این متن رو پاراگراف به پاراگراف خلاصه کن به انگلیسی. تیتر هر پاراگراف حفظ بشه   The Industrial Organization (IO) View of Strategy

As mentioned earlier, the study of strategic management has its roots in industrial economics. Based primarily on industrial organization con- cepts, the discipline has traditionally focused on the linkage between a firm’s strategy and its external environment. Such a linkage is espe- cially evident in the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm proposed by Bain (1968) and popularized with a strategic emphasis by Porter (1985). Specifically, the foundation of strategic management as a field may be traced to Chandler’s definition of strategy as a set of mana- gerial goals and choices, distinct from a structure, and the allocation of resources necessary to carry out these goals (Chandler, 1962). In a sense, the industry structure in which a firm chooses to compete deter- mines the state of competition, the context for strategies, and thus the resulting performance of the strategies (Collis & Montgomery, 1995; Grant, 1991). Process-wise, the IO approach to developing competitive advantage begins with examining the external environment, followed by locating an industry with a high potential for above-average re- turns. A strategy is then formulated to benefit from the exogenous fac- tors, and assets and skills are developed to effectively implement the chosen strategy (Hitt et al., 2001).
As the foundational theory of antitrust applications, the IO view of strategy was initially derived from its implications for social policy, which denote the undesirability of a less than perfectly competitive in-
 
dustry structure because it allows for conduct options that lead to supe- rior performance of firms and thus reduction of social welfare. The SCP paradigm, which aims at developing competitive advantage and thus better performance, basically turned the antitrust notion on its head by suggesting that firms should seek to enter markets with the best envi- ronment (i.e., structure) that allows for strategic options to obtain per- sistent superior performance.
Some have argued that one of the most significant contributions to the development of strategic management came from industrial eco- nomics paradigms, especially the work of Michael Porter. His SCP model and the notion of strategic groups, where firms are clustered into groups of firms with strategic similarity within and differences across groups, have established a foundation for research on competitive dy- namics (Hoskisson et al., 1999). As economics scholars gradually adopt other theories such as “game theory,” “transaction costs economics,” and “agency theory,” strategic management research moves closer to firm-level and competitive dynamics (Hoskisson et al., 1999). Begin- ning in the late 1980s, business scholars, seeking to explain the impact of firm attributes and behavior, such as diversification, vertical integra- tion, and technological experience, on performance (Lockett & Thomp- son, 2001), started investigating an “inside-out,” resource-based view of strategy.

The Resource-Based View of Strategy

Emphasizing the critical value of the internal resources of a firm and the firm’s abilities to manage them, the RBV assumes that each firm is a col- lection of unique resources that provide the foundation for its strategy and lead to the differences in each firm’s performance (Hitt et al., 2001; Peteraf, 1993; Wernerfelt, 1984). The RBV literature also stresses that a firm’s heterogeneous resources are the foremost factors influencing performance and sustainable competitive advantage. Historically, the RBV drew its rationales from four theoretical sources: (a) the traditional notion of distinctive competencies, which regards general managers and institutional leaders as distinctive competencies that critically impact a firm’s strategy and final performance, (b) Ricardian economics, which proposes that certain resources used by firms are inelastic in supply and are possible sources of economic rents through proper exploitations (Barney & Arikan, 2001), (c) Penrosian economics, which stresses firms’ heterogeneity, and (d) the IO-based theories of antitrust, which stimu- lated the RBV’s counterargument of firm competency as the source of superior performance instead of the presumed anticompetitive activi- ties.
The RBV theory has several assumptions. First, as in many other eco- nomics theories, RBV assumes that managers are generally rational and firms aim to maximize profits. Second, resource heterogeneity exists in
 
