Ferreira, Ana Margarida Martins Pina

English

Independently of the company or industry to which it belongs, the idea of getting a position of competitive advantage in relation to competitors gains an increasing importance, mostly in a global world where being highly competitive is a fundamental driver of the company‟s strategy. But to understand the process through which a company attains that position might turn out to be a complex task. There is a lot of research dedicated to understand how companies obtain and manage their resources or capabilities in order to achieve competitive advantages. The Resource Based View (RBV), one of the best known theories, considers that it is based on a set of valuable, rare, inimitable and not substitutable (VRIN) resources that a company can achieve a competitive advantage. More focused on the internal context, the RBV approach did not seem able to explain how the ownership of those resources could in practice become sources of competitive advantage. The concept of RBV evolved consistently and a new approach appeared, based on the basic principles of RBV. This new theory, defined as Dynamic Capabilities approach, was considered an extension of the first one and attributes the emphasis to the capacity that the company has to integrate, manage and modify its resources in order to adapt to the external environment. The ownership of critical resources is still important, however the ability to achieve a competitive advantage position is more dependent on the company´s capacity to organize and use them rather than on its ownership. The emphasis is now on the Organization factor. The theory concerning RBV and Dynamic Capabilities is the theoretical basis for the present dissertation. The aim of this study is to understand which resources are in the basis of a competitive advantage situation, using a practical example. More particularly, the research question is “What are the resources or capabilities owned by the company that might be the basis for the competitive advantage and how were they developed?”. The company chosen to develop the study was Corticeira Amorim, a Portuguese cork company. In order to answer the research question, the potential sources of competitive advantage were analyzed and codified using a theoretical model developed by Cardeal (2010)

Repositório Institucional da Universidade Católica Portuguesa

Obtaining competitive advantages based on specific resources and capabilities : the case of Corticeira Amorim

https://repositorio.ucp.pt/bitstream/10400.14/7791/3/Tese_pdf.pdf

Obtaining competitive advantages based on specific resources and capabilities : the case of Corticeira Amorim

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Repositório Institucional da Universidade Católica Portuguesa