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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSWe express our gratitude to Michael Leiblein and two anonymous Journal of Management reviewers for their outstanding and developmental feedback. We also thank three anonymous reviewers of the Annual meeting of the Academy of Management (2007) THE RESOURCE-BASED VIEW: A REVIEW AND ASSESSMENT OF ITS CRITIQUES ABSTRACTThe resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has been around for over twenty years -during which time it has been both widely taken up and subjected to considerable criticism. We review and assess the principal critiques evident in the literature, arguing they fall into eight categories.We conclude the RBV's core message can withstand criticism from five of these quite well provided the RBV's variables, boundaries and applicability are adequately specified. Three critiques that cannot be readily dismissed call for further theorizing and research. They arise from the indeterminate nature of two of the RBV's basic concepts -resource and value -and the narrow conceptualization of a firm's competitive advantage. As our suggestions for this work indicate, we feel the RBV community has clung to an inappropriately narrow neo-classical economic rationality thereby diminishing its opportunities for progress. Our suggestions may assist with developing the RBV into a more viable theory of competitive advantage, especially if it is moved into a genuinely dynamic framework.

The explosion of interest in knowledge and its management reflects the trend towards 'knowledge work' and the Information Age, and recognition of knowledge as the principal source of economic rent. The papers in this Special Issue represent an attempt by strategy scholars (and some outside our traditional field) to come to terms with the implications of knowledge for the theory of the firm and its management. They are the product of a convergence of several streams of research which have addressed management implications of knowledge, including the management of technology, the economics of innovation and information, resource-based theory, and organizational learning. At the theoretical level, knowledge-centered approaches of Penrose, Arrow, Hayek and others have been enriched by contributions from evolutionary economists (notably Nelson and Winter) and epistemologists (notably M. Polanyi). At the empirical level, research into innovation and its diffusion originated by Mansfield, Griliches and others has been extended through studies which investigate tacit as well as explicit knowledge, and explore knowledge transfer within as well as across firms.The range of issues and disciplines encompassed by the field of strategy continues to expand. Our hope is that this Special Issue will further extend the scope of strategic management through responding to changes in the socioeconomy, notably the shift towards 'knowledge work' and the emergence of the Information Age, and by introducing concepts and ideas from beyond the usual disciplinary boundaries. This issue also addresses some neglected issues within our field. Strategy scholars like to think they work on the 'capstone' discipline where the partial views offered by economics, financial and market analyses, human resource management, production operations, organization behavior, and so forth, come together into the essence of the firm: its competitive capability. Strategy has long been thought the core of the senior executive task: the management of the firm's position relative to its

There is much interest in organizational knowledge following the recognition of its strategic place in inter‐firm competition, but there is no adequate theory of such knowledge, or of its acquisition, storage and application. Penrose’s (1959) theory of the growth of the firm, Nelson and Winter’s (1982) evolutionary economics, and the gestalt notions of discontinuous perceptual change taken from Lewin (1935), still define the cutting edge of the learning and knowledge‐based approaches to the firm. Compared with these field‐shaping works, the recent literature on organizational knowledge, learning and memory seems inconclusive. Takes a new start from the Jamesian distinction between knowing what and knowing how, and the Durkheimian distinction between individual and social forms of knowledge. The resulting pluralistic organizational epistemology implies a dynamic theory of the firm as a dialectical system of knowledge processes.

Purpose -Organizational performance is increasingly grounded on knowledge-related issues. The two key academic discussions addressing knowledge in organizations are the Intellectual Capital (IC) and Knowledge Management (KM) literatures. However, there are very few earlier studies systematically combining these approaches and demonstrating how IC assets and their management mechanisms might interact in organizational value creation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop and argue a theoretical model depicting the connections between intellectual capital, knowledge management practices and organizational performance outcomes.Design/methodology/approach -The paper draws on IC and KM literatures to build a theoretical model on how intellectual asset assets and their management practices interact in producing organizational performance.Several conceptual models and related discussion on the interaction of IC and KM practices are put forth.Findings -Organizational value creation is based on both static (IC assets) and dynamic (KM practices) aspects of organizational knowledge, in various combinations. In this paper, potential interaction effects between IC assets and KM practices in terms of moderation and mediation were conceptually analyzed, and four alternative models were proposed on how the knowledge-based issues affect organizational performance.Originality/value -By addressing both the "static" asset aspect of IC as well as the "dynamic" perspective of how leveraging IC assets can be enabled by systematic managerial activities, the paper combines the key issues in IC and KM literatures and demonstrates how intangible resources should be managed to produce value. The authors are not aware of any previous studies explicitly combining and distinguishing IC and KM fields to this extent. The paper therefore contributes to the literature on knowledge-based issues in organizations at large and potentially offers a theoretical grounding for many empirical and theoretical future studies.Practical implications -The paper suggests that organizational value creation is a function of both possessing valuable intangible assets as well as being able to manage these assets systematically. The four models concerning the interaction of IC assets and KM practices in value creation presented in the paper provide managers with tools to reflect about their own thinking model concerning how knowledge produces value in their own firms.