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.