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Within international business, the diamond model, also known as Porter's Diamond or the Porter Diamond Theory of National Advantage, describes a nation's competitive advantage in the international market. In this model, four attributes are taken into consideration: factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, and firm strategy, structure, and rivalry. According to Michael Porter, the model's creator, "These determinants create the national environment in which companies are born and learn how to compete." [1]
Strategic analysis typically focuses on two views of organization: the industry-view and the resource-based view (RBV). These views analyse the organisation without taking into consideration relationship between the organizations strategic choice (i.e. Porter generic strategies) and institutional frameworks. The diamond model is a tool for analyzing the organization's task environment. The diamond model highlights that strategic choices should not only be a function of industry structure and a firm's resources, it should also be a function of the constraints of the institutional framework. Institutional analysis (such as the diamond model) becomes increasingly important as firms enter new operating environments and operate within new institutional frameworks.
Porter's National Diamond framework resulted from a study of patterns of comparative advantage among industrialized nations. It works to integrate much of Porter's previous work in his competitive five forces theory, his value chain framework as well as his theory of competitive advantage into a consolidated framework that looks at the sources of competitive advantage sourcable from the national context. It can be used both to analyze a firm's ability to function in a national market, as well as analyse a national market's ability to compete in an international market.
It recognizes four pillars of research (factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, firm structure, strategy and rivalry) that one must undertake in analysing the viability of a nation competing in a particular international market, but it also can be used as a comparative analysis tool in recognising which country a particular firm is suited to expanding into.
Two of the aforementioned pillars focus on the (national) macroeconomics environment to determine if the demand is present along with the factors needed for production (i.e. both extreme ends of the value chain). Another pillar focuses on the specific relationships supporting industries have with the particular firm/nation/industry being studied. The last pillar it looks at the firm's strategic response (microeconomics) i.e. its strategy, taking into account the industry structure and rivalry (see five forces). In this way it tries to highlight areas of competitive advantage as well as competitive weakness, by looking at a companies/nations suitability to the particular conditions of a particular market.
The four different components of the framework are:
Factor conditions include the nation's production resources, including infrastructure, labor force, land, and natural resources.
According to Porter, "a nation does not inherit but instead creates the most important factors of production—such as skilled human resources or a scientific base". [1] A lack of less important factors, such as an unskilled labor force or access to raw materials, can be mediated through technology or by implementing what Porter calls "a global strategy."
Factor endowment can be categorized into two forms:
For example, in analyzing Hollywood's preeminence in film production, Porter has pointed out the local concentration of skilled labor, including the different schools of film (UCLA and USC) in the area. Also, resource constraints may encourage development of substitute capabilities; Japan's relative lack of raw materials has spurred miniaturization and zero-defect manufacturing.
This component refers to industries that supply, distribute, or are otherwise related to the industry being examined. [1] For many firms, the presence of related and supporting industries is of critical importance to the growth of that particular industry. A critical concept here is that national competitive strengths tend to be associated with "clusters" of industries. For example, Silicon Valley in the US and Silicon Glen in the UK are techno clusters of high-technology industries which includes individual computer software and semi-conductor firms. In Germany, a similar cluster exists around chemicals, synthetic dyes, textiles and textile machinery.
Demand conditions in the domestic market provide the primary driver of growth, innovation and quality improvement. The premise is that a strong domestic market stimulates the firm from being a startup to a slightly expanded and bigger organization. As an illustration, we can take the case of Germany which has some of the world's premier automobile companies like Mercedes, BMW, Porsche. German auto companies have dominated the world when it comes to the high-performance segment of the world automobile industry. However, their position in the market of cheaper, mass-produced autos is much weaker. This can be linked to a domestic market which has traditionally demanded a high level of engineering performance. Also, the transport infrastructure of Germany, with its Autobahns does tend to favor high-performance automobiles.
