Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage

Name: Carolina Marques Leite Alves Rodrigues

Class: 2

Homework Number: 2

Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage

The literature review forms the foundation for the research, since the researcher needs to know about the contributions others have made to the knowledge pool relevant to the topic. It is the ideas of others that provide researchers with the framework for their own work. (Hart, 1998, pp. 26, 27). It includes the current knowledge, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic, not reporting new or original experimental work.

The particular case of the article written by Barney begins to announce the topic of his review. He makes a clear and concise statement saying that “this article examines the link between firm resources and sustained competitive advantage” (Barney, 1991, pp. 99).

Barney points out overall researches of what had been published, by renowned authors, about this topic. He highlights the conflict between the assumptions of the “Five Forces Model” and the “Resource-based View” Model.

To state the purpose of his review, he careful explains that the main reason for reviewing the literature is to find out how can be the firm resources a basis for sustained competitive advantage, building on the assumptions that strategic resources are heterogeneously distributed across firms and that these differences are stable over time.  Moreover, he explains the criteria to be used in analysing and comparing literature and outlines the literature review, giving an advanced notice about its structure and organization.

Reading this article, we are able to recognize that the author cared about the type of literature, using mainly academic references, always keeping a track record of his references.

After selecting a topic and search the literature, it is time to develop knowledge, comprehend, analyze and synthesize the literature.

The reader is perfectly capable of notice author’s knowledge and comprehension. We can perceive that he realizes the principles, the use and function of rules, methods and events. He can easily define, classify, describe, understand and, mostly, use all the concepts of the different data and theories. Throughout the article, he always supports his research question with different types of data, theory and arguments. Barney is able to distinguish, interpret and correctly discuss and explain in various ways the substance of each idea he applies in his work. Afterwards, when writing the body of the literature review, it is important to synthesize and analyze what we collect. After having grouped research studies and other types of literature according to common denominators, it is time to select and differentiate the main variables, which are the key to the current research. The body of this review is made upon relationships between principles and theories, used to back up and answer to the research question. In this way, we have a structured reasoning, showing all the elements integrated and combined.