New Article Forthcoming in the Journal of Small Business Management:
The resource-based view in entrepreneurship: A content-analytical comparison of researchers’ and entrepreneurs’ views
Franz W. Kellermanns*, Jorge Walter**, T. Russel Crook*, Benedict Kemmerer***, & V. K. Narayanan****
* University of Tennessee, ** The George Washington University, *** Strategic Marketing, Consumer Products Division (CPM-SM), BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH , **** Drexel University
The resource-based view (RBV) is one of the most influential perspectives in the organizational sciences. Although entrepreneurship researchers are increasingly leveraging the RBV’s tenets, it emerged in strategic management. Despite some important similarities between entrepreneurship and strategic management, there are also important differences, raising questions as to whether and to what extent the RBV needs to be adapted for the entrepreneurship field. As a first step towards answering these questions, this study focuses on resources as the fundamental building block of the RBV and presents a content-analytical comparison of researchers’ and practicing entrepreneurs’ resource conceptualizations to derive similarities and differences between established theory and entrepreneurial practice. We find that although the two conceptualizations exhibit some overlap, there are also important differences in the emphasis on different dimensions of resources and ownership requirements, as well as in the understanding of how those resources shape outcomes. These results suggest important contextual conditions when applying the RBV’s tenets within the field of entrepreneurship.
Keywords: Strategic consensus, strategic alignment, organizational performance
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