Abstract
The increasing turmoil in the external organizational setting or business environment has focused attention on capabilities and resources as the primary source of competitive advantage. Obviously, this statement points to the application of the resource-based view (RBV) of organizational management. Nevertheless, what constitutes RBV remains an illusion in many quarters of organizational management, as scholars have managed to put up their personal ideas, and managed to converge on phenomenon-driven theories, in addition to RBV. This paper reviews the concepts of RBV in light of knowledge management to highlight some critical pitfalls that might have eluded the research community on the subject matter of RBV. To this end, this paper’s educational value lies in the fact that it simplifies the concept of RBV to the new researcher in a fashion that is capable of appealing to his or her level. A cross-sectional qualitative research approach was employed in an effort aimed at understanding the role of RBV in creating a sustainable competitive advantage and key competencies. A total of 20 relevant articles were searched from different databases and search engines, including Scopus, EBSCO, ABI Inform, IEEE, PubMed, Science Direct, SABINET, IEEE, Bing, Science Direct, and Google Scholar. The findings indicate that RBV plays an important role and assists organizations not only create, nurture, and maintain competitive advantage, but also understand the collective resources needed to compete favorably in a globalized and highly competitive market. With expert knowledge workers at its core to provide support for knowledge creation, sharing, and utilization, the RBV principles discussed in this paper promise to guarantee a methodological step geared towards the achievement of competitive advantage. It, therefore, makes an incremental contribution to the RBV to attain modest improvement in organizational settings.
Highlights
BackgroundGlobalization and the increasing turbulence in the external business environment, coupled with sources of economic rents, vis-a-vis the desire to attain competitive advantage, have become a research focus in the strategic management field
The increasing turmoil in the external organizational setting or business environment has focused attention on capabilities and resources as the primary source of competitive advantage. This statement points to the application of the resource-based view (RBV) of organizational management
What constitutes RBV remains an illusion in many quarters of organizational management, as scholars have managed to put up their personal ideas, and managed to converge on phenomenon-driven theories, in addition to RBV
Summary
Globalization and the increasing turbulence in the external business environment, coupled with sources of economic rents, vis-a-vis the desire to attain competitive advantage, have become a research focus in the strategic management field. Scholars have come up with their personal plans by focusing on phenomenon-driven studies in addition to adopting various theories including resource-based view (RBV), learning and knowledge management (Osborn & Hagedoorn, 1997; Lavie, 2006) This has prioritized alliance formation and alliance performance over other investigations, creating a hypothetical vacuum between creation, sharing and utilization of knowledge in the organizations as a central matter to the theory of RBV for competitive advantage. Competition impacts every business aspect ranging from the target market, price, and cost of service or product, to technological adaptation With this new trend, which creates an increased competition due to a globalized market, organizations must learn to design better and sustainable strategies to outsmart their competitors and thrive in the market. By understanding both the internal and external environment, RBV can assist organizations in achieving a competitive advantage
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