(UN)SUCCESSFUL MANAGEMENT OF A FIRM’S DYNAMIC BUSINESS: WHERETO SHOULD COMPETENCE-BASED CONCEPTS BE ADVANCED?

A new grouping of the eight schools of thought on business management is introduced. Their advancement is initially assessed with the help of a frame of reference, which is based on the principles inherent in Beer’s viable system model. It is proposed that a high degree of systemic advancement is one of the necessary attributes of any business-management concept that will be proven to be highly applicable to managing a firm’s dynamic business in practice. The first assessment reveals that the systemic advancement of the representative concepts varies a lot as follows. Porter’s chained frameworks (representing 1st Porterian school), Barney’s VRIO framework (2nd resource-based school), Sanchez and Heene’s concepts (3rd competence-based school), von Krogh et al.’s concept (4th knowledge-based school), and Hedlund’s heterarchy (5th organization-based school) are fairly systemic, respectively. Martin’s cascade (6th process-based school) is less systemic. Instead, Hamel’s revolutionary concept (7th dynamism-based school) and Brown and Eisenhardt’s competing on edge strategy (8th evolutionary school) are highly systemic. Thus, some promising ways to advance, in particular, the competence-based school of thought on business management are suggested.