The constituents of core competencies and firm performance: evidence from high-technology firms in china

This paper, unlike previous studies, focuses on the decomposition of impacts of core competencies on firm performance and the moderating effects of environmental turbulence on the basis of developing structural equation models using the partial least square (PLS) method. By taking a disaggregated approach, the decomposed effects of core competencies on firm performance are examined and the relative influences of all three major constituents of core competencies, marketing competencies, technological competencies and integrative competencies, are studied. Furthermore, this approach helps to avoid the so-called “pitfall” of being vague, tautological, endlessly recursive, and non-operational, for which some studies based on a resource-based view have been criticized. All three constituents are found to have significant influences on firm performance. And these relationships are moderated significantly by environmental turbulence such as market turbulence and technological turbulence, except that market turbulence is found to have no significant moderating effect on the relationship between integrative competencies and firm performance.