The Dynamics of Competitive Advantage: An Integrative Framework

The paper provides an integrative framework for acquisitions of competitive advantage of the firm. The issue of competitive advantage is of vital in the field of strategic management, representing how to build up the theory of firm strategy to compete over competitors in the long run. Based on analyses of competitive advantage from multiple theories of industrial organization, resource-based view and institution-based perspective, an integrative framework of the dynamics of competitive advantage for acquisition is normatively deduced to be composed of three successive processes of generation, maintenance and sustainability respectively. The propositions are postulated for normative studies according to analyses of the three kinds of the mainstream theories of firm strategy. Contrasted against emerging Chinese firm strategy, labeling as Go Out since 1999, the framework is of significant for Chinese firms going globally at present