Corporate Core Competencies’ Essence, Contexts, Discovery, and Future: A Call to Action for Executives and Researchers

Abstract

Research and managerial literatures on core competencies present them as essential to corporations because these competencies, proposed by the literatures to be difficult to acquire and imitate, are applied repeatedly to produce products and services delivering value to customers and wealth to corporations. Indeed, researchers and managers consider the significance of core competencies to be immense as they are the central intellectual means through which corporations produce valuable products and services. Paradoxically, though, rather than providing a clear, focused description, or picture, of what core competencies are and how they contribute to their host corporations, these same literatures present a sprawling, even fragmented picture of core competencies’ essence and contribution.In contrast, this book presents a clear empirical model of corporations’ core competencies’ essence; provides a clear conceptual treatment of how core competencies’ contextual, corporate contributions occur; presents valid methodologies for discovering and understanding corporations’ specific core competencies; and delineates an agenda for executives and researchers to collaborate in learning about core competencies and in using them to provide value for corporate stakeholders, especially customers. The book also places core competencies within their historical and social context, and it presents conceptual and methodological tools to assist in managing and discovering them.

Business Transformation: Exploring Dynamic Capabilities, Technological Innovation, and Competitive Advantage through the Lens of Resource-Based View in Construction Services Companies

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Key Factors Affecting Business Sustainability of MSMEs in Indonesia: The Role of Intellectual Capital, Social Innovation, and Social Bricolage

“…[38]. Intellectual Capital as a packaged useful knowledge which includes organization's processes, technologies, patents, employees' skills, and information about customers, suppliers, and stakeholders [39]. Although many have tried to explore the components of intellectual capital, the authors chose the views of Edvinson and Malone to be used in this study [40].…”

Ears on the Street: Practitioner Opinions on What Competencies Sales Executives Need and How to Develop Them

“…Even though literature reviews to determine important competencies (Jokinen, 2005), surveys about perceived development needs (Viitala, 2005) and meta-analyses with implications for developments (Gaddis & Foster, 2015) have been conducted, just what exactly the “right competencies” are remains unclear. According to the literature, competency models can be found for industries (Prifti et al, 2017), specific sectors (Bashir et al, 2021; Ranjbar et al, 2014), hierarchical levels (Kan et al, 2002), positions in the company (Kaur & Bains, 2013), centuries (Rahman, 2012), generations (Harrison, 2015), subgroups such as females (Jaafar et al, 2016), core competencies (Edgar & Lockwood, 2021), as well as general competency frameworks that can be individualized (Midhat Ali et al, 2021). Yet from the abundance of models, it is difficult to determine exactly which competencies are important for specific jobs.…”