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The resource-based view (RBV), often referred to as the "resource-based view of the firm", [1] is a managerial framework used to determine the strategic resources a firm can exploit to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.
Barney's 1991 article "Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage" is widely cited as a pivotal work in the emergence of the resource-based view. [2] However, some scholars[ who? ] argue that there was evidence for a fragmentary resource-based theory from the 1930s.[ citation needed ] RBV proposes that firms are heterogeneous because they possess heterogeneous resources, meaning that firms can adopt differing strategies because they have different resource mixes. [3]
The RBV focuses managerial attention on the firm's internal resources in an effort to identify those assets, capabilities and competencies with the potential to deliver superior competitive advantages.
During the 1990s, the resource-based view (also known as the resource-advantage theory) of the firm became the dominant paradigm in strategic planning. RBV can be seen as a reaction against the positioning school and its somewhat prescriptive approach which focused managerial attention on external considerations, notably industry structure. The so-called positioning school had dominated the discipline throughout the 1980s. In contrast, the resource-based view argued that sustainable competitive advantage derives from developing superior capabilities and resources. Jay Barney's 1991 article, "Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage," is seen as pivotal in the emergence of the resource-based view. [4]
A number of scholars point out that a fragmentary resource-based perspective was evident from the 1930s, noting that Barney was heavily influenced by Wernerfelt's earlier work which introduced the idea of resource position barriers being roughly analogous to entry barriers in the positioning school. [5] [6] Other scholars suggest that the resource-based view represents a new paradigm, albeit with roots in "Ricardian and Penrosian economic theories according to which firms can earn sustainable supranormal returns if, and only if, they have superior resources and those resources are protected by some form of isolating mechanism precluding their diffusion throughout the industry." [7] While its exact influence is debated, Edith Penrose's 1959 book The Theory of the Growth of the Firm is held by two scholars of strategy to state many concepts that would later influence the modern, resource-based theory of the firm. [8]
The RBV is an interdisciplinary approach that represents a substantial shift in thinking. [9] The resource-based view is interdisciplinary in that it was developed within the disciplines of economics, ethics, law, management, marketing, supply chain management and general business. [10]
RBV focuses attention on an organisation's internal resources as a means of organising processes and obtaining a competitive advantage. Barney stated that for resources to hold potential as sources of sustainable competitive advantage, they should be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and not substitutable (now generally known as VRIN criteria). [2] The resource-based view suggests that organisations must develop unique, firm-specific core competencies that will allow them to outperform competitors by doing things differently. [4]
Although the literature presents many different ideas around the concept of the resource-advantage perspective, at its heart, the common theme is that the firm's resources are financial, legal, human, organisational, informational and relational; resources are heterogeneous and imperfectly mobile and that management's key task is to understand and organise resources for sustainable competitive advantage. [11] [12] Key theorists who have contributed to the development of a coherent body of literature include Birger Wernerfelt, Jay B. Barney, George S. Day, Gary Hamel, Shelby D. Hunt, G. Hooley and C.K. Prahalad.
Achieving a sustainable competitive advantage lies at the heart of much of the literature in strategic management and strategic marketing. [9] The resource-based view offers strategists a means of evaluating potential factors that can be deployed to confer a competitive edge. A key insight arising from the resource-based view is that not all resources are of equal importance, nor do they possess the potential to become a source of sustainable competitive advantage. [9] The sustainability of any competitive advantage depends on the extent to which resources can be imitated or substituted. [13] Barney and others point out that understanding the causal relationship between the sources of advantage and successful strategies can be very difficult in practice. [2] Thus, a great deal of managerial effort must be invested in identifying, understanding and classifying core competencies. In addition, management must invest in organisational learning to develop, nurture and maintain key resources and competencies.
In the resource-based view, strategists select the strategy or competitive position that best exploits the internal resources and capabilities relative to external opportunities. Given that strategic resources represent a complex network of inter-related assets and capabilities, organisations can adopt many possible competitive positions. Although scholars debate the precise categories of competitive positions that are used, there is general agreement, within the literature, that the resource-based view is much more flexible than Porter's prescriptive approach to strategy formulation. [14] [15] [16]
The key managerial tasks are:
Given the centrality of resources in terms of conferring competitive advantage, the management and marketing literature carefully defines and classifies resources and capabilities.
Barney defines firm resources as: "all assets, capabilities, organizational processes, firm attributes, information, knowledge, etc. controlled by a firm that enable the firm to conceive of and implement strategies that improve its efficiency and effectiveness" [17]
Capabilities are "a special type of resource, specifically an organizationally embedded non-transferable firm-specific resource whose purpose is to improve the productivity of the other resources possessed by the firm." [18]
Barney defined a competitive advantage as "when [a firm] is able to implement a value creating strategy not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors." [2]
Firm-based resources may be tangible or intangible.
Resources and capabilities may also be intraorganizational or interorganizational:
While RBV scholars have traditionally focused on intraorganizational resources and capabilities, some research points to the importance of interorganizational routines. [20] Routines between organizations and the ability to manage interorganizational relationships can improve performance. [21] Such collaboration capabilities are, in particular, supported by contract design capabilities. [22]
The resources are divided into two critical assumptions:
Firms in possession of a resource, or mix of resources that are rare among competitors, are said to have a comparative advantage. This comparative advantage enables firms to produce marketing offerings that are either (a) perceived as having superior value or (b) can be produced at lower costs. Therefore, a comparative advantage in resources can lead to a competitive advantage in market position. [24]
In the resource-based view, strategists select the strategy or competitive position that best exploits the internal resources and capabilities relative to external opportunities. Given that strategic resources represent a complex network of inter-related assets and capabilities, organisations can adopt many possible competitive positions. Although scholars debate the precise categories of competitive positions that are used, there is general agreement, within the literature, that the resource-based view is much more flexible than Porter's prescriptive approach to strategy formulation. Hooley et al. suggest the following classification of competitive positions: [1]
In addition to the resource-based views, value-based views provide an additional way to create organizational management links between employees at a company, based on their core values and beliefs. [25]
The steps to a values-based view of strategy are:
The main reason for these alternate steps to view strategy is to provide a method that concentrates on the values of management practices, rather than simply resourced-based strategy.
