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Fondements et déterminants de l'avantage concurrentiel durable de l’entreprise Thèse Jean-Samuel Cloutier Doctorat en sciences de l’administration Philosophiæ doctor (Ph.D.) Québec, Canada © Jean-Samuel Cloutier, 2016

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Page 1: Fondements et déterminants de l'avantage …...Fondements et déterminants de l'avantage concurrentiel durable de l’entreprise Thèse Jean-Samuel Cloutier Sous la direction de :

Fondements et déterminants de l'avantage concurrentiel durable de l’entreprise

Thèse

Jean-Samuel Cloutier

Doctorat en sciences de l’administration Philosophiæ doctor (Ph.D.)

Québec, Canada

© Jean-Samuel Cloutier, 2016

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Fondements et déterminants de l'avantage concurrentiel durable de l’entreprise

Thèse

Jean-Samuel Cloutier

Sous la direction de :

Réjean Landry, directeur de recherche Nabil Amara, codirecteur de recherche

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Résumé

Dans la littérature en gestion stratégique, l'avantage concurrentiel durable (ACD) est vu

comme une finalité désirable des entreprises, car il représente les facteurs qui expliquent la

probabilité qu'une entreprise obtienne une performance supérieure à celle de ses

concurrents (Porter, 1985). Bien que l'ACD ait été amplement étudié, les limites de la

littérature soulignent la nécessité de conduire des recherches plus intégratives. À titre

d’exemple, il est nécessaire de développer de meilleurs instruments afin de capter l'ACD

comme variable dépendante. Cela permettrait d’obtenir une compréhension plus globale de

la complexité des déterminants des multiples formes de l'avantage concurrentiel et leurs

interactions. Cette thèse aborde trois objectifs de recherche qui découlent de ces limites :

1) La réalisation d'une synthèse de littérature intégrative des différentes formes d'avantage

concurrentiel en entreprise et leurs déterminants ;

2) La validation d'un nouveau construit de l'ACD, celui-ci comprenant trois dimensions,

soit la persistance de l'avantage concurrentiel économique, social et environnemental, en

utilisant la modélisation par équation structurelle ;

3) L'identification des complémentarités entre ces trois types d'avantage concurrentiel

persistant et l’identification des facteurs explicatifs de ces avantages.

La revue systématique de la littérature a mis en lumière une grande part de cette complexité

ignorée jusqu'à ce jour, lorsqu'il est question du construit de l'ACD en entreprise et de ses

déterminants. Le nouveau construit de l'ACD validé dans l'article 2 constitue une première

tentative afin de modéliser l’ACD comme étant la capacité d'une firme à développer

simultanément un avantage concurrentiel persistant économique, social et environnemental.

Les résultats de la modélisation d'équations simultanées dans l'article 3 soutiennent

l'hypothèse de complémentarité qui suggère que les ressources consacrées à l'amélioration

de l'avantage concurrentiel social et environnemental prédisent également l'avantage

concurrentiel économique et vice-versa.

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Abstract

An extensive literature stream in strategic management portrays sustainable competitive

advantage (SCA) as a desirable outcome because it focuses on the factors explaining a

firm’s probability of sustaining a performance superior to that of competitors (Porter,

1985). The limits of the SCA literature highlight the need for more integrative SCA

research to improve the construct and capture SCA both as an output and to provide a more

comprehensive understanding of the complexity of the determinants of the multiple forms

of competitive advantage and their interactions. This thesis:

1) Presents a systematic review of the different forms of a firm’s competitive advantage and

its determinants;

2) Uses structural equation modeling to validate a new construct of SCA as a three-

dimensional construct of persistent economic, social, and environmental competitive

advantage;

3) Uses simultaneous regression estimations to identify the complementarities among these

three types of competitive advantage, as well as the industry-, resource-, dynamic

capabilities- and governance-based determinants of these competitive advantages.

The systematic review uncovered a great deal of previously ignored complexities behind

the SCA construct, its measurement, and the importance of the industry-, resource-, and

institution-based determinants of competitive advantage. To our knowledge, the proposed

SCA construct, validated in the second paper, serves as a first step in introducing a new

conceptualization on the operationalization of SCA as abilities of firms to simultaneously

develop an economic, social, and environmental persistent competitive advantage. The

results of the simultaneous equation modeling support the complementarity hypothesis that

suggests that a firm’s economic, social and environmental persistent competitive

advantages reinforce each other.

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Table des matières

Résumé .................................................................................................................................. iii Abstract .................................................................................................................................. iv Table des matières .................................................................................................................. v Liste des tableaux ................................................................................................................ viii Liste des figures ..................................................................................................................... ix Liste des abréviations ............................................................................................................. x Dédicaces ............................................................................................................................... xi Remerciements ..................................................................................................................... xii Avant-propos ....................................................................................................................... xiii Chapitre 1 : Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1

1.1. Contexte ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1. L’avantage concurrentiel durable, une source de richesse collective ................... 2 1.1.2. Les investisseurs, leur performance et leur impact sur la richesse collective ....... 5

1.2. Problématique .............................................................................................................. 7 1.3. Sujet, structure et contributions de la thèse ................................................................. 8

Chapitre 2 : Cadre théorique ................................................................................................. 11 2.1. L'avantage concurrentiel durable comme un construit de la performance de la firme .......................................................................................................................................... 12 2.2. Les déterminants de l'avantage concurrentiel durable ............................................... 15

