Gaining Sustainable Competitive Advantage: Balanced Scorecard Approach

Competitive advantage (CA) arises from a firm's attributes that allow one firm to create better customer value than others. Organizations of all sectors of the economy believe that sustainability is a way to achieve a differential advantage. CA is recognised as being the major cause for explaining top organizational performance and is a fundamental goal of academic management studies. There are two main views about obtaining a stable competitive position in the marketplace; The theory of industrial organization, re-introduced by Porter in the 1980s arguing that competitive advantage is caused by environmental opportunities. The resource-based view, which argues that every company creates its own competencies and capabilities can result in competitive advantages. The article shows how the balanced scorecard (BSC) can assist organizations in obtaining sustainable competitive advantage (SCA). The BSC development is a response to the criticism of traditional forms of accounting assessment. Academics and practitioners recognize the benefits of adopting the BSC concept.