Research papers
1991 · Journal of Management · 46,698 citations
Understanding sources of sustained competitive advantage has become a major area of research in strategic management. Building on the assumptions that strategic resources are heterogeneously distributed acrossfirms and that these differences are stable over time, this article examines the link betweenfirm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Four empirical indicators of the potential of firm resources to generate sustained competitive advantage-value, rareness, imitability, and substitutability-are discussed. The model is applied by analyzing the potential of severalfirm resourcesfor generating sustained competitive advantages. The article concludes by examining implications of this firm resource model of sustained competitive advantage for other business disciplines.
2004 · Advances in strategic management · 38,531 citations
Understanding sources of sustained competitive advantage has become a major area of research in strategic management. Building on the assumptions that strategic resources are heterogeneously distributed across firms and that these differences are stable over time, this article examines the link between firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Four empirical indicators of the potential of firm resources to generate sustained competitive advantage-value, rareness, imitability, and substitutability are discussed. The model is applied by analyzing the potential of several firm resources for generating sustained competitive advantages. The article concludes by examining implications of this firm resource model of sustained competitive advantage for other business disciplines.
1990 · Administrative Science Quarterly · 35,052 citations
Wesley M. Cohen, Daniel A. Levinthal, Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1, Special Issue: Technology, Organizations, and Innovation (Mar., 1990), pp. 128-152
1997 · Strategic Management Journal · 32,214 citations
The dynamic capabilities framework analyzes the sources and methods of wealth creation and capture by private enterprise firms operating in environments of rapid technological change. The competitive advantage of firms is seen as resting on distinctive processes (ways of coordinating and combining), shaped by the firm’s (specific) asset positions (such as the firm’s portfolio of difficult-to-trade knowledge assets and complementary assets), and the evolution path(s) it has adopted or inherited. The importance of path dependencies is amplified where conditions of increasing returns exist. Whether and how a firm’s competitive advantage is eroded depends on the stability of market demand, and the ease of replicability (expanding internally) and imitatability (replication by competitors). If correct, the framework suggests that private wealth creation in regimes of rapid technological change depends in large measure on honing internal technological, organizational, and managerial processes inside the firm. In short, identifying new opportunities and organizing effectively and efficiently to embrace them are generally more fundamental to private wealth creation than is strategizing, if by strategizing one means engaging in business conduct that keeps competitors off balance, raises rival’s costs, and excludes new entrants. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
1984 · Strategic Management Journal · 25,052 citations
Abstract The paper explores the usefulness of analysing firms from the resource side rather than from the product side. In analogy to entry barriers and growth‐share matrices, the concepts of resource position barrier and resource‐product matrices are suggested. These tools are then used to highlight the new strategic options which naturally emerge from the resource perspective.
1990 · Journal of Marketing · 5,390 citations
A model of distributor firm and manufacturer firm working partnerships is presented and is assessed empirically on a sample of distributor firms and a sample of manufacturer firms. A multiple-informant research method is employed. Support is found for a number of the hypothesized construct relations and, in both manufacturer firm and distributor firm models, for the respecification of cooperation as an antecedent rather than a consequence of trust. Some implications for marketing practice are discussed briefly.
1984 · Academy of Management Review · 4,307 citations
A comparative model of organizations as interpretation systems is proposed. The model describes four interpretation modes: enacting,discovering, undirected viewing, and conditioned viewing. Each mode is determined by (1) management’s beliefs about the environment and (2)organizational intrusiveness. Interpretation modes are hypothesized to be associated with organizational differences in environmental scanning,equivocality reduction, strategy, and decision making.