This week, our discussion thread is centered on the resource-based view of the firm as espoused by Jay Barney. In the section on Human Resources in your text, Barney’s focus on the correlation between superior financial performance and organizational culture is emphasized, In the section on Sustaining Competitive Advantage: Transferability, it is shown that Barney believed that some firms are more profitable than others because of the value of the firms’ resources.
To sustain competitive advantage, a firm must acquire and control valuable, rare, inimitable resources and capabilities, and the organization must be able to exploit those resources and capabilities effectively. This is often captured in the acronym (VRIO).
- Using Barney’s characteristics (VRIO), select a Middle Eastern company with which you are familiar and identify which resources are most important for their competitive advantage.
- Based on your analysis of the company’s resources, make recommendations to the firm’s management as to which of the resources you have identified should be invested in (or divested) and/or which resources should be acquired.
- In your follow-on response, focus on the viability of the suggestions made by other students: To which degree do these suggestions make sense regarding the possibility of gaining sustainable competitive advantage (related to value, rareness, inimitability, and organization capability of the factors)?
- Embed course material concepts, principles and theories, which require supporting citations along with at least one scholarly peer-reviewed reference in supporting your answer unless the assignment calls for more. Keep in mind that these scholarly references can be found in the Saudi Digital Library by conducting an advanced search specific to scholarly references.
- You need to reply to at least two peer discussion question post answers to this weekly discussion question. These post replies need to be substantial and constructive in nature. They should add to the content of the post and evaluate/analyze that post answer. Normal course dialogue doesn’t fulfill these two peer replies but is expected throughout the course. Answering all course questions is also required.
- Use Saudi Electronic University academic writing standards and APA style guidelines.