IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/stratm/v22y2001i9p875-888.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competitive advantage: logical and philosophical considerations

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas C. Powell

Abstract

Strategic management theories invoke the concept of competitive advantage to explain firm performance, and empirical research investigates competitive advantage and describes how it operates. But as a performance hypothesis, competitive advantage has received surprisingly little formal justification, particularly in light of its centrality in strategy research and practice. As it happens, the core hypothesis—that competitive advantage produces sustained superior performance—finds little support in formal deductive or inductive inference, and the leading theories of competitive advantage incorporate refutation barriers that preclude meaningful empirical tests. This article explores the logical and philosophical foundations of the competitive advantage hypothesis, locating its philosophical foundations in the epistemologies of Bayesian induction, abductive inference and an instrumentalist, pragmatic philosophy of science. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas C. Powell, 2001. "Competitive advantage: logical and philosophical considerations," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(9), pages 875-888, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:stratm:v:22:y:2001:i:9:p:875-888
    DOI: 10.1002/smj.173
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.173
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/smj.173?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:stratm:v:22:y:2001:i:9:p:875-888. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/0143-2095 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.