国际企业管理
4
Leveraging Resources
and Capabilities
Part II: 资源与能力的视角
国际企业管理4
朱吉庆
朱吉庆
博士 讲师
harveyzjq@126.com
Outline
• Understanding resources and capabilities
• Resources, capabilities, and the value chain
• The VRIO framework
• Debates and extensions
• Implications for strategists
4–2
Competing on Resources
• Opening Case:
 Consider the intense competitive conditions in the
airline industry.
 The industry-based view suggests that all firms “stuck”
in this industry are likely to suffer.
• Question:
 How can firms like Ryanair (Opening Case) and
Southwest Airlines consistently do so well in such an
unattractive industry even during periods of recession?
4–3
Competing on Resources (cont’d)
• Answer:
 There must be resources and capabilities specific to
successful firms like Southwest and Ryanair that are
not shared by their unsuccessful competitors in the
same industry.
• This insight has been developed into a resourcebased view, which has emerged as one of the
three leading perspectives on strategy.
• This is the heart of this chapter
4–4
Competing on Resources (cont’d)
• Focus of the industry-based view:
 How “average” firms within an industry compete.
• Focus of the resource-based view:
 How individual firms differ from each other within an
industry and can outperform the industry average
consistently and significantly.
4–5
Resources and Capabilities
• The Resource-based View
 A firm consists of a bundle of productive resources
and capabilities.
 Resources
– The tangible and intangible assets a firm uses to choose and
implement its strategies.
 Capabilities
– The skills a firm can use to bring its resources to bear.

This book follows leading resource-based theorists such as J.
Barney, D. Collis, and C. Montgomery, by using the two terms,
“resources” and “capabilities,” interchangeably and often in
parallel.
4–6
Resources and Capabilities
• Tangible
 Resources and
capabilities that are
observable and easily
quantified
 Broadly organized in
four categories:
 Financial
 Physical
 Technological
 Organizational
• Intangible
 Resources and
capabilities not easily
observed or difficult (or
impossible) to quantify
 Examples include:
 Human
 Innovation
 Reputational
4–7
Examples of Resources and Capabilities
Sources: Adapted from (1) J. Barney, 1991, Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage (p. 101), Journal of
Management, 17: 101; (2) R. Grant, 1991, Contemporary Strategy Analysis (pp. 100–104), Cambridge, UK: Blackwell; (3) R.
Hall, 1992, The strategic analysis of intangible resources (pp. 136–139), Strategic Management Journal, 13: 135–144.
Table 3.1
4–8
Resources, Capabilities,
and the Value Chain
• Value Chain
 The functional activities within the firm that create
value in the goods and services produced
• Components of the Value Chain
 Primary activities
 Are
directly associated with the development,
production, and distribution of goods and services.
 Support activities
 Assist
in the accomplishment of primary activities.
4–9
The Value Chain
Panel A. An example of value chain with firm boundaries
Figure 3.1
4–10
The Value Chain (cont’d)
Panel B. An example of value chain with some outsourcing
Figure 3.1 cont’d
4–11
Value Chain Analysis
• Shows how a bundle of resources and
capabilities come together to add value.
 Forces strategists to think about firm resources and
capabilities at a micro-activity-based level.
 The key is to examine whether the firm has the
resources and capabilities to perform a particular
activity in a manner superior to competitors.
 Requires
that strategists ascertain a firm’s
strengths and weaknesses on an activity-by-activity
basis, relative to rivals, in a SWOT analysis.
4–12
A Two-Stage Decision Model in Value Chain Analysis
Figure 3.2
4–13
Outsourcing
• Turning over all or part of an organizational
activity to an outside supplier which will perform
it on behalf of the focal firm.
 Value-adding activities can be geographically
dispersed to take advantage of the best locations to
perform certain activities.
 Outsourcing manufacturing to China
 Outsourcing IT/BPO activities to India
4–14
A Geographically
Dispersed Global
Value Chain:
How General Electric
Medical Systems
Produces the Proteus
Radiographic System
Source: Adapted from T. Khanna &
J. Weber, 2002, General Electric
Medical Systems, 2002, Harvard
Business School case 702–428.
Figure 3.3
4–15
The VRIO Framework
• VRIO
 An analysis of the “sticky” nature of resources and
capabilities of a firm and the difficulty of their
replication elsewhere.
• Two Key Assumptions:
 Resource heterogeneity
 Each firm has a unique combination of resources
and capabilities such that no two firms are “twins.”
 Resource immobility
 Resources and capabilities unique to one firm
cannot easily migrate to competing firms.
4–16
The VRIO Framework:
Features of a Resource or Capability
Sources: Adapted from (1) J. Barney, 2002, Gaining and Sustaining Competitive
Advantage, 2nd ed. (p. 173), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall; (2) R.
Hoskisson, M. Hitt, & R. D. Ireland, 2004, Competing for Advantage (p. 118),
Cincinnati: Thomson South-Western.
