THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF FIRM'S PRODUCTIVE ASSETS TO ITS COMPETITIVE PERFORMANCE: A RESOURCE-BASED VIEW APPROACH IN THE SOFTWARE SECTOR

Abstract

In accordance to Resource Based View (RBV), the main cause of the variety of firm's performance in the market lies on the specific nature of their resources and accumulated competences. Nevertheless, the majority of explicative variables are qualitative what makes it hard to quantify and identify the correlation degree between the competitive performance and the resources of the company. Through a research performed in 1999, the French economist Rodolphe Durand developed his own methodology, building latent variables (proxys) that permit a highly satisfactory evaluation of the relationship between firm's performance and their specific resources. Based on this methodology we evaluated, in the specific case of Brazilian software sector, the degree of influence of the firm's productive assets on its competitive performance The theory establishes that the higher the inimitability and immobility of assets, the higher their profitability, margin and market performance. In inimitability we have found a relevant positive association only with the market performance. In relation to immobility we found a positive association with profitability and a negative association with margin.