ational capabilities and then to cope with the challenges of the competitive environment (Senge, 1990). The individual and collective learning requires proper structures, incentives, and management, which can help firms, generate innovation and build knowledge assets (Teece, 1998). The organizational culture management, which means the elaboration and monitoring of the organizational values with the aim of guiding and coordinating the various experts’ and their teams’ tasks instead of carrying out any other kind of work standardization (Burack, 1991).Business units may employ two basic strategies with a broad or restricted scope in order to develop and attain competitive advantages within their competitive environment (Porter, 1980): Cost reduction, in which the company seeks to position itself by practicing the lowest cost in the competitive environment, which may imply the offering of goods and/or services with the lowest prices in its market. Differentiation, which aims at offering differentiated goods and/or services generally to niches of a market. A price policy with a greater unitary profit margin could be practiced. Focus, which selects one or more segments of the company’s markets and tries to develop competitive advantages (focusing on one of the two previous strategies). As these advantages are focused on a few segments of the market, no general competitive advantage is attained.Competitive advantage is commonly defined as a position attained by a business unit and perceived by its customers when it is compared with its competitors. They may be characterized as lower cost or differentiation (Porter, 1980).Both manufacturing and human resource strategies support the development of a competitive or business unit strategy. Based on the definition of corporate and competitive strategies, it is possible to start the formulation of its manufacturing strategy and the choi...
