Historically there has been a strong link between the disciplines of strategy and economics,
but as Lockett and Thompson (2001) show, explicit citations of key RBV papers have
been low in mainstream economics journals. They suggest that the explicit use of the RBV
in economics has been limited by the problems of causal ambiguity, tautology, and firm
heterogeneity. However, the authors argue that work on the consequences of path dependency
on firm behavior builds implicitly on the ideas of the RBV to explain a number of
different economic issues. Lockett and Thompson use the influence of path dependency as
a unifying theme to examine patterns of diversification and entry, diversification and
performance, corporate refocusing and exit, innovative activity by firms, and industry
evolution in markets with rapidly evolving products. Potential areas for future research
include the interaction of the RBV and agency theory (especially in relation to corporate
governance), the RBV as a dynamic theory, and using the RBV to explain radical change.
Lockett and Thompson argue that the interplay between the RBV and agency theory has
been most important in the literature on corporate restructuring, where the two approaches
are both substitutes and complements. Their review of corporate refocusing studies provides
support for both strategy and governance hypotheses in explaining the phenomenon, including
support for strategy-governance interaction effects. Lockett and Thompson’s arguments
parallels work by Combs and Ketchen (1999) who argue that transaction cost economics
(TCE) and the positive theory of agency have important implications for the RBV.