外文翻译--公司的核心竞争力.docx

1、中文4890字本科毕业论文（设计）外 文 翻 译外文题目The Core Competenceof the Corporation外文出处Harvard Business ReviewMay-June 1990外文作者普拉哈拉德原文：The Core Competenceof the CorporationThe most powerful way to prevail in global competition is still invisible to many companies. During the 1980s, top executives were judged on their

2、 ability to restructure, declutter, and delayer their corporations. In the 1990s, theyll be judged on their ability to identify, cultivate, and exploit the core competencies that make growth possible indeed, theyll have to rethink the concept of the corporation itself.Consider the last ten years of

3、GTE and NEC. In the early 1980s, GTE was well positioned to become a major player in the evolving information technology industry. It was active in telecommunications. Its operations spanned a variety of businesses including telephones, switching and transmission systems, digital PABX, semiconductor

4、s, packet switching, satellites, defense systems, and lighting products. And GTEs Entertainment Products Group, which produced Sylvania color TVs, had a position in related display technologies. In 1980, GTEs sales were $9.98 billion, and net cash flow was $1.73 billion. NEC, in contrast, was much s

5、maller, at $3.8 billion in sales. It had a comparable technological base and computer businesses, but it had no experience as an operating telecommunications company.Yet look at the positions of GTE and NEC in 1988. GTEs 1988 sales were $16.46 billion, and NECs sales were considerably higher at $21.

6、89 billion. GTE has, in effect, become a telephone operating company with a position in defense and lighting products. GTEs other businesses are small in global terms. GTE has divestedSylvania TV and Telenet, put switching, transmission, and digital PABX into joint ventures, and closed down semicond

7、uctors. As a result, the international position of GTE has eroded. Non U.S. revenue as a percent of total revenue dropped from 20% to 15% between 1980 and 1988.NEC has emerged as the world leader in semiconductors and as a first tier player in telecommunications products and computers. It has consol

8、idated its position in mainframe computers. It has moved beyond public switching and transmission to include such lifestyle products as mobile telephones, facsimile machines, and laptop computers bridging the gap between telecommunications and office automation. NEC is the only company in the world

9、to be in the top five in revenue in telecommunications, semiconductors, and mainframes. Why did these two companies, starting with comparable business portfolios, perform so differently? Largely because NEC conceived of itself in terms of core competencies, and GTE did not.Rethinking the Corporation

10、Once, the diversified corporation could simply point its business units at particular end product markets and admonish them to become world leaders. But with market boundaries changing ever more quickly, targets are elusive and capture is at best temporary. A few companies have proven themselves ade

11、pt at inventing new markets, quickly entering emerging markets, and dramatically shifting patterns of customer choice in established markets. These are the ones to emulate. The critical task for management is to create an organization capable of infusing products with irresistible functionality or,

12、better yet, creating products that customers need but have not yet even imagined)This is a deceptively difficult task. Ultimately, it requires radical change in the management of major companies. It means, first of all, that top managements of Western companies must assume responsibility for competi

13、tive decline. Everyone knows about high interest rates, Japanese protectionism, outdated antitrust laws, obstreperous unions, and impatient investors. What is harder to see, or harder to acknowledge, is how little added momentum companies actually get from political or macroeconomic relief. Both the

14、 theory and practice of Western management havecreated a drag on our forward motion. It is the principles of management that are in need of reform.NEC versus GTE, again, is instructive and only one of many such comparative cases we analyzed to understand the changing basis for global leadership. Ear

15、ly in the 1970s, NEC articulated a strategic intent to exploit the convergence of computing and communications, what it called C&C Success, top management reckoned, would hinge on acquiring competencies, particularly in semiconductors. Management adopted an appropriate strategic architecture, summar

16、ized by C&C, and then communicated its intent to the whole organization and the outside world during the mid 1970s.NEC constituted a C&C Committee of top managers to oversee the development of core products and core competencies. NEC put in place coordination groups and committees that cut across th

