Competitive advantages in business strategy

Riordan is a plastic injection-molding manufacturer. The company has expanded overseas, and competes in a number of other countries at this point (Tavangaran, 2013). That creates exposure for Riordan to the global market. There are several ways that the global market affects the company. This paper will outline those.

Nachum (2012) notes that there are several international forces that can affect business strategy. These are supply chains, global markets and global competition. Riordan is actually a part of the global supply chain for a number of different companies. So Riordan mostly needs to focus on how it will foster competitive advantage because now it must compete against companies from anywhere for business everywhere. Global competition means finding competitive advantage either in being a low cost producer or a high end producer with exceptional technological capability (Mind Tools, 2013).

So for Riordan, the natural approach is to seek competitive advantage through high levels of quality and technological innovation. This is because as an American company Riordan is unlikely to have any sort of cost advantage, but it can reasonably have a technological competitive advantage. This is important for Riordan to recognize.

On the production side, the company has implemented Six Sigma, which is a technique that fosters things like low defect rates (iSixSigma, 2013). That is an important part of being a global leader in technological competitive advantage. However, if one wants to sustain this competitive advantage, then there are further steps that need to be followed -- Six Sigma is just a starting point. Another strategy is to build a corporate culture that emphasizes quality and innovation. In the global marketplace, this is actually going to be important because the company now has a plant in China. In order to build a truly global brand and service customers all over the world, Riordan needs to ensure that all of its facilities are operating to the same high standard as the first plant, with a culture that is built around quality and reinforced by the use of Six Sigma techniques.

Further, the company needs to bolster all of this with recruiting strategies. To be the best in its business is going to require Riordan to attract the finest in engineers, for example, and so Riordan is going to need a recruiting strategy that allows it to find the best people from anywhere in the world. Retention will also be necessary to keep those people. In the globalized environment, Riordan needs to remember, you are competing globally for talent as well as globally for customers.

Third, there is the issue of government. Government is the greatest facilitator of globalization in business with all the trade barriers reductions like NAFTA that are helping companies to get more business opportunities around the world. For Riordan, fostering good relationships with government is important because to do so will allow it to have more of a say in how the international legal environment for its industry is run. Riordan might also try to have competitors shut out of the U.S. market, but that might not be possible.