Revisiting competitive advantage: existence, dynamics, and new dimensions

• Ano de defesa: 2014
• Autor(a) principal: Pretto, Karina
• Orientador(a): Brito, Luiz Artur Ledur
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Palavras-chave em Português: Vantagem competitiva; Criação de valor; Desempenho; Bayesiana
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Competitive advantage; Value creation; Performance; Bayesian
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/11565

Despite the fact that Competitive Advantage is a cornerstone concept in Management, this theme is still an origin of debates about its meaning, measurement, manifestation, and relationship with financial performance. This work contributes with this debate advancing in conceptual, methodological and empirical aspects. Using a sequence of three papers, the concept of competitive advantage is revisited, proposing new dimensions, its existence is quantified using a Bayesian model, its dynamism is characterized, and, in the end, the new dimensions are empirically tested. The first paper contributes theoretically with the discussion of competitive advantage concept and its relationship with the financial performance based on the economic value creation approach. This paper offers a methodological contribution with the proposition of a Bayesian hierarchical bi-dimensional model to measure the existence of competitive advantage from financial performance data. It also offers a conceptual contribution with the proposition of two new dimensions (momentum and consistency). The second paper applies the model proposed in the first paper to a North American database covering the historical period from 1995 to 2011. This paper offers empirical contributions to the quantification of existence and dynamics of competitive advantage, describing its topography in a real world. Results indicate that the competitive advantage occurrence is not as rare as found in early studies, and rarity is dependent on the industry. The theoretical and practical implications relate to reviewing the industry’s relevance when compared to theories that are focused on internal firms’ resources, as the resourced-based view. Results also demonstrate and characterize how profitability and growth are conjointly necessary to evaluate the presence of competitive advantage, and influence in its dynamic in different ways. The third paper operationalizes the new dimensions of competitive advantage proposed initially in the first paper. It describes the pattern of occurrence of these new dimensions and tests its capability in foresee the competitive statuses mobility on a longitudinal view. Results indicate that the inclusion of new dimensions increase the capacity of prediction of firms future competitive status.