2.2.1. Les déterminants industriels de la performance de la firme................................ 16 2.2.2. Les déterminants basés sur les ressources ........................................................... 17 2.2.3. Les déterminants institutionnels de l'avantage concurrentiel .............................. 18

2.3. Le développement de l'avantage concurrentiel en entreprise (problématique de complémentarité et de substitution) .................................................................................. 19

Chapitre 3 : Objectifs de recherche et évolution de la thèse ................................................ 21 3.1. Objectifs ..................................................................................................................... 21

3.1.1. Revue systématique de la littérature.................................................................... 21 3.1.2. Validation de construit ........................................................................................ 22 3.1.3. Étudier les déterminants et le développement de l’ACD en entreprise............... 22

3.2 Évolution de la thèse et dimensions mobilisées .......................................................... 23 Chapitre 4 : Sustainable competitive advantage: a systematic review of the literature from 2007 to 2013 ......................................................................................................................... 26

Résumé .............................................................................................................................. 27 Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 28 4.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 29 4.2. Materials and methods ............................................................................................... 30

4.2.1. Objective and scope of our study ........................................................................ 30 4.2.2. Literature search .................................................................................................. 31 4.2.3. Data extraction and analysis ................................................................................ 33

4.3. Results ........................................................................................................................ 38 4.3.1. Some general characteristics of the included studies .......................................... 38 4.3.2. SCA as a dependent variable ............................................................................... 40 4.3.3. SCA predictors .................................................................................................... 42

4.3.3.1. Industry-based variables .............................................................................. 42

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4.3.3.1.1. Industry structure .................................................................................. 42 4.3.3.1.2. Firm-level strategies ............................................................................. 44

4.3.3.2. Resource-based variables and dynamic capabilities .................................... 45 4.3.3.2.1. Tangible resources ................................................................................ 46 4.3.3.2.2. Firm intangibles and dynamic capabilities ........................................... 47

4.3.3.3. Country-level institutions, governance, and networks ................................ 50 4.3.3.3.1. Macroeconomics, regulation, and tax ................................................... 50 4.3.3.3.2. Firm governance structures and mechanisms ....................................... 51 4.3.3.3.3. Networks ............................................................................................... 53

4.4. Discussion and conclusions ....................................................................................... 54 4.5. References .................................................................................................................. 58

Chapitre 5 : Conceptualizing and operationalizing sustainable competitive advantage as persistent superior economic, social, and environmental performance ................................ 69

Résumé .............................................................................................................................. 70 Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 71 5.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 72

5.1.1. From absolute performance to persistent competitive advantage ....................... 73 5.1.2. From persistent to sustainable competitive advantage: two competing models . 75

5.2. Methodology .............................................................................................................. 76 5.2.1. Data and measures ............................................................................................... 76 5.2.2. Exploratory analysis ............................................................................................ 78 5.2.3. Confirmatory analysis ......................................................................................... 79

5.3. Results ........................................................................................................................ 80 5.4. Discussion .................................................................................................................. 83 5.5. References .................................................................................................................. 86

Chapitre 6 : The virtuous cycle of economic, social, and environmental persistent competitive advantage .......................................................................................................... 92

Résumé .............................................................................................................................. 93 Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 94 6.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 95 6.2. Literature review ........................................................................................................ 96

6.2.1. An extended vision of competitive advantage .................................................... 96 6.2.2. Interaction patterns among economic, social, and environmental PCA ............. 97

6.3. Methodology .............................................................................................................. 99 6.3.1. Data and measures ............................................................................................... 99 6.3.2. Measures of PCA and their determinants .......................................................... 100 6.3.4. Analytical plan .................................................................................................. 101

6.4. Results ...................................................................................................................... 102 6.4.1. Sample characteristics ....................................................................................... 102 6.4.2. Regression results .............................................................................................. 102 6.4.3. Determinants of economic, social, and environmental PCA ............................ 104

6.5. Discussion ................................................................................................................ 107 6.6. References ................................................................................................................ 109

Chapitre 7 : Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 113 7.1. Synthèse ................................................................................................................... 113 7.2. Implications.............................................................................................................. 115 7.3. Principales contributions de l'étude ......................................................................... 117

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7.3.1. Contributions théoriques ................................................................................... 117 7.3.2. Contributions empiriques .................................................................................. 118

7.4. Limites et pistes de recherche .................................................................................. 119 8. Références ...................................................................................................................... 121

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Liste des tableaux

Tableau 1.1. Actifs gérés par les investisseurs institutionnels autour du monde ................... 6 Table 4.1. Research statement used in this study. ................................................................ 31 Table 4.2. List of electronic databases used in this study and initial citation search results. .............................................................................................................................................. 32 Table 4.3. Inclusion and exclusion criteria. .......................................................................... 33 Table 4.4. SCA dependent variables and their operational definitions. ............................... 35 Table 4.5. SCA independent variables and their operational definitions ............................. 37 Table 4.6. Review study and firm sample characteristics. ................................................... 39 Table 4.7. Econometric models and causality characteristics reviewed. .............................. 40 Table 4.8. Determinants of firm SCA and their effects. ....................................................... 43 Table 5.1. Exploratory analysis of the SCA dimensions. ..................................................... 79 Table 5.2. Goodness of fit indices for alternative models. ................................................... 83 Table 6.1. Operational definitions of independent variables. ............................................. 100 Table 6.2. Percent of variance accounted for by different models. .................................... 102 Table 6.3. Initial correlation estimates among dependent variables / estimated error-term covariance for the final model. ........................................................................................... 103 Table 6.4. Estimated effects of industry-, resource- and institution-based variables on economic, social, and environmental PCA. ........................................................................ 105 

