We integrate and extend research on causal ambiguity, indicating the principal causal paths from ambiguity to performance and discussing the connections between empirical findings and resource-based expectations. We then develop the linkage between causal ambiguity and management perception....

This Special Issue explores the impacts of behavioral strategy on management practice. We believe that behavioral strategy can best contribute to management practice by shifting its focus from individual decision biases to the design of behaviorally-informed decision processes at the level of...

Uncertainty pervades most aspects of life. From selecting a new technology to choosing a career, decision makers rarely know in advance the exact outcomes of their decisions. Whereas the consequences of decisions in standard decision theory are explicitly described (the decision from description...

We present an ordinal method for studying persistence in firm profitability. The method is based on the degree of stability in a ranked performance distribution over time. The method gives a numerical index of rank friction (Rf) that can be applied to any ranked data over any period of time. Rf...

This chapter explores the origins of the theme of competitive advantage in 19th and early 20th century economics. This theme, which forms the core of modern Strategic Management, was a battleground for debates about the value of abstract theory versus observations about real-life events....

Firms sometimes fail to capture opportunities, fail to imitate perfectly-imitable resources, and do not solve their solvable problems. The persistence of errors creates intra-industry performance variation that is usually attributed to the competitive advantages of successful firms. However,...

In a recent paper, Powell (2003) studied 20-year performance in 21 industries, using an ordinal performance measure (‘wins’), and the Gini coefficient as a measure of competitive dominance. The findings suggest that firm performance is statistically indistinguishable from performance in...

Despite having the capability to act, firms sometimes lapse, blunder, or squander opportunities. Modern theories of the firm acknowledge the effects of uncertainty, transaction costs and agency problems on firm conduct, but they do not recognize the consequences of "execution holes" - the...