Resources and transaction costs: how property rights economics furthers the resource-based view

Property rights economics furthers the resource-based view of strategic management in a number of ways. First, resources are conceptualized as being composed of multiple attributes for which property rights may be held. Second, a resource owner's ability to create, appropriate, and sustain value from resources depends on the property rights that he or she holds and on the transaction costs of exchanging, defining, and protecting them. While transaction costs are a major source of value dissipation, reducing such dissipation may create value. Implications for the RBV analysis of sustained competitive advantage are derived.