An Evaluation of a Company’s Resources and Capabilities; Achieving

and Sustaining Competitive Advantage in Nigerian firms

by

Mrs. Hauwa Lamino Abubakar

1.0 Abstract

Achieving a competitive advantage position relative to its business rival is what most Nigerian

organization in particular should be aiming for. Despite the importance of attaining competitive

advantage in organizations, there has been limited study on the relationship between organizational

resources and the way firms are organized to achieve competitive advantage.

A company’s resource and capabilities are increasingly being considered as one of the fundamental

sources of competitive advantage within the context of strategic management in Nigeria. However, most

literature has not clearly linked the resource and capabilities of an organization with sustainable

competitive advantage. This paper, therefore, explores and discusses the role of a company’s resource

and capabilities in helping Nigerian business firms to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

Specifically, it deals with how resources and capabilities can be transformed into competencies of an

organization that can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage. The main research methods used

are interview of the five (5) organizations that were picked as the population of study, also analysis and

integration of theories were done to develop a conceptual model. This paper proposes that, through a

company’s resources and capabilities a firm can develop hard to imitate core competence that creates

value, which in turn leads to superior performance, thus competitive advantage over other competitors

in the Nigerian market.

2.0 Introduction

In the 21st century business landscape, firms must compete in a complex and

challenging context that is being transformed by many factors from

globalization, frequent and uncertain changes to the growing use of

information technologies (DeNisi, Hitt and Jackson, 2003). Therefore achieving

a competitive advantage is a major preoccupation of senior managers in the

competitive and slow growth markets, which characterize many businesses

today and the sources of competitive advantage have been a major concern

for scholars and practitioners for the last two decades (Henderson, 1983;

Porter, 1985; Coyne, 1986; Prahalad and Hamel, 1990; Barney, 1991; Grant,

1991; Peteraf, 1993). The importance of competitive advantage and

distinctive competences as determinants of a firm’s success and growth has

increased tremendously in the last decade. This increase in importance is as a

result of the belief that fundamental basis of above-average performance in

the long run is sustainable competitive advantage (Porter, 1985). Practitioners

and academicians have centred their studies on firm specific characteristics

that are unique, add value to the ultimate consumer and are transferable to

many different industrial settings (Coplin, 2002). Thus, it is understood that

across sectors most firms should recognize that attaining competitive

advantages is the most challenging issue facing firms in the 21st century. This

concern has lead to the development of resource-based and knowledge-based

theories that examine the relationship between core resources and

capabilities; sustainable competitive advantage and above normal

performance. According to Barney (1991) a firm is said to have a sustainable

competitive advantage when it is implementing a value creating strategy not

simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors

and when these other firms are unable to duplicate the benefits of this

strategy. Thus sustained competitive advantage exists only after efforts to

replicate that advantage have failed. It is for this reason that organizations

are focusing on methods and strategies that are difficult to imitate. One of

such methods and strategies is resource-based approach through which an

organization is capable of developing intellectual capital (human capital,

social capital and organizational capabilities) that is rare and difficult to

imitate.

3.0 Objectives of the Study

The objectives of the study are:

1. To know if company resources play a vital role in a company's

competition.

2. To understand the relationship between resources, capabilities, and

competence of firms.

3. To know if resources play a significant role in achieving and sustaining

the competitive advantage of an organization.

4.0 Literature Review

4.1 Introduction

Winning business strategies are grounded in sustainable competitive

advantage. A company has competitive advantage whenever it has an edge

over rivals in attracting customers and defending against competitive forces.

There are many routes to competitive advantage, but the most basic is

through a company’s internal resources and competitive capabilities. An

organisation can identify its internal strategic factors – critical strengths and

weaknesses that are likely to determine whether a firm will be able to take

advantage of opportunities while avoiding threats.

4.2 Organisational Resources

(Johnson, Scholes & Whittington, 2008; pg 95-96) Perhaps the most basic

concept is that of resources. Tangible resources are the physical assets of an

organisation such as plant, people and finance. Intangible resources are non-

physical assets such as information, reputation and knowledge. Typically an

organisation’s resources can be considered under the following categories;

Physical resources – such as the machines, buildings or the production

capacity of the organization.