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Liste des figures

Figure 1.1. Investissement en recherche et développement autour du monde ....................... 3 Figure 1.2. Support gouvernemental à la recherche et développement autour du monde : OCDE 2014. ........................................................................................................................... 3 Figure 1.3. Évolution de la proportion des entreprises du SP 500 radicalement innovantes versus traditionnelles. ............................................................................................................ 4 Figure 1.4. Investissement en responsabilité sociale des entreprises américaines US SIF Foundation. ............................................................................................................................. 5 Figure 1.5. Répartition des investissements des fonds de pension autour du globe selon différentes classes d'actifs. ...................................................................................................... 6 Figure 1.6. Retour moyen des investissements privés. ........................................................... 7 Figure 2.1. Représentation des quatre formes d'avantage concurrentiel de l'entreprise (potentiel, réalisé, persistant et durable). .............................................................................. 14 Figure 2.2. Cadre théorique général de la thèse. .................................................................. 16 Figure 3.1. Évolution des articles selon le cadre théorique principal de la thèse. ................ 24 Figure 3.2. Dimensions mobilisées et évolution de la thèse. ................................................ 25 Figure 4.1. Study selection process. ..................................................................................... 33 Figure 4.2. SCA framework. ................................................................................................ 34 Figure 4.3. Representation of the four streams of literature given the three fundamental dyadic properties of SCA (in the x, y, and z axes). .............................................................. 41 Figure 5.1. From potential competitive advantage to persistent competitive advantage. .... 74 Figure 5.2. Two competing models of SCA suggested by : a) corporate social responsibility studies, and b) the triple bottom line. ................................................................................... 76 Figure 5.3. Alternative models for the SCA construct of PCA. ........................................... 82 Figure 6.1. SCA as the persistence of economic, social, and environmental performance and its determinants. .................................................................................................................... 97 

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Liste des abréviations

ACD : avantage concurrentiel durable RBV : vision de l'entreprise basée sur les ressources

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Dédicaces

À la persévérance de tous ceux qui ont traversé ou qui sont en train de traverser des étapes difficiles dans leur vie, il n'y a rien de

plus grand que soi qui se manifeste sans efforts et sans volonté.

À la sagesse de tous ceux qui savent soutenir leur entourage avec douceur, délicatesse et discrétion, et ce, malgré leurs moments de

faiblesse et leurs maladresses.

À la liberté et à tous ceux qui ont su me faire sentir accepté comme je suis, libre de mes

choix et de mes priorités, et qui m'ont toujours accueilli.

Ils se reconnaîtront.

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Remerciements

Premièrement, je tiens à remercier mon père et ma mère qui m'ont toujours encouragé et

n'ont jamais douté de mes capacités.

Deuxièmement, j'aimerais aussi remercier mon directeur et mon codirecteur de recherche,

soit les Professeurs Réjean Landry et Nabil Amara, pour m'avoir impliqué dans plusieurs

projets de recherche des plus stimulants et aussi pour m'avoir orienté tout au long de mon

cheminement doctoral. De plus, cette thèse a été rendue possible grâce au mode de

réflexion et aux méthodes perfectionnés par les Professeurs Landry et Amara, notamment

en ce qui a trait à la méthode de la revue systématique de la littérature en gestion et aux

analyses factorielles exploratoires et confirmatoires, et aux analyses de complémentarité et

de substitution. Je me sens privilégié de leur confiance et de la liberté académique dont j'ai

pu jouir pendant ces nombreuses années.

Finalement, j'exprime toute ma gratitude d'avoir fait partie d'une équipe aussi dynamique et

sympathique que celle de la Chaire sur l'innovation et le transfert de connaissances. Jalila,

Catherine, Jolyanne, Othman, Norrin, Saliha, Hager et j'en passe. Hormis vos contributions

à mon avancement professionnel, vous avez apporté un côté humain et amical à mon

cheminement qui a transformé mon expérience doctorale d'une façon très positive.

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Avant-propos

Cette thèse contribue à l’avancement des connaissances dans le domaine de la gestion

stratégique des entreprises en ce qui a trait aux fondements et aux déterminants de

l'avantage concurrentiel durable. Cette thèse comporte trois articles de recherche originaux

dont le contenu est soumis en vue d’être publié dans des revues avec un comité de lecture

reconnues par la Faculté des sciences de l'administration. Ces trois articles ont été écrits en

collaboration avec les professeurs Réjean Landry et Nabil Amara.

L’article 1 effectue une revue de la littérature systématique sur les fondements et

déterminants de l'avantage concurrentiel. Il est soumis en vue d’être publié dans «

International Journal of Management Reviews ». L’article 2 présente la validation d'un

construit théorique de l'avantage concurrentiel durable à titre de variable dépendante. Il est

soumis en vue d’être publié dans « Measuring Business Excellence ». L'article 3 expose

une analyse de complémentarité entre la persistance de l'avantage concurrentiel

économique, social et environnemental de la firme. Il est soumis en vue d’être publié dans

« Journal of Strategy and Management ».

Les références de ces articles sont :

Jean-Samuel Cloutier, Nabil Amara, et Réjean Landry. SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE

ADVANTAGE: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE FROM 2007 TO

2013. Soumis à International Journal of Management Reviews.

Jean-Samuel Cloutier, Nabil Amara, et Réjean Landry. CONCEPTUALIZING AND

OPERATIONALIZING SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AS

PERSISTENT SUPERIOR ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL

PERFORMANCE. Soumis à Measuring Business Excellence.

