helen mba _2 - Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

generalised factor would be a pool of well motivated employees with tertiaryeducations. Activities dependent on generalised factors (such as labourintensive assembly operations requiring semi-skilled employees) can often bereadily performed at a distance from the home base.• Specialised factors involve narrowly skilled personnel, infrastructure withspecific properties, knowledge bases in particular fields, and other factorsrelevant to a single industry. Specialised factors are more integral toinnovation and provide a more decisive and sustainable base for competitiveadvantage than generalised factors. According to Porter (1990:79),specialised factors are necessary for more sophisticated forms of competitiveadvantage and require more focused, and often riskier, private and socialinvestment. Specialised factors are necessary at a firm’s home base and areless effective at a foreign site.Porter (1990:79) concludes that the most significant and sustainable competitiveadvantage results when a country possesses factors needed for competing in aparticular industry that are both advanced and specialised. The availability and qualityof advanced and specialised factors determine the level of competitive advantagethat can be achieved. Porter further stresses that the standard for specialisation alsotends to rise continuously, as today’s specialised factors tend to become tomorrow’sgeneralised factors. A factor pool is therefore a depreciating basis for sustainableadvantage unless it is constantly upgraded and developed.2.2.1.3 Production factor creation and deploymentPorter (1990:80) argues that nations succeed in industries where they are particularly32