An issue of managing a business (unit) as a whole successfully is perceived to belong to the fundamental issues within strategic management. This paper proposes that a business unit can be managed successfully in short and longer term in its focal contexts as a set of three recursive,...

The growing modularization of complex products encourages the division of labor in industry. End product manufacturers outsource production of individual components to large module suppliers, saving on costs in the short term. In the medium term, however, they sacrifice competences. The...

The competence-based management approach has shed light on how firms represent open systems that link assets, strategic logic, and capabilities in order to create new competences. Nonetheless, we find that there are too few empirical studies that illustrate how competences are distributed within...

The objectives of this study are to reveal the relationship between strategic options and competence building processes and to investigate the effect of environmental and firm-related factors on competence building. Competence building is defined as the qualitative change in firms' existing...

The dynamic capabilities perspective focuses on the ability of an organization to develop its resource base in order to meet environmental expectations. Therefore, it is closely interrelated to the issue of managing the interaction of exploration and exploitation. The competence of continuously...

In order to elaborate the concept of resources (a key component of the well-established resource-based theory of the firm) this paper concentrates on exploring and elaborating the associated concept of competences, in particular distinctive and core competences. This exploration includes an...