The resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic-capabilities approach (DCA) have emerged as two important frameworks in strategic management that seek to explain why firms are different. In recent years operations management scholars have sought to integrate both RBV and DCA within the field's epistemological orientation to provide normative frameworks for practising managers. This paper argues that the structure of resources and capabilities are such that they present impediments to normative prescriptions. Using ideas from complex systems it argues that any framework for thinking about resource accumulation and capability development must take account of uncertainty and knowledge imperfections in the system. The paper contends that the real options framework is an appropriate heuristic for managing the process of capability development and a case study of a manufacturing operation is used to illustrate our ideas.
Introduction and overviewThe resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic-capabilities approach (DCA) constitute two separate yet highly related streams of research in the strategic-management literature. A fundamental question in the field of strategic management is how do firms create and sustain a competitive advantage (Rumelt et al., 1991). The resource-based view and the dynamic-capability-based approach have addressed this question in different ways. According to the RBV, competitive advantage and durable performance differences between firms are accounted for by asymmetric resource endowments with differential productivities (Wernerfelt
Given the increasingly competitive nature of the international
hotel industry, understanding sources of competitive advantage is likely
to become a critical management task in the 1990s. A framework for
practising managers is presented within which to examine the link
between the hotel′s resources and sustained competitive advantage, using
anecdotal evidence from the international hotel industry. Three
indicators that have the potential to generate durable advantages ‐
value, irreversibility, and inimitability – are discussed. The
framework is applied to one major set of resources: organisational
capability.
The growing research interest in sociocultural issues in relation to global economic activity motivates this article to postulate a set of behavioural mechanisms that contribute to the debate on cultural distance and Multinational Corporations (MNC) cross-border replication production of economic activity. The empirical tests draw on a data base comprising 289 managers (R&D and product development professionals) employed by China MNC (CMNC) subsidiaries operating across 150 countries. First, the results reveal a negative relationship between cultural distance and CMNC cross-border replication. Second, the negative coefficients are moderated by social norms, reciprocity, and prosocial behaviours in cooperation. Finally, in using the moderator and mediator in the analysis, the results demonstrate that the mediator variables (capacity for cross-cultural adaptation, and language) positively lead to CMNC replication, and subsidiary operating years and managerial experience significantly moderate cultural distance. The findings support the model that contributes to the extant literature by demonstrating sociocultural determinants of economic growth.
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