Point–counterpoint: Resource heterogeneity, performance, and competitive advantage

• Published date: 01 January 2016
• Author: Mikko Ketokivi
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2015.10.004
• Date: 01 January 2016

Forum

Pointecounterpoint: Resource heterogeneity, performance, and

competitive advantage

Mikko Ketokivi

IE Business School eIE University, Spain

article info

Article history:

Accepted 20 October 2015

Available online 18 December 2015

abstract

This JOM Forum is an exchange of ideas on the antecedents and consequences of resource heterogeneity.

Two sets of authors examine in a pointecounterpoint style the usefulness of the resource based view (or

resource based theory) in operations management research.

©2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Look at anyaspect of any operation in a large sample of factories,

hospitals, new product development projects, or supply chains, and

you are guaranteed to encounter considerable diversity.The objects

of our inquiry are heterogeneous in just about any aspect imagin-

able: objectives, inputs, transformation processes, and outputs.

Two important questions arise: (1) What gives rise to this hetero-

geneity? (2) What are the performance and competitive implica-

tions? This pointecounterpoint exchange addresses these

questions from two different angles, challenging OM researchers to

think carefully about the theoretical foundation of their work.

These papers are a must-read to any OM researcher who wishes to

present arguments about performance and competitive advantage.

The exchange that follows is focused on the resource based view

(RBV), perhaps the most commonly applied theoretical perspective

in examinations of resource heterogeneity in recent OM research.

The first time the RBVdor resource based theory (RBT), as the au-

thors of the first article label itdwas mentioned in a Journal of

Operations Management article was in 1996; the latest mention

appears in an oven-fresh in-press article. In 1996e2015, the

resource based view has been referenced in 124 published JOM ar-

ticles. Indeed, RBV/RBT may well be the most-cited approach to

strategy in JOM. For comparison, agency theory appears in 38 JOM

articles and transaction cost economics in 89 in the same 20-year

time frame. A quick glance at the titles and abstracts of the 124

articles invoking RBV/RBT predictably revealsthat the vast majority

are empirical examinations of the drivers of either operational or

financial performance. Many of them also invoke competitive

advantage.

Needless to say,OM researchers were interested in the drivers of

performance several decades prior to 1996, indeed prior to the

introduction of the RBV in the strategic management literature in

the early 1980s. How resources (broadly defined) link to perfor-

mance has always been at the heart of OM scholarship (Skinner,

1969). Therefore, we may ask: What insights have been gained by

incorporating RBV/RBT into OM research? In the 20 years of

applying RBV/RBT in OM, what have we learned? How does the

RBV/RBT account for resource heterogeneity? What kinds of per-

formance implications does this heterogeneity have? What are the

theoretical alternatives to the RBV/RBT?

I am thrilled to introduce this pointecounterpoint exchange

between two groups of prominent strategy scholars. In order to

obtain a balanced and thorough treatment, it was important to

obtain two different viewpoints. Agreement is over-rated; let us

instead invite different, even opposing points of view, so that we

can learn something new. We decided to reach out to two strategy

heavyweights, Mike Hitt and Phil Bromiley, as we were convinced

they would take at least somewhat different positions on the issue.

Both were invited to choose co-authors to join their papers as they

saw fit. The end result is rigorous academic debate at its finest.

Both sets of authors argue for a specific position, but also

encourage critical self-reflection: Is RBV/RBT useful in my own

research? This is crucial, because Jay Barney, the main architect of

the RBV/RBT,noted in a ten-year retrospective of his seminal article

Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage (Barney,1991)

that this article had been cited “primarily to help establish the

context of some empirical researchdfor example, that the focus is

on the performance implications of some internal attribute of a

firmdand are not really direct tests of the theory developed.”

(Barney, 2001, p. 46). Indeed, many empirical applications of the

RBV/RBT fall short of empirical rigor and are best described as

rhetorical appeals to the RBV/RBT. This is a cause for concern in the

E-mail address: Mikko.Ketokivi@ie.edu.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Operations Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jom

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2015.10.004

0272-6963/©2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Journal of Operations Management 41 (2016) 75e76