Towards a Stakeholder Perspective on Competitive Advantage

Abstract

Competitive advantage and stakeholder management are two important research streams that have attractedmuch attention during the past few decades. Distinctive approaches to studies on competitive advantage exhibitdifferences in their assumptions, units of analysis, and strategic implications; however, none of them canindividually explain the whole concept of competitive advantage. Although competitive advantage is the coreissue of strategic management in which stakeholder management is rooted, the two topics have developedseemingly independently in the literature. By focusing on value creation, value protection, and value capture, thispaper suggests a theoretical framework that employs a stakeholder perspective, linking three approaches oncompetitive advantage—the resource-based view, the relational view, and the activity-position view. Thisframework provides insight to an incomplete picture of competitive advantage in the extant literature.