Non-traditional Competitors Research Articles

How Can Resilience Create and Build Market Value?

Resilience of an organization is increasingly being perceived as the key factor that enables businesses to bounce back from the inevitable ‘curved balls’ posed by big challenges such as economic, environmental and health impacts (as with the current pandemic), technological discontinuities, regulatory changes, geopolitical shocks, industry de-verticalization and dis-intermediation, sudden shifts in consumer tastes and many/new non-traditional competitors who undermine the disadvantages of incumbency. Organizational resilience defined: Key definitions in the classical literature specify it as a dynamic capability and ‘ability to effectively absorb, develop situation-specific responses to, and ultimately engage in transformative activities to capitalize on disruptive surprises that potentially threaten organization survival’ ( Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011 ). This article attempts to study how resilience can be built in organizations and how it generates market/customer value for businesses in the long haul.

Do You See Them Coming? Attention to Nontraditional Competitors

In this paper, we investigate the antecedents of firms’ attention to nontraditional competitors (including outside-industry and entrepreneurial competitors that are not on the immediate radar of th...

Organisational Agility: Role of HR in Turbulent Times

In order to survive in this dynamic and competitive era, organisations must think about reducing response times and improving flexibility in performing tasks and accept and adapt to changes with limited resistance. Even after the current recession lifts, underlying fluctuations in energy, commodity and currency rates, the emergence of new and nontraditional competitors and rising customer demands will continue to roil traditional business and operating models for some time to come. In today's knowledge era, the ability to transform information into insight in response to market movements is core to sustainability. Companies must think of ways to make their processes more flexible. Organisational agility is defined loosely as a combination of flexibility, nimbleness and speed is increasingly regarded as a source of competitive advantage in today's fast changing markets it is important to create agile people, teams, and cultures. Also in the case of operational processes, organisations need to continually adjust and align how people do their jobs by working together. It is not enough to ensure that people are accepting of changes, they need to advocate and initiate changes. Organisations as tool to achieve agility include flexible structure, human capital, technology, information technology, innovation and creativity. One of the most important survival and development factors of companies in dynamic environment is their agility. Thus, human capital is considered as the most valuable capital and the biggest property in every organisation and country as whole. In fact, human capital is the most important capital of any organisation and also is creative and innovative resource that includes all individuals, abilities and competences, talents, knowledge and staff and managers, experiences. Also, human capital includes factors such as staff's knowledge, skills, abilities and their attitudes (Bazbora, 2004). Today, the speed of changes has increased by growth and development of technology, creative communicative methods, virtual reality, markets improvements and alternative job patterns that each of them led to significant changes. KarlAlbrecht refers to intelligent human factors, groups and organisations to succeed (Bagher Zadeh and Dibavar, 2011). The current business environment is demanding a great deal of workers around the globe. The practice of doing ‘more with less’ has become the modus operandi in most businesses and business areas, perhaps nowhere more so than in human resources (HR) divisions. HR is being stretched and pulled in every way to meet challenging goals within unprecedented resource constraints. This paper is purely based on secondary sources.

Genesis of a Commercial Space Suit from Dining Room Table to Revolutionary Space Company

Abstract The pressurized space suit is an essential enabler for human exploration and eventual settlement of space. A key problem is reducing resistance of the suit to movements of the human occupant. In 2007, NASA sponsored the Astronaut Glove Centennial Challenge which sought non-traditional competitors who could create better gloves than NASA's own state-of-the-art. The winning gloves were developed and built by the author on his dining room table. This and later developments followed a process that is different from most aerospace programs in that it emphasized iterative hands-on build-test-learn cycles over more traditional design and analysis cycles, yet produced significant innovations in glove flexibility, bending resistance compensation, and ability to fabricate custom-patterned (bespoke) gloves with less effort than standard-sized gloves. Gloves incorporating this technology have demonstrated twice the flexibility of current designs which allows higher suit operating pressure and “zero pre-breat...

