It is important to bear in mind, however, that capability building and change do not require dynamic capabilities…(Helfat and Peteraf, 2003: 1004) Why do some firms succeed in a dynamic competitive environment when others fail? Recently, concepts and models addressing this question have increasingly clustered around the dynamic capabilities view (DCV). Citation counts suggest that the DCV is the new touchstone firm-based performance-focused theory (Teece et al. [1997], for example, had received 1180 citations in the ISI Web of Knowledge as of June 2008), and case studies of innovative firms such as IDEO (Hargadon and Sutton, 1997) have fueled interest. We take a step back to assess the ability of the DCV to explain successful change with logical consistency, conceptual clarity and empirical rigor, criteria suggested by Laudan (1977). Such an assessment is important not only because of the DCV's popularity, but also because of the theoretical and practical significance of the issues it addresses. While the arguably static resource-based view (RBV) emphasizes the value of resources, the DCV addresses the need to explain changes in valuable resources, e.g. the erosion of asset stocks (Dierickx and Cool, 1989) and the changes in asset values (Miller and Shamsie, 1996). The DCV also addresses a practical need to understand how firms can change effectively, given perceptions that many competitive environments now change at increasing rates, and that firms have difficulty changing successfully (Beer and Nohria, 2000; Strebel, 1996). Our assessment identifies four major problems that limit the potential contribution of the DCV: (1) unclear value-added relative to existing concepts; (2) lack of a coherent theoretical foundation; (3) weak empirical support; and (4) unclear practical implications. Although potentially interrelated, each problem presents different difficulties and raises different questions. DCV's characteristics and cousins-a question of added value With an intellectual ancestry that includes the resource-and knowledge-based views, evolutionary economics, hypercompetition, real options and the innovation

Effectuation is a proposed new theory of entrepreneurship, with insufficient empirical testing and critical analysis. Drawing on a new, comprehensive set of theory-building criteria-sourced from and complementing those of Robert Dubin and others-we provide the first formal assessment of effectuation as a theory. We highlight its strengths and weaknesses, leveraging the former to address the latter in five different directions that would build on the existing work to improve this theory. The assessment exercise also displays the value of our assessment framework in guiding the evaluation and development of other existing and future theories in entrepreneurship and management.Effectuation, as a new proposed theory of entrepreneurship (Sarasvathy, 2001), appears to be at a crossroads: many scholars consider it a viable theory while many do not. Supporters include Fisher (2012), who believes effectuation is one of the few viable alternative theoretical perspectives describing entrepreneurial action, and Coviello and Joseph (2012), who find value in effectuation as an explanation of success in new product development. Detractors include Chiles, Bluedorn, and Gupta (2007), who find effectuation under-defined and unoriginal; Baron (2009), who argues that the focal agents described in it cannot actually exist; and Perry, Chandler, and Markova (2012), who conclude that effectuation has yet to be properly tested. We believe that any proposed theory of entrepreneurship is worthy of detailed assessment, especially one that has survived over a dozen years and continues to divide its audience. Given that "an awareness of the actions and behaviors of entrepreneurs is critical to understanding an entrepreneurial economy" (Chandler, DeTienne, McKelvie, & Mumford, 2011: 375), then studies of such actions are important, and if such studies are important, then the critical analysis of any new conceptualizations of such actions-like effectuation-is also important. We conduct that critical analysis based on a new, comprehensive set of theory-assessment criteria organized in an intuitive framework.We contribute to the entrepreneurship literature in two ways: (1) by providing critical analysis of effectuation as a theory and (2) by suggesting alternatives and directions for improving on and extending the effectual approach, based on our assessment as well as on recent developments in related entrepreneurship research. To that end, in this article we address the question of whether effectuation is good social science theory and, specifically, whether it is good entrepreneurship ! 1 theory. By providing a formal assessment of this proposed entrepreneurship theory, we define a clear standard for other proposed theories, of the present and future, in our field and others.Thus, a related contribution is the introduction of a new, comprehensive theory-assessment framework that is fair, objective, and applicable to any general business theory because it effectively summarizes the main criteria grounded in general normative and pragmat...

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In this longitudinal study, individual differences in security of attachment at 18 months and effective autonomous functioning at age 2 years were related to the dimensions of ego-control and ego-resiliency at age 4--5 years. The kindergarten or nursery school teachers of 26 children completed California Child Q-Sorts. The children were also given a short form of the Block's laboratory battery (Banta's curiosity box, level of aspiration, motor impulse control delay of gratification, the Shure and Spivack Preschool Interpersonal Problem-solving Test, and the Lowenfeld mosaics). Following the Blocks, composited ego-resiliency and ego-control scores were derived from each data set. Children earlier classified as securely attached were, as predicted, significantly higher on ego-resiliency on both laboratory and Q-sort composites. They were also higher than anxiously attached infants on 3 independent measures of curiosity. An independently composited index of competence from 2-year tool-using measures also correlated significantly with later resiliency, as did 2-year measures of mothers' support and quality of assistance. The data provide initial links between the infant's quality of attachment, the toddler's effectiveness in a problem-solving situation, and competence during the preschool years.

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