Jean-Samuel Cloutier, Nabil Amara, Michael Bourdeau-Brien et Réjean Landry. THE

VIRTUOUS CYCLE OF ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND ENVIRONMENTAL

PERSISTENT COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE. Soumis à Journal of Strategy and

Management.

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Affiliation des coauteurs :

Réjean Landry est mon directeur de recherche et il est professeur émérite au Département

de management à la Faculté des sciences de l'administration à l’Université Laval (Québec,

Canada).

Nabil Amara est mon codirecteur de recherche et il est professeur titulaire au Département

de management à la Faculté des sciences de l'administration à l’Université Laval (Québec,

Canada).

Michael Bourdeau-Brien est professeur assistant au Département de finance à la Faculté des

sciences de l'administration à l’Université Laval (Québec, Canada).

Rôle de l’auteur principal :

En tant que premier auteur, j’ai rédigé les trois articles en accomplissant, pour chacun

d’eux, la revue de la littérature, la formulation de la question de la recherche, le cadre

conceptuel, la collecte et l'analyse des données, ainsi que l'interprétation des résultats et la

discussion. Mes coauteurs ont contribué à mon avancement par la formation qu’ils m’ont

donnée, leurs questions et approches méthodologiques exemplaires, leurs commentaires et

suggestions, et de cette façon, ils ont rendu possible la finalisation de ces trois articles.

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Chapitre 1 : Introduction

La mondialisation est une réalité actuelle pour les entreprises qui génère des opportunités et

des menaces. Une menace majeure est l’augmentation de la concurrence. Vu

l’accroissement de la concurrence depuis les années 1990, les questions liées au

développement et au maintien de l’avantage concurrentiel pour les entreprises gagnent en

importance (D'Aveni, 2010).

Même si la littérature scientifique sur l'avantage concurrentiel durable (ACD) considère

exclusivement l'avantage de l'entreprise pour ses actionnaires (Newbert, 2014), l'avantage

concurrentiel est un enjeu concernant toutes les parties prenantes de la firme. Autrement

dit, les entreprises sont en concurrence sur plusieurs marchés. Elles sont en concurrence

pour des investisseurs, des employés, des clients, etc.

Dans un marché concurrentiel, si l'entreprise n'offre pas une profitabilité supérieure, ses

investisseurs se retireront pour aller investir leur patrimoine dans les entreprises

concurrentes. Si l'entreprise n'offre pas des conditions d'emploi supérieures, les employés

quitteront avec leur savoir, souvent critique au fonctionnement et à l'avantage concurrentiel

de l'entreprise, et iront travailler pour la concurrence. Enfin, si l'entreprise n'offre pas des

produits se démarquant suffisamment, c'est la concurrence qui se saisira des parts de

marché.

1.1. Contexte

Le contexte économique actuel, soit celui d'un marché majoritairement ouvert, caractérisé

par une forte concurrence basée de plus en plus sur la connaissance, l'innovation et les

réseaux (Becheikh et coll., 2006), rend particulièrement intéressante l'étude de l'ACD, ses

déterminants et son développement dans les entreprises. De meilleures connaissances en la

matière mèneraient à de meilleurs outils, grandement bénéfiques aux investisseurs, aux

gestionnaires et aux décideurs politiques.

Au point de vue de la discipline du management stratégique, celle-ci est rendue à un stade

de son développement où l'utilisation d'une diversité d'approches intégrées est préférable

(Hafsi et Thomas, 2005). Sur le plan méthodologique, l’ère du numérique et l'émergence du

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« big data » rendent disponibles une quantité sans précédent de données secondaires

longitudinales sur un très grand nombre d'entreprises (principalement cotées en Bourse). De

plus, la modélisation de phénomènes plus complexes est aussi facilitée par le

développement d’outils permettant l’utilisation de méthodes toujours plus perfectionnées.

La thèse porte sur les fondements de l’ACD, ses déterminants et son développement dans

les entreprises. La thèse s’appuie sur une revue systématique de la littérature, une validation

de construits et l’utilisation de données secondaires afin d’étudier les différences de

performance, les déterminants de leur persistance et les relations de complémentarité entre

les différents avantages concurrentiels persistants de la firme. Même si les données

secondaires comportent des limites importantes et qu'elles sont souvent moins riches que

les données primaires, il faut comprendre que c'est sur la base de la collecte, de l'analyse et

de l'interprétation de ces données que des trillions (milliers de milliards) de dollars sont

investis chaque année par les investisseurs institutionnels qui gèrent la quasi-totalité de

notre richesse collective. Ces décisions d'investissements ont de très grandes conséquences

sur notre épargne collective et sur les marchés en général. Une faible amélioration des

décisions de ces investisseurs institutionnels se traduirait par un impact économique

majeur.

1.1.1. L’avantage concurrentiel durable, une source de richesse collective

L’avantage concurrentiel est une conséquence des efforts novateurs des entreprises se

traduisant par des différences plus ou moins persistantes de performance entre les firmes et

leurs concurrents. Ces firmes qui possèdent des ACD (qui persistent dans le temps) sont à

l’origine d’une activité économique ayant un multiplicateur très important pour la

collectivité et sont une importante source de richesse collective.

