Untangling the origins of competitive advantage
通过研究科学驱动药物研发这一组织实践的缓慢扩散，本文区分了关于竞争优势起源的不同理论，发现初始条件、环境变化和落后企业的追赶行为共同驱动了实践采纳。
This paper begins to reconcile competing perspectives on the origins of competitive advantage by examining the adoption of ‘science-driven’ drug discovery, a performance-enhancing organizational practice. Science-driven drug discovery diffused slowly, allowing us to disentangle alternative theories of organizational heterogeneity. Adoption is driven by initial conditions, time-varying internal and external environmental conditions, and convergence (firms positioned least favorably adopt most aggressively). While accounting for initial conditions is critical, managers are sensitive to idiosyncratic environmental cues. The origins of competitive advantage may therefore lie in the ability to identify and respond to environmental cues well in advance of observing performance-oriented pay-offs. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.