Review of Literature : competitive advantage

Abstract

The chapter focuses on review of literature and presents a theoretical basis for an informed discussion on the subject. Various theories to study Competitive Advantage and its relationship with Knowledge and Dynamic Capabilities form the basis of the exercise. To elaborate further, literature on Competitive Advantage is followed by a discussion on two main schools of thoughts on achieving Organizational Competitiveness viz. the Classical school of thought and and the Contemporarary school of thought. The Classical school of thought has three categories i.e. (i) The Design school (ii) The Positioning School and (iii) The Resource-Based View whereas the Contemporarary school of thought has different studies done under two streams i.e. (i) Dynamic Capability View and (ii) Knowledge-Based View. The focus of present research is to explore the realm of Contemporarary school and delve deeper into the disciplines of Knowledge Mangement Process Capabilities as well as Dynamic Capabilities. Organizations in the contemporary context are in a transformative state where there exists a gap in understanding the potential of knowledge to leverage the capabilities of an organization. Additionally, not much literature has been found on the subject in the Indian context and thus it needs to be studied and underpinned for greater relevance of the knowledge economy (Kaur and Mehta 2016b).