Afin de demeurer concurrentielles, beaucoup d'entreprises voient l'innovation comme une

activité incontournable face à l'intensification et l'évolution de la concurrence. Tel

qu'illustré à la figure 1.1, depuis les années 90, les entreprises ont multiplié les

investissements en recherche et développement. Dans le même sens, les gouvernements des

pays de l’OCDE ont investi des sommes considérables (principalement sous forme de

crédits d'impôt et de subventions) dans le soutien à la recherche et au développement afin

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de permettre aux entreprises de développer et de maintenir leur avantage concurrentiel

(figure 1.2).

Figure 1.1. Investissement en recherche et développement autour du monde (source : http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/06/its_official_china_is_becoming_a_new_innovation_powerhouse). PVD : pays en voie de développement.

Figure 1.2. Support gouvernemental à la recherche et développement autour du monde : OCDE 2014 (Source : http://www.finfacts.ie/Irish_finance_news/articleDetail.php?Canada-and-Ireland-face-similar-innovation-policy-challenges-254).

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Les préférences des investisseurs ont également évolué en ce sens. Tel que montré à la

figure 1.3, la proportion d'entreprises radicalement innovantes au rang des plus grandes

entreprises américaines est en forte croissance.

Figure 1.3. Évolution de la proportion des entreprises du SP 500 radicalement innovantes versus traditionnelles (Source : ARK internal research, http://ark-invest.com/whatwedo).

Tel que mentionné précédemment, les entreprises sont en concurrence sur plusieurs

marchés, pour les investisseurs, pour les meilleurs employés et pour les parts de marché.

Ainsi, dans un marché concurrentiel, les entreprises accordent de plus en plus d’importance

à la façon dont elles partagent leurs profits avec leurs parties prenantes. Cette tendance,

visible à la figure 1.4, s'illustre par l'investissement grandissant des entreprises dans des

activités qui visent à améliorer leur performance sociale (pour leurs employés, leurs clients

et l'environnement). L’adoption des pratiques qui profitent à d’autres parties prenantes que

les actionnaires représente un dilemme important pour les gestionnaires.

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Figure 1.4. Investissement en responsabilité sociale des entreprises américaines US SIF Foundation (Source : http://www.dedoracapital.com/blog/ongoing-evolution-socially-responsible-investing).

1.1.2. Les investisseurs, leur performance et leur impact sur la richesse collective

L'impact potentiel de la performance des décisions des investisseurs institutionnels sur la

richesse collective nous apparaît colossal. En fait, les sommes investies par ces derniers

dans les entreprises et dans les autres classes d’actifs sont tellement volumineuses qu’elles

représentent une proportion importante du produit national brut des pays concernés (figure

1.3). De fait, une proportion majoritaire des sommes gérées par ces investisseurs (tableau

1.1) est investie sur les marchés boursiers (i.e. dans les entreprises publiques) (mis à part au

Japon et aux Pays-Bas; figure 1.5). Étant donné l’importance de ces sommes investies dans

les entreprises, comprendre et soutenir le développement et le maintien de l’avantage

concurrentiel des entreprises est un enjeu central tant pour les gestionnaires en entreprises,

pour les investisseurs, pour les décideurs politiques, que pour la société dans son ensemble.

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Tableau 1.1. Actifs gérés par les investisseurs institutionnels autour du monde

Actifs totaux

2013

% du PNB

Australie 1 565 105%Brésil 284 13%Canada 1 451 80%France 169 6%Allemagne 509 14%Hong Kong 114 41%Irlande 130 59%Japon 3 236 65%Pays-Bas 1 359 170%Afrique du Sud 236 67%Suisse 786 122%Grande-Bretagne 3 263 131%États -Unis 18 878 113%Total 31 980 83%

Source : http://www.towerswatson.com/en/Insights/IC-Types/Survey-Research-Results/2014/02/Global-Pensions-Asset-Study-2014

Figure 1.5. Répartition des investissements des fonds de pension autour du globe selon différentes classes d'actifs (Source : A Towers Watson Global Pension study; http://www.towerswatson.com/en/Insights/IC-Types/Survey-Research-Results/2014/02/Global-Pensions-Asset-Study-2014).

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Tel qu'illustré à la figure 1.6, la profitabilité agrégée des entreprises publiques est très

sensible aux fluctuations économiques. On y voit que le rendement agrégé des investisseurs

souffre de fortes variations. Lors des crises financières, comme au début et milieu des

années 2000, la mauvaise performance de plusieurs fonds a mis à risque et à perte l'épargne

et la richesse des ménages canadiens.

Figure 1.6. Retour moyen des investissements privés (Source : Bloomberg).

1.2. Problématique

Il est bien connu que certaines entreprises arrivent à maintenir des rendements supérieurs à

la moyenne de leur industrie même lorsque les temps sont difficiles (Wiggins et Ruefli,

2002; Wiggins et Ruefli, 2005; Choi et Wang, 2009; Powell et Reinhardt, 2010). La faible

performance de plusieurs investisseurs, en phase avec les conditions économiques,

témoigne d'une certaine incapacité à reconnaître les entreprises qui ont un avantage et qui le

maintiennent d’année en année, même lorsque l’économie ralentit. La société dans son

ensemble, les entreprises et les investisseurs ont tout à gagner à mieux comprendre les

fondements et déterminants de l’ACD de l’entreprise.

