Yasemin Bal
Research Assistant, Yildiz Technical University, Turkey.
Esin Can Mutlu
Professor, Yildiz Technical University, Turkey.
Yonca Gurol
Associate Professor, Yildiz Technical University, Turkey.The Core Competence Concept: A Way to Gain
Competitive Advantage for Organizations
Competitive advantage has gained more importance for the
organizations that continue their activities in an increasing competitive
environment. Parallel with the changes in technology and competitive
conditions, it has become vital for organizations to survive in this
challenging world. Different strategies are analyzed in order to gain
sustainable competitive advantage.
Organizations can have sustainable competitive advantage against
their rivals in the industry and earn above average income by
developing differentiated products or services and creating a superior
value for the customer. One of the strategic approaches that is proposed
for competitive advantage is the concept of “Core Competencies” which
will be studied in this paper.
According to Gary Hamel and C.K.Prahalad; companies can create
a superior value for the customers by developing valuable, rare,
inimitable and nonsubstitutable core competencies that are unique for
them in the industry. When an organization has a core competence, it
can achieve sustainable competitive advantage and make strategic
alliances by exploiting this competence to varied customer segments,
products and services.
In order to obtain competitive advantage, it is recommended to the
organizations to give priority to explore their resources and capabilities
by doing internal analysis and develop core competencies, then
determine their core competence based strategies according to the
opportunities outside. Organizations should focus on their core values
and outsource the cost increasing functions. By maintaining their core
competencies against the changes, they may become more powerful to
sustain their competitive advantages in the industry.
In this paper the theoretical perspective of “core competence” will
be explained and then the effect of core competencies for gaining
competitive advantage will be discussed briefly by the help of real
organization examples.