Corporate Core Competencies’ Essence, Contexts, Discovery, and Future: A Call to Action for Executives and Researchers

Abstract

Research and managerial literatures on core competencies present them as essential to corporations because these competencies, proposed by the literatures to be difficult to acquire and imitate, are applied repeatedly to produce products and services delivering value to customers and wealth to corporations. Indeed, researchers and managers consider the significance of core competencies to be immense as they are the central intellectual means through which corporations produce valuable products and services. Paradoxically, though, rather than providing a clear, focused description, or picture, of what core competencies are and how they contribute to their host corporations, these same literatures present a sprawling, even fragmented picture of core competencies’ essence and contribution.In contrast, this book presents a clear empirical model of corporations’ core competencies’ essence; provides a clear conceptual treatment of how core competencies’ contextual, corporate contributions occur; presents valid methodologies for discovering and understanding corporations’ specific core competencies; and delineates an agenda for executives and researchers to collaborate in learning about core competencies and in using them to provide value for corporate stakeholders, especially customers. The book also places core competencies within their historical and social context, and it presents conceptual and methodological tools to assist in managing and discovering them.