پیکربندی منابع، قابلیت توسعه محصول و مزیت رقابتی: تحلیل تجربی از تکامل آنها Resource configurations, product development capability, and competitive advantage: An empirical analysis of their evolution

1. Introduction According to Resource Based Theory (RBT), firms that possess valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable resources gain competitive advantage, owing to firm heterogeneity in the distribution of these resources and their imperfect mobility across firms (Barney, 1991). However, along with resources, firms also need to possess organizational capabilities to coordinate and exploit these resources and therefore Barney in his subsequent work stressed the importance of organizational capability to exploit the resources a firm possesses in order to attain and sustain competitive advantage (Barney, 1997). These resources and capabilities constitute bundles of tangible and intangible assets that include management skills, organizational processes, information and knowledge that the firm controls (Barney, 2001). In addition to the emphasis on resources and capabilities, which represents an important element in understanding competitive advantage, there was an increasingly felt need to probe the evolution of capabilities and their underlying linkages closely. In line with this belief, some prior work (e.g. Black & Boal, 1994) has argued that the interactions (or linkages) between various tangible and intangible resources1 enable firms to develop higher level routines leading to sustainable competitive advantage. Winter (2000) considers these higher level routines to be analogous to organizational capabilities.2 Black and Boal (1994) argue that strategic resources that are part of a complex network can enhance, compensate, detract or substitute for each other, such that the combination of resources is important to gain competitive advantage that is sustainable in the long run. Therefore, understanding how the interactions of these resources take place and enable evolution of capabilities (or higher level routines), potentially provides an important perspective towards unpacking the drivers that lead to competitive advantage in firms. Concurrent to the development of the theoretical building blocks pertaining to RBT, there have been several empirical studies that have focused on measuring the attributes of resources and capabilities and examining their implications on competitive advantage. (e.g., Barney, 2001; Henderson & Cockburn, 1994). In addition, studies have also engaged with issues pertaining to how capabilities change over time and the implications of these capability related changes on competitive advantage (e.g., Barney, 2001; Levinthal & Myatt, 1994). However, despite the importance of the phenomena, relatively scarce evidence exists of studies that empirically establish the linkages between resources and capabilities and their evolution. There are even fewer studies in the context of emerging markets where firms engage with each other based primarily on previous relations and trust, rather than presence of formal organizational processes, routines and structures (Kumaraswamy, Mudambi, Saranga, & Tripathy, 2012).