Quality Can Endure Despite Environmental Shocks

Strategic capabilities are very difficult to imitate, better than the majority of the competition, and of excellent value to customers. Six generic strategic capabilities are quality, visionary leadership, innovation, staff with good technical skills, differentiated products or services, adaptability and flexibility.1 Three crucial dynamic capabilities are flexible leadership, flexible organisational culture, and strategic thinking about the big-picture and the long-term — which enable an organisation to reconfigure its resources quickly in uncertain economic times.2 This is particularly well demonstrated by the Mercedes car group in their production of the legendary Mercedes Benz vehicles.

Over a period of about 120 years, Mercedes has consistently developed and manufactured vehicles that are recognised all over the world as quality products par excellence.3 Having focused on the strategic capabilities of innovation, technical knowledge and quality,4 the Mercedes Benz is considered to be in the forefront of engineering, technology, comfort and safety. Its trademarked emergency sensing brake assist and electronic stability program are designed to keep the occupants out of harm’s way. Furthermore, it is so strongly differentiated through branding that it is really hard to imitate, with the brand having achieved folklore status. A Mercedes was gifted to Nelson Mandela on his release from prison, and the name was even eulogised by the late Janice Joplin in a song entitled Mercedes Benz. In the film The Rookie, Clint Eastwood referred to a Mercedes Benz as a precision-engineered vehicle after escaping unscathed from a major crash. Notwithstanding the efficacy of their products, competing cars produced by BMW and Lexus are still not spoken of in the same breath as Mercedes Benz, despite the fact that it is an expensive vehicle.5

In the boating world, Haines Marine Industries is a family business in south-east Queensland that produces the Haines Signature range of runabouts and cabin cruisers. It has been doing this for almost 60 years. These boats are known among small power craft operators as the ‘Mercedes Benz of boats’. Compared to its competitors in Australia, Signature boats are much more aesthetic, and have better instrumentation and hatches, more comfortable seating and superior finishes. More importantly, the Signature range is differentiated by a trademarked variable deadrise hull. This hull is the result of enterprising work by highly skilled and creative staff in the research and development team committed to producing the most innovative and finest quality trailerable boat in the industry.

By definition, the variable deadrise hull is impossible to imitate, but this special feature also makes the craft so stable that small five-metre boats are able to operate in the shipping lanes and submarine channels off Australia’s coast. Measures of the Signature’s success are 15 ‘Boat