Understanding and explaining the performance differences among organisations have always been a central goal of strategic management research.The strategic management literature indicates two main theoretical streams to explain the performance differences among firms: industrial organisation (I/O) economics and resource-based view (RBV). Whilst the industrial organisation economics view theorises that performance variation of firms should be attributed to the structural characteristics of the industries in which they operate, another stream RBV explains the performance differences among firms in relation to internal or firm specific factors.Hence, while not altogether excluding industry structure, the RBV considers the internal, idiosyncratic resources as the most important factors to explain the performance variation among firms competing within the same industry. The RBV has substantially grounded the understanding of the differences in the performance levels of the firms and has...
