دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی سرمایه فکری و مزیت رقابت در صنعت سرمایه گذاری خرد اوگاندا - امرالد 2017

INTRODUCTION

The mushrooming and wide spread of institutions engaged in providing diverse financial services to both organizations and communities have caused stiff competition in the microfinance industry. Players in the Microfinance industry are facing stiff competition than ever before (CGAP, 2002; Adongo & Christopher, 2005). Notwithstanding its adverse effects, competition is seen as health a phenomenon that is capable of improving quality of service and efficiency in firms. Majority of financial institutions has recognized that a sustainable solution to a competitive environment lies in building more efficient and strong financial institutions that are capable of cultivating strategic assets that are firm specific. Barney (1991) regards such assets are those that are internally controlled and permit the firm to formulate and implement strategies that expand its efficiency and effectiveness. Stiles and Kulvisaechana (2004) observed that such assets are valuable, rare, and hard-toimitate, and, above all, they are firm specific. Competitive advantage is, thus, dependent not, as traditionally assumed, on such bases as natural resources, technology or economies of scale, since these are increasingly easy to imitate. Rather, competitive advantage is, according to the resource-based view, dependent on the valuable, rare, and hard-to-imitate resources that reside within an organization (Barney, 1991; Stiles & Kulvisaechana, 2004). They are indeed the assets which Stewart (1997) referred to as ' invisible assets,’ which in a real sense is intellectual capital.

CONCLUSION

In the nutshell, the study has thrown more light on the relative contribution of intellectual capital elements in influencing competitive advantage. This study has established the leading elements of intellectual capital in influencing Microfinance Institutions competitive advantage. Their relative contribution to competitive advantage in descending order (basing on their standardized beta values) is: relational capital, structural capital, and human capital. Thus, knowing the strength or weight of the individual intellectual capital elements to competitive advantage can direct the effort of managers to deploy the intellectual resources to benefit of the organization.