حسابداری برای مزیت رقابتی: دیدگاه مبتنی بر منابع شرکت و نظریه ارزش کار

This article uses accounting concepts to assist the field of strategic management in its search for a theory of value, competitive advantage and superior profitability. Specifically, it argues that the resource-based view of the firm requires a labour theory of value creation. Using the circuit of capital as an organizing framework this article integrates RBV and Marx's value theory, by introducing the notion of value as socially necessary labour time, into the analysis of resource-based advantage. This enables us to identify the impact of particular sources of competitive advantage as they become diffused through an industry. Some resource-based advantages, when eventually imitated lead to an overall reduction in industry profitability, and other advantages lead to increases in industry average profitability.

An important problem in the strategic management literature is to establish linkages between managerial actions and their consequences in terms of measurable outcomes. In one strand of this literature in particular, the resource-based view (RBV) there is an explicit acknowledgement that the theory cannot be fully developed without reference to a consistent and complete theory of value (Miller and Shamsie, 1996, p.539; Makadok and Coff, 2002). Although there have been significant contributions in the critical accounting literature to the problem of value (Bryer, 1994 and Tinker, 1980), which might assist in this respect, thus far there has been little interaction between the accounting and strategic management literatures. Both literatures are rooted in the classical traditions of Marx and Ricardo, and in view of this commonality, rather than add to the weight of critique of the RBV (for example and a summary see Priem and Butler, 2001), this article assesses whether the RBV can be developed from a more rigorous application of its too often unacknowledged intellectual origins. The purpose of this article is to propose an integration which offers the opportunity of a theory of competitive advantage consistent with a theory of value. The field of strategic management concerns itself with identifying strategies that allow some firms to produce ‘super-normal’ profits. From the 1980s the structure-conduct-performance paradigm of industrial organisation economics dominated the field, which explained how competitive advantage derives from privileged market positions. Following Porter (1980) the strategy problem could be decomposed into decisions about (1) where to compete, as some markets are more structurally attractive to incumbent firms than others; (2) how to compete, which involves a basic choice between two alternative ‘generic strategies’; and (3) strategy implementation. From the early 1990s an alternative explanation of superior profit performance emerged, labelled RBV. The RBV locates the sources of advantage inside the firm and views the firm as a bundle of resources (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993, Barney, 1991, Carter and Mueller, 2006 and Rumelt, 1984). Resources that are simultaneously valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable earn the firm rents in equilibrium. The RBV argument can be traced back to Selznick's (1957) idea of ‘distinctive competences’ and to Penrose's (1959), who perceived the firm as a collection of resources, and that performance depends on its ability to use them. The RBV could be said to dominate discourse in the strategy field, and it has spawned other sub-fields like the knowledge-based view of the firm (e.g. Grant, 1996 and Kogut and Zander, 1996), which focuses specific attention on knowledge resources, and the dynamic capabilities literature (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000 and Teece et al., 1997), which explores how firms can sustain resource-based advantages in rapidly changing environments. However, there are problems with the theory. For example, it can be argued to be tautological as we cannot know whether a firm has unique capabilities independently of the description of them (Carter et al., 2008 and Priem and Butler, 2001). There are problems in empirically identifying unique resources: it is particularly difficult to attribute, unambiguously, superior performance to specific activities or assets. Moreover, resources occur in configurations with complex interaction effects between resources, some synergistic, others conflicting. And as a theory of competitive advantage, the RBV has little advice to offer managers, and, to date, there has been little empirical work into how resources come about. But rather than address these and other problems with the RBV we focus here on the question of value and what ‘valuable’ might mean in the RBV. We would suggest that although the RBV is concerned with the role of valuable assets, it does not have a theory of value, and is unlikely to find one from the neo-classical perspective that dominates the field. Instead, when not relying on conventional economic theories of market imperfection, the RBV uses Ricardian rents to explain excess profits (for example, Barney, 1986a and Barney, 1986b, Conner, 1991, Makadok, 2001, Peteraf, 1993 and Wernerfelt, 1984) as part of a taxonomy of rent earning opportunities (Peteraf, 1994) These Ricardian RBV perspectives utilise the notions of inelastic factor supply or heterogeneous resource picking skills. In these respects, they are manifestations of classical Ricardian approaches, but which ignore the neo-Ricardian approach. This is surprising since Sraffa's (1960) neo-Ricardian theory offers an explanation of wages, profits and prices, consistent with Marx's first volume of Capital, all of which are potentially important to the establishment of a resource-based theory of the firm. Sraffa's analysis offers a useful starting point, but only insofar as it explains the technical relationships between these categories in a homogeneous commodity-based economy. In the RBV heterogeneous processes of value creation are all important and, as in Marx's more general analysis, a function of social relationships. In the critical accounting literature, there has been much discussion of how accounting is implicated in the policing of the social relations of production. There has also been much discussion of the nature of value, how it is measured and its relation to the rate of profit (Bryer, 1994, Tinker, 1980, Toms, 2006a, Toms, 2006b, Toms, 2010a and Toms, 2010b). There has also been some development of practical accounting techniques to deal with the analysis of competitive advantage, although typically these have not incorporated the RBV (see for example Roslender and Hart, 2003). What is needed therefore is a model incorporating a robust theory of value, thereby explaining different profitability outcomes in different competitive situations. Such a model is presented below in the remainder of this article, which is structured as follows. We begin with a summary of the RBV that concludes that there is sufficient scope within the view to justify the introduction of an explicit labour theory of value perspective. Then we compare in broad outline the RBV and Marx's labour theory of value and conclude that there are important and fundamental similarities between the theories. We then set out a critical component of Marx's theory, the circuit of capital. We use the notation of the circuit to explore four primary types of resource creation process. The processes of profit rate equalization are then considered, and we explore what happens to average industry profitability when these resource advantages are imitated. We explain that some types of resource advantage when diffused throughout the industry lead to average profits falling, whilst other resource advantages, when copied, lead to increases in average profitability. Finally propositions are set out that capture the essential arguments of this article.

In this article we have used insights from Marx's economics to inform RBV, and RBV in turn has enabled us to develop certain aspects of Marx's schema. We have seen that the process of accumulation, which is at the heart of Marx's analysis and which we have explored in the circuit of capital, is capable of representing and accounting for many of the phenomena developed in the RBV. By introducing Marx's concept of value we have been able to explore the effects on firm's and industries of particular types of resource developments, how the value created from such developments is split between employees, managers and shareholders and how accounting mediates the split, and the impact on industry profitability if these are imitated. Direct empirical testing of the relationships outlined is possible for example by using realised profit rates to ascertain the most efficient firm and hence the socially necessary labour in any given industry sector. Moreover the categories used by Marx above have been shown to be consistent with conventional accounting categories (Bryer, 2005). Profit rates can be mapped over time for firms and industries, and approximations to the value constructs c and vv can be made using cost information. But further theoretical work is needed to explore the effects of introducing market dynamics, rates of resource diffusion, and entry barriers into the theory. Finally, there is a macro-perspective that could be developed to consider these processes and tendencies at a system level. Even so, it is hoped that this article represents a radicalisation of strategy and will assist in the development of future discussions of critical strategy as well as critical accounting.