La poursuite de l'ACD, ou d'une performance supérieure aux concurrents persistant dans le

temps, est un élément crucial de la stratégie concurrentielle des entreprises et un pilier sur

lequel s'appuient les politiques d'investissement institutionnel dans la plupart des pays

industrialisés. Depuis le début des années 90, le concept d'ACD a fait l'objet de nombreux

questionnements et a été enrichi par un nombre important de recherches.

‐0,6

‐0,4

‐0,2

0

0,2

0,4

1982 1987 1992 1997 2002 2007 2012

Rendement investissement boursier indice Russell 3000 (source:Bloomberg)

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Provenant de tous les horizons (sciences économique, managériale et politique), une

littérature riche et vaste sur le sujet s'est développée, mais pas forcément d'une façon

intégrée (Armstrong et coll., 2009). En effet, la revue systématique de la littérature que

nous avons réalisée dans le cadre de cette thèse montre qu’il n’existe pas de consensus sur

la définition même de l’ACD. Qui plus est, peu d’études empiriques s'intéressent à l’ACD

comme variable dépendante (beaucoup plus sur les déterminants). Cela représente une

limite majeure de la littérature en management stratégique, science dont les résultats se

veulent utiles pour les entreprises.

Le concept d'avantage concurrentiel puise ses racines dans les trois principales approches

en management stratégique : les visions basées sur l'industrie, les ressources et les

institutions (Peng et coll., 2009). Les trois approches ont contribué de façon importante à

l’avancement des connaissances sur l'ACD, utilisant des points de vue très différents, mais

complémentaires. Ces trois approches mettent en lumière des éléments d'intérêt autant en ce

qui a trait aux déterminants qu’à l'ACD comme variable dépendante.

Plus particulièrement, la revue de la littérature systématique a montré que peu de travaux se

sont intéressés à l'opérationnalisation de l'ACD comme variable dépendante et à son

développement en entreprise. La quasi-totalité des études sur le sujet se limitent à la

performance absolue de la firme pour ses actionnaires (Newbert, 2014). C'est en bénéficiant

de la complémentarité entre les différentes approches du management stratégique que la

thèse souhaite avancer les connaissances sur l'avantage concurrentiel comme variable

dépendante, ses déterminants et son développement dans l'entreprise.

1.3. Sujet, structure et contributions de la thèse

L’ACD représente les moyens qu'une entreprise doit mettre en œuvre pour obtenir une

performance supérieure à celle de ses concurrents (Porter, 1985). L'ACD et ses

déterminants constituent un sujet de recherche très riche en gestion stratégique. L'objectif

général de la thèse est de contribuer à l’avancement des connaissances sur l’ACD, ses

déterminants et son développement dans les entreprises. L'ACD comme variable

dépendante est présenté comme un construit de la performance économique, sociale et

environnementale de la firme. Les antécédents de ce processus sont conceptualisés comme

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appartenant à l'un ou à l'autre des trois piliers de la gestion stratégique (Peng et coll., 2009)

: les visions basées sur l’industrie, sur les ressources et sur les institutions.

La thèse présente trois articles de recherche originaux. Le premier article correspond à une

revue systématique de la littérature empirique sur l'ACD qui a permis de documenter

différentes formes d'avantages concurrentiels en entreprise et les déterminants de la

performance de la firme pour ses actionnaires, ses clients, ses employés, la communauté et

l'environnement. Les différentes formes d'avantages concurrentiels recensées peuvent être

différenciées selon trois propriétés dyadiques fondamentales : absolue vs relative,

ponctuelle vs persistante, et unipartie vs multipartie. De plus, les déterminants identifiés et

leur influence tendent à confirmer le rôle des trois piliers de la gestion stratégique. Le

deuxième article valide un nouveau construit de l'ACD, celui-ci comprenant trois

dimensions, soit la persistance des avantages concurrentiels économique, social et

environnemental. Contrairement aux études précédentes (Newbert, 2014), cet article

présente une conceptualisation et une mesure de l'ACD qui tiennent compte de sa nature

relative, persistante et multipartie. Le troisième et dernier article de la thèse s'intéresse au

développement de l'ACD et suggère que les avantages concurrentiels économique, social et

environnemental persistants de la firme se renforcent mutuellement. Il montre également

que les caractéristiques de l'industrie, les ressources, les capacités dynamiques et les

mécanismes de gouvernance de la firme sont des déterminants importants de ces trois

avantages concurrentiels persistants.

La thèse apporte des contributions méthodologiques, théoriques et pratiques importantes.

D'une part, le deuxième article présente une première tentative empirique visant à

développer et à valider un instrument de mesure modélisant l'ACD comme étant la capacité

d'une firme à développer à la fois des avantages concurrentiels économique, social et

environnemental persistants. Le troisième article est également le premier à étudier

simultanément les déterminants et les relations de complémentarité entre ces trois

avantages concurrentiels persistants. D'autre part, le cadre conceptuel utilisé combine, d'une

façon originale, les trois piliers de la gestion stratégique suggérés par Peng et coll. (2009).

Contrairement à ce dernier qui applique les trois visions exclusivement à l’étude des

déterminants de la performance, la thèse les applique à la définition de l’ACD comme

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variable dépendante. Contrairement à Peng et coll. (2009) qui limitent leur analyse à

l’influence des institutions nationales, la thèse étend sa conceptualisation à l'influence des

institutions internes à la firme, notamment ses mécanismes de gouvernance.

