In Search of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

This research project aims to explain how firms can gain and sustain their competitive advantages in some of the most important industries of the Finnish economy. It aims to empirically explain interfirm differences in profitability by analyzing both the external conditions at the industry level and internal idiosyncratic factors at the firm level as potential sources for competitive advantages and their shifts.

The role of Turku School of Economics and Business Administration in this project is to focus on competition analysis. The dynamic nature of the market process and competition is becoming an increasingly decisive issue at the global market arena. Consequently, the need to better understand the evolution of competitive forces and their interplay with business organizations and competition authorities is becoming a crucial issue. The research problem is the manifestation of firm level competitive advantages, and the pursuit of these advantages, at the industry level. Our goal is to build up a unifying framework that integrates the investigation of firm-specific sources of competitive advantage and industry-level competition analysis.

In relation to the goals of the consortium, focus is on the role of external environment in competitive advantage of firms. The research problem is twofold: 1) the idea is to bring into the discussion the threats and opportunities to firms opened up by changes in the external environment, e.g. industry concentration, regulation, nature of competition, and as the requirements of competition policy are changing, 2) to elaborate the idea of the competition process in knowledge-based economy from a theoretic point of view.

Participating in the Advantage project from TSEBA are Professor Paavo Okko and researcher and Ph.D. student Mikko Pohjola. Contact: Prof. Paavo Okko p. 02 4814 336, paavo.okko(at)tukkk.fi; Director Aki Koponen p. 02 4814 605, aki.koponen(at)tukkk.fi.