Debates In Strategic Management

Business organizations play a significant role in promoting national economies in different ways such as employment creation and revenue development. Factors relating to globalization such as increased internet accessibility, technology innovation, efficient transportation strategies, and effective communication methods favour business internalization. Even as business organizations globalize, the challenges of current business environments continue to increase creating the need for promoting sustainable competitiveness. Promoting sustainable competitiveness has seen business organizations focus on promoting the adoption of technologies and innovative strategies. Therefore, these pages will focus on evaluating the importance of innovation and adaptation of new technologies to create a sustainable competitive advantage for companies critically.

Business organizations operating under the current environments face challenges that pose notable issues to the maintenance of competitive advantage. Regardless of the nature of the business, organizational success related to how the abilities and resources are acknowledged, developed and employed (Krishnaswamy, 2017). The three factors must operate together such that even when resources are identified and developed to realize business profitability, the manner in which they are managed plays a crucial role in determining success continuity. Over the past decades, business organizations have continued to struggle with issues of promoting continuous success due to problems that develop from globalization. As such, business leaders have realized the need for utilizing strategic management options to promote the sustainability of business organizations.

Competition is a major issue affecting business environments and strategic management options are crucial to ensuring that firms remain competitive. Sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) describes the maintenance of the distinguishing capabilities that ensure an organization realizes more profitability while compared to competing organizations (Krishnaswamy, 2017). The continuously changing nature of business environments more so concerning consumer behaviours creates the need for institutions to innovate continuously for success. According to Onyango, and Katuse, (2016), business competition around the world is getting fiercer and the strategies for managing operations are crucial for the survival of organizations. The authors note that under the current business environments that are both unpredictable and volatile, the implementation of strategic decisions is crucial for sustaining organizational growth.

Experts acknowledge the importance of innovation in promoting sustainable competitive advantage under the current competitive business environments (Khattab, 2017). As factors influencing consumer purchasing behaviours continue to evolve from the traditional factors of demand and supply, consumer preferences are crucial for promoting organizational success. Further, Lin, Su, and Higgins, (2016) notes that innovative ideas must consider consumer desires and needs while specializing in service or product development. The profitability and sustainability of an organization’s growth depend greatly on new services and product development (innovation). Khattab (2017) notes that innovation supports organizations in developing different products and services that enable organizations to increase their market share and maintain sector influence thus enhancing profitability.

Research notes that innovation does not relate to the improvement of business products and services alone but includes the improvement of procedures, communication, human resource, leadership, marketing, and organizational activities as well (Taneja, Pryor, and Hayek, 2016). Further, Khattab (2017) highlights the importance of innovation in ensuring that businesses survive competitive business environments and are able to maintain profitability for a prolonged period of time. Through innovation, organizations are not only able to improve the quality of existing services and products but manage the delivery of new quality products that enhance the promotion of competitive abilities. Different organizations utilize innovation as a tool for increasing the market value of the organization together with the organizational profits (Taneja, Pryor, and Hayek, 2016).

Besides, innovation is seen as a tool for enhancing organizations’ ability to adapt to environmental changes quickly and equally promote their ability to discovering market opportunities. Innovation promotes efficiencies that help organizations promote both growths and differentiate from the competitors thus increasing their abilities for realizing competitive advantage. According to Khattab (2017) and Taneja et al. (2016), organizations must focus on crucial innovation supporters such as dynamic capabilities. Khattab (2017) and Lin et al. (2016) describe dynamic capabilities as activities that allow organizations to integrate, restrict, and acquire resources that promote the utilization of both internal and environmental resources to develop solutions to existing challenges within a short time.

Leaders focus on intrinsic motivation to take innovation risks especially in supporting the organizations to realize a competitive advantage. The most effective way for organizations to utilize innovation as a tool for promoting competitive advantage is evaluating consumer behaviours and ensure that changes in products or new products meet the demands. Equally, institutions using innovation as a tool for promoting a competitive advantage must integrate consumer demands with the nature of services and products offered by competitors to realize the market demands and ensure that the innovative options eliminate the existing gaps. For example, in the automotive industry, populations have increasingly focused on minimizing pollution as different vehicle manufacturing organizations focus on producing less-polluting cars. Evidently, there is a market demand for non-polluting vehicles and organizations that focus on manufacturing electronic cars at affordable costs will easily be able to realize a competitive advantage.

Additionally, the rapid growth of information technologies has seen new technologies shift organizations to a period of new information forms. The globalization of business operations for most organizations creates the need for businesses to focus on utilizing technologies to cope with complex problems. For example, the growth of data has seen the application of big data technology used to describe large collections of data. Experts argue that big data analytics (BDA) is a critical tool for shaping the competitiveness of business organizations in specific markets it creates paths for both innovation and productivity (Shan et al., 2019). The introduction of new market technologies offers organizations an opportunity to enhance internal business procedures. Nainaar and Masson (2018) describe technology as the design and production of both inventive and innovative products for the satisfaction of consumer demands.

Technology's effectiveness in promoting competitive advantage could be realized in different ways. Basically, business organizations manage competitiveness by minimizing the labour costs thus maximizing profitability. Technology adoption enhances the realization of the goal since the adopted technologies eliminate the need for organizations to utilize manual labour and equally minimize the wastage of raw materials. According to research by Nainaar, and Masson, (2018) notes the successful utilization of new technologies for promoting a competitive advantage requires the implementation of a multi-disciplined strategic management approach at all levels. Further, the adaptation of new technologies promotes competitive advantage due to the ability of technologies to reduce the life cycle of products thus enabling more production and innovation.