National performance in particular sectors is inevitably related to the strategies and the structure of the firms in that sector. Competition plays a big role in driving innovation and the subsequent upgradation of competitive advantage. Since domestic competition is more direct and impacts earlier than steps taken by foreign competitors, the stimulus provided by them is higher in terms of innovation and efficiency. As an example, the Japanese automobile industry with 8 major competitors (Honda, Toyota, Suzuki, Isuzu, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Subaru) provide intense competition in the domestic market, as well as the foreign markets in which they compete.
Porter identifies two other variables that affect competitiveness. These factors "support and complement the system of national competitiveness but do not create lasting competitive advantages." [2]
The role of government in Porter's Diamond Model is "acting as a catalyst and challenger; it is to encourage - or even push - companies to raise their aspirations and move to higher levels of competitive performance ..." . They must encourage companies to raise their performance, stimulate early demand for advanced products, focus on specialized factor creation and to stimulate local rivalry by limiting direct cooperation and enforcing anti-trust regulations.
The role of chance basically denotes the idea that it may occur that many times a product or an enterprise may get an opportunity to maximize its benefits out of sheer luck. Thus chance plays a key role in determining the fate of the product as well.
Criticism on Porter's national diamond model revolve around a number of assumptions that underlie it. As described by Davies and Ellis:
"sustained prosperity may be achieved without a nation becoming 'innovation-driven', strong 'diamonds' are not in place in the home bases of many internationally successful industries and inward foreign direct investment does not indicate a lack of 'competitiveness' or low national productivity".
Porter generalized from the North American, European and Japanese experiences; for countries developing in the presence of these now developed regions of the world, the model may need to be re-examined.
In economics, internationalization or internationalisation is the process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization. Internationalization is a crucial strategy not only for companies that seek horizontal integration globally but also for countries that addresses the sustainability of its development in different manufacturing as well as service sectors especially in higher education which is a very important context that needs internationalization to bridge the gap between different cultures and countries. There are several internationalization theories which try to explain why there are international activities.
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models can include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.
Marketing management is the strategic organizational discipline which focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods inside enterprises and organizations and on the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities.
In business, a competitive advantage is an attribute that allows an organization to outperform its competitors.
Competitive analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify opportunities and threats. Profiling combines all of the relevant sources of competitor analysis into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, monitoring and adjustment.
Porter's Five Forces Framework is a method of analysing the operating environment of a competition of a business. It draws from industrial organization (IO) economics to derive five forces that determine the competitive intensity and, therefore, the attractiveness of an industry in terms of its profitability. An "unattractive" industry is one in which the effect of these five forces reduces overall profitability. The most unattractive industry would be one approaching "pure competition", in which available profits for all firms are driven to normal profit levels. The five-forces perspective is associated with its originator, Michael E. Porter of Harvard University. This framework was first published in Harvard Business Review in 1979.
Porter's generic strategies describe how a company pursues competitive advantage across its chosen market scope. There are three/four generic strategies, either lower cost, differentiated, or focus. A company chooses to pursue one of two types of competitive advantage, either via lower costs than its competition or by differentiating itself along dimensions valued by customers to command a higher price. A company also chooses one of two types of scope, either focus or industry-wide, offering its product across many market segments. The generic strategy reflects the choices made regarding both the type of competitive advantage and the scope. The concept was described by Michael Porter in 1980.
The word ‘dynamics’ appears frequently in discussions and writing about strategy, and is used in two distinct, though equally important senses.
Marketing strategy is an organization's promotional efforts to allocate its resources across a wide range of platforms and channels to increase its sales and achieve sustainable competitive advantage within its corresponding market.
A value chain is a progression of activities that a business or firm performs in order to deliver goods and services of value to an end customer. The concept comes from the field of business management and was first described by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.
The idea of [Porter's Value Chain] is based on the process view of organizations, the idea of seeing a manufacturing organization as a system, made up of subsystems each with inputs, transformation processes and outputs. Inputs, transformation processes, and outputs involve the acquisition and consumption of resources – money, labour, materials, equipment, buildings, land, administration and management. How value chain activities are carried out determines costs and affects profits.
