Barney's 1991 article "Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage" is widely cited as a pivotal work in the emergence of the resource-based view.
[3] The RBV focuses managerial attention on the firm's internal resources in an effort to identify those assets, capabilities and competencies with the potential to deliver superior competitive advantages.
RBV can be seen as a reaction against the positioning school and its somewhat prescriptive approach which focused managerial attention on external considerations, notably industry structure.
Barney stated that for resources to hold potential as sources of sustainable competitive advantage, they should be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and not substitutable (now generally known as VRIN criteria).
[11][12] Key theorists who have contributed to the development of a coherent body of literature include Birger Wernerfelt, Jay B. Barney, George S. Day, Gary Hamel, Shelby D. Hunt, G. Hooley and C.K.
A key insight arising from the resource-based view is that not all resources are of equal importance, nor do they possess the potential to become a source of sustainable competitive advantage.
In the resource-based view, strategists select the strategy or competitive position that best exploits the internal resources and capabilities relative to external opportunities.
Although scholars debate the precise categories of competitive positions that are used, there is general agreement, within the literature, that the resource-based view is much more flexible than Porter's prescriptive approach to strategy formulation.
[24] In the resource-based view, strategists select the strategy or competitive position that best exploits the internal resources and capabilities relative to external opportunities.
Although scholars debate the precise categories of competitive positions that are used, there is general agreement, within the literature, that the resource-based view is much more flexible than Porter's prescriptive approach to strategy formulation.