件/組件的掌控多努力。 研究建議，若代工廠商選擇發展品牌，就需強化國際行銷並有長久投入資源的決心。若繼續投入代工，則建議下列三個策略：a.市場滲透策略：提高協同設計的比例，增加產品開發、設計流程的速度，從OEM、ODM走向 JDM(Joint Design Manufacturing)，也可更進一步整合客戶需求，提供多樣化的加值服務，並且強化全球運籌之能力，以就近支援與服務。 b. 多角化營運：憑藉著台灣廠商的研發能力與豐富的代工經驗，拓展代工產品項目，如3C、資訊家電等輕薄短小的產品，或是軍用、醫療用電子產品等。 c. 產品/服務發展策略：藉由提升研發能力、製造技術與提供全面性服務，增加與品牌廠商的合作關係。 / With its fast growth rate and well-developed infrastructure, Taiwan's IT (Information Technology) Industry holds a key position in the world. Taiwan is well known for its global leadership position in the shipments of notebook computer, desktop computer, server and mother board, but it is perhaps less recognized for its top global ranking in the production of TFT LCD displays, input devices, and IC packaging and testing. Although Taiwan's IT Industry takes advantage of vertically integrated supply chains, years of technical experience, and manufacturing scale of economies, it is not able to differentiate itself from "Red Sea" competition and is subject to continued pricing pressure and decreasing margins. This study will explore the existing Taiwanese OEM/ODM’s competitive advantage through surveys and interviews of 5 vendors and will evaluate and develop any possible solutions or strategies for future growth and avoid from "Red Sea" pricing competition. The following questions will be addressed: 1. What are the competitive advantages of Taiwan's IT companies? What are their challenges? 2. How can these companies sustain their competitive advantage and continue to grow in the "Red Sea"? Accordance with the study finding, Taiwan's IT Industry established a very healthy supply chain integration. Well-trained R&D talent, highly efficient and productive manufacturing process management, and cost-driven mindsets are in place. Nevertheless, every OEM/ODM company is faced with huge margin pressure which started when the whole industry fell into a pricing cut situation. While production volumes have increased through growth and industry consolidation, it also diluted the depth of their core competence and resources. There are difficulties for OEM/ODM to develop their own brand business, not only huge investment on product development and marketing promotion but also impact to the relationship with existing customers. OEM/ODM must strengthen international marketing capability as well as channel sales strategy as a long-term investment if they want to move toward own brand business. If they chose to continue moving forward OEM/ODM business, there are three recommended strategies, which are offered in accordance with the study. 1, Penetration – Move to JDM (Joint Design Manufacturing), alliance or partner with customers in new product development, speed up products design processes, increase manufacturability, provide integrated and value added service from production all the way up to the new product stage. 2, Diversification – Leverage the existing scale, experience and capability to move into new markets such as 3C, medical or military products…etc. 3, Product and service developments – Continue to develop core competences, key components strategy investment, processes innovation, W/W production and logistics management, after purchased services and RMA…etc, offer total solution to enhance the partnership with branding company.

The container shipping industry is essentially a service industry, based on the derived need of shippers wanting to transport their goods to buyers around the world. The industry relies on the volume of world trade and consequently is highly cyclical with its profitability being dependent, in large part, on the health of the global economy. It is also a highly capital intensive industry that requires large amount of investment in large scale fixed assets, such as ocean vessels, ports facilities, terminal equipments, global office networks and communication infrastructure. The industry has been undergoing a period of restructuring and consolidation in the 1990s, reflected in both merger and acquisition and in the formation of global alliances. This paper will explore the literature on growth alternatives and competitive advantages of the industry. The specific case on NOL/APL growth path and its key success factors of strategy-performance relationship will also be identified. This paper will conclude by making some suggestions on longer-term strategy for the company in order to generate sustainable profitability and financial success for the NOL/APL group.

Background The external requirements for the European top clubs within the UEFA football industry are changing. Due to mismanaged finances during a significant period of time derived from the clubs’ ruthless aim for short-term sporting success, UEFA (The Union of European Football Association) has decided to change the rules of the game. UEFA’s newly implemented financial fair play regulations, with the main requirement of breaking even, force clubs that aim to participate in future UEFA competitions to drastically improve their financial performance. Consequently, we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the European top club’s upcoming strategy. From now on, the club must go from pursuing a short-term strategy almost exclusively based on the quest for sporting success, to successfully implement a long-term strategy that besides being based on the main purpose of sporting success also is characterized by the quest for financial success. Purpose The purpose with this thesis is to provide guidance towards the European top club’s adjustment to UEFA financial fair play and its simultaneous achievement of competitive advantage within the changing UEFA football industry. Approach With the more decisive aim for profitability, the similarities between the European top club and a profit-seeking firm become evident. Consequently, the authors apply and adapt business strategic management theories to formulate a long-term strategy based on the simultaneous achievement of profitability and improved sporting performance.   Results Formulating a long-term strategy based on the simultaneous quest for financial and sporting success, the authors finally come to an understanding of how the European top club possibly could comply with financial fair play and simultaneously create conditions for competitive advantage within the changing UEFA football industry.