Performance indicators for sustainable competitive advantage: the next frontier

In the context of business processes, it is argued that whilst the operate-processes create competitive advantage, it is the manage-processes, which ensure that competitive advantage is sustained. There are now several frameworks for performance measurement and benchmarking but none of these frameworks provide an approach for measuring businesses’ ability to sustain competitive advantage. There are several examples of how manage-processes enable companies to “maintain and develop a winning business formula” or “identify and change to a new business formula”. This paper introduces a research programme which has been instituted to address this gap by defining a system of leading and lagging performance measures and indicators, which would objectively assess the capability of the manage-processes to sustain competitive advantage and by creating an understanding and develop a typology of strategic performance indicators and measures, which are or should be used by the manage processes.