Assignment: Competitive Advantage.

Assignment: Competitive Advantage.

ORDER NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT: Assignment: Competitive Advantage.

Discuss the resource-based view of competitive advantage. Why is it important to understand organizational differences to use this approach?
Briefly define what is meant by competitive advantage. Are competitive advantage and sustained competitive advantage identical concepts? Compare and contrast the two concepts.
Professional Development:

Case Study #12: AIDSCAP Nepal
Conduct an internal environmental analysis, identifying the value-creating strengths and weaknesses for each value chain component. Model your response after Exhibit 4-4 (p. 144) “Value Creating Strengths and Value Reducing Weaknesses.”
For each strength, assess the competitive relevance, using Exhibit 4-6 (p. 149) as an example.
Exhibit 4–4: Value Creating Strengths and Value Reducing Weaknesses for American Healthways, Inc.

Assignment: Competitive Advantage.
Value Chain Component
Service Delivery, Pre-Service
Service Delivery, Point-ofService
Service Delivery, AfterService
Support Activities, Culture
Support Activities, Strategic Resources
Value Reducing Weakness
• Limited brand identity • Disease management and care enhancement contracts require extensive selling because of lack of knowledge of key benefits • Revenues subject to seasonal pressures from enrollment processes of contracted health plans
• Company/employees have less experience in care enhancement programs in expanded product line areas such as end-state renal disease, fibromyalgia, etc. • A majority of company’s revenues accounted for by three health plans
• Incomplete or inaccurate data could render independent evaluation of clinical interventions useless
• Acquisition of StatusOne Health System with different culture • Company’s reluctance to declare cash dividend may discourage some classes of investors
• Hospital contracts decreasing • Cost to maintain IT for compliance with federal and state regulations • High labor costs from competition for staff • Volatility of stock price and trading volume
Value Creating Strength
• Customer benefit: care enhancement/disease management concept (attractive to health plans, hospitals, physicians, patients) • Customer benefit developed: geographical coverage (attractive to large health plans) • Six care enhancement centers
• Successful management of diseases leading to reduced costs and increased customer satisfaction • Company employees highly experienced in implementing care enhancement programs in certain areas, such as diabetes • Integrated care product line attracts broad range of patients • Number of covered lives increasing making economies of scale possible
• Alliance with Johns Hopkins Health System to independently evaluate effectiveness of clinical interventions
• First disease management and care enhancement provider in nation accredited by all three accrediting agencies • Highly professionalized culture • Experienced management team of individuals with extensive health care experience and longevity with the company • Conservative fiscal management philosophy: retain earnings for future growth and development • Company has state-of-the-art medical information technology • Company has sound financial position: cash, working capital, stockholder equity increasing over past year • Earnings per share of common stock has increased despite 3:2 stock split in 2001 and 2:1 stock split in 2003.
Exhibit 4–6: Strategic Thinking Map of Competitive Advantages Relative to Strengths in General

Is the Value of the Strength High or Low? (High/Low?)

H

H

H

H

H

H

H

H

Is the Strength Rare? (Yes/No)

N

N

N

N

Y

Y

Y

Y

Is the Strength Easy or Difficult to Imitate? (Easy/Difficult)

E

E

D

D

E

E

D

D

Can the Strength Be Sustained? (Yes/No)

Y

N

Y

N

Y

N

Y

N

Implications

No competitive advantage. Most competitors have the strength and those that do not can develop it easily. All can sustain it. Maintenance strategy.

No competitive advantage. All competitors have the strength which is easy to develop. Strength is not sustainable so it represents only a short-term advantage.

No competitive advantage. Many competitors possess the strength but it is difficult to develop, so care should be taken to maintain this strength.

No competitive advantage. Many competitors possess the strength but it is difficult to develop, and those who do possess it will not be able to sustain the strength. Only a short-term advantage.

Not a source of long-term competitive advantage. Because it is valuable and rare, competitors will do what is necessary to develop this easy-to-imitate strength. Short-term advantage. Should not base strategy on this type of strength but should obtain benefits of short-term advantage.

Not a source of competitive advantage. The strength is easy to imitate and cannot be sustained. Short-term advantage. Do not base strategy on this type of strength but obtain benefits of short-term advantage.

Source of long-term competitive advantage. If value is very high, it may be worth “betting the organization” on this strength.

Possible source of short-term competitive advantage but not a strength that can be sustained over the long run.

Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2013). Strategic Management of Health Care Organizations (7th ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Assignment: Competitive Advantage.

Assignment: Competitive Advantage.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.