Financial resources – such as capital, cash, debtors and creditors, and

suppliers of money (shareholders, bankers, etc).

Human resources including the mix (for example demographic profile),

skills and knowledge of employees and other people in an organisation’s

networks.

An intellectual capital resource – as intangible resources – includes

patents, brands, business systems and customer data bases. An

indication of the values of these is that when businesses are sold, part

of the value is ‘goodwill’. In a knowledge-based economy intellectual

capital is likely to be a major asset of many organisations.

4.3 Resource-Based Approach

The RBV theory argues that firms have resources which enable them to

achieve competitive advantage and superior performance. Resources that are

valuable and rare can lead to the creation of competitive advantage. That

advantage can be sustained over longer time periods to the extent that the

firm is able to protect against resource imitation, transfer, or substitution.

Researchers have argued that internal resources are more important than

external factors for a firm in achieving and sustaining competitive advantage.

Some researchers have also argued that a firm’s performance will mainly be

determined by internal resources of the firm such as employees, training,

experience, intelligence, knowledge, skills, abilities, information systems,

patents, trademarks, copyrights, databases, and so forth. In sum, RBV theory

asserts that resources are basically what help a firm to exploit opportunities

and neutralize threats. David asserts that the basic premise of the RBV is that

the mix and type of a firm’s internal resources should be considered first and

foremost in devising strategies that can lead to sustainable competitive

advantage.

(Shaibu, 2010; pg 164) Proposing that a company’s sustained competitive

advantage is primarily determined by its resource endowments; Grant (1991)

proposes a five-step, resource-based approach to strategy analysis:

1. Identify and classify the firm’s resources in terms of strengths and

weaknesses.

2. Combine the firm’s strengths into specific capabilities and core

competencies.

3. Appraise the profit potential of these capabilities and competencies in

terms of their potential for sustainable competitive advantage and the

ability to harvest the profits potential from their use. Are there any

distinctive competencies.

4. Select the strategy that best exploits the firm’s capabilities and

competencies relative to external opportunities.

5. Identify resources gaps and invest in upgrading weaknesses.

4.4 A Company’s Competitive Capabilities

(Shaibu, 2010; pg 162-163) Capabilities refer to a company's ability to exploit its

resources. They consist of processes and routines that manage the interaction

among resources to turn inputs into outputs. For example, a company's

marketing capability can be based on the interaction among its marketing

specialists, information technology, and financial resources a capability is

functionally based and is resident in a particular function. Thus there are

marketing capabilities, manufacturing capabilities, and human resources

management capabilities

(Thompson & Strickland, 2004; pg 96-97) A distinction needs to be made

between capabilities (resources or competences that are at a threshold level

and those that might help the organisation achieve competitive advantage

and superior performance. Threshold capabilities are those needed for an

organisation to meet the necessary requirements to compete in a given

market. These could be threshold resources required to meet minimum

customer requirements: for example, the increasing demands by modern

multiple retailers of their suppliers mean that those suppliers have to possess

a sophisticated IT infrastructure simply to stand a chance of meeting retailer

requirements. Or they could be the threshold competences required to deploy

resources so as to meet customers’ requirements and support particular

strategies. Retailers do not simply expect suppliers to have the required IT

infrastructure, but to be able to use it effectively so as to guarantee the

required level of service.

(Thompson & Strickland, 2004; pg 118) Example of competitive capabilities

includes; short development times in bringing new products to the market, a

strong dealer network, strong partnerships with key suppliers, an R&D

organization with the ability to keep the company’s pipeline full of innovative

new products, a high degree of organizational agility in responding to shifting

products, a high degree of organizational agility in responding to shifting

market conditions and emerging opportunities, a cadre of highly trained

customer service representatives, or state-of-the-art systems for doing

business via the internet.

