Comparing the resource based view, Porter's five forces and dynamic capabilities in strategy.

Barney, J., 1991. Firm Resources and Sustainable Competitive Advantage. Journal of Management, 17 (1), 99-120.

I am going the review the Article "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy" written by Micheal E. Porter. This article was published in Harvard business Review in year 2008.

Barney, J. (2004). Firm resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Strategy: Process Content Context: an international perspective, de Wit & Meyer , 285-292.

For a business to be successful and have a competitive advantage, it is important to evaluate the company’s resources and capabilities (Pitt & Koufopoulos, 2012). Resources in a company are the productive assets owned (tangible or intangible) whereas capabilities are what the company can do with this (Grant, 2010). “Establishing competitive

Compare and contrast the market-based approach and the resource-based view as approaches to competitive strategy. To what extent are they rival or complementary views?

There are two schools of thought pertaining to how firms should choose the competitive strategy that best suits them. One is of the opinion that firms should choose one of the generic strategies and commit all resources to making it work. Porter belongs to this category. They believe that the value chain necessary for cost leadership is quite different from that of differentiation strategy and that while differentiation deals with better quality, cost leadership deals with lowering costs wherever possible.(DESS and DAVIES 1984) What porter articulated here is that there is need for strategic clarity.

There are various schools of strategy that have been vigorously debated on and after a consolidated effort; three schools of strategy were produced. They are the planning school, the positional school, and the resource based school of strategy (Ritson, 2013). All these strategies will be described with examples to buttress each.

Michael. Porter defines strategic position as attempts to achieve sustainable competitive advantage by preserving what is distinctive about a company. It means performing different activities from rivals, or performing similar activities in different ways. He maintains that strategic position emerges from three distinct but not mutually exclusive and often overlapped sources, ie: variety-based positioning, needs-based positioning and access

To begin with, heterogeneity of capabilities and resources of firms, which is explained as “enduring and systematic performance differences among relatively close rivals”, provides a foundation of the resource-based view (Song, et al.,2006). The implication of this assumption is that core competence conveys the valuable and unique feature of products to customers. The RBV disagrees with the opinion that the resources are homogeneous; if homogeneity is assumed to be essential to develop a proper strategy, the strategy can be easily copied by competitors, which will ultimately result in the dissipation of above-normal rents. Conversely, the unique and fixed resources on hand will lead to outstanding performance and ultimately turn to be a competitive advantage, under the circumstances that sustainable competitive advantage is achieved in an environment where competition does not exist.

Strategy can be defined as being different from one’s competitors, finding the race to operate and accomplished it. According to Michael Porter (1996), while becoming better at what you do is desirable, it will not benefit you in the long run because it is something other competitors can also do. Strategies for organizations are originally developed by Michael E. Porter in 1979 by introducing the five forces model. A company can identify the industry profitability and attractiveness by analyzing the five forces of Porter (Johnson et al., 2008). And then a reasonable strategy can be set up in line with the strengths and the weakness of an organization is able to create a plan for a stronger position for the organization within its

Resources are the source of the firm’s capabilities. Resources are bundled to create organisational capabilities. Some of a firm’s resources are tangible and intangible. Tangible resources are assets that can be seen and quantified. Intangible resources include assets that typically are rooted deeply in the firm’s history and have accumulated over time. Intangible resources are relatively difficult for competitors to analyse and imitate. The four types of tangible resources are financial, organisational, physical and technological. And the three types of intangible resources are human, innovation and reputational (Hanson, D., Hitt, M., Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R. E., 2011, pp. 75-78).

Thompson, Arthur A., Strickland A. J., Gamble, John E. (2010). Crafting and Executing Strategy. McGraw-Hill Irwin. (Ed.) Boston

Competitive advantage is explained by Mahoney and Pandian (1992) as the function of industry analysis, organizational governance and the firm’s effects in the form of resource advantages and strategies. In order for a firm to be competitive it must adapt to the volatile business environment and through strategic management decisions establish a competitive advantage that will ultimately produce superior performance relative to its competitors (Akimova 2000).

1) Barney, J., (1991). Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage, Journal of Management, vol. 17 (1991), no. 1, pp. 99–120.

For transforming a short-run competitive advantage into a sustained competitive advantage we require resources that are heterogeneous in nature and not perfectly mobile. This translates into valuable resources that are neither perfectly imitable nor substitutable without great effort. If these conditions are fulfilled then the bundle of resources can sustain the firm's above average returns.