Online customer experience: Implications for digital banking

Banks will be facing great challenges in the coming period. Some of these challenges are a lack of differentiation, disloyal customers, new non-traditional competitors, increased interaction and expectations from digital channels. Many consulting firms, but also the academic community, propose a solution in the form of implementing the concept of customer experience management. As research shows that a large number of challenges come from the online environment, it is necessary for banks to ensure excellence in the online environment by applying the concept of online customer experience. In order to create this experience, it is up to the banks to meet all the necessary antecedents, which can involve the elements in terms of control, processes and content. This can be a very difficult job if one is unfamiliar with the basics, but it could also be a rewarding job which will reflect on the business performance. Although the focus of the paper is online customer experience, even in the developed countries 'digital' customers are rare. Most of them are multichannel oriented and an important aspect is the multichannel integration and the strategy focused on customer experience. This paper presents an overview of the literature in the field of online customer experience, with the aim of introducing the public with the concept as well as presenting the implications which this concept has for digital banking.

The Link Between Student Satisfaction and Service Quality: A Case of a Rural Based Public University

Globalization and the advent of the information age are recent evolutions that have catalyzed increased competition amongst non-traditional competitors. Institutions of higher education now strive ...

A Study of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) in Manufacturing Industry Perspective

The Manufacturing Industry today is significantly challenged by slow growth and a tough global economy. In order to remain competitive in the global marketplace, manufacturers are adopting radical corporate strategies -- like flattening the organization, globalizing production, forming strategic alliances with customers, suppliers and competitors, merging with other companies to form new structures, decentralizing business units, and creating global business units. Having to deal with a whole new set of non-traditional competitors can slow progress of even the sleekest of companies. This has necessitated Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) for manufacturers of all sizes, today. BPR is being used as a vehicle for re-aligning strategy, operations and systems to deliver significantly increased financial results and customer satisfaction. It helps to find ways to do more with less and provide a better product or service in the minimum amount of time- speed, quality, and cost being the key drivers. This paper provides a brief overview of BPR, and its critical success factors, in addition to discussing applicability of BPR to the manufacturing industry, based on current trends and corporate strategies. Finally, a conclusion is presented. This research paper is theoretical in nature.

Pain-Coping Traits of Nontraditional Women Athletes: Relevance to Optimal Treatment and Rehabilitation.

The primary goal of traditional treatment and rehabilitation programs is to safely return athletes to full functional capacity. Nontraditional activities such as rock climbing or rodeo are typically less training structured and coach structured; individualism, self-determination, and autonomy are more prevalent than observed in athletes in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)-sponsored sports. The limited research available on nontraditional athletes has provided the athletic trainer little insight into the coping skills and adaptations to stressors that these athletes may bring into the clinical setting, especially among the growing number of women participating in these types of activities. A better understanding of the pain-coping traits of nontraditional competitors would enhance insight and triage procedures while heading off potential athlete-related risk factors in the clinical setting. To quantify and compare pain-coping traits among individual-sport women athletes participating in nontraditional versus traditional NCAA-structured competition, with relevance to optimal treatment and rehabilitation. Cross-sectional study. Data collected during each participant's respective group meeting before seasonal activity. Participants or Other Participants : A total of 298 athletes involved in either nontraditional, non-NCAA individual sports (n = 152; mean age = 20.2 ± 1.3 years; downhill skiing, martial arts, rock climbing, rodeo, skydiving, telemark skiing) or traditional NCAA sports (n = 146; mean age = 20.3 ± 1.4 years; equestrian, golf, swimming/diving, tennis, track). All participants completed the Sports Inventory for Pain, a sport-specific, self-report instrument that measures pain-coping traits relevant to competition, treatment, and rehabilitation. Trait measures were direct coping, cognitive, catastrophizing, avoidance, body awareness, and total coping response. Data were grouped for analyses by type of athlete (nontraditional, traditional). We found a significant main effect for type of athlete (Wilks' λ F6,291 = 12.922; P = .0001). Nontraditional sport athletes scored lower on direct coping (P = .0001), cognitive (P = .0001), catastrophizing (P = .0001), and total coping response (P = .0001) than traditional athletes. Women participating in nontraditional individual-sport activity revealed less pronounced pain-coping traits than women participating in more coach-structured, traditional NCAA sports. Sport and medical personnel should consider the type of athlete when prescribing training, treatment, and rehabilitation for optimal performance and return to play.