4.5 The Relationship between Company Resources and Capabilities

(Grant, 2009; pg 149) Possibly the most difficult problem in developing

capabilities is that we know little about the linkage between resources and

capabilities. The firms that demonstrate the most outstanding capabilities are

not necessarily those with the greatest resource endowments: in automobiles,

GM has four times the output of Honda and four times the R&D expenditure,

yet it is Honda, not GM, that is world leader in power train technology.

(Shaibu, 2010; pg 170) Functional resources and capabilities include not only

the financial, physical, and human assets in each area but also the ability of

the people in each area to formulate and implement the necessary functional

objectives, strategies, and policies. These resources and capabilities include

the knowledge of analytical concepts and procedural techniques common to

each area as well as the ability of the people in each area to use them

effectively. If used properly, these resources and capabilities serve as

strengths to carry out value-added activities and support strategic decisions.

It can be clearly seen how resources have a direct effect on the competitive

capabilities of an organization. Once these resources can be identified and

used effectively then proper strategic plans can be put together, thus a

company will have a strong competitive capability over its rivals.

According to Hamel and Prahalad, it is not the size of a firm’s resource base

that is the primary determinant of capability, but the firm’s ability to leverage

its resources.

Resources can be leveraged in the following ways;

Concentrating Resources: through the processes of converging

resources on a few clearly defined and consistent goals; focusing the

efforts of each group, department, and business unit on individual

priorities in a sequential fashion; and targeting those activities that have

the biggest impact on customers’ perceived value.

Accumulating resources through mining experience in order to achieve

faster learning and burrowing from other firms – accessing their resources

and capabilities through alliances, outsourcing arrangements, and the

like.

Complementing resources involves increasing their effectiveness through

the linking them with complementary resources and capabilities. This may

involve blending product design capabilities with the marketing

capabilities needed to communicate these to the market, and balancing

to ensure that limited resources and capabilities in one area do not hold

back the effectiveness of resources and capabilities in another.

Conserving resources involves utilizing resources and capabilities to the

fullest by recycling them through different products, markets, and product

generations; and co-opting resources through collaborative arrangements

with other companies.

(Thompson & Strickland, 2004; pg 97-98) while threshold capabilities are

important, they do not of themselves create competitive advantage or the

basis of superior performance. These are dependent on an organisation

having distinctive or unique capabilities that competitors will find difficult to

imitate. This could be because the organisation has unique capabilities that

competitors will find difficult to imitate. This could be because the

organisation has unique resources that critically underpin competitive

advantage and that others cannot imitate or obtain – a long established

brand, for example. It is, however more likely that an organisation achieves

competitive advantage because it has distinctive, or core, competences.

4.6 Identifying a Company’s Competencies

(Johnson, Scholes & Whittington, 2008; pg 96) The term competence is used

to mean the skills and abilities by which resources are deployed effectively

through an organisation’s activities and processes.

It can also be said to be (Shaibu, 2010; pg 162-163) a cross-functional

integration and coordination of capabilities. For example, a competency in

new product development in one division of a company may be the

consequence of integration management of information systems (MIS)

capabilities, marketing capabilities, R&D capabilities, and production

capabilities within the division.

(Thompson & Strickland, 2004; pg 120) A company competence is nearly

always the product of experience, representing an accumulation of learning

overtime and the build-up of overtime of real proficiency. Competencies have

to be consciously built and developed- they don’t just happen a company

competence originates with deliberate efforts to develop the organizational

ability to do something, however imperfectly or inefficiently. Such efforts

entail selecting people with the requisite knowledge and skills, upgrading or

expanding individual abilities as needed, and then moulding the efforts and

work products of individuals into cooperative group effort to create

organizational ability. Then as experience builds, such that the company

reaches a level of ability to perform the activity consistently well and at an

acceptable cost, the ability begins to translate into true core competence.