industries because different firms might have different combinations of resources. Third, resource immobility exists in industries because firms’ resource differences may persist (Barney & Arikan, 2001). According to the RBV, four specific attributes—value, rareness, nonsubstitutability, and inimitability—must work in tandem to increase performance. Valuable resources “exploit opportunities and/or neutralize threats in a firm’s environment” (Barney, 1991, p. 105). A rare resource is one that is not easily located and implemented, moving firms beyond the “com- petitive parity” that is associated with common resources. Similarly, a nonsubstitutable resource has no strategic equivalents that perform the same function. The final factor, imperfect imitability, virtually guaran- tees a firm’s sustainable competitive advantage, but it must work jointly with the aforementioned characteristics. That is, although a re- source may be valuable, rare, and not easily substituted, it must be in- imitable to bestow the firm with a sustained competitive advantage. Imperfect imitability may be the result of three factors: unique histori- cal conditions, causal ambiguity, and social complexity (Barney, 1991). That is, competitors may not be able to capture and re-create the histor- ical conditions that have led the firm to experience success. They may not be able to understand the linkages between the firm’s resources and its competitive advantage, or they may be unable to unravel the com- plex interactions among resources. In sum, the concurrent interactions between these four resource attributes form the basis of a firm’s supe- rior performance.
Process-wise, an RBV approach begins with identifying and assessing a firm’s resources and capabilities, locating an attractive industry in which the firm’s resources and capabilities can be exploited, and finally selecting a strategy that best utilizes the firm’s resources and capabili- ties relative to opportunities in that industry (Hitt et al., 2001). Schol- ars, such as McGahan and Porter (1997), have examined the relationship between the comparative impact of firm (an RBV approach) and industry (an IO approach) attributes on firm performance and con- cluded that firm-related factors seem to carry more weight in influenc- ing performance.
As a theoretical framework of investigation, the RBV approach has become more popular among strategic management scholars since the 1990s after the initial dominance of the IO approach. There seems to be an interesting parallel in such a progression between the general studies of strategic management and strategy studies in the context of media economics. As some media scholars have pointed out, historically, there has been an overreliance on industrial organization studies in media economics (Picard, 2002); examinations of the exogenous factors (i.e., the IO framework) that influence firm conduct have been the primary focus of many media industry studies. As we move toward the study of media firms, the RBV investigative approach might provide more in- sight into explaining the different performances of individual media firms and various clusters of media firms.
 
The IO and RBV perspectives of strategic management establish the basic approaches for investigating media firms’ strategic postures and their relationships to superior performance. Four more areas of re- search—strategic and resource taxonomy, value creation, competitive dynamics, and strategic entrepreneurship—have also made a substan- tial contribution to the strategic management literature and are re- viewed next. These supporting constructs may offer a rich theoretical base to inspire more investigations of media products within a strategic management perspective. Note that other relevant concepts in the field of corporate strategy such as strategic networks, diversification, merg- ers, and acquisitions are examined in chapter 3. However, strategy-re- lated organizational topics such as organizational design and structure, human resources management, organizational learning, and strategic leadership and stewardship are not discussed in this chapter because of the extensiveness of these issues and our focus on the RBV perspective of the strategic formulation phase of strategic management.
Strategic and Resource Taxonomy
Classification of strategy types offers the utility of comparative analysis and systematic assessment of the relationship between different strate- gic postures and market performance. To this end, the strategy typologies proposed by Miles and Snow (1978) and Porter (1980) are perhaps the most popular frameworks used by strategic management researchers for analyzing business strategy (Slater & Olson, 2000). Whereas Porter proposed that most business strategies fall under one of three strategic types—“focus,” “differentiation,” and “low-cost leader- ship”—Miles and Snow developed a framework for defining firms’ ap- proaches in product market development, structures, and processes. The notion is that different types of firms have different strategic prefer- ences. Though firms in the same category might have a similar strategic tendency, they could achieve various levels of performance due to differ- ent implementations of the strategy. Miles and Snow classified firms into four groups: (a) prospectors, who continuously seek and exploit new products and market opportunities and are often the first to mar- ket with new products and services, (b) defenders, who focus on occupy- ing a market segment to develop a stable set of products and customers,
(c)	analyzers, who have an intermediate position between prospectors and defenders by cautiously following the prospectors while at the same time monitoring and protecting a stable set of products and customers, and (d) reactors, who do not have a consistent product–market orienta- tion but act or respond to competition with a more short-term focus (Zahra & Pearce, 1990).
Despite the differences in strategic aggressiveness, empirical studies have found that except for the reactors, the other three groups of firms achieve equal performance on average (Zahra & Pearce, 1990). The im- plication is that the implementation of the strategy is most critical to the
 
