In his article in the special issue, Barney argued that
sustained competitive advantage derives from the resources and capabilities a firm controls
that are valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and not substitutable.
These resources and
capabilities can be viewed as bundles of tangible and intangible assets, including a firm’s
management skills, its organizational processes and routines, and the information and
knowledge it controls. In the intervening decade, the diffusion of the resource-based view
(RBV) in strategic management and related disciplines has been both dramatic and controversial
and has involved considerable theoretical development and empirical testing.
As
such, it seemed timely to organize a new special issue that attempts to assess the past
contributions of the RBV as well as presenting forward-looking extensions.