A company’s proficiency in conducting different facets of its operations can

range from merely the ability to perform an activity to a competence, core

competence, or distinctive competence:

1. A competence is an internal activity an organization performs with

proficiency. Some competencies relate to fairly specific skills and

expertise (like just-in-time inventory control or picking locations for new

stores) and may be performed in a single department or organizational

unit. Other competencies, however, are inherently multidisciplinary and

cross-functional. A competence in continuous product innovation, for

example, comes from the bundled efforts of people and groups with

expertise in market research, new product R&D, design and

engineering, cost-effective manufacturing, and market testing.

2. A core competence is a proficiently performed internal activity that is

central to a company’s strategy and competitiveness. A core

competence is a highly valuable capability because of the contribution it

makes to the company’s success in the marketplace. A company may

have more than one core competence in its resource portfolio, but rare

is the company that can legitimately claim more than two or three core

competencies. Most often, a core competence is knowledge-based,

residing in people and in a company’s intellectual capital and not in its

assets on the balance sheet. Moreover, a core competence is more

likely to be grounded in cross-department combinations of knowledge

and expertise rather than being the product of a single department or

work group. Face book has a core competence in anticipating features

that will appeal to Internet users who maintain social networking sites.

The ability of Internet users to share information, photos, videos, and

interesting news stories with friends and others made Face book the

world’s largest social networking site as of 2009 with more than 90

million unique visitors each month.

3. A distinctive competence is a competitively valuable activity that a

company performs better than its rivals. Because a distinctive

competence represents a uniquely strong capability relative to rival

companies, it has significant competitive advantage potential. This is

particularly true when the distinctive competence enables a company to

deliver standout value to customers (in the form of lower prices or

better product performance or superior service). Toyota has worked

diligently over several decades to establish a distinctive competence in

low-cost, high-quality manufacturing of motor vehicles; its “lean

production” system is far superior to that of any other automaker’s and

the company is pushing the boundaries of its production advantage with

a new Global Body assembly line. Toyota’s Global Body assembly line

costs 50 percent less to install and can be changed to accommodate a

new model for 70 percent less than its previous production system.

The conceptual differences between a competence, a core competence, and a

distinctive competence draw attention to the fact that a company’s resources

and competitive capabilities are not all equal. Some capabilities and

competencies merely enable market survival because most rivals have them.

Core competencies are competitively more important than competencies

because they add power to the company’s strategy and have a bigger positive

impact on its market position and profitability. Distinctive competencies are

even more competitively important. A distinctive competence is competitively

potent for three reasons:

1. It gives a company competitively valuable capability that is unmatched

by rivals,

2. It has potential for being the cornerstone of the company’s strategy,

and

3. It can produce a competitive edge in the marketplace.

4.7 Competitive Advantage

(Thompson & Strickland, 2004; pg 117) Sizing up a firm’s resource

strengths and weaknesses and its external opportunities and threats,

commonly known as SWOT analysis, provides a good overview of whether a

firm’s business position is fundamentally healthy or unhealthy. SWOT analysis

is grounded in the basic principle that strategy-making efforts must aim at

producing a good fit between a company’s resource capability (as reflected by

its balance of resource strength and weaknesses) and its external situation

(as reflected by industry and competitive conditions, the company’s own

market opportunities, and specific external threats to the company’s

profitability and market standing). Perceptive understanding of a company’s

resource capabilities and deficiencies, its market opportunities and the

external threats to its future well-being is essential to a good-strategy making.

4.8 Achieving and Sustaining Competitive Advantage through Resources

& Capabilities

According to Barney (1991) a firm is said to have a sustainable competitive

advantage when it is implementing a value creating strategy not

simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors

and when these other firms are unable to duplicate the benefits of this

strategy. Thus sustained competitive advantage exists only after efforts to

replicate that advantage have failed. It is for this reason that organizations

are focusing on methods and strategies that are difficult to imitate. One of

such methods and strategies is organizational learning through which an

organization is capable of developing intellectual capital (human capital,

social capital and organizational capabilities) that is rare and difficult to

imitate.