17、e interests of individual businesses. Consistent with its strategic architecture, NEC shifted enormous resources to strengthen its position in components and central processors. By using collaborative arrangements to multiply internal resources, NEC was able to accumulate a broad array of core compe

18、tencies.NEC carefully identified three interrelated streams of technological and market evolution. Top management determined that computing would evolve from large mainframes to distributed processing, components from simple ICs to VLSI, and communications from mechanical cross bar exchange to compl

19、ex digital systems we now call ISDN. As things evolved further, NEC reasoned, the computing, communications, and components businesses would so overlap that it would be very hard to distinguish among them, and that there would be enormous opportunities for any company that had built the competencies

20、 needed to serve all three markets.NEC top management determined that semiconductors would be the companys most important core product. It entered into myriad strategic alliances over 100 as of 1987 aimed at building competencies rapidly and at low cost. In mainframe computers, its most noted relati

21、onship was with Honeywell and Bull. Almost all the collaborative arrangements in the semiconductor component field were orientedtoward technology access. As they entered collaborative arrangements, NECs operating managers understood the rationale for these alliances and the goal of internalizing par

22、tner skills. NECs director of research summed up its competence acquisition during the 1970s and 1980s this way: From an investment standpoint, it was much quicker and cheaper to use foreign technology. There wasnt a need for us to develop new ideas.”No such clarity of strategic intent and strategic

23、 architecture appeared to exist at GTE. Although senior executives discussed the implications of the evolving information technology industry, no commonly accepted view of which competencies would be required to compete in that industry were communicated widely. While significant staff work was done

24、 to identify key technologies, senior line managers continued to act as if they were managing independent business units. Decentralization made it difficult to focus on core competencies. Instead, individual businesses became increasingly dependent on outsiders for critical skills, and collaboration

25、 became a route to staged exits. Today, with a new management team in place, GTE has repositioned itself to apply its competencies to emerging markets in telecommunications services.The Roots of Competitive AdvantageThe distinction we observed in the way NEC and GTE conceived of themselves a portfol

26、io of competencies versus a portfolio of businesses was repeated across many industries. From 1980 to 1988, Canon grew by 264%, Honda by 200%. Compare that with Xerox and Chrysler. And if Western managers were once anxious about the low cost and high quality of Japanese imports, they are now over;wh

27、elmed by the pace at which Japanese rivals are inventing new markets, creating new products, and enhancing them. Canon has given us personal copiers; Honda has moved from motorcycles to four wheel off road buggies. Sony developed the 8mm camcorder, Yamaha, the digital piano. Komatsu developed an und

28、erwater remote controlled bulldozer, while Casios latest gambit is a small screen color LCD television. Who would have anticipated the evolution of these vanguard markets?In more established markets, the Japanese challenge has been just as disquieting.Japanese companies are generating a blizzard of

29、features and functional enhancements that bring technological sophistication to everyday products. Japanese car producers have been pioneering four wheel steering, four valve-per cylinder engines, in car navigation systems, and sophisticated electronic engine management systems. On the strength of i

30、ts product features, Canon is now a player in facsimile transmission machines, desktop laser printers, even semiconductor manufacturing equipment.In the short run, a companys competitiveness derives from the price/performance attributes of current products. But the survivors of the first wave of glo

31、bal competition, Western and Japanese alike, are all converging on similar and formidable standards for product cost and quality minimum hurdles for continued competition, but less and less important as sources of differential advantage. In the long run, competitiveness derives from an ability to bu

32、ild, at lower cost and more speedily than competitors, the core competencies that spawn unanticipated products. The real sources of advantage are to be found in managements ability to consolidate corporatewide technologies and production skills into competencies that empower individual businesses to

33、 adapt quickly to changing opportunities.Senior executives who claim that they cannot build core competencies either because they feel the autonomy of business units is sacrosanct or because their feet are held to the quarterly budget fire should think again. The problem in many Western companies is not that their