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This paper examines leadership in practice, specifically the interaction of leaders and followers, taking account of context (. Distributed Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass). Employing Gronn's dimensions of concertive action and conjoint agency (. Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis. Leadership Quarterly, 13, pp. 423-451), different conceptualizations of distributed leadership (DL) are examined, and the influence of a health and social care context on attempts to enact DL is analysed. In so doing, boundary conditions or the limits to distributing leadership in health and social care are identified. The analysis suggests that the collective leadership DL model presented by Denis et al. (. The dynamics of collective leadership and strategic change in pluralistic organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 44, pp. 809-837) is most likely to be enacted in the face of policy and professional pressures towards more concentrated leadership. However, where DL does not encompass conjoint agency, it will tend towards more towards 'nobody in charge' (. Nobody in charge: distributed change agency in healthcare. Human Relations, 60, pp. 1065-1090) or collaborative leadership (. Leadership in the shaping and implementation of collaboration agendas: how things happen in a (not quite) joined-up world. Academy of Management Journal, 43, pp. 1159-1175). Following the analysis, the authors argue that researchers need to move beyond a reified concept of DL, and ask a more straightforward question of how power is distributed. As Gosling et al. suggest (. Distributed leadership in higher education: what does it accomplish? Leadership, 5, pp. 299-310), DL evokes an aspiration for the way leadership is configured, and draws attention to iterative relations between leadership, followership and context, but it is a conception of leadership that requires unpacking. This conceptual analysis, applied to health and social care, is offered in pursuit of this aim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay we explore the curious symmetry between contestability theory (CT) and the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. CT assumes away all distinctions between incumbent firms and potential competitors. By contrast, the RBV stresses the fundamental heterogeneity of firms and why such differences may be sustainable. The juxtaposition of the two theories highlights the potential trade-off between rigor and relevance in theory development and provides the opportunity to further our understanding of the RBV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, the resource-based view (RBV) has reached a pre-eminent position among theories in the field of strategy, but debate continues as to its precise nature. This paper contributes to the debate by critically reviewing the development of the RBV to date. The critical appraisal examines the development of the RBV in terms of theory, method, empirical evidence and practical insights. It is contended that the permeable and eclectic nature of the RBV stems from its being a theory about what firms are and how they function, and that its popularity is due to an absence of limiting behavioural assumptions. Finally, the authors provide their own subjective views on where they think RBV scholars should focus their efforts in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of Birger Wernerfelt's seminal article on the 'Resource-based view of the firm' in 1984, the strategic management field has embraced the notion that firms are fundamentally heterogeneous in terms of their resources and internal capabilities. This paper assesses the development of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm from Wernerfelt's own perspective. Given his limited engagement in the strategic management field over the previous decades, we asked Wernerfelt to revisit his work and to comment on the critical issues which have subsequently arisen as the RBV has developed into a dominant paradigm in strategic management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates a fellowship scheme aiming to overcome attitudinal and operational barriers towards university technology transfer. We propose barriers exist because of the focus of many academics exclusively within a peer review research network. We explore the case of the Medici Fellowship programme that was implemented in biomedical departments across five universities located in the midlands of England. Our evidence suggests that such fellowship programmes, through the retraining of academics, may have a positive impact on the commercialisation of research. In particular, the fellows, through the enhancement of their social and human capital, are able to act as agents of attitudinal change in their host departments and are seen to build bridges into external business networks that can provide early stage funding, market and legal information and help identify potential customers for nascent academic entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on resource-based views (RBV) of firms which has increasingly been viewed as a broad church that offers the potential to bring together a number of different theories. The ascendancy of RBV--arguably--began during the mid to late 1980s and the initial wave of interest was reflected in a special issue of the "Journal of Management," in 1991. This period has seen the empirical validation of some of the central hypotheses of RBV and developments of the theory. Although RBV now occupies a central role in the field of management its origins pre-date the 1980s by a substantial margin. RBV has emerged as the dominant paradigm in strategy research over the last 15 years or so. Scholars might dispute the relative weights attributable to individual contributions, but it is clear that over a series of papers diverse insights into the relationship between a firm's opportunity set and the strategic behavior to be implemented by its management team have become consolidated into a theory of competitive advantage. In particular, RBV has focused attention on the role of each firm's unique experience in accumulating resources and capabilities that shape its opportunities to earn rents.

Edith Penrose's work has been widely acknowledged to have played a central role in providing the intellectual foundations of the resource-based view. This position, however, was recently challenged in a paper by Rugman and Verbeke (2002). In this paper we address the three main arguments of Rugman and Verbeke and, by drawing on her writings, demonstrate that their arguments are materially incorrect. While readily conceding that Penrose's primary goal was to explain the growth of firms, we show that her analysis of path-dependent firm evolution anticipated many key propositions of the resource-based view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the link between economics and the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. Although, historically there has been a strong link between the disciplines of strategy and economics, explicit citations of key RBV works has been disappointingly low in mainstream economics journals. However, there are substantial bodies of works that build implicitly on the ideas of the RBV, in particular the consequences of path dependency on firm behavior, to explain a number of different economic issues. The issues we review in the paper are all influenced by path dependency and include: (1) diversification and market entry, (2) corporate refocusing, and market exit, (3) explaining innovative activity among firms, (4) diversification and performance and (5) industry evolution with rapidly changing products. Furthermore, we identify a number of reasons that may have limited the explicit use of the RBV in economics, which include the problems of causal ambiguity, tautology and firm heterogeneity. Finally, potential areas for future research are identified, which include the interaction of the RBV and Agency Theory, the RBV as a dynamic theory, using the RBV to explain radical change and the application of the RBV to issues of antitrust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]