Resource-Based View Theory

The resource-based view (RBV) is a way of viewing the firm and in turn of approaching strategy. Fundamentally, this theory formulates the firm to be a bundle of resources. It is these resources and the way that they are combined, which make firms different from one another. It is considered as taking an inside-out approach while analysing the firm. This means that the starting point of the analysis is the internal environment of the organization.

RBV is an approach to achieving competitive advantage that emerged in 1980s and 1990s, after the major works published by Wernerfelt, B. (“The Resource-Based View of the Firm”), Prahalad and Hamel (“The Core Competence of The Corporation”), Barney, J. (“Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage”) and others. The supporters of this view argue that organizations should look inside the company to find the sources of competitive advantage instead of looking at competitive environment for it.

The following model explains RBV and emphasizes the key points of it.

According to RBV proponents, it is much more feasible to exploit external opportunities using existing resources in a new way rather than trying to acquire new skills for each different opportunity. In RBV model, resources are given the major role in helping companies to achieve higher organizational performance. There are two types of resources: tangible and intangible.

Tangible assets are physical things. Land, buildings, machinery, equipment and capital – all these assets are tangible. Physical resources can easily be bought in the market so they confer little advantage to the companies in the long run because rivals can soon acquire the identical assets.

Intangible assets are everything else that has no physical presence but can still be owned by the company. Brand reputation, trademarks, intellectual property are all intangible assets. Unlike physical resources, brand reputation is built over a long time and is something that other companies cannot buy from the market. Intangible resources usually stay within a company and are the main source of sustainable competitive advantage.

The two critical assumptions of RBV are that resources must also be heterogeneous and immobile.

Heterogeneous. The first assumption is that skills, capabilities and other resources that organizations possess differ from one company to another. If organizations would have the same amount and mix of resources, they could not employ different strategies to outcompete each other. What one company would do, the other could simply follow and no competitive advantage could be achieved. This is the scenario of perfect competition, yet real world markets are far from perfectly competitive and some companies, which are exposed to the same external and competitive forces (same external conditions), are able to implement different strategies and outperform each other. Therefore, RBV assumes that companies achieve competitive advantage by using their different bundles of resources.

The competition between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics is a good example of how two companies that operate in the same industry and thus, are exposed to the same external forces, can achieve different organizational performance due to the difference in resources. Apple competes with Samsung in tablets and smartphones markets, where Apple sells its products at much higher prices and, as a result, reaps higher profit margins. Why Samsung does not follow the same strategy? Simply because Samsung does not have the same brand reputation or is capable to design user-friendly products like Apple does. (heterogeneous resources)

Immobile. The second assumption of RBV is that resources are not mobile and do not move from company to company, at least in short-run. Due to this immobility, companies cannot replicate rivals’ resources and implement the same strategies. Intangible resources, such as brand equity, processes, knowledge or intellectual property are usually immobile.

Resources

Resources of the firm can include all assets, capabilities, organizational processes, firm attributes, information and knowledge. In short resources can be considered as inputs that facilitate the organization to perform its activities.

All resources that an organization has may not have strategic relevance. Only certain resources are capable of being an input to a value creating strategy which put the organization in a position of competitive advantage. An organization’s resource should have four attributes to provide the potential for competitive advantage. These form the VRIN characteristics.

The VRIN characteristics

The important features for a resource to be strategically important are as below

• Valuable – When resources are able to bring value to the firm they can be a source of competitive advantage.
• Rare – Resources have to deliver a unique strategy to provide a competitive advantage to the firm as compared to the competing firms. Consider the case where a resource is valuable but it exists in the competitor firms as well. Such a resource is not rare to provide competitive advantage
• Inimitable – Resources can be sources of sustained competitive advantage if competing firms cannot obtain them. Consider the case where a resource is valuable and rare but the competing organizations can copy them easily. Such resources also cannot be sources of competitive advantage
• Non-substitutable – Resources should not be able to be replaced by any other strategically equivalent valuable resources. If two resources can be utilized separately to implement the same strategy then they are strategically equivalent. Such resources are substitutable and so are not sources of sustained competitive advantage.

The VRIN characteristics mentioned above are individually necessary for the resources to be valuable.

VRIO framework

Although, having heterogeneous and immobile resources is critical in achieving competitive advantage, it is not enough alone if the firm wants to sustain it. Barney (1991) has identified VRIN framework that examines if resources are valuable, rare, costly to imitate and non-substitutable. The resources and capabilities that answer yes to all the questions are the sustained competitive advantages. The framework was later improved from VRIN to VRIO by adding the following question: “Is a company organized to exploit these resources?”

Question of Value. Resources are valuable if they help organizations to increase the value offered to the customers. This is done by increasing differentiation or/and decreasing the costs of the production. The resources that cannot meet this condition, lead to competitive disadvantage.

Question of Rarity. Resources that can only be acquired by one or few companies are considered rare. When more than few companies have the same resource or capability, it results in competitive parity.

Question of Imitability. A company that has valuable and rare resource can achieve at least temporary competitive advantage. However, the resource must also be costly to imitate or to substitute for a rival, if a company wants to achieve sustained competitive advantage.

Question of Organization. The resources itself do not confer any advantage for a company if it’s not organized to capture the value from them. Only the firm that is capable to exploit the valuable, rare and imitable resources can achieve sustained competitive advantage.

SCM and RBV

There is an ongoing debate in supply chain management research about whether or not resource-based theory suggests that supply chain management can be a source of sustained competitive advantage for a firm. Among those who have denied this suggestion is Ramsay, whereas, in his recent essay, Barney has argued that SCM can, “at least in some settings”, be such a source. In his insightful article, the competitive advantage of interconnected firms: An extension of the resource-based view, he follows the relational view, an extension of the resource-based view to networked environments (read my previous text about the relational view). He integrates and extends this view and social network theories, “contrasting the formulation of the traditional [resource-based view] with a reformulated version of the [resource-based view] that takes into account the impact of network resources”.