ASSET STOCK ACCUMULATION AND SUSTAINABILITY OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.

Given incomplete factor markets, appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets. That is, critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in "strategic factor markets" (Barney 1986). Sustainability of a firm's asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated. Imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process: time compression diseconomies, asset mass efficiencies, inter-connectedness, asset erosion and causal ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]