A Book Publisher's Manifesto for the Twenty-first Century: How Traditional Publishers Can Position Themselves in the Changing Media Flows of a Networked Era

In this challenging call to arms, Sara Lloyd, head of digital publishing at the United Kingdom trade publishing house, Pan Macmillan, explores whether there will be a role for publishers in a digital future and discusses the radical changes in culture and approach publishers will need to make if they are to evolve quickly enough to embrace the change from a linear content creation and delivery chain in which a publisher's role is definitive and fixed, to a circular, networked, Web-based one. This is a broad-ranging piece including coverage of the creative directions in which content creation and delivery might develop, new ways in which publishers will need to engage with authors, readers, and other distributors in the content creation chain and the interface between publishers and nontraditional competitors emerging in the digital marketplace.

Hypercompetition and Strategic Planning in the Retail Food Industry

Much has been written about the changing competitive structures often caused by the advent of new technology or the entry of nontraditional competitors into the market. These new realities suggest a changing perspective on what constitutes competitive strategy, including a view arguing that competitive differential advantage is not sustainable and therefore companies must face up to this reality in their strategic planning. This paper examines food retailing and assesses competitive change within food retailing. The paper goes on to look at D'Aveni's 7-S model and determine its applicability to strategy development in food retailing. Suggestions for strategy formulation within food retailing are given and applications proposed.

The IT advantage assessment model: Applying an expanded value chain model to academia

Academia faces an uncertain future as the 21st century unfolds. New demands, discerning students, increased competition from non-traditional competitors are just a few of the forces demanding a response. The use of information technology (IT) in academia has not kept pace with its use in industry. What has been lacking is a model for the strategic and tactical use of IT that would allow academia to better focus the use of technology in response to the demands of its marketplace. Such a model, termed “IT Advantage Assessment Model,” or ITAAM (derived from Michael Porter’s Value Chain Model) is described herein as it is applied to a case study in academia. This yields a clearer picture of ITAAM in use and serves to validate it. The results indicate a great advantage in the application of ITAAM and a greater understanding of the strategic and tactical implications of IT integration into academia.

The Canadian Forest Service: Agent of change in an evolving forest environment

The Canadian Forest Service (CFS) has set new goals and priorities in its Strategic Plan 2003–2008, re-examining the knowledge it creates and the ways in which that knowledge is created. This is in line with the Government of Canada's pursuit of a global strategy for Canadian science and technology, supporting more collaborative international research at the frontiers of knowledge. Also, with the Canadian forest industry facing new and non-traditional competitors and repositioning its product mix, CFS is encountering increased expectations from its external partners, clients and stakeholders—as the primary forest research agency in the country and the main federal body ensuring the competitiveness of the industry. CFS is, therefore, re-defining its role as the leading player in the Canadian forest sector by re-evaluating how it does business. CFS will spearhead the development and implementation of a new national forest S&T agenda, becoming Canada's premier source of authoritative, value-added forest information. It will also champion Canadian forest interests and expertise internationally while strengthening national consensus on Canadian forest policies and programs and advocating Canada's forest agenda within the federal government. To this end, CFS will attract and support talented personnel by creating a workplace conducive to creativity. Key words: Strategic Plan, global S&T strategy, non-traditional competitors, product mix, value-added forest information

Le service canadien des forêts: Agent de changement dans un environnement forestier en évolution

