14 Part 1: Strategic Management Inputs
Firms should try to develop strategic flexibility in all areas of their operations. However,
those working within firms to develop strategic flexibility should understand that the task
is not easy, largely because of inertia that can build up over time. A firm’s focus and past
core competencies may actually slow change and strategic flexibility.^73
To be strategically flexible on a continuing basis and to gain the competitive bene-
fits of such flexibility, a firm has to develop the capacity to learn. Continuous learning
provides the firm with new and up-to-date skill sets, which allow it to adapt to its envi-
ronment as it encounters changes.^74 Firms capable of rapidly and broadly applying what
they have learned exhibit the strategic flexibility and the capacity to change in ways that
will increase the probability of successfully dealing with uncertain, hypercompetitive
environments.1-2 The I/O Model of Above-Average Returns
From the 1960s through the 1980s, the external environment was thought to be the
primary determinant of strategies that firms selected to be successful.^75 The industrial
organization (I/O) model of above-average returns explains the external environment’s
dominant influence on a firm’s strategic actions. The model specifies that the industry or
segment of an industry in which a company chooses to compete has a stronger influence
on performance than do the choices managers make inside their organizations.^76 The
firm’s performance is believed to be determined primarily by a range of industry proper-
ties, including economies of scale, barriers to market entry, diversification, product dif-
ferentiation, the degree of concentration of firms in the industry, and market frictions.^77
We examine these industry characteristics in Chapter 2.
Grounded in economics, the I/O model has four underlying assumptions. First, the
external environment is assumed to impose pressures and constraints that determine
the strategies that would result in above-average returns. Second, most firms competing
within an industry or within a segment of that industry are assumed to control similar
strategically relevant resources and to pursue similar strategies in light of those resources.
Third, resources used to implement strategies are assumed to be highly mobile across
firms, so any resource differences that might develop between firms will be short-lived.
Fourth, organizational decision makers are assumed to be rational and committed to
acting in the firm’s best interests, as shown by their profit-maximizing behaviors.^78 The
I/O model challenges firms to find the most attractive industry in which to compete.
Because most firms are assumed to have similar valuable resources that are mobile across
companies, their performance generally can be increased only when they operate in the
industry with the highest profit potential and learn how to use their resources to imple-
ment the strategy required by the industry’s structural characteristics. To do so, they must
imitate each other.^79
The five forces model of competition is an analytical tool used to help firms find the
industry that is the most attractive for them. The model (explained in Chapter 2) encom-
passes several variables and tries to capture the complexity of competition. The five forces
model suggests that an industry’s profitability (i.e., its rate of return on invested capital
relative to its cost of capital) is a function of interactions among five forces: suppliers,
buyers, competitive rivalry among firms currently in the industry, product substitutes,
and potential entrants to the industry.^80
Firms use the five forces model to identify the attractiveness of an industry (as
measured by its profitability potential) as well as the most advantageous position
for the firm to take in that industry, given the industry’s structural characteristics.^81