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Donald E Heany, (1986),"Porter's competitive advantage, revisited", Planning Review, Vol. 14 Iss 1 pp. 27 - 29
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(1996),"Michael Porters Competitive Advantage revisited", Management Decision, Vol. 34 Iss 6 pp. 12-20 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1108/00251749610145889
(1997),"COMPETITIVE STRATEGY", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 1 Iss 2 pp. 12-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/
eb025476
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27
PORTER'S COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGE, REVISITED
By Donald E Heany
N E A R L Y FORTY YEARS AGO, Professor Edward Advantage to help bridge the current gap between
Mason, then the guru of industrial organiza strategy formulation and strategy implementation.
tion in the Graduate School of Arts and Bottom-Up Planning Is Ineffective: Most of the
Sciences at Harvard began an experiment. He en strategic planning done in the 1970s and early 1980s
couraged his doctoral students to investigate topics focused on lines of business. Firms such as General
that opened up new territory between economics Electric, General Motors, and duPont, with decen
and business, and between economics and law. tralized organizational structures, favored bottom-up
Mason believed that these topics called for an planning systems. This meant that line managers
interdisciplinary approach. He also wanted to prepared plans and senior executives reviewed them.
accumulate reliable data on the workings of the Only a few people worried about the tension between
modern business concern. To do this he asked some business-unit strategies and corporate strategy. It
of his friends on the business school and law was assumed that a handful of senior executives
faculties at Harvard to help his students gain access would be able to adjudicate conflicts among busi
to particular firms and to data on their industries, nesses and that every one would appreciate the ad
and also to help them master techniques of analysis vantages of pooling work (e.g., purchasing, EDP,
and perspectives that had few exponents on his side R&D).
of the Charles River.
As things turned out, however, activity sharing
Now, forty odd years later, Mason would view developed slowly and businesses did not readily
Michael E. Porter's newest bookCompetitive Ad- enter into coalitions. Strategic opportunities that
required teamwork across organizational boundaries
vantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance
as a confirmation of his faith in interdisciplinary went begging.
research. Professor Porter has crossed and recrossed
Porter is quite rightly upset by this. Being a realist,
the Charles River a number of times. He has he expects that the merits of bottom-up planning
obviously been inside many firms. He has used the will have its defenders. He knows that organizational
tools of many disciplines to illuminate strategic barriers will have to be removed before these
decision making in multibusiness firms. Only in one interrelationships can be activated.
area has he not fulfilled Mason's dream: his book Senior Managers Must Do More than Review
includes only anecdotal data.
Plans: As strategic business units multiplied like
rabbits, and planning departments began to turn out
PORTER'S KEY IDEAS
lengthy strategic plans, executives at corporate,
For the benefit of those who have not followed
sector, and group levels found themselves over
this young author's intellectual development, a
whelmed. In multibusiness firms, top-level executives
summary of the central ideas found in Competitive
had little time for or interest in preparing a corporate
Advantage appears to be our first order of business: (or group) strategic plan or formulating an explicit
Strategy Implementation Remains a Problem:
Porter's starting point was his concern that many
well-conceived business strategies were not being
implemented properly. He wrote Competitive
January
Planning Review
1986
28
January
Planning Review
1986
29
decide how to gain competitive advantage. How else
does one explain the absence of the term "planner"
or "strategic planner" from the index of Competitive
Advantage?
AN EVALUATION
Michael Porter's book deserves the attention it is
receiving. People enjoy seeing someone challenge the
conventional wisdom, and they like authors who
accompany their critique with an alternative. However:
January
Planning Review
1986