Does the competitive orientation really lead to emphasis on different internal capabilities?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the organization competitive orientation can really make firms emphasize different internal capability. This paper aims to revisit and extend the study proposed by Fleury and Fleury (2003). Design/methodology/approach – The survey instrument was employed to collect the sample composed by 163 companies from different sectors of Brazilian market. Additionally, several statistic techniques were applied such as cluster analysis, ANOVA test and hierarchical regression analysis to investigate the phenomenon. Findings – It was observed that three possible clusters can be built based on cumulative capabilities perspective and the Operation oriented group has no emphasis on production, logistic nether R & D capability, while other two clusters have a distinctive attentions on their internal capabilities. Research limitations/implications – The limitation of this research lies in using perceptual scale for performance and few constructs with one item for measuring. On the other hand, this research has revisited the taxonomy topic based on cumulative capability perspective and discussed the trade-off concepts assumed in past studies. Practical implications – This study has demonstrated the absence of systematic strategy implementation of those that are considered Operational oriented. Additionally, the authors have demonstrated that market share and customer satisfaction performance are impacted by different competitive priority as well as internal capability. Originality/value – The authors reviewed the work proposed by Fleury and Fleury (2003), and went further in proposing a taxonomy complementation suggested by them. Additionally the authors discussed the assumptions of the taxonomies that have been adopted up today and explored this issue using cumulative capabilities concept. This work is based on competitive orientations, internal capability and cumulative capabilities suggested by seminar papers.