Approaches from strategic management: Resource-based view, knowledge-based view, and dynamic capability view

Abstract

This chapter introduces three essential approaches of strategic management: resource-based view, knowledge-based view and dynamic capability view. They represent the modern streams of strategic management, each highlighting the role of intra-organizational factors as the source of sustainable competitive advantage. The resource-based view emphasizes the role and management of valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable resources as sources of market imperfections and thus able to create competitive advantage. The knowledge-based view focuses on the role of intangible knowledge assets as a main source of superior performance. The dynamic capability view studies strategic change with the question of how firms are able to keep their resources valuable and unique when the business environment changes. The emphasis on firm-specific and unique factors and drivers of success is highly relevant in the media industry where new technologies and keen global competition are changing existing business models faster than in any other industry. For media management, the approaches studied in this chapter provide important concepts and analytical tools to analyze intra-organizational dynamics of change and to detect what types of resources and change-enhancing capabilities media firms would need to outperform others and remain competitive.