Samenvatting

Competitive advantage is probably the most popular business concept today (Mooney, 2007). This article aims to investigate critically the discourse on competitive advantage, as expressed by business literature, by locating its meanings in the public higher education sector. This research reveals that people working within the HEIs have given broader and more diversified meanings to this concept, which are partly due to the message received from external environment, and partly because of the influence of professional settings in which they function. By studying these diversified meanings, 13 elements are identified in constructing the competitive advantages of higher education institutions. Furthermore, the importance of each element is rated and ranked which enables us to assess the quantitative significance. The clarification of this container concept “competitive advantage” leads to the conclusion that the business way of defining of competitive advantage should be critically reviewed and verified in the context of public higher education sector, because the competition in the public education market is different from the normal market competition defined by the business literature.