ABSTRACT
This chapter is taken up with discussing, among other things, the sources of what has nowbecome generally known as ‘the resource-based perspective on strategy’ (henceforth, ‘the RBP’). Although the chapter should have some appeal to intellectual historians, it is not an exercise in the doctrinal history of the strategy discipline per se. The primary motivation of the chapter is rather to understand the present condition of the RBP, and to speculate on its possible future paths of development, in terms of the historical conditioning that some crucial contributions have imposed on the perspective. In other words, it is an examination of intellectual path-dependence2 in the context of strategic management and the theory of the firm, but also an attempt to suggest briefly how resource-based scholars may avoid some less fortunate future paths of development. Thus, at the general level the chapter sets the stage for much of the discussion in the rest of this book, and links up directly with the argument of some of the other chapters (particularly Metcalfe’s and James’ and Roberts’) by arguing that the RBP should take more seriously its Penrosian heritage and adopt an explicit process mode of analysis.
