Resources, activities and competitive advantage: Application to outsourcing

Abstract

In this article we present an alternative approach to assessing competitive advantages of a firm and operationalizing the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm in the context of strategic outsourcing. When resource bundles are viewed in the form of activities, they become easier to observe, identify, understand and measure, thus activities can be used to operationalize bundles of resources and capabilities when empirically testing the RBV. We propose a conceptual model and present several propositions for subsequent empirical testing of the RBV.