According to Alderson (1965) firms should strive for unique characteristics in

order to distinguish themselves from competitors in the eyes of the consumer

for a long period of time (that is, sustainable competitive advantage). (Collis

and Montgomery, 1995) Thus, sustainable competitive advantage is the ability

to offer superior customer value on an enduring or consistent basis, a

situation in which competitors are unable to easily imitate the firm’s capacity

for value creation. According to Barney (1991), sustainable competitive

advantage arises when the firm’s resources are valuable (the resources help

the firm create valuable products and services), rare (competitors do not have

access to them), inimitable (competitors cannot easily replicate them) and

appropriate (the firm owns them and can exploit them at will). (Aaker, 1989;

Barney, 1995) Acquiring and preserving sustainable competitive advantage

and superior performance are a function of the resources and capabilities

brought to the competition. (Dodgson, 1993; Sinkula, 1994) These knowledge

resources and capabilities, resulting from learning processes implies an

improvement in response capacity through a broader understanding of the

environment.

(Johnson, Scholes & Whittington, 2008; pg 106) from the resource-based view

of organisations, managers need to consider whether their organisation has

strategic capabilities to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. To do so

they need to consider how and to what extent it has capabilities which are;

a) Valuable to buyers

b) Rare

c) Inimitable

d) Non substitutable

If such capabilities for competitive advantage do not exist, the managers

need to consider if they can be developed.

Competitive advantage could also be based on rare competences: for

example, unique skills developed overtime. However, there are three (3)

important points to bear in mind about the extent to which rarity of

competences might provide sustainable competitive advantage:

Ease of transferability. Rarity may depend on who owns the

competence and how easily transferable it is. For example, the

competitive advantage of some professional service organisations is

built around the competence of specific individuals – such as a doctor in

‘leading-edge’ medicine’, individual fund managers, the manager of a

top sports team or the CEO of a business .but since these individuals

may leave or join competitors, this resource may be a fragile basis of

advantage

Sustainability. It may be dangerous to assume that competences that

are rare will remain so. Rarity could be temporary. If an organisation is

successful on the basis of a unique set of competences, then

competitors will seek to imitate or obtain those competences. So it may

be necessary to consider other bases of sustainability.

Core rigidities. There is another danger of redundancy. Rare

capabilities may come to be what Dorothy Leonard-Barton refers to as

‘core rigidities’, difficult to change and therefore damaging to the

organisation. Managers may be so wedded to these bases of success

that they perceive them as strengths of the organisation and ‘invent’

customer values around them.

4.9 Summary

Organisational capability is concerned with the suitability and adequacy of an

organisations resources and competences that will enable organisation to

survive and prosper. If organisations are to achieve competitive advantage,

they require resources and competences which are both valuable to

customers and difficult for competitors to imitate, which are known as core

competences.

The sustainability of competitive advantage is likely to depend on strategic

capabilities being of; value to customers, rare, inimitable, or non-sustainable.

In the ever-growing global market, an organisations’ strategic capability

cannot remain the same. Therefore dynamic capabilities are essential (that is

the ability to change strategic capability continually)

Managers need to think about how and to what extent they can manage their

company’s resources and strategic capabilities, by stretching and adding to

such resources and capabilities to create core and distinctive competencies,

so as to achieve and sustain competitive advantage over its competitors.

5.0 Methodology of the Study

This study employed, interview, journals, textbooks, and also corporate

material from various organizations in Nigeria which were selected as the

population study. This includes Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN), Nassarawa

State University Keffi (NSUK), Federal Inland Revenue (FIRS), Central Bank of

Nigeria (CBN), Federal Medical Centre Keffi (FMC). The interview focused on

the management members of these various organizations mentioned above.

Management members were selected to be interviewed because of their

direct accesses to corporate resources.

The first stage was the interview which gave insight on how company

resources were used, and if they were used effectively to create

organizational competencies and capabilities. Further discussions were made

on the essential resources needed to increase the productivity/profitability of

these various organizations. In total 50 (fifty) managers were interviewed. 10

(ten) Managers were picked from each organization mentioned above. Also

textbooks, corporate journals and corporate profiles were also retrieved and

critically studied to understand the capabilities and competencies of these

various organizations. Finally further studies were made to see if it was

possible for these organizations to create and sustain a competitive

advantage or even increase productivity through these resources and

capabilities.

6.0 Discussions

6.1 Company’s Resources

From the research carried out it has been realised that organizations

especially in Nigeria are always limited in resources that will help them in

creating competitive capabilities over their competitors, especially the

competitors abroad. These resources include:

Infrastructural Resources: For example when you look at infrastructural

resources like electricity which has been a prominent problem in Nigeria for

decades; it affects all organizations in Nigeria, thus it will definitely affect their

productivity. Therefore organizations need to provide accesses to

uninterrupted electricity and a private water system (i.e. bore hole) and

advocate to government or if possible develop roads that lead to their

organization. This and more will give them a better competitive edge over

their competitors.

Equipment & Machinery Resources: Also when you look at some Nigerian

organizations like CBN, FIRS whereby some office materials have to be taken

abroad processed abroad because of lack of equipments in Nigeria. In this

aspect Nigerian organizations need to make greater effort on trying to

purchase sophisticated equipments and machines, even if it means in the

long-run. Also Government should create polices on allowing Nigerian used

materials to be made abroad and also encourage these equipments and

machines to be brought into Nigeria.

Financial Resources: in this aspect, financial resources are available in Nigeria to

a good extent. The hindrance comes from it not being utilised properly.

Nigerian organization whether publicly or privately owned has had the

reputation of squandering or unnecessarily using financial resources

ineffectively, which tends to affect the Nigerian organization in the long-run.

Strict organizational policies need to be put in place that will mitigate the

under utilisation of these financial resources, and also proper budgets,

auditing should be put in place to make sure there is a checks and balance

system.

Raw Material Resources: these resources are the most essential resources in an

organization. It is with these resources that an organizations product or

service is created. Nigeria is endowed with various resources, which even

other countries tend to buy from us, but again the quality of these resources

in Nigeria tend to hinder the problem of availability of the ‘right’ resources

needed to produce the goods or services in an organization. This limits the

resources that tend to be available for some organizations in Nigeria. Some

Nigerian organizations tend to buy abroad because of reasons like this.

Nigerian government have to create stricter policies that will limit

organizations buying foreign materials, but not only stop at that but look into

how these raw materials can be of better standard, so that organizations don’t

have to go out of the country to look for a particular raw material.

Human Resources: if not the most important resources needed in an

organization. Nigeria is one of the most populace countries in the world, so

when you talk about human resources it is abundant. But when we say human

resources we are also talking about the literate, professional, and experienced

person. Of course if a worker is professional in his or her field the tendency is

that they will work more effectively than an amateur who doesn’t have the

experience or necessary qualification. The problem with most Nigerian

organizations is that they let sentiment, personal interests and biasness get in

the way in selecting the right kind of worker that is qualified and suited to do

the required job, and this of course affects the quality of work of an

organization. Thus organization need to be more rigid when it comes to the

quality of worker employed to work for their organization and also make sure

all necessary training is given to improve their professional ability.

From the essential resources mentioned above we can see that resources play

a vital role in creating the necessary capabilities and competencies that

Nigerian organizations need to have a competitive advantage over their

competitors and if these resources are utilised well, then ‘sky is the limit’ for

these organizations.

The more firm-specific and difficult to imitate an organizations resource, the

more likely Nigerian organizations will have a distinctive competency.

Nigerian firms should give more efforts to its resources than to its competitive

environment. What organizations should do is to create a status where its own

resource position directly or indirectly makes it more difficult for others to

catch up. Furthermore, Nigerian organizations may have firm-specific and

valuable resources, but unless it has the capability to use those resources

effectively, it may not be able to create a distinctive competency.

6.2 Creating Competencies

From the selected population of study, the research has given us insight on

the competencies and lack of competencies that exists in the various

organizations (CBN, FIRS, NSUK, PAN, and FMC). As discussed earlier on we

know that competency is the direct function of skills and expertise of a

particular work activity or process, as well as work efficiency.

