Identification of key capabilities : A single-case study on a nursing home for the mentally handicapped

Abstract

Capabilities, whether them being dynamic, strategic, innovative or something else have been a popular subject for researchers for a long time. The difficulty in capabili-ties is how to gain competitive advantage through them and how to choose the right combination of capabilities to utilize in competition. Capabilities are often built from resources and can be further developed into for example, dynamic capabilities. Re-searchers often see capabilities as a hierarchical structure, where resources and com-petences are built on in order to build higher level capabilities.

This study is a qualitative single-case study exploring the key capabilities of the case company. The case company is a private nursing home for the mentally handicapped offering different housing services as well as different activities. The case company has been on the market for 12 years. The data was collected through workshops in March 2022 with the executive team consisting of six participants with different back-grounds, which provided different viewpoints for the case.

The results of this study show, that despite the restrictions of the industry and similar resources and capabilities between competing companies, there are clear ways to find unique key capabilities and utilize them in a way that competitive advantage can be gained. Additionally, this study helped the strategy development process in the com-pany and further added the awareness of the key capabilities in the company.