Reading 5.4: Barney

What does Jay Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4) mean when he says that firms within an industry may have heterogeneous resources?
1. Firms have the same resources
2. Firms have access to the same resources
3. Firms have access to similar resources
4. Firms have different resources.
According to Barney’s (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, Reading 5.4) definition of resources, which of the following is a resource?
1. The position within an industry
2. The firm’s customer
3. The access to capital
4. The age of the firm.
According to Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4), when is a resource valuable?
1. When it is rare
2. When it can be substituted for other resources
3. When it is imperfectly imitable
4. When it neutralizes a threat, or exploits an opportunity.
What would Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4) call a resource that is dependant on unique historical conditions?
1. Imperfectly imitable
2. Rare
3. Valuable
4. Not strategically substitutable.
What would Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4) call a resource that was generating the firm’s advantage, in a socially complex way?
1. Not strategically substitutable
2. Imperfectly imitable
3. Rare
4. Valuable.
What would Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4) call a resource, or a bundle of resources, that is possessed by a number of firms but is less than the number of firms needed to generate perfect competition?
1. Not strategically substitutable
2. Valuable
3. Rare
4. Imperfectly imitable.
The resource-based view of a firm (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’ by Barney, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4) is sometimes referred to as the VIRO framework. Based on your knowledge of resources, what might this stand for?
1. VIRO = Valuable, Industry, Resources, Operations
2. VIRO = The name of the Swedish company where Barney did his research
3. VIRO = Value In Resource Operations
4. VIRO = Valuable, imperfectly Imitable, Rare, exploited by the Organization.
The view that a successful organization develops difficult to copy resources is known as the inside-out perspective. Which author(s) is/are representative of this view?
1. Hedley
2. Porter
3. Mason and Mitroff
4. Barney.
How are Porter’s (‘Competitive strategy’, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.1) views, and Barney’s (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4) views on competitive advantage similar?
1. They view inimitability as an important determinate of sustainable competitive advantage
2. They view long-term competitive advantage as a function of the control of scarce resources
3. They view competitive advantage as illusionary
4. They view being ‘stuck-in-the-middle’ as an impossible position from which to generate competitive advantage.
Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4) identifies three categories of firm resources. What are they?
1. Strategy, structure, and culture
2. Physical capital, human capital, and organizational capital
3. Fixed assets, links with financial institutions, and range of products/services
4. Sources of supply, operational technologies, and distribution channels.
According to Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4), what is the major objection to the traditional model of industry analysis and competitive advantage, developed by Porter (‘Competitive advantage’, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.1)?
1. Porter assumes that firm resources within an industry are homogeneous and perfectly mobile
2. Porter assumes that, by applying the techniques of industry scenario, the firm can gain a significant competitive advantage
3. Porter does not take into account co-evolution between industry and organizational development
4. Porter does not take into consideration multinational companies and global industries.
According to Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4), to achieve sustained competitive advantage, a firm resource must have four attributes. What are they?
1. Complementarity, durability, non-transferability, and the right mix of resources
2. Value, rareness, inimitability, and non-substitutability
3. Heterogeneity, immobility, reproducibility, and substitutability
4. Homogeneity, perfect mobility, value, and non-substitutability.
In what way does the model of competitive advantage, developed by Porter (‘Competitive advantage’, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.1), and the resource-based model, developed by Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4), relate to each other?
1. They are not related
2. Porter’s model presents an extension to the Barney’s model
3. They are supplementary models
4. They are complementary models.
Does Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4) consider organizational culture as an important source of the firm’s sustained competitive advantage?
1. Yes – He argues that organizational culture can be used, as a means of control within the firm, and domination in the industry
2. No – He argues that organizational culture can only produce ambiguities for a firm, in implementing certain strategies
3. Yes – He argues that a firm, with a unique and valuable organizational culture, may have an imperfectly imitable advantage over other firms
4. No – He argues that strong organizational culture can only be an obstacle for a firm, in achieving a sustained competitive advantage.
How are the concepts of competitive advantage, developed by Porter (‘Competitive advantage’, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.1) and sustained competitive advantage, developed by Barney (‘Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage’, 1991, in De Wit & Meyer, 2010, Reading 5.4), different from each other?
1. According to Porter, a firm can achieve competitive advantage by combining the firm’s strengths into specific capabilities and creating a unique strategy whereas, according to Barney, a firm can achieve sustained competitive advantage by perceiving environmental opportunities and selecting the strategy that best fits these opportunities
2. According to Porter, to achieve competitive advantage, a firm’s strategy should be directional and have a differentiation focus, whereas Barney argues that a firm must have transparent and transferable core competencies to achieve sustained competitive advantage
3. According to Porter, a firm can achieve competitive advantage by observing external strategic factors and turning them to its own favor, whereas Barney argues that sustained competitive advantage is based on a firm’s unique internal strategic factors, which other firms are unable to duplicate
4. Porter argues that a firm can achieve competitive advantage by imitating successful companies from its industry, whereas Barney argues that a firm should standardize its internal processes, to achieve sustained competitive advantage.