The role of managers in the RBV

Barney (1991) says that it is possible to be "lucky" by being able to acquire the right resources at the right moment, however this is not something that should be left to chance. The manager's discrection is emphasised within RBV and managers have an important role in creating capabilities.

It's also important to consider, create, protect and nurture intangible assets. Brand is the example given; Disney's brand is an intangible asset of that company and it's not something that another company can exploit without entering into licencing arrangements or even acquiring Disney.

Your (strategic) assets cannot be adjusted instantaneously and have to be built over time. Because capability development is not a neat, controlled experiment but happens constantly and concurrently along with other capability development and other factors in the environment, there can be a lack of clarity as to exactly which factors lead to superior performance - this is causal ambiguity (Lippman and Rumelt, 1982)

Barney also says only valuable resources can contribute to competitive advantage. Such resources are:-

• rare
• imperfectly imitable
• non-substitutable

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One thing to note about causal ambiguity is that it helps make resources imperfectly imitable and non-substitutable. This is because potential imitators do not necessarily know what it is they need to imitate. Examples are capabilities which develop due to the interconnectedness of resources within your organisation. These resources are generally tacit - less easily written down - eg the know-how required to ride a bicycle.

Path Dependency - the way in which organisations follow certain pathways of development to arrive at the resource bundle they now posess.

Another important concept is that of the mobility of resources. The more mobile the resources, the less they may be considered valuable (that is unless you are providing that resource!) Sticky, non-easily traded resources are usually considered to be immobile.


Examples of immobile resources may include land, custom fixtures & fittings, or even resources that make up co-specialised assets (Teece 1982), eg a scientist who requires equipment that is expensive to provide, or oil buried under the ice caps that needs specialist equipment and knowledge to extract.