Organizational America is working very hard these days to become more competitive. Few organizations have been spared the necessity of taking serious action to fight increased pressures from home and abroad. The message is clear: either become more competitive or run the risk of going out of business.O
A national preoccupation with U.S. international industrial competitiveness, driven by our continuing enormous balance of payments deficit, has tended to focus media and political attention during the 1980s on manufacturing. A torrent of books and articles has inundated business managers, offering guidance on how to improve manufacturing performance.
When AT&T entered the credit card business in March 1990, it had a powerful source of competitive advantage: it knew millions of its prospective customers by name and reputation because they were telephone customers.1