Expanding Our Resources: Including Community in the Resource-Based View of the Firm

We apply insights from organizational behavior, psychology, and sociology to make the case that the community in which a firm is embedded is a valuable, rare, inimitable, and nonsubstitutable resource that holds potential as a source of sustained competitive advantage. First, we review several key principles of the resource-based view (RBV) and show how they apply to community as a strategic resource, incorporating prior work that simultaneously addresses communities and RBV. Next, we juxtapose pairs of firms in the same industries, comparing those that have embraced this strategy with those that have not, demonstrating the superior sustainability of the firms that consider community as a strategic resource. Finally, we conclude with thoughts as to a future research agenda that allows for an expansion of the concept of resources to further the development of RBV, the firms that apply it, and the communities in which they are embedded. In doing so, we demonstrate how expanding RBV to incorporate the community as strategic resource contributes to managerial theory, research, and practice.