Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Fundamentals of Operations Strategy: Com...

Chao, Raul O., Gol...

Technical Note

Fundamentals of Operations Strategy: Competitive Dimensions

Chao, Raul O.; Goldberg, Rebecca

OM-1636 | Published September 25, 2025 | 2 Pages Technical Note

Collection: Darden School of Business

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Product Details

This technical note is part of a set that focuses on the fundamentals of operations strategy, including basic competitive dimensions, productivity measurements, understanding productivity as a relative measure, and the balanced scorecard. While designed to be used together, these four notes can also be used as stand-alone documents to support particular learning objectives. The other notes in this set are “Fundamentals of Operations Strategy: Productivity” (UVA-OM-1637), “Fundamentals of Operations Strategy: Productivity as a Relative Measure” (UVA-OM-1638), and “Fundamentals of Operations Strategy: The Balanced Scorecard” (UVA-OM-1639). These materials form one module in our collection of introductory operations management topics, and all are appropriate for an advanced undergraduate- or graduate-level introductory course on operations management. The complete list of the materials in this collection is available in the teaching materials included with this technical note.

1. Explore how the firm uses competitive dimensions to compete and create a competitive advantage. 2. Present basic methods for calculating output productivity and demonstrate its utility to diagnose strengths and weaknesses in a company. 3. Discuss how productivity measures are used in the context of benchmarking or time series as a critical part of understanding, measuring, comparing, and observing change in a firm’s performance over time. 4. Describe the balanced scorecard as a valuable tool to monitor and manage any operation at a high level because it addresses many different aspects of the company’s operations: financial, customer, business process, and learning and growth.