From Sustainable to Transient Competitive Advantage

The concept of competitive advantage is central for the strategic management literature. The researchers` ideas in this field are broad and comprehensive - from an attempts to define and measure the advantage, through its sources, to the complex of conditions that presuppose its existence at all, and its preservation for a longer period. The activities to protect it in a highly dynamic environment are a great challenge. This makes the topic of the necessary and sufficient requirements that the sources of competitive advantage have to meet in order to ensure its sustainability. Studying the conditions needs the sustainability to be defined, and with respect to the requirements of dynamism coming from the outside environment. The purpose of this article is to study, systematize and summarize existing scientific opinions about the conditions that ensure the sustainability for the competitive advantage and to identify the reasons for moving to its flexibility. In order to achieve this objective, it is necessary to fulfil the following tasks: - to consider the prerequisites for sustainability and to derive a definition of "sustainable competitive advantage"; - to highlight the specific features of the transitional competitive advantages; - to indicate the implementation of the two concepts in business organizations