- •Unit 8. Performance
- •1. Read the text about the pursuit of happiness at work. Enumerate advantages of providing happiness for employees. Elaborate on every advantage.
- •2. Explain how leadership is connected with employees’ happiness.
- •3. Find the questions, define their types and function.
- •Успешные люди родом из счастливого детства
- •Unit 9. Resources
- •Strategy: Resources of a Business.
- •Intangible Resources and Sustainability of Performance Differences.
- •Obtaining financial resources. There is an almost universal reaction of managers when it comes to money, namely, they do not have enough of it. They need and want more.
- •Acquiring and Managing Financial Resources.
- •Vocabulary task
- •Unit 11. Values
- •Putting your Values to the Test
- •1. Now read the rest of the text. Complete sentences about the text with answer a, b, or c.
- •2 Discuss these questions with you partner.
- •3 Work with a partner. Without looking at the text, work together to summarize the main points. You must include all the words and phrases below in your summary.
- •4 Complete the sentences with the correct form of the word in brackets. You will find the answers in the text.
- •Companies turn to ethics for competitive advantage
- •1 Read the extract from the 2011 kpmg Business Ethics Survey. What did the ceOs consider the three most important features of an ethical organisation?
- •2010 Kpmg Business Ethics Survey: Managing for Ethical Practice Executive Briefing
- •2 Look at the report and find examples of the following:
- •3 Read the extract again. Are the following statements true or false?
- •In search of the good company
- •1 Look at the words in bold in the text and try to get meaning of the words. Circle the correct definitions.
- •Социальная ответственность бизнеса
- •Социальная ответственность бизнеса и корпоративное управление
- •Unit 12. Persuaision
- •How To Make Your Advertising Really Work
Intangible Resources and Sustainability of Performance Differences.
By Belén Villalonga, Harvard Business School
According to the resource-based view of the firm (RBV), a firm's endowment of resources is what makes its competitive advantage sustainable intime. RBV stresses the importance of intangible resources as the key to sustainability. Intangible assets, such as a particular technology, accumulated consumer information, brand name, reputation and corporate culture, are invaluable to the firm's competitive power. In fact, these invisible assets are often the only real source of competitive edge that can be sustained over time.
The impact of intangible resources on the sustainability of performance differences across firms is likely to vary systematically by industry, for two reasons. First, some of the intangible resources that can be a source of advantage are likely to be of a different nature in different industries and sectors. For instance, a firm's technological knowledge base built through research and development is more likely to be a source of competitive advantage in the manufacturing sector than it is in the lodging and entertainment industries. Amit and Schoemaker use the term "strategic industry factors" to refer to the set of resources that has become the prime determinant of economic rents for industry incumbents. They note that the capacity of a firm's resources for creating and protecting the firm's competitive advantage depends not just on their unique characteristics but also on the extent to which they overlap with industry-determined strategic industry factors.
Second, the efficacy of different mechanisms for ensuring the appropriation by firms of the value generated by intangible resources is also likely to vary across industries. Intangible resources may exist at different levels within the firm: human resources, teams, functions, processes, projects, or the organization as a whole. RBV recognizes this, but focuses on the firm as the main level of analysis. RBV makes no prediction about the existence or persistence of performance differences across sub-units of a firm; only about differences across firms. It is therefore important to note that, in order for those intangible resources to be a source of superior performance for firms, the owners of the firm must be able to appropriate at least some of their value. Levin et al. (1989) provide evidence that the efficacy of different mechanisms for ensuring the appropriation by firms of returns to R&D varies significantly across industries.
1. Intangible resources are of great importance for the company’s
A. competitiveness.
B. productivity
C. image
2. The word ‘incumbents’ (the second passage) refers to the
A. rivals
B. factors
C. officials
3. The author can hypothesize that the impact of resource intangibility on the sustainability of a firm's competitive advantage will
A. be similar across industries.
B. depend on human resources.
C. differ significantly across industries.
TEXT 3
Read the text about financial resources. Choose the best sentence to fill in the gaps. For each gap (1-5) mark one letter (A-F). Do not use any letter more than once. There is an example at the beginning (0 – B).