An Empirical Test of the Resource-Based Theory: Strategic Regulation in the Dutch Audit Industry

Abstract

The resource-based view of the Jirm is a recent strategic management theory that seeks to identify the resources that may provide firms with a sustainable competitive advantage. This paper has two purposes. First, the paper relates strategic management arguments to parallel lines of reasoning in industrial organization theory and argues that strategic regulation is a major source of sustainable competitive advantage. The second purpose of the paper is to report the results of an empirical test of the resource-based theory on the basis of a longitudinal data set on the postwar history of the Dutch audit industry.A key determinant of this history proves to be strategic regulation, which stimulates demand for audit services and protects rentproducing resources.

Corporate political resources and the resource-based view of the firm

“…Distinctive competencies and firm-specific nonmarket assets generate value as a function of how costly it is for market and nonmarket rivals to replicate them ' (2003: 42). A similar proposition can be found, in different forms, in Dahan (2005), Keim and Baysinger (1988), Maijoor and Van Witteloostuijn (1996), Oliver and Holzinger (2008) or Wei (2006), suggesting that the RBV can be applied in a straightforward manner when it comes to studying corporate political resources.In this essay, I challenge this proposition and argue that important modifications to the original RBV analysis need to be considered to really develop a theory of political resources and why they matter for firms. Rare, inimitable and non-substitutable resources certainly exist in political environments; however, I show that these criteria are not necessary conditions for political resources to matter and that other criteria are in fact as important, or even more important, in political environments.…”

Identity realization, multiple logics and legitimacy: Organizational foundings during the emergence of the Dutch accounting industry

“…This combination implies that the profession can self-regulate the supply of services in a market with mandatory demand. Creating "artifical" scarcity in this way is a very powerful rent-seeking strategy (see Maijoor & van Witteloostuijn, 1996). Taking the current paper's logic to this issue suggests that we can expect that countries hosting a lower number of competing professional associations in the early days of the industry's history were more successful, and were so earlier in their history, to have the wished regulation e i.e., (a) and (b) above e in place.…”

“…Specifically, different countries are associated with different evolutionary processes, as witnessed in a different associational and regulatory dynamic. For instance, in the Netherlands, the merger of the professional associations into a single monopolist co-emerged with national regulation regarding the demand and supply of accountancy services (see Maijoor & van Witteloostuijn, 1996). Hence, to carefully unravel the combined and relative effect on founding rates of competing associations and demandpromoting regulations, we have to turn to another country.…”

“…To achieve this, the profession lobbied for a subtle combination of self and state regulation (cf. Maijoor & van Witteloostuijn, 1996), offering an account of collective entrenchment and status maintenance (Walker, 1991, p. 257).…”

An Empirical Analysis of Trade Support System and Export Performance in Korean SMEs

“…Studies that focus on relationships with other companies from a resource-based perspective have made significant progress (Chatterjee & Wernerfelt, 1991;Leonard-Barton, 1992;Maijoor & Witteloostuijn, 1996). These studies emphasize that companies can secure core resources through relationships and networks between companies.…”