The strategic imperative and sustainable competitive advantage: Public policy implications of resource-advantage theory

Strategy theorists share (I) the view that the strategic imperative of a firm should be sustained, superior financial performance and (2) the belief that this goal can be achieved through a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. Neoclassical perfect competition and traditional industrial organization economics, however; imply that the sustained performance goal advocated by strategy theorists is anticompetitive and its achievement presumptively detrimental to social welfare. This article addresses the strategy-is-anticompetitive thesis with the goal of grounding strategy in a theory of competition-resource-advantage theory-that does not imply that the strategic imperative and its achievement are presumptively anticompetitive and antisocial. As such, this article initiates a discussion of the public policy implications of resource-advantage theory.