The Canadian Forest Service (CFS) has set new goals and priorities in its Strategic Plan 2003–2008, re-examining the knowledge it creates and the ways in which that knowledge is created. This is in line with the Government of Canada's pursuit of a global strategy for Canadian science and technology, supporting more collaborative international research at the frontiers of knowledge. Also, with the Canadian forest industry facing new and non-traditional competitors and repositioning its product mix, CFS is encountering increased expectations from its external partners, clients and stakeholders—as the primary forest research agency in the country and the main federal body ensuring the competitiveness of the industry. CFS is, therefore, re-defining its role as the leading player in the Canadian forest sector by re-evaluating how it does business. CFS will spearhead the development and implementation of a new national forest S&T agenda, becoming Canada's premier source of authoritative, value-added forest information. It will also champion Canadian forest interests and expertise internationally while strengthening national consensus on Canadian forest policies and programs and advocating Canada's forest agenda within the federal government. To this end, CFS will attract and support talented personnel by creating a workplace conducive to creativity. Key words: Strategic Plan, global S&T strategy, non-traditional competitors, product mix, value-added forest information

Preemptive patenting, human genomics, and the US biotechnology sector: balancing intellectual property rights with societal welfare

Within the biotechnology sector of the US economy, aggressive patenting, i.e. preemptive patenting, of human genomic research results are practiced by private-sector firms, the academic community, and non-profit organizations. Preemptive patenting has traditionally been practiced by the private sector as a competitive strategy, being driven by economic considerations. Recently, academics and patients/consumers have instituted preemptive patenting strategies as a way of ensuring access to genomic sequences for, respectively, research study purposes and life-enhancing access to diagnostic gene testing. To reduce this non-economic motivation for preemptive patenting by these nontraditional competitors, it is recommended that the biotechnology industry initiate a strategy of its own which will: (1) relax firm patent enforcement of genomic sequences that are essential for academic researchers to use in their studies; and (2) provide for a ‘means-test’ approach that incorporates a ‘staggered’ fee-schedule for academic researchers to charge their subjects, i.e. patients, for gene tests and diagnostic results.

Who Are Your Future Competitors?

As industries restructure and new challengers emerge in established markets, it is vital to strategically assess these nontraditional competitors.

The effects of the current turbulent times on American multinational banking : An overview

Turbulent times are nothing new in the long sweep of financial and monetary history. Nonetheless, the turbulence of the current period has some unique features in terms of both its causes and its long-run effects on the financial markets. Three factors in particular would seem to set the current period apart from previous turbulent periods. First, most previous periods of global financial difficulties were associated either with wars or with acute liquidity crises in the banking system. These factors have been present to some extent in the current episode. However, in addition there has been a dramatic change in the global monetary regime that has played a major role in the present turbulence. Second, most previous crises were not accompanied by technological changes of the magnitude of the current computer/information revolution. And third, no previous crisis occurred in the context of a highly regulated banking industry attempting to adjust to much higher levels of risk, much faster paces of technological change, and much greater price and non-price competition from both traditional and non-traditional competitors in the global financial markets. These factors have radically changed the nature of multinational banking and accelerated pressures to deregulate the price fixing and entry restriction parts of the American financial regulatory system. Many of the current technological, competitive and regulatory issues facing multinational banks have their roots in the unstable and inflationary global monetary regime of the past decade. High and volatile inflation and interest rates, fluctuating currencies, and a long and deep recession have both changed and raised the risks facing multinational banks. Banks have responded over the past decade by attempting to manage this greater risk more carefully through diversification and by developing new products and services that are in demand in this riskier environment, including better and cheaper means of cash management and a richer menu of fixed and variable rate bank deposit and loan products. While the major purpose of this paper is to review how American multinational banks adapted — and are adapting — to the current turbulent times, there is a more fundamental question to consider. That is, will the financial and monetary turbulence of the past decade continue, or will the 1980s bring a return to lower and more stable inflation and interest rates, and faster economic progress?