STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Strategic Management

Strategic Management

Introduction

This article proposes to renew the imitation with the competitive advantage of firms. The objective is to consider imitation as reliable competitive strategy. To achieve this objective, the definition of the strategy of imitation through a skills-based approach is needed. This article also debate success factors of such a strategy and discusses its positive and negative effects. Without having to empirically verify these assertions, this work breaks with some ideas that consider imitation as a strike-craft, a parasite. The pejorative connotation of imitation seems to be unjustified. No doubt, in the corporate culture, innovation is valued more than imitation. However, several studies show imitating a competitor appears to be a very profitable strategy. In addition, entrepreneurs can imitate each other without even knowing it. This suggests that it is important to understand the functioning view of the firm in today's competitive environment (Hitt et al., 2012).

Discussion

Process and Functional View of the Firm

Organisations, traditionally, are structured into business functions such as operations, finance, marketing, information systems and human resources. In fact, these functions define and organise various processes in an organisation such as developing strategy or product or order fulfilment (Hitt et al., 2012). It is important to know that processes are vital for every organisation because it is the process view that allows a company to create value for their customers. A business process can be defined as set of activities that have order preference, identifiable inputs and well-explained outputs. These activities work all together to add value for customers as well as develop competitive aptitude. There are significant numbers of researchers how believe that shifting from functional approach to process approach is a demand of modern style business (Taghizadeh & Zeinalzadeh, 2012). They also claim that structuring organisations by functions is not appropriate for modern business as it is not capable to address the rapidly changing business environment.

Imitation in Strategic Management

Imitation - in contrast to the innovation - is often perceived as a significant component of strategic management. In fact, in business matters imitations is not a formal degree of innovation decision, and the degree of market success. It's easy to understand the desire of managers to portray their company pioneers. In our time of rapid technological change such a technique is a means of promoting the market for the company's image as a whole and a particular brand of product (Naranjo-Valencia et al., 2011). Most effectively use it flagship industries, has a strong advertising and PR-potential. As a result, the claim to the position of the pioneer was already something of a mandatory attribute of any strong company. The success of the product and the company's market associated exclusively with the approach of the new in everything and always (Andriopoulos & Dawson, 2008). Try to understand whether this is in fact, and whether the company is not being first to market is not only efficient to exist, but to achieve long-term competitive advantage and even though it sounds almost paradoxically, to be on the cutting edge ...