Part Two: Past Empirical Research on the Creation of Superior Economic Performance – A Narrative and Meta-Analytic Review of Industry- and Firm-level Influences (S. 9-10)
1 Introduction
Studying superior economic performance is at the heart of both industrial organization (IO) research and strategic management research. Researchers in these fields have accumulated a vast number of empirical studies on the sources and sustainability of superior economic performance. Research in IO economics usually examines the role of industry effects such as entry barriers, concentration, and growth. Traditional IO research generally ignores the question of firm behavior and focuses on the performance effects of industry membership, highlighting interindustry profit differences. In contrast to IO economics, strategic management research sees strategy effects leading to CA as predominant sources of superior economic performance. Generic strategies and strategic group membership are here considered to be drivers of intraindustry profit differences. More recently, resources and capabilities of firms have been discussed in strategic management research as internal factors underlying CA and intra-industry profit differences.
The Austrian school and its predecessors, who apply a dynamic perspective, underline, in contrast, constant environmental changes that erode an existing position of superior economic performance and generate the necessity for continuous development. Although the majority of empirical studies testing the concepts mentioned attempt to explain superior economic performance, empirical research has resulted in a wide variety of results.
The sources of this heterogeneity are multiple, but the most dominant are the differences in (1) the primary theoretical perspective, (2) the choice of variables, (3) the definition and measurement of variables, and (4) the statistical techniques employed. The observed heterogeneity – not only between the mentioned research fields but also within them – leaves the reader in state of uncertainty about the nature of superior economic performance. This uncertainty is increased by the fact that researchers often focus on their respective research topics without referring to other lines of research that also analyze sources and sustainability of superior economic performance.
Due to the differences in the theoretical perspectives, even reviews of existing literature often focus on just one aspect without giving a comprehensive overview of the overall research topic. In order to allow better insights into the body of research on the creation and sustainability of superior economic performance, the goal in this part is to review existing empirical studies on the research topic, analyzing one of the above mentioned theoretical concepts.
This review will allow an assessment of determinants of the sources and sustainability of superior economic performance. Based on this assessment, an integrative theoretical framework will be developed in order to draw a clearer picture of the determinants of superior economic performance. The review comprises 144 empirical investigations published between 1951 and 2007 examining factors influencing the generation and/or sustainability of superior economic performance.
Due to the observed heterogeneity of the studies, the review will be primarily of a narrative nature following the five steps suggested by Cooper (1998) for literature reviews in general, but will also provide for a subsample quantitative integration based on the meta-analytic techniques introduced by Hunter, Schmidt,&, Jackson (1982) and Hunter&, Schmidt (1990, 2004). Analogous to the main research streams introduced above, the review will include both industry- and firm-level influences on the sustainability of superior economic performance. |
