Abstract

Over the past few years, number of seats has grown significantly in Higher Education Institutes (HEI), thus it becomes prudent to look at the ways of improving decision making of the HEI. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate factors affecting the sustainable competitive advantage. Since literature does not support strong underpinnings in this area, an exploratory and grounded theory-based study was designed to conduct this study. The main contribution of this research is that we propose factors to consider for an HEI to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Our findings indicate that proper student-teacher relationship, maintaining good reputation, maintaining a high rank and good indexing’s, maintain good relationships with industries, student participation in competitions, accreditation from reputable institutions are the most significant factors affecting the sustainable competitive advantage (AA) within Sri Lankan HEIs. To remain competitive and obtain competitive advantages, HEI decision makers can try to increase organizational performance by managing each dimension of core competence, i.e. Market profile; Innovation and Core Competencies.

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