More so, experts highlight the need for organizations to keep pace with changing technologies to promote sustainable competitive advantage. Evidently, technology systems change from time to time and new technologies have positive benefits that make them better than the previous technologies. As such, organizations should focus on adopting new technologies continue to increase the organization’s chances of realizing competitiveness. Typically, the adaptation of technologies increases the efficiency of organizations more so in enhancing the delivery of better services (Dauda, and Lee, 2015). For example, the adaptation of technologies that promote online service technologies is adopted in a business organization more so in financial institutions to boost competitiveness. The appreciation of technology adaption for increasing organizational competitiveness has equally seen organizations focus on research and development (R&D) initiatives.

The use of research and development to evaluate existing and emerging technologies enable organizations to realize the best technologies in their best shape to offer competitiveness (Anzoategui et al., 2019). Basically, although adopting new technologies is seen as a strategy for increasing the sustainability of competitiveness in business, the duration that organizations take to adopt the technology determines the effectiveness of sustainability. For example, organizations focus on consumer relationship management software as a way of promoting sustainable competitive advantage through enhancing the efficiency of consumer satisfaction from the offered services.

Again, organizations focus on adapting new marketing technologies such as social media marketing that promotes the ability of organizations to sustain competitiveness. The idea of e-business is crucial to the current market environments and has seen organizations focus on using marketing technologies that support internet business operations (Behringer, and Sassenberg, 2015). The use of social media marketing techniques through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube enhances the sustenance of competitive advantage since businesses use the platforms to grow their markets. For instance, organizations using social media marketing technology manage to reach more business customers within and beyond their operation borders. Through social media technology, an organization could sell products across borders and utilize tracking technologies as well as logistic technologies to ship the products to the clients (Behringer, and Sassenberg, 2015). Positive referrals on social media are equally crucial for enabling organizations to gain more customers thus improving the sustainability of business competitiveness.

Typically, technology and innovation used in business enhance the utilization of cost-effective production systems that minimize the need for human labour and material waste thus enhancing cost reduction. (Anzoategui et al., 2019) Technology adaptation in different fields such as the medical field has enabled organizations to offer complex procedures at affordable prices which increases continuous competitiveness. Experts note that cost reduction is among the effective strategies utilized to promote profitability, adopting technologies that enable cost reduction for end products increases the organization’s capability for sustaining competitive advantage. For example, the use of automated inspection scanners enhances the quality of services offered to clients while minimizing the need for human labour to undertake the scanning procedures.

More so, the use of automated technologies ensures agility for company and customer response thus enhancing consumer loyalty to the specific brand (Anzoategui et al., 2019). Organizations that manage to utilize new technologies to boost the loyalty of their clients are at an advantaged position for realizing sustainable competitive advantage. Automated technologies enable organizations to boost quality efficiency as dependence on the workforce implies reduced errors. For example, the use of 3-D technology in manufacturing enhances the production of high-quality products without worrying about possible errors.

In conclusion, business environments in the 21st century face notable challenges that implicate the efficiency of maintaining success. Importantly, globalization and related factors like efficient communication and transportation methods as well as internet and computerized gadget accessibility favour business internalization thus increasing competition. Globalization is characterized by continuous innovations and technology development which are commonly used to increase business competitiveness. Both innovation and new technology adaptation promotes the sustainability of an organization’s competitive advantage through efficient outcomes such as improved customer service from technologies like big data analytics and consumer relationship management software. More so, innovative options ranging from improvement of products and services quality to the organizational procedures for meeting the consumer demands promote continuous success. Promoting sustainable competitive advantage through innovation and adoption of new technologies requires organizations to evaluate the consumer demands and the changes in business environments to ensure that adopted options eliminate the existing gap.

References

• Anzoategui, D., Comin, D., Gertler, M. and Martinez, J., 2019. Endogenous technology adoption and R&D as sources of business cycle persistence. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 11(3), pp.67-110.
• Behringer, N. and Sassenberg, K., 2015. Introducing social media for knowledge management: Determinants of employees’ intentions to adopt new tools. Computers in Human Behaviour, 48, pp.290-296.
• Dauda, S.Y. and Lee, J., 2015. Technology adoption: A conjoint analysis of consumers׳ preference on future online banking services. Information Systems, 53, pp.1-15.
• Khattab, S.A., 2017. The Impact of Dynamic Capability on Innovation (An Applied Study on Jordanian Pharmaceutical Organizations). European Journal of Business and Management, 9(20), pp.73-85.
• Krishnaswamy, S., 2017. Sources of Sustainable competitive Advantage: A Study & Industry Outlook. St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 3(1).
• Lin, H.F., Su, J.Q. and Higgins, A., 2016. How dynamic capabilities affect adoption of management innovations. Journal of Business Research, 69(2), pp.862-876.
• Nainaar, D. and Masson, J., 2018. An investigation into technology management to create sustainable competitive advantage within the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) beverage industry. European Journal of Engineering and Technology Vol, 6(2).
• Onyango, L. and Katuse, P., 2016. Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Banking through Technology, Customer Relationship Management and Internal Marketing: A Case Study of Co-Operative Bank of Kenya (Co-Op Bank) Ltd.
• Shan, S., Luo, Y., Zhou, Y. and Wei, Y., 2019. Big data analysis adaptation and enterprises’ competitive advantages: the perspective of dynamic capability and resource-based theories. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 31(4), pp.406-420.
• Taneja, S., Pryor, M.G. and Hayek, M., 2016. Leaping innovation barriers to small business longevity. Journal of Business Strategy.