Michael Eugene Porter is an American academic known for his theories on economics, business strategy, and social causes. He is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, and was one of the founders of the consulting firm The Monitor Group and FSG, a social impact consultancy. He is credited for creating Porter's five forces analysis, which is instrumental in business strategy development at present. He is generally regarded as the father of the modern strategy field. He is also regarded as one of the world's most influential thinkers on management and competitiveness as well as one of the most influential business strategists. His work has been recognized by governments, non governmental organizations and universities.
VRIO is a business analysis framework that forms part of a firm's larger strategic scheme, proposed by Jay Barney in 1991. The basic strategic process of any firm begins with a vision statement, and continues on through objectives, internal & external analysis, strategic choices, and strategic implementation.
The resource-based view (RBV), often referred to as the "resource-based view of the firm", is a managerial framework used to determine the strategic resources a firm can exploit to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.
In economics, competition is a scenario where different economic firms are in contention to obtain goods that are limited by varying the elements of the marketing mix: price, product, promotion and place. In classical economic thought, competition causes commercial firms to develop new products, services and technologies, which would give consumers greater selection and better products. The greater the selection of a good is in the market, the lower prices for the products typically are, compared to what the price would be if there was no competition (monopoly) or little competition (oligopoly).
Context analysis is a method to analyze the environment in which a business operates. Environmental scanning mainly focuses on the macro environment of a business. But context analysis considers the entire environment of a business, its internal and external environment. This is an important aspect of business planning. One kind of context analysis, called SWOT analysis, allows the business to gain an insight into their strengths and weaknesses and also the opportunities and threats posed by the market within which they operate. The main goal of a context analysis, SWOT or otherwise, is to analyze the environment in order to develop a strategic plan of action for the business.
A business cluster is a geographic concentration of interconnected businesses, suppliers, and associated institutions in a particular field. Clusters are considered to increase the productivity with which companies can compete, nationally and globally. Accounting is a part of the business cluster. In urban studies, the term agglomeration is used. Clusters are also important aspects of strategic management.
The six forces model is an analysis model used to give a holistic assessment of any given industry and identify the structural underlining drivers of profitability and competition. The model is an extension of the Porter's five forces model proposed by Michael Porter in his 1979 article published in the Harvard Business Review "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy". The sixth force was proposed in the mid-1990s. The model provides a framework of six key forces that should be considered when defining corporate strategy to determine the overall attractiveness of an industry.
Hypercompetition, a term first coined in business strategy by Richard D’Aveni, describes a dynamic competitive world in which no action or advantage can be sustained for long. Hypercompetition is a key feature of the new global digital economy. Not only is there more competition, there is also tougher and smarter competition. It is a state in which the rate of change in the competitive rules of the game are in such flux that only the most adaptive, fleet, and nimble organizations will survive. Hypercompetitive markets are also characterized by a “quick-strike mentality” to disrupt, neutralize, or moot the competitive advantage of market leaders and important rivals.
Creating shared value (CSV) is a business concept first introduced in a 2006 Harvard Business Review article, Strategy & Society: The Link between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility. The concept was further expanded in the January 2011 follow-up piece entitled Creating Shared Value: Redefining Capitalism and the Role of the Corporation in Society. Written by Michael E. Porter, a leading authority on competitive strategy and head of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, and Mark R. Kramer, of the Kennedy School at Harvard University and co-founder of FSG, the article provides insights and relevant examples of companies that have developed deep links between their business strategies and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Porter and Kramer define shared value as "the policies and practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company while simultaneously advancing social and economic conditions in the communities in which it operates", while a review published in 2021 defines the concept as "a strategic process through which corporations can turn social problems into business opportunities".
Porter's four corners model is a predictive tool designed by Michael Porter that helps in determining a competitor's course of action. Unlike other predictive models which predominantly rely on a firm's current strategy and capabilities to determine future strategy, Porter's model additionally calls for an understanding of what motivates the competitor. This added dimension of understanding a competitor's internal culture, value system, mindset, and assumptions helps in determining a much more accurate and realistic reading of a competitor's possible reactions in a given situation.