performance variation within each strategy type. Strategic taxonomy might be applied in the media industries to empirically assess how orga- nization factors and activities contribute to the effective implementa- tion of different strategies. For example, how have different types of television stations, with their various organizational resources and ca- pabilities, implemented their Internet-related strategies? The taxonomy approach also provides a useful framework for analyzing cross-media competition in an increasingly converged media world. For example, in- stead of investigating media corporations by sectors, which is becoming increasingly meaningless, one might use the Miles and Snow (1978) typology to examine these firms by analyzing their strategic prefer- ences toward different media sectors.
In examining a firm’s strategy, the relationship between strategy and resources, and the link between strategy and performance, strategy scholars have also developed a number of resource categorization sys- tems in an attempt to assess the different contributions of various re- sources to performance in different market environments. Hofer and Schendel (1978) suggested that resources can be classified into six cate- gories: financial, physical, human, technological, reputation, and orga- nizational. Barney (1991) placed firm resources into three groups: physical capital, human capital, and organizational. Porter (1996) maintained that resources are of three types: activities, skills/routines, and external assets such as reputations and relationships. Black and Boal (1994) further argued that resources are best classified as operat- ing in bundles—or network configurations—of two types: contained and system, based on the complexity of the network to which the re- source belongs. Habann (2000), from a different perspective, divided firm resources into two sets according to their contents: competence, which refers to firm-specific capabilities, and strategic assets, which re- fer to tangible and intangible assets of strategic importance.
Nonetheless, Miller and Shamsie (1996) and Das and Teng (2000) maintained that the classification of resources is theoretically sound only when incorporated into the aforementioned characteristics of value, rareness, nonsubstitutability, and inimitability. Specifically, be- cause the basis of a sustainable competitive advantage lies mainly in the inimitability of a resource, categorization of resources therefore must incorporate this notion of imperfect imitability. Resources thus may be classified into two broad categories: property based and knowledge based, each based on the inimitability of property rights or knowledge barriers, respectively. Miller and Shamsie (1996) further incorporated Black and Boal’s (1994) concept of resource configurations, thus subclassifying property- and knowledge-based resources into discrete or systemic resources. That is, both property- and knowledge-based re- sources may stand alone or compose part of a network of resources.
Specifically, property-based resources are inimitable due to the pro- tection afforded by property rights. A firm may secure a competitive ad- vantage based on the length of the protection, thus proscribing
 
competitors from imitation and appropriation of the resource (Miller & Shamsie, 1996). Contractual agreements form the foundation of the two types of property-based resources. Discrete property-based re- sources, for example, “take the form of ownership rights or legal agree- ments that give an organization control over scarce and valuable inputs, facilities, locations, or patents” (Miller & Shamsie, 1996, p. 524). Disney, for example, has “international rights to about 853 feature films, 671 cartoon shorts and animated features, and tens of thousands of television productions” (Hollywood wired, 2001). Systemic prop- erty-based resources include configurations of physical facilities and equipment whose inimitability lies in the complexity of the network configurations. Viacom’s television station group, which consists of 34 owned and operated (O&O) stations, is an example of systemic prop- erty-based resources (Viacom, 2003).
Knowledge-based resources refer to a firm’s intangible know-how and skills, which cannot be imitated because they are protected by knowledge barriers. Competitors do not have the know-how to imitate a firm’s processed resources, such as technical and managerial skill (Hall, 1992). McEvily and Chakravarthy (2002) attributed uncertain imitability to complexity, tacitness, and specificity of knowledge. Like property-based resources, knowledge-based resources are composed of discrete and systemic resources. Discrete knowledge-based resources, such as technical, creative, and functional skills, stand alone. The man- agement experience of specific media subsidiaries is an example of dis- crete knowledge-based resources. Systemic knowledge-based resources, on the other hand, “may take the form of integrative or coordinative skills required for multidisciplinary teamwork” (Miller & Shamsie, 1996, p. 527). Increasing attention in the strategy literature within the RBV framework has centered on the factor of “knowledge.” Many stud- ies have focused on how firms generate, leverage, transfer, integrate, and protect knowledge (Wright, Dunford, & Snell, 2001). Some have gone even further, arguing for a “knowledge-based” theory of the firm under the notion that firms exist because they can better integrate, ap- ply, and protect knowledge than can markets (Grant, 1991; Liebeskind, 1996). In recent years, knowledge-based competition has become a pop- ular area of study among strategic management scholars and practitio- ners. Some researchers claim that knowledge is the most important source of sustainable competitive advantage and performance (McEvily & Chakravarthy, 2002). Because media content products are intangible and largely rely on knowledge-based resources for both production and marketing, this is another fruitful ground for further application of strategic management constructs of media products.