Resource configurations, generic strategies, and firm performance: Exploring the parallels between resource‐based and competitive strategy theories in a new industry
Abstract
Purpose
This paper, anchored in the resource‐based view of the firm, attempts to develop linkages between firm‐level resources, Porter's competitive strategy space and firm performance and explores them in the context of a new industry – the marketing technology industry.
Design/methodology/approach
In the marketing technology industry the authors classify resource configurations (generalists, specialists, innovators) which group firms with distinctive competences on similar resource dimensions. They then map these firm‐level resource configurations onto their respective optimal strategies in the industry's competitive strategy space.
Findings
The major findings are: some firms that are close together in strategy space vary in performance; some firms that are close together in strategy space belong to quite different resource configurations; firms that belong to the same resource configuration (i.e. are close together in resource space and distant from others) vary in performance; given the origin (i.e. resource configuration) of a new entrant there exists an optimal strategy that can be theoretically defined; and corresponding to each resource configuration there seems to exist a unique optimal region in strategy space.
Originality/value
It is one of few attempts to empirically explore the parallels between firm level resource‐based and industry level competitive strategies.
Keywords
Citation
Furrer, O., Sudharshan, D., Thomas, H. and Tereza Alexandre, M. (2008), "Resource configurations, generic strategies, and firm performance: Exploring the parallels between resource‐based and competitive strategy theories in a new industry", Journal of Strategy and Management, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 15-40. https://doi.org/10.1108/17554250810909400
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited