The significance of Marx’s value for strategy theory: Competitive advantage and the issue of tautology within the resource-based view of the firm

Abstract

Marxian thinking following the TSSI (temporal single system interpretation) of Marx’s work is applied to refute the allegation of a tautology in the resource-based view of the firm, paired with the provision of an explanation of how and why resources create value, where resources are synonymous with Marx’s categories of constant and variable capital. Refuting the allegation naturally leads to the Holy Grail of resource-based thinking: the question of what, conceptually, constitutes a firm’s competitive advantage within the industry context. This article achieves its objectives by tying the resource-based view into Marx’s theory of value.