A number of criticisms of RBV have been widely cited, [26] and are as follows:
Other criticisms include:
The reputation or prestige of a social entity is an opinion about that entity – typically developed as a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria, such as behavior or performance.
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models can include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.
Marketing management is the strategic organizational discipline which focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods inside enterprises and organizations and on the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities.
In business, a competitive advantage is an attribute that allows an organization to outperform its competitors.
The word ‘dynamics’ appears frequently in discussions and writing about strategy, and is used in two distinct, though equally important senses.
Marketing strategy is an organization's promotional efforts to allocate its resources across a wide range of platforms and channels to increase its sales and achieve sustainable competitive advantage within its corresponding market.
A strategic partnership is a relationship between two commercial enterprises, usually formalized by one or more business contracts. A strategic partnership will usually fall short of a legal partnership entity, agency, or corporate affiliate relationship. Strategic partnerships can take on various forms from shake hand agreements, contractual cooperation's all the way to equity alliances, either the formation of a joint venture or cross-holdings in each other.
VRIO is a business analysis framework that forms part of a firm's larger strategic scheme, proposed by Jay Barney in 1991. The basic strategic process of any firm begins with a vision statement, and continues on through objectives, internal & external analysis, strategic choices, and strategic implementation.
Dominant logic relates to the main means a company uses to make a profit. In essence, it is an interpretation of how a company has succeeded. It describes the cultural norms and beliefs that the company espouses.
The knowledge-based theory of the firm, or knowledge-based view (KBV), considers knowledge as an essentially important, scarce, and valuable resource in a firm. According to the knowledge-based theory of the firm, the possession of knowledge-based resources, known as intellectual capital, is essential in dynamic business environments. These resources contribute to lower costs, foster innovation and creativity, improve efficiencies, and deliver customer benefits. Collectively, they are considered key drivers of overall organizational performance. The proponents of the theory argue, that because knowledge-based resources are usually complex and difficult to imitate, different sources of knowledge and intellectual capital can be seen as the main sources for a sustainable competitive advantage.
Within international business, the diamond model, also known as Porter's Diamond or the Porter Diamond Theory of National Advantage, describes a nation's competitive advantage in the international market. In this model, four attributes are taken into consideration: factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, and firm strategy, structure, and rivalry. According to Michael Porter, the model's creator, "These determinants create the national environment in which companies are born and learn how to compete."
In organizational theory, dynamic capability is the capability of an organization to purposefully adapt an organization's resource base. The concept was defined by David Teece, Gary Pisano and Amy Shuen, in their 1997 paper Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management, as the firm’s ability to engage in adapting, integrating, and reconfiguring internal and external organizational skills, resources, and functional competences to match the requirements of a changing environment.
Hypercompetition, a term first coined in business strategy by Richard D’Aveni, describes a dynamic competitive world in which no action or advantage can be sustained for long. Hypercompetition is a key feature of the new global digital economy. Not only is there more competition, there is also tougher and smarter competition. It is a state in which the rate of change in the competitive rules of the game are in such flux that only the most adaptive, fleet, and nimble organizations will survive. Hypercompetitive markets are also characterized by a “quick-strike mentality” to disrupt, neutralize, or moot the competitive advantage of market leaders and important rivals.
Competitive heterogeneity is a concept from strategic management that examines why industries do not converge on one best way of doing things. In the view of strategic management scholars, the microeconomics of production and competition combine to predict that industries will be composed of identical firms offering identical products at identical prices. Deeper analyses of this topic were taken up in industrial organization economics by crossover economics/strategic-management scholars such as Harold Demsetz and Michael Porter. Demsetz argued that better-managed firms would make better products than their competitors. Such firms would translate better products or lower prices into higher levels of demand, which would lead to revenue growth. These firms would then be larger than the more poorly managed competitors.
In management, the relational view by Jeffrey H. Dyer and Harbir Singh is a theory for considering networks and dyads of firms as the unit of analysis to explain relational rents, i.e., superior individual firm performance generated within that network/dyad. This view has later been extended by Lavie (2006).
Jay B. Barney is an American professor in strategic management at the University of Utah.
The composition-based view (CBV) was recently developed by Luo and Child (2015). It is a new theory that explicates the growth of firms without the benefit of resource advantages, proprietary technology, or market power. The CBV complements some existing theories such as resource-based view (RBV), resource management view, and dynamic capability – to create novel insights into the survival of firms that do not possess such strategic assets as original technologies and brands. It emphasizes how ordinary firms with ordinary resources may generate extraordinary results through their creative use of open resources and unique integrating capabilities, resulting in an enhanced speed and a high price-value ratio that are well suited to large numbers of low- to mid-end mass market consumers. The CBV has been commented as “a new view with significant application” for emerging market firms and for small and medium sized enterprises in many countries. The view cautions though that composition-generated advantages are temporary in nature and that composition itself mandates special skills in distinctively identifying, leveraging, and combining open or existing resources inside and outside the firm.
Cooperative Strategy refers to a planning strategy in which two or more firms work together in order to achieve a common objective. Several companies apply cooperative strategies to increase their profits through cooperation with other companies that stop being competitors.
Sharon F. Matusik is an American business strategy scholar, currently serving as dean of the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.
Hart E. Posen is an academic, researcher, and business analyst. He is a Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business.