Introduction: On the nature and scope of dynamic capabilities

Abstract

The resource-based and dynamic capabilities frameworks (RBV and DCV hereafter) have been hailed as remarkable success stories in the historical evolution of strategic management—(Kraaijenbrink et al., 2010). Following the near dominance of Porter’s (1980, 1985) market structure and “positioning”-based approach, the RBV emerged in the early 1980s with the works of Teece (1982) and Wernerfelt (1984) and reached its apogee in the 2000s following canonical contributions by Barney (1991), Peteraf (1993), and Mahoney and Pandian (1992). These and many other authors drew on early contributions by, in particular, Penrose (1959) and Demsetz (1973) that gradually led to two related variants of the RBV—one that focused on innovation and resource-value creation, (notably Teece, 1982), the other that emphasized value appropriation/capture (notably Barney, 1991; Peteraf, 1993). The resource-value creation variant drew on Penrose’s focus on endogenous firm growth through knowledge-learning-induced slack resources, sometimes combined with a more dynamic variant of transaction costs theorizing (Teece, 1982). The value capture variant emphasized the role of differential resource-induced firm heterogeneity on the ability of firms to capture above-average Ricardian rents.1