gender differential paper IJCRB

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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS
JUNE 2011
VOL 3, NO 2
To have an understanding of why competitive strategies are better than others, we need to pay
attention to resources’ distribution and allocation in competing firms. As we know resources in
the firms are different.
It means that every firm may have more or less some of the resources, just those resources which
are rare, valuable, and difficult to imitate can provide a SCA. (Amit & Schoemaker, 1993;
Barney, 1991; Schoenecker & Cooper, 1998). Hitt, Nixon, Clifford, & Coyne, (1999) opine if we
apply some of the strategies to leverage those rare and valuable resources successfully in the
firm, that firm is likely to gain an advantage over its competitors in the marketplace and thus
earn higher returns. Peteraf, (1993) says competitive advantages that are sustained over time lead
to higher performance. Thus, if a firm could find better and cheaper ways in doing the production
process, it could compete successfully and prosper. Among a firm’s intangible resources, human
capital may be the most important and critical for competitive advantage because it is the most
difficult to imitate. For example, Miller and Shamsie (1996) discussed the role of stars, or
“talent,” in the success of the Hollywood studios in their heyday, the 1930s and 1940s. The stars
were developed so that each had an unique reputation or image that was difficult for a rival
studio to imitate. Yet as Miller and Shamsie note, rival studios often did try to develop their own
versions of other studios’ stars by trying to imitate their “image”—for example, Warner Brothers
developed Tyrone Power to compete with MGM’s Clark Gable. But this approach was generally
unsuccessful because it focused on the star alone. Day and Wensley (1988) focused on two
categorical sources involved in creating a CA: superior skills and superior resources. Other
authors have elaborated on the specific skills and resources that can contribute to a SCA. For
example, Barney (1991) states that not all firm resources hold the potential of SCAs; instead,
they must possess four attributes: rareness, value, inability to be imitated, and inability to be
substituted. Similarly, Hunt and Morgan (1995) propose that "potential resources can be most
usefully categorized as financial, physical, legal, human, organizational, informational, and
relational" (p. 6-7). Prahalad and Hamel (1990) suggest that firms combine their resources and
skills into core competencies, loosely defined as that which a firm does distinctively well in
relation to competitors. Therefore, firms may succeed in establishing a SCA by combining skills
and resources in unique and enduring ways. By combining resources in this manner, firms can
focus on collectively learning how to coordinate all employees’ efforts in order to facilitate
growth of specific core competencies. As Body Shop has done to mix all skills and resources to
compete with its rivals in caring of environment and today Body Shop is known with its core
competency as a leader in protecting the planet. According to Warhust (2001) the major elements
of CSR are product usage that is concentrated on contribution of industrial products which can
help in well being and quality society’s life, business practice which focuses on good corporate
governance and gives high impetus for the environmental well being and equity which tries for
distribution of profits equitably across different societies especially the host community.
Chambers, Chapple, Moon and Sullivan (2003) evaluate the extent of CSR penetration in seven
Asian countries (India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and
Thailand). The evolution of CSR in developing economies shows widely varying results. Many
researchers have hypothesized that CSR in emerging economies is still in a very nascent stage
and suitable mechanisms do not exist to ensure that companies practice CSR with anything other
than a charitable outlook. Kemp(2001) states “There are numerous obstacles to achieving
corporate responsibility, particularly in many developing countries where the institutions,
standards and appeals system, which give life to CSR in North America and Europe, are
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