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Chapitre 2 : Cadre théorique

La gestion stratégique en tant que discipline est organisée autour de quatre questions

fondamentales (Rumelt et coll., 1994, Peng et coll., 2009) : 1) qu’est-ce qui différencie les

entreprises?; 2) comment se comportent-elles?; 3) qu’est-ce qui détermine leurs frontières?;

et 4) qu’est-ce qui détermine leur succès ou les échecs autour du monde? En fin de compte,

la gestion stratégique vise à aider les entreprises et les industries à comprendre leur

avantage concurrentiel et à reproduire leur succès de façon durable. En effet, le nombre de

documents sur l'ACD en entreprise a augmenté de façon constante au cours de la dernière

décennie (comme le montre la revue de la littérature systématique présentée au chapitre 4).

Étudier et expliquer les différences de performance économique entre les entreprises sont

deux des missions fondamentales de la recherche en gestion stratégique (Rumelt et coll.,

1994; Armstrong et Shimizu, 2007; Newbert, 2007; Armstrong et coll., 2009; Newbert,

2014). L'explication de cette hétérogénéité de performance se base généralement sur le

concept d'avantage concurrentiel (Powell, 2001). S'il est possible pour une entreprise

d'obtenir un avantage sur ses concurrents, des différences de performances interentreprises

plus ou moins persistantes devraient être observées (Wiggins et Ruefli, 2002).

Globalement, la gestion stratégique s'intéresse à la relation entre l'environnement de la

firme (les menaces et les opportunités), les stratégies (par exemple : innovation,

internationalisation et réseautage) et la performance. Comprendre et expliquer en termes de

causalité l'ACD est un défi qui nécessite une approche multidisciplinaire (Schendel, 1994;

Wiggins et Ruefli, 2002; Hambrick et Chen, 2008; Peng et coll., 2009). Même si le

management stratégique est une discipline qui se veut intégratrice de différentes disciplines,

le domaine d'étude de l'ACD est caractérisé par un grand nombre de débats isolés les uns

des autres (Armstrong et coll., 2009). Il semble qu'une approche intégratrice serait

enrichissante (Hafsi et Thomas, 2005; Enders et coll., 2009).

Afin d'emprunter une telle approche, la discipline du management stratégique peut être vue

comme reposant sur trois piliers influencés respectivement par l'économie industrielle, la

vision de la firme basée sur les ressources (RBV) et la théorie institutionnelle (Peng et coll.,

2009). En gardant ces trois piliers du management stratégique transversal, l’analyse réalisée

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dans cette thèse est organisée en trois volets: 1- l'avantage concurrentiel comme variable

dépendante (comme un construit de la performance de la firme); 2- les déterminants de

l'avantage concurrentiel; et 3- le développement de l'avantage concurrentiel durable en

entreprise.

2.1. L'avantage concurrentiel durable comme un construit de la performance de la firme

Le courant dominant en management stratégique sur l'ACD de la firme emprunte la RBV

(Newbert, 2007, 2014; Armstrong et coll., 2009). Si cette littérature s'est intéressée à une

grande diversité de déterminants et de stratégies, en théorie, à l'origine de l'avantage

concurrentiel de la firme, beaucoup moins d'études se sont intéressées à l'avantage

concurrentiel de la firme comme un construit de la performance de la firme. Les différences

interfirmes de performance constituent en quelque sorte la manifestation ultime de l'ACD

en entreprise (Powell, 2001).

La littérature considérant l'ACD à juste titre comme un construit de la performance de la

firme est plus rare. Newbert (2014) montre aussi que cette littérature est dominée par des

études sur les déterminants de la performance absolue de l'entreprise pour ses actionnaires,

sans tenir compte de la relativité de l'avantage concurrentiel de l’entreprise (par rapport à

ses compétiteurs). Notre lecture montre aussi que la littérature ne tient pas plus compte de

la persistance temporelle de ces avantages ou de leur durabilité (en considération de

multiples parties prenantes).

Considérant la diversité d'approches pouvant être empruntées afin de traiter de l'avantage

concurrentiel de la firme, une conception fidèle du phénomène ne doit pas être limitée de la

sorte. Afin de pallier à cette lacune de la littérature, l'approche empruntée dans la thèse est

plus intégratrice. Tel que mentionné plus tôt, elle utilise les trois approches : la vision de la

firme basée sur l’industrie, les ressources et les institutions.

Premièrement, c'est en économique industrielle que le concept d'ACD prend racine (comme

étant la persistance de différence de profits entre les firmes et les industries) (Mueller,

1986; Porter, 1979; Wiggins et Ruefli, 2002). À la lecture des travaux pionniers de Mueller

(1977, 1986), il apparaît très clairement que la manifestation d'avantage concurrentiel

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correspond à l'occurrence de firmes ayant, de façon plus ou moins persistante, une

performance supérieure à leurs concurrents. Dans cette optique, les travaux innovateurs de

Newbert (2014) et de Wiggins et Ruefli (2002) ont été une source d’influence importante

pour cette thèse.

Tel que suggéré par Newbert (2014), l'avantage concurrentiel comme variable dépendante

doit refléter la position concurrentielle d'une entreprise par rapport à ses compétiteurs. La

nature relative de l'avantage concurrentiel est importante, car elle permet de déterminer si

effectivement et dans quelle mesure une entreprise a un avantage sur ses compétiteurs

(Arend, 2006; Newbert, 2014).

Comme suggéré par Wiggins et Ruefli (2002), l'avantage concurrentiel comme variable

dépendante doit également prendre en compte la persistance temporelle de ces avantages.