From the interview conducted in PAN their competency can be clearly seen in

their production of cars which is done with such expertise and efficiency.

Every stage of production is timed; also workers are given consistent and

qualitative training for better expertise. We can also say that their production

line is a core competency, because of its international standard of production.

CBN can also be said to have a competency of skilled employees who are

professionals in their field like human resource management, strategic

planning, risk management, auditing, etc. This gives CBN a good corporate

image of competent workers who know what they are doing.

When we look at organizations like FMC, there is lack of organizational

competency. This is mainly due to the lack of Doctors available at all hours of

the day; as well as inadequate reception which gives the organization a bad

image to customers. There are also some hospital services that can’t be found

at all times of the day i.e. scanning, x-ray, etc.

Therefore we can see that though some Nigerian organizations are making big

strides to become more competent and making efforts to create core

competencies. Some organizations have to make extra efforts and even

extensive organizational changes that will help them in being more competent

and creating core competencies that can be used to compete with

competitors.

6.2 Capabilities of an Organization

Further research has also given us insight on the capabilities of these various

organizations. From are earlier definition of organizational capabilities, which

is the effective exploitation of resource; Nigerian organizations in general fall

short of fully utilising their resources, which was discussed earlier on. From

the interview and data retrieved from the population of study, capability has

been lacking in one or more aspects of all organizations. This shows that

almost all if not all organisations in Nigeria have to re-strategies in order to

become more capable and exploit their resources so they can be more

competent.

For example NSUK have the knowledgeable resources, and excellent location

to attract Abuja-based workers to their school. Various professional programs

can be created that will tailor the Abuja-based workers to NSUK, thus create

great revenue for NSUK.

6.4 Achieving & Sustaining Competitive Advantage

The final research analysis focused on achieving and sustaining the

competitive advantage of a firm through the resources of that firm. Therefore

through our analysis of data collected of the various Nigerian organizations it

was realised that resources like raw materials, plant & machinery,

infrastructure, human, etc play a vital role in achieving and sustaining these

organizations main goals and objectives.

For example in FIRS the Director of Human Resource makes sure that proper

recruitment process is done through hiring independent consultants, to make

sure professional and competent employees are placed in the necessary place

of work, which brings about professionalism. This brings about a level of

competence at work, which in turn will increase the productivity of the firm.

In the instance of PAN the Assembly line and machineries’ are needed to

assemble the Peugeot Sedan Cars together. It’s the level of maintenance of

these machines and its sophistication that brings about its high level of

effectiveness, thus competence of a highly sophisticated assembly line. This

in turn produces qualitative, standard cars for the Nigerian customers.

Therefore competitive advantage is achieved and can be sustained through

consistent maintenance and training of workers on the assembly line.

It should be realised that once resources are not effectively used in these

organizations i.e. employees are recruited based on favouritism of

management employees and not because of qualification; or the lack of

maintenance of the assembly line, which in time could cause the breaking

down of the plant and machinery.

Therefore it has been concluded that it’s not just about having the required

and quantity of resources, but knowing how to utilise these resources or make

sure these resources are used effectively (capability) to create a required

outcome of productivity. Once this is done it creates competence;

competence of employees, plant and machinery, consistent electricity supply,

adequate water supply, qualitative raw materials, adequate internet

connection, clean working environment, etc.

7.0 Conclusion & Recommendation

A firm’s goals and objectives should align with its resources and capabilities,

leveraging its core competencies and helping it achieve its strategic intent.

Once, the strategic intent has been articulated, the firms should be able to

identify the resources and capabilities required to close the gap between the

strategic intent and the current position.

Resource and capability not only provide the direction for business strategy,

but also are the key of business performance and creating advantage and the

main source of firm’s benefits. In other words, the appropriated firm resources

acquisition, allocation and utilization are the key factor that decides the firm

operation efficiency and profitability. Because resources and capabilities play

a dominant role in achieving a sustainable competitive advantage, managers

would be expected to design strategy to leverage firm’s resources and

capabilities.

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