Scientific Progress in Strategic Management: The Case of the Resource-Based View

By N. J. Foss. 2007

124 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Does the Resource-Based View (RBV) represent a case of scientific progress? And has it emerged as the dominant approach to the understanding of competitive advantage for this reason? Conventional criteria for scientific progress, notably those of the growth of knowledge literature, are not particularly helpful for understanding this. Instead, it is argued that in order to understand why the RBV is an instance of scientific progress, we should begin from the notion that reduction is at the heart of progress in science, and that many scientists implicitly or explicitly hold this view. The RBV is a case of scientific progress because it identified theoretical mechanisms at levels lower than those that were usually investigated in strategy research prior to the RBV. Unfortunately, the micro-emphasis of the RBV gave way during the 1990s to more aggregative modes of theorising (i.e., the capabilities approach). Thus, the RBV represents an 'unfinished revolution' as there is still considerable potential to dig deeper in the deep structure of competitive advantage.

Subfields: Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b0a6fa971adc20b8d13c0b86ccd06673fffed96d

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In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

Absorbing the Concept of Absorptive Capacity (2009, background): “An important characteristic of much strategy and management research in the last two decades is an overriding concern with collective constructs, such as competencies, routines, dynamic capabilities, and so on (Felin and Foss, 2005).”
On the Path towards a Competence-based Theory of the Firm (2008, unknown): “This implies that ‘at least metaphorically … institutions exert influence on individual behaviour … in the sense that ‘they’ structure incentives and therefore impact behaviour’ (Foss 2005: 10).”
Heterogeneous resources and the financial crisis: implications of strategic management theory (2009, unknown): “We start with the basic observation that economies do not make decisions, and neither do firms—people make decisions (Felin and Foss, 2005).”