Networking strategies as enabler for competitive advantage creation: a market-based and a resource-based perspectives

The purpose of this work is to explore the potential of networking strategy as a source of competitive advantage by integrating market-based and resource-based logics. According to the former logic a firm identifies operations performance objectives as drivers for achieving its wished competitive position and advantage. According to the latter logic the firm achieves a competitive advantage through the obtainment and/or the creation of valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and not substitutable resources. Both operations performance objectives and strategic resource needs should, thus, directly affect networking strategy decisions. The question is whether they effectively do and how. In this paper a literature review and analysis approach with theory building purpose was chosen to explore such issues. Both networking decisions, operations objectives, and resource endowment needs constructs have been operationalised through elements of specificity and two major propositions have been formulated. The integration of these two different perspectives on networking strategy suggests several research questions to be further investigated by adopting empirical research