Proceedings of the 18th International Academic Conference, London

CAPABILITY VS COMPETENCY: A CASE OF VISHPALA PROSTHETICS

RAJNANDAN PATNAIK

Abstract:

To understand a business, its operations or its competitiveness, it is important to understand the competition and factors of production. These factors help in evaluating the profitability of a firm, its growth prospects and eventual long-term survival. Further, to ensure survival (sustainability) of the firm, it is essential to ascertain the plausible source of competitive advantage, such as core competency. The firm faces with the choice to either build all such required competencies in-house or to somehow acquire them from outside. This paper takes the case of Vishpala Prosthetics and tests the issues of competency in the practical perspective of strategy implementation. The paper converges the two diverging perceptions of the firm, capability versus competency, by analyzing the resource that is valuable to the firm through the five tests as suggested by Collis & Montgomery (2008), viz. the test of inimitability, the test of durability, the test of appropriability, the test of substitutability and the test of competitive superiority. With this, the argument between capability versus competency is explained in the perspective of strategy implementation with the help of the case on the firm.

Keywords: Competency, Scalability, Prosthetics, Firm Appraisal, Start-up Venture

DOI: 10.20472/IAC.2015.018.097

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