unit 3

Competitive Advantage and the Value Chain

Write a 350-500 word response (formatted to APA style and including references and citations).

Address the following questions:

• Is the concept of a value chain intrinsic to all businesses and if not, why not?
• How does a Value Chain assist in creating competitive advantage?
• Can competitive advantage be achieved without a value chain?

In your reply also discuss the meaning of the comments made by Lu and Hung (2010) in their article in the Unit 3 readings i.e.” the competiveness of the individual firm depends upon the competitiveness of the value chain to which it belongs” (p. 1155).

• Is this statement valid, and is cost reduction the only purpose of a value chain?

Apply and cite at least three relevant and respected resources [one of the applied and cited references should be the Lu and Hung (2010) article] within the response and list the references at the end of the response. Use APA formatting.

Is Outsourcing a Competitive Advantage?

The topic of outsourcing often elicits heated and often polarizing debate on its use as a basic business strategy.

Required Resource (Kaplan Library)

Yaghoubi, N. M., Moradi, M., & Banihashemi, S. A. (2011). Analyzing the effect of value chain outsourcing on productivity based on the customer and learning perspective of the BSC Model.Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 2(10), 45-56.

Discuss circumstances when outsourcing should be considered, and whether outsourcing will add to the competitive advantage of a firm. Make sure to include the financial AND human considerations that should be included in the decision process.

Apply and cite the above-required resource plus at least two additional relevant and respected resources within the response and list the references at the end of the response. Use APA formatting.

unit 3

Unit 3 assignment

Effective Value Chain equals Competitive Advantage

The purpose of this assignment is to confirm understanding of the direct correlation between an effective value chain and a firm’s competitive advantage.

Directions

1. Use the APA formatted Microsoft Word document template in Doc Sharing: “Unit 3: Effective Value Chain equals Competitive Advantage Assignment” as the starting point.
2. Write a 5-6 pages paper (exclusive of the Title and References pages) making a compelling argument as to why an effective value chain creates competitive advantage.
   1. Examine the concepts of a Value Chain, Competitive Advantage and Customer Delight.
   2. Discuss the inter-relationship of the three elements.
   3. Provide examples of companies that have been successful in this integration and at least one that has not.
3. Apply and citeat leastthree supportive, relevant and respected resources within your paper using APA in-text citation formatting and list the applied references on a References page using APA formatting.
4. Submit your MS Word document into the Unit 3 Dropbox