This paper focuses on dynamic capabilities and, more generally, the resource-based view of the firm. We argue that dynamic capabilities are a set of specific and identifiable processes such as product development, strategic decision making, and alliancing. They are neither vague nor tautological. Although dynamic capabilities are idiosyncratic in their details and path dependent in their emergence, they have significant commonalities across firms (popularly termed ‘best practice’). This suggests that they are more homogeneous, fungible, equifinal, and substitutable than is usually assumed. In moderately dynamic markets, dynamic capabilities resemble the traditional conception of routines. They are detailed, analytic, stable processes with predictable outcomes. In contrast, in high-velocity markets, they are simple, highly experiential and fragile processes with unpredictable outcomes. Finally, well-known learning mechanisms guide the evolution of dynamic capabilities. In moderately dynamic markets, the evolutionary emphasis is on variation. In high-velocity markets, it is on selection. At the level of RBV, we conclude that traditional RBV misidentifies the locus of long-term competitive advantage in dynamic markets, overemphasizes the strategic logic of leverage, and reaches a boundary condition in high-velocity markets. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Dynamic capabilities, what are they?

In this article we offer a view that suggests that a firm's critical resources may span firm boundaries and may be embedded in interfirm resources and routines. We argue that an increasingly important unit of analysis for understanding competitive advantage is the relationship between firms and identify four potential sources of interorganizational competitive advantage: (1) relation-specific assets, (2) knowledge-sharing routines, (3) complementary resources/capabilities, and (4) effective governance. We examine each of these potential sources of rent in detail, identifying key subprocesses, and also discuss the isolating mechanisms that serve to preserve relational rents. Finally, we discuss how the relational view may offer normative prescriptions for firm-level strategies that contradict the prescriptions offered by those with a resource-based view or industry structure view.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259056.pdf

The Relational View: Cooperative Strategy and Sources of Interorganizational Competitive Advantage

Our task is to adopt a multidisciplinary view
of trust within and between firms, in an effort to
synthesize and give insight into a fundamental
construct of organizational science. We seek to
identify the shared understandings of trust
across disciplines, while recognizing that the
divergent meanings scholars bring to the study
of trust also can add value.

Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View Of Trust

This research was supported by grants provided to the first author by the Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute, University of Arizona, and the Aspen Institute Nonprofit Sector Research Fund and by grants to the second author by the College of Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona. We have benefited from productive exchanges with numerous audiences to whom portions of this paper have been presented: a session at the 1994 Academy of Management meetings, the Social Organization workshop at the University of Arizona, the Work, Organizations, and Markets workshop at the Harvard Sociology Department, the 1994 SCOR Winter Conference at Stanford University, and colloquia at the business schools at the University of Alberta, UC-Berkeley, Duke, and Emory, and the JFK School at Harvard. For detailed comments on an earlier draft, we are extremely grateful to Victoria Alexander, Ashish Arora, Maryellen Kelley, Peter Marsden, Charles Kadushin, Dick Nelson, Christine Oliver, Lori Rosenkopf, Michael Sobel, Bill Starbuck, Art Stinchcombe, and anonymous reviewers at ASQ. We thank Dina Okamoto for research assistance and Linda Pike for editorial guidance. Address correspondence to Walter W. Powell, Department of Sociology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. We argue in this paper that when the knowledge base of an industry is both complex and expanding and the sources of expertise are widely dispersed, the locus of innovation will be found in networks of learning, rather than in individual firms. The large-scale reliance on interorganizational collaborations in the biotechnology industry reflects a fundamental and pervasive concern with access to knowledge. We develop a network approach to organizational learning and derive firm-level, longitudinal hypotheses that link research and development alliances, experience with managing interfirm relationships, network position, rates of growth, and portfolios of collaborative activities. We test these hypotheses on a sample of dedicated biotechnology firms in the years 1990-1994. Results from pooled, within-firm, time series analyses support a learning view and have broad implications for future theoretical and empirical research on organizational networks and strategic alliances.*

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2393988.pdf

Interorganizational Collaboration and the Locus of Innovation: Networks of Learning in Biotechnology.

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

Exploring the factors that explain the choice of governance structures in interfirm alliances, this study challenges the use of a singular emphasis on transaction costs. Such an approach erroneously treats each transaction as independent and ignores the role of interfirm trust that emerges from repeated alliances between the same partners. Comprehensive multiindustry data on alliances made between 1970 and 1989 support the importance of such trust. Although support emerged for the transaction cost claim that alliances that encompass shared research and development are likely to be equity based, there is also strong evidence that repeated alliances between two partners are less likely than other alliances to be organized using equity.

Does Familiarity Breed Trust? The Implications of Repeated Ties for Contractual Choice in Alliances

This paper introduces a social network perspective to the study of strategic alliances. It extends prior research, which has primarily considered alliances as dyadic exchanges and paid less attention to the fact that key precursors, processes, and outcomes associated with alliances can be defined and shaped in important ways by the social networks within which most firms are embedded. It identifies five key issues for the study of alliances: (1) the formation of alliances, (2) the choice of governance structure, (3) the dynamic evolution of alliances, (4) the performance of alliances, and (5) the performance consequences for firms entering alliances. For each of these issues, this paper outlines some of the current research and debates at the firm and dyad level and then discusses some of the new and important insights that result from introducing a network perspective. It highlights current network research on alliances and suggests an agenda for future research. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Alliances and networks

Organizations enter alliances with each other to access critical re‐sources, but they rely on information from the network of prior alli‐ances to determine with whom to cooperate. These new alliances modify the existing network, prompting an endogenous dynamic be‐tween organizational action and network structure that drives the emergence of interorganizational networks. Testing these ideas on alliances formed in three industries over nine years, this research shows that the probability of a new alliance between specific organi‐zations increases with their interdependence and also with their prior mutual alliances, common third parties, and joint centrality in the alliance network. The differentiation of the emerging network structure, however, mitigates the effect of interdependence and en‐hances the effect of joint centrality on new alliance formation.

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Where Do Interorganizational Networks Come From

Social Structure and Alliance Formation Patterns: A Longitudinal Analysis

This paper presents a dynamic, firm-level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation. Such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed. Data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners, such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances, especially because alliances entail considerable hazards. This study also assesses the importance of firms’ capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions. I test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time-varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi-industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989. The results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms’ decisions to enter into new alliances. This study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ranjay Gulati

Papers

Does Familiarity Breed Trust? The Implications of Repeated Ties for Contractual Choice in Alliances

Alliances and networks

Where Do Interorganizational Networks Come From

Social Structure and Alliance Formation Patterns: A Longitudinal Analysis

Network location and learning: the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation