The Resource‐Based View: Using Strategy Unor‐thodoxy to Identify Uniqueness Available to Purchase

Whilst the automotive industry celebrates its centenary, in this same period relationships between manufacturing organisations and their component suppliers have experienced a sea change due to the advent of global competition. In the case of the automotive components industry, the change from market‐based approaches to collaborative relations has included earlier and more profound commitments to part design, downstream dependent manufacture and delivery (JIT), constancy of production, higher quality, and falling unit costs (Womack et al 1990; Lamming, 1994). If the latter part of the twentieth century can be characterised as one of uncertainty, discontinuity and unreason, so too must the concept of strategy. Seen as the art and science of management exercised to meet the competition in the marketplace under more favourable conditions, the search for sustainable competitive advantage has become the centre‐point of strategic management yet has marginalised re‐source‐based views of the firm for much of this period. Successful organisations are seen to be those who match the opportunities and threats in their environments using their capabilities, known through the continuous analysis and development of internal proficiencies. Known as the concept of ‘best‐fit’ and popularised by ‘SWOT’ type analyses, strategy theory has suggested a linear process involving mission/goal setting and review, internal and external analysis, strategic choice, implementation, and feedback and control. However, such organisational analysis has tended to follow functional boundaries, often eliciting functional bias. Other approaches have centred upon the value/cost generating operations in the manufacturing/delivery process (Porter, 1985). Quantification of organisational attributes has often been sought or espoused at the expense of relevance and explanatory power, yet it can be readily acknowledged that soft systems, tacit knowledge and behaviour, and foresight play a part in determining organisational configuration. At the dawn of a golden age for the discipline the perceived constraints of pedagogy, the need to quantify and the stubborn orthodoxies of planning have given rise to situation that Whittington describes as follows: “If there was really so much agreement on the fundamentals of corporate strategy, then strategic decisions would not be so hard to make” (1993:1). Clearly, firms are historical and social entities, often influenced by the organisations and resources closest to them.