Table 3.2
4–17
The VRIO Framework: Value
• The Question of Value
 Only value-adding resources can lead to competitive
advantage, whereas non-value-adding capabilities
may lead to competitive disadvantage.
 If firms do not shed non-value-adding resources and
capabilities, they are likely to suffer below-average
performance or become extinct (e.g., IBM).
• Overall, the search for valuable resources and
capabilities is an ever present challenge for
virtually all firms.
4–18
The VRIO Framework: Rarity
• The Question of Rarity
 Valuable common resources and capabilities can lead to
competitive parity but no advantage (e.g., airline aircraft).
 Valuable rare resources and capabilities can provide, at best,
temporary competitive advantage (e.g., Ford pricing)
 Resources and abilities that add value in new areas needed to
keep up with the competition (benchmarking).
• Once competitors develop equal abilities, then no unique
and distinctive capability remains on which to build a
competitive advantage.
4–19
The VRIO Framework: Imitability
• The Question of Imitability
 Valuable and rare resources and capabilities are a
source of competitive advantage only if competitors
have a difficult time imitating them.
 Imitation
of tangible resources (such as plants,
software, or trucking fleet) is easy.
 Imitation
of intangible resources (knowledge,
managerial talents, and organizational culture) is
much more difficult.
 Some
resources are impossible to imitate
4–20
The VRIO Framework: Imitability (cont’d)
• Why is imitation so difficult?
 Time compression diseconomies: Inability to acquire
in a short period of time rivals’ resources and
capabilities over a long history
 (SIA 3.2: Mercedes’ failure in learning and
practicing the Japanese capabilities of “design to
cost”)
 Path dependencies: History matters
 Causal ambiguity: What really causes the success of
certain firms? Nobody really knows!
4–21
The VRIO Framework: Organization
• The Question of Organization
 How is a firm organized to develop and leverage the full
potential of its resources and capabilities?
• A More Fundamental Question
 Why do firms exist? In other words, why do people organize
firms?

Firms exist to develop and leverage resources and
capabilities better than individuals could.
• Complementary Assets: Star power + other talents
• Social Complexity: Movie production
4–22
The VRIO Framework: Overview
• Because resources and capabilities cannot be
evaluated in isolation, the VRIO framework
presents four interconnected and increasingly
difficult hurdles for them to become a source of
sustainable competitive advantage.
4–23
Lessons from the VRIO Framework
• Build the firm’s resources and capabilities strengths
before beginning the search for the most attractive
industry or segment.
• Imitation is not a successful strategy—creating new
ways of adding value forces competitors to play the best
performing firm’s game.
• Competitive advantage does not last forever—strategic
foresight is necessary to anticipate needs and move
early to build resources and capabilities for future
competition.
4–24
Debates and Extensions
• Firm- versus Industry-Specific Determinants of
Performance:
 Both views are complementary to each other
• Static Resources versus Dynamic Capabilities
 Table 3.3
• Rent Generation versus Appropriation:
 Who gets what?
• Domestic Resources versus International
Capabilities:
 Are they the same?
4–25
Dynamic Capabilities in Slow- and Fast-Moving Industries
Sources: Adapted from (1) K. Eisenhardt & J. Martin, 2000, Dynamic capabilities: What are they?
Strategic Management Journal, 21: 1105–1121; (2) G. Pisano, 1994, Knowledge, integration,
and the locus of learning, Strategic Management Journal, 15: 85–100.
Table 3.3
4–26
Implications for Strategists
• The strategic imperative is to focus on
identifying the resources and capabilities that
really count and developing new ones.
• Strategists need to focus on when, where, and
how resources and capabilities are useful.
 A fundamental challenge is how to do this, not just
once or every now and then, but consistently.
• The resource-based view offers a set of answers
to the four fundamental questions in strategy.
4–27
Implications for Strategists:
Fundamental Questions to Consider
• Why do firms differ?
 The assumption of resource heterogeneity – that is,
every firm is unique in its bundle of resources and
capabilities – directly addresses this question.
• How do firms behave?
 The answer boils down to how they take advantage
of their strengths embodied in resources and
capabilities and overcome their weaknesses.
4–28
Implications for Strategists:
Fundamental Questions to Consider (cont’d)
• What determines the scope of the firm?
 Value chain analysis suggests that the scope of the
firm is determined by how a firm performs different
value-adding activities relative to rivals.
 Managers often fail to assess them relative to
competitors, resulting in an unnecessarily broad
scope with some mediocre units.
• What determines the international success and
failure of firms?
 The resource-based view identifies firm-specific
resources and capabilities as the crucial determinants.
4–29
Key Terms
agency problem
agents
business process outsourcing (BPO)
capabilities
causal ambiguity
complementary assets
core competencies
corporate governance
direct duplication
dynamic capabilities
financial resources and capabilities
human resources and capabilities
innovation resources and capabilities
4–30