En fait, comme ces derniers auteurs le suggèrent, un avantage concurrentiel difficilement

imitable devrait donner lieu à l'observation d'une performance supérieure aux concurrents

persistant dans le temps (qui s'érode moins rapidement).

Le développement de l'avantage concurrentiel en entreprise peut donc être vu comme un

processus au cours duquel une entreprise gradue d'une forme d'avantage concurrentiel à un

autre (de l'observation d'une simple performance absolue à l'occurrence d'une différence

positive persistante de performance par rapport à ses compétiteurs). À cette fin, quatre

nouvelles définitions de l'ACD sont proposées : l’avantage concurrentiel potentiel, réalisé,

persistant et durable.

Tel qu'illustré à la figure 2.1, toutes les entreprises ayant une certaine activité économique,

et donc une certaine performance, sont vues comme ayant un avantage concurrentiel

potentiel. Parmi ces entreprises, seulement celles dotées de certains avantages auront, à un

certain moment, une performance supérieure à leurs compétiteurs. Ces entreprises sont vues

comme ayant un avantage concurrentiel réalisé. Parmi ces entreprises, seulement celles

dotées d'un avantage difficile à imiter ou à substituer par leurs compétiteurs verront leur

avantage concurrentiel persister un certain temps. Ces entreprises sont vues comme ayant

un avantage concurrentiel persistant.

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Figure 2.1. Représentation des quatre formes d'avantage concurrentiel de l'entreprise (potentiel, réalisé, persistant et durable).

Deuxièmement, la théorie institutionnelle reconnaît, contrairement à l'économique

classique, l'existence d'inefficiences propres aux mécanismes d'appropriation des marchés,

reconnaissant notamment le risque d'opportunisme (Williamson, 1975) et la notion

d'externalité (Dahlman, 1979). D'une part, l'idée d'opportunisme a mené au développement

de deux théories sur la protection de la valeur créée par l'entreprise : la théorie des coûts de

transaction (Williamson, 1975) et la théorie de l'agence (Eisenhardt, 1989). Cependant, si la

littérature institutionnelle classique et néoclassique s’est beaucoup intéressée à vérifier et

avancer les théories relatives à la protection de la valeur (Williamson, 1975; Eisenhardt,

1989), elle s’est peu ou pas intéressée au partage de la valeur créée par l'entreprise par ses

parties prenantes avant les travaux de Freeman (1984). Pourtant, la protection et le partage

de valeur sont deux côtés de la même médaille.

D'autre part, l'idée d'externalité a mené au développement de théories qui ont servi de bases

pour la formulation de politiques publiques visant, à titre d'exemple, la correction de

certaines inefficiences informationnelles (promotion de la divulgation volontaire des

entreprises) ou encore le développement de standards et de réglementations obligeant les

entreprises à assumer une plus grande partie des coûts sociaux et environnementaux liés à

leurs activités (Coase, 2000). Cela dit, là où il y a des coûts, il y a aussi des bénéfices

sociaux et, par extension, il y a non seulement des avantages concurrentiels économiques,

mais aussi sociaux et environnementaux.

Ainsi, une fois transposée au niveau de l'entreprise, la durabilité ne renvoie pas uniquement

à la performance économique de la firme (Dyllick et Hockerts, 2002; Steurer et coll., 2005).

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Jusqu'à présent, les trois premières formes de l'avantage concurrentiel proposées (potentiel,

réalisé ou persistant) sont non spécifiques, car elles peuvent s'appliquer à tous les types de

performance de l'entreprise (économique, sociale et /ou environnementale). Autrement dit,

une entreprise pourrait avoir un avantage concurrentiel persistant économique, social et/ou

environnemental.

Tel que mentionné en introduction, les entreprises sont en concurrence sur plusieurs

marchés. Elles sont concurrentes pour des investisseurs, des employés, des clients, etc. La

valeur créée par une entreprise est partagée d'une certaine façon plus ou moins volontaire

parmi ses parties prenantes, y compris ses compétiteurs qui peuvent s'approprier ses

ressources et son marché. La notion de durabilité de l'avantage concurrentiel suggère une

prise en compte non seulement de la performance économique de la firme, mais également

de sa performance sociale et environnementale. Dans la thèse, la quatrième forme d'ACD

en entreprise proposée, aussi la plus riche d'entre toutes, correspond à la persistance

simultanée d'avantage concurrentiel économique, social et environnemental.

2.2. Les déterminants de l'avantage concurrentiel durable

Le courant dominant en management stratégique sur l'ACD de la firme emprunte la RBV.

Cette littérature peut être vue comme suivant deux courants principaux s'intéressant : soit 1)

aux déterminants des stratégies qui, en théorie, favorisent l'avantage concurrentiel de la

firme, soit 2) aux déterminants de l'ACD comme étant un construit de la performance de la

firme. La thèse s'inscrit dans le deuxième courant. Fait à noter, les facteurs étudiés (liés, par

exemple, à l'industrie, aux ressources, aux capacités dynamiques et/ou aux institutions)

pour expliquer les stratégies et ceux étudiés comme déterminants de la performance sont

similaires. Il s'agit tout de même de deux courants distincts de la littérature utilisant des

variables dépendantes différentes. La thèse s'intéresse donc à l'ACD comme étant un

construit de la performance de la firme.

Les variables indépendantes pouvant être utilisées pour prédire quantitativement différents

types d'avantage concurrentiel (basé sur la performance économique, sociale et

environnementale de la firme) sont ici présentées comme se rapportant à l'un ou à l'