A Competency-Based Model of Sustainable Competitive Advantage: Toward a Conceptual Integration

This article examines the concept of sustainable competitive advantage in the context of two theoreticalframeworks: environmental determinism (which encompasses macroeconomic and industrial organization traditions) and "strategic selection" (which incorporates Schumpeterian economic and strategic choice perspectives). It is argued that by ascribing competitive advantage to industry/market imperatives, the I/O-based model apparently overlooks the idiosyncratic competencies that potentially generate a sustainable competitive advantage for the firm. An alternative conceptualization of sustainable competitive advantage from a resource-based perspective is offered. Specifically, a systems model that integrally links four components of a firm's "distinctive competencies" (managerial competencies and strategic focus, resource-based, transformation-based, and outputbased competencies) is proposed.