Essay about Archetypes: Strategic Management and Firm Specific Advantages

Words: 1620
Pages: 7

1. Which are the archetypes does Verbeke distinguish? Draw the figures associated with these archetypes.
Verbeke distguish between 4 types of archetypes and they are the following:
Centralized exporter: Home country managed firm. Firm specific advantage in its final products. Standardized products manufactured at home. Only the transferable firm specific advantages are taken to the host country, meaning that they try to make exporting successful in international markets. No development of location bound firm specific advantages.

International projector: Clones home operations into host countries. Knowledge based firm specific advantages are replicated from home country. Only the internationally

There are 4 key characteristics of core competences:

- Be difficult for competitors to imitate in terms of achieving the required internal coordination and learning.
- Provide potential access to a wide variety of markets
- Make a significant contribution to customer needs.
- The loss of a core competence would have an important negative effect on the firm’s present and future performance, in terms of value creation.

9. What critique does Verbeke have on the concept of core competences?

Core competencies are the company’s most important FSAs: its vital routines and recombination abilities. Recombination abilities are Locating resources, especially knowledge, as response to differences between national and foreign environments, and to satisfy new stakeholders’ demands. Verbeke has a few critiques regarding the concept of core competences and they are the following:
Core competences of organizations in industries may differ. Prahalad & Hamel don’t include country factors in their analysis. Their theory overestimates the role of strategic management. Strategic management role is to develop strategic architecture. Develop a road map for the future which identifies core competencies to build the required technologies. In the other side their theory underestimates the role of host country location factors. Another critique from Verbeke is that core competences are historically driven.