Strategic resources: Traits, configurations and paths to sustainable competitive advantage

The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm holds that certain assets with certain characteristics will lead to sustainable competitive advantage. All the traits are required to be present to result in sustainable competitive advantage. Such a trait approach overlooks the dynamics of the creation of firm resources especially the strategically important factors as identified by the resource based view theory. We propose that the resources are made up of factor networks which have specific interfactor and inter-resource relationships that result in the characteristic traits being evidenced. These strategic resource factor relationships include network type, available substitutes and cogency relationships…