Capabilities, business processes, and competitive advantage: choosing the dependent variable in empirical tests of the resource‐based view
提出在某些情况下，用业务流程有效性而非企业整体绩效作为因变量更合适，并通过北美保险公司客户服务流程的数据验证了这一观点。
Abstract A growing body of empirical literature supports key assertions of the resource‐based view. However, most of this work examines the impact of firm‐specific resources on the overall performance of a firm. In this paper it is argued that, in some circumstances, adopting the effectiveness of business processes as a dependent variable may be more appropriate than adopting overall firm performance as a dependent variable. This idea is tested by examining the determinants of the effectiveness of the customer service business process in a sample of North American insurance companies. Results are consistent with resource‐based expectations, and they show that distinctive advantages observable at the process level are not necessarily reflected in firm level performance. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed along with a discussion of the relationship between resources and capabilities, on the one hand, and business processes, activities, and routines, on the other. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.