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Strategic Organization
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From ordinary resources to extraordinary performance: environmental moderators of competitive advantage

Oana Branzei

York University, Canada, obranzei{at}schulich.yorku.ca

Stewart Thornhill

University of Western Ontario, Canada, sthornhill{at}ivey.ca

This study offers new insights into the context-contingent origins of attainable competitive advantage.We investigate how human capital pools and specialized training enable firms to extract superior margins from adopted information technology resources under different environmental contingencies. Using longitudinal survey data from a large and representative sample of manufacturing firms, we find that: first, specialized training for the users of adopted information technologies consistently promotes above-average increases in firmlevel performance; second, human capital endowments do not contribute to attained advantage directly, but significantly enhance the performance gains derived from specialized training in low munificence and technologically complex environments; and third, in munificent or technologically simple settings, investments in specialized training are associated with comparable performance gains for adopters with above-average and below-average human capital endowments.

Key Words: attainable competitive advantage • competitive context • human capital • information technology

Strategic Organization, Vol. 4, No. 1, 11-41 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1476127006061029
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