Edith Penrose and the Resource‐based View of Strategic Management
这是《管理研究杂志》新设专栏的首篇文章，邀请不同学者围绕彭罗斯对资源基础观的贡献展开辩论，包括对其1959年著作《企业成长理论》的正面评价与批评。
This is the first of a new twice-yearly feature in JMS in which we invite differing perspectives on a topical issue in the management field. Recent years have seen considerable development of research interest in the internal operation of the organization. The resource-based view (RBV) and the associated capabilities framework have been viewed as an increasingly important, yet somewhat controversial, approach. A number of writers have made significant contributions to the field, including Birger Wernerfelt, Jay Barney, Margaret Peteraf, David Teece, etc. One writer also frequently credited with laying the groundwork for the development of the resource based view is Edith Penrose in her seminal 1959 book The Theory of Growth of the Firm. As part of the development of this framework, recent attention has focused on evaluating the contribution of the resource-based view as a theory for understanding firm behaviour and of some of the authors who have been prominent in its development. For example, the Journal of Management published a special issue in December 2001 that examined developments in the ten years following the special issue devoted to the RBV published in that journal in 1991. The Academy of Management Review published an exchange between Jay Barney, Richard Priem and John Butler concerning the theoretical rigour of Barney's exposition of the RBV. Edith Penrose's contribution to the RBV is also coming under scrutiny. The immediate stimulus for the papers presented here was a paper published in August 2002 in the Strategic Management Journal by Alan Rugman and Alain Verbeke which took a strongly critical view of Penrose's contribution. The first two papers critique Rugman and Verbeke's paper, taking instead a positive view of Penrose's contribution. In the first contribution, Yasemin Kor and Joe Mahoney focus on the contribution of The Theory of Growth of the Firm. The second contribution by Andy Lockett and Steve Thompson examines the contribution to the RBV contained in Penrose's famous case study of The Hercules Powder Corporation and her papers on the growth of international firms. The third paper by Rugman and Verbeke presents a rejoinder to the arguments of Kor and Mahoney and Lockett and Thompson. Rugman and Verbeke entitle their contribution ‘A Final Word on Edith Penrose’. Somehow, this does not seem likely.