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The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the business model (BM) from a knowledge-based view (KBV), to interpret its nature and knowledge structure and to investigate the relationship between its imitability and the erosion of firm’s competitive advantage.

Based on a systematic literature review, this study builds an integrated framework to explicate the nature and structure of the BM from a KBV. Moreover, on the analysis of two contrasting cases, the argument concerning the relationship between BM imitability and its strategic value is proposed, analyzed and supported.

The main finding of this study is that a BM can be viewed as a structured knowledge cluster that contains explicit and implicit parts. Its imitation is a dynamic process of knowledge diffusion across firm boundaries. Ceteris paribus, with a lower proportion of implicit knowledge, a BM is more likely to be imitated and the adopter’s competitive advantage is more likely to be eroded, and vice versa.

The proposed framework could provide managers with a deeper understanding of the nature and structure of the BM and help potential adopters develop a successful entry strategy by avoiding BMs that seem profitable but are incapable of maintaining competitive advantage.

As a complement to previous studies, the research conceptualizes the BM as a “structured knowledge cluster” to explicate its nature and knowledge structure from a KBV. The implicit part of the BM is explored, and its importance for the adopter’s competitive advantage is discussed and verified.

Advancements in responsive manufacturing have been supporting companies over the last few decades. However, manufacturers now operate in a context of continuous uncertainty. This research paper explores a mechanism where companies can “elastically” provision and deprovision their production capacity, to enable them in coping with repeated disruptions. Such a mechanism is facilitated by the imitability and substitutability of production resources.

An inductive study was conducted using Gioia methodology for this theory generation research. Respondents from 20 UK manufacturing companies across multiple industrial sectors reflected on their experience during COVID-19. Resource-based view and resource dependence theory were employed to analyse the manufacturers' use of internal and external production resources.

The study identifies elastic responses at four operational levels: production-line, factory, company and supply chain. Elastic responses that imposed variable-costs were particularly well-suited for coping with unforeseen disruptions. Further, the imitability and substitutability of manufacturers helped others produce alternate goods during the crisis.

While uniqueness of production capability helps manufacturers sustain competitive advantage against competitors during stable operations, imitability and substitutability are beneficial during a crisis. Successful manufacturing companies need to combine these two approaches to respond effectively to repeated disruptions in a context of ongoing uncertainties. The theoretical contribution is in characterising responsive manufacturing in terms of resource heterogeneity and resource homogeneity, with elastic resourcing as the underlying mechanism.

Part I of this chapter applies the principles of the philosophy of science and the derived scientific method to analyze the foundational concepts and core proposition of the Resource-Base View (RBV) as popularized by Barney (1986, 1991, 1997). This analysis identifies seven fundamental conceptual deficiencies and logic problems in Barney's conceptualization of “strategically valuable resources” and in Barney's VRIO framework for identifying strategically valuable resources that can be sources of sustained competitive advantage. Three problems – the Value Conundrum, the Tautology Problem in the Identification of Resources, and the Absence of a Chain of Causality – relate to the RBV's and VRIO's failure to provide an adequate conceptual basis for identifying strategically valuable resources. The Uniqueness Dilemma, the Cognitive Impossibility Dilemma, and an Asymmetry in Assumptions about Resource Factor Markets result in an inability of the VRIO framework to support identification of resources that can be sources of sustained competitive advantage. More fundamentally, the core proposition of the RBV – that resources that are strategically valuable, rare, inimitable, and organizationally embedded are sources of sustainable competitive advantage – is argued to result directly in the Epistemological Impossibility Problem that precludes use of the scientific method in RBV research. This chapter argues that until these conceptual deficiencies and logic problems are recognized and remedied, the RBV – in spite of its current popularity – is and will remain theoretically sterile and incapable of contributing in any systematic way to the development of strategy theory.

Part II of this chapter then suggests how foundational concepts developed within the competence perspective on strategy provide essential remedies for the identified deficiencies and problems in the RBV – and thereby provide a more conceptually adequate basis for representing the nature of firms in the scientific study of their interactions and competitive outcomes.

This paper presents a model of resources refinement for systematically and comprehensively deriving competence-based competitive advantages. Competence-based competitive advantages support market-based strategies. They reinforce the overall market-based advantages of low costs, product differentiation and minimal cost differentiation at the business unit level and of carrying out tasks jointly in a performance compound at the corporate level. Competence-based competitive advantages also support resource-based strategies by reinforcing the advantages of product innovation skills at the business unit level and transfer of core competences in a performance compound at the corporate level.

Ideas from microeconomics, market‐positioning theory and resource‐based theory have been brought together to develop a framework for discussing firm competitiveness and survival.

Propositions about the nature of scale economies, time, resource imitability and customer‐perceived benefits are used to provide a basis for the analysis of firms and their markets. The structures of markets and the impact of innovation and environment on these structures are discussed.

A number of hypotheses are advanced. When movements in consumer perceptions and technology are slow and predictable, leading firms may have developed enough resource capital to remain dominant. When they are not, opportunities for market leadership changes occur.

A conclusion is that strategic management should involve the study of firms in the context of their market situation. Market‐based case studies should seek to understand how markets evolve over time by tracking changes in key variables.

The paper outlines factors that firms’ managers need to take into account in order to evaluate their relationships with their competitors. How these relationships impact on industry structure and the long‐term equilibrium that would result if these relationships remain unchanged is discussed.

A contribution to thinking about research and practical strategic management longitudinally is proposed. The approach emphasises the importance of relationships between firms and the factors that may dynamically change those relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of legal protection mechanisms to sustain competitive advantage and appropriate technological intellectual capital, taking into account its degree of complexity.

The empirical analysis was conducted on a sample of Spanish biotechnology firms, devoted to human and animal health, having a specific department for carrying on R&D activities from 2001 to 2003. The hypotheses were tested by non‐parametric techniques after collecting data by sending a questionnaire as the primary source of information.

The results show that the higher the complexity of technological knowledge, the greater the protection of intellectual capital against imitation. In addition, it is proven that legal protection is an effective means of protection against imitation only when technological knowledge has a low degree of complexity.

Within the resource‐based view context, our results provide new empirical evidence about the great impact of the complexity of technological intellectual capital on evaluating the effectiveness of legal protection mechanisms and sustaining competitive advantage.

This research is of great value for strategic technological decision‐making. Although several studies present the theoretical conditions that explain how firms can create imitation “barriers”, the empirical evidence found is very scarce and controversial, especially for the Spanish biotechnology industry. The results obtained here offer new empirical evidence on the resource‐based view.

Economic theory posits that production factors that are both difficult to imitate and capable of creating organizational efficiencies can generate economic rents and sustain long-term competitive advantage. Using survey data for 106 firms, we measure four dimensions of strategic human capital and find that the market values strategic human capital that has the capability to create efficiencies in the organization and is also difficult for competitors to imitate. We discuss implications for the reporting of human capital in intellectual capital reports and offer suggestions for future research.

Firms frequently need to update their capabilities in changing environments but face significant barriers to accomplish this goal due to the stickiness of their routines, local search constraints, bounded rationality, uncertain imitability, and causal ambiguity. Under high levels of uncertainty, dynamic capabilities are often externally oriented, involving acquisitions and alliances. However, nonunique but competitive predictions about the behavior of these capabilities arise from the evolutionary theory. We test these competitive hypotheses analyzing portfolios of acquisitions and alliances made by pharmaceutical firms in search of portfolios of biotech capabilities. The analysis of portfolios enables us to better identify “common practices” in the pharmaceutical industry than using a transactional‐level focus. We develop implications for the evolutionary theory and for managerial practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore drivers of alliance formation in a specialized supply chain from a manager’s perspective, focussing on firm-specific resources, resources embedded in inter-firm relationships and capabilities under the control of the focal firm.

This paper focusses on the resource-based view to obtain insights from the analysis of a manager survey conducted in Canada’s beef sector, applying a logistic regression approach to study alliance formation.

In identifying significant roles for resource richness and diversification of resource usage, the analysis highlights the importance of resource characteristics underlying factor market imperfections as drivers of alliance formation in a single primary input supply chain. The results suggest that resource heterogeneity is important for alliance formation and organizational success in specialized supply chains.

If previous alliance-related experience of managers, controlled for in the underlying cross-sectional survey, serves as an approximation for persistent unobservables impacting the alliance formation decision, we may face spurious state-dependence.

Managers interested in building compatible alliances in specialized single primary input supply chains may benefit from an improved understanding of the differential role of resource characteristics and resource heterogeneity for alliance formation, as these can function as a source of competitive advantage.

The analysis provides new insights from an individual manager’s perspective on alliance formation drivers in a specialized agri-food supply chain, thereby solidifying extant findings on alliance formation obtained in other sectors. The study contributes to the understanding of the role of resources in alliance formation with regard to prior relationship experience, resource heterogeneity and thus causal ambiguity, thereby also contributing to the debate of the role of relational capabilities vs firm-internal resources for sustained competitive advantage.

The resource-based view and value-rarity-imitability-organisation (VRIO) method have diffused widely into courses aimed at managerial practice, but research has yet to verify whether they help managers analyse a firm’s resources. Following recent interest in the use of strategy tools, the purpose of this paper is to focus on what happens when VRIO informs strategy action.

The paper uses experimental method to evaluate directly users’ analysis guided by VRIO relative to analysis that is not. Systematic coding of the responses evaluates how users select resources to evaluate, in which areas they make recommendations, and what account they take of competitors, dynamic evolution, and resource disadvantages, risks and limitations.

VRIO encouraged users to evaluate resources relative to competitors and competitive dynamics, but resource selection difficulties and failure to evaluate resource disadvantages limited its value. In addition, it drew users to the existing operations and business model.

The study highlights a tendency for users to evaluate antecedents and outcomes of resources, and partly supports the view that VRIO elicits inward-looking descriptions. Field-based research is needed to show how using VRIO plays out in full strategy making context.

Highlighted limitations in VRIO analysis could be alleviated by better specifying resource selection and by addressing the positive-only tenor of VRIO materials.

Only a small number of published studies evaluate VRIO as a method of practical strategic analysis, and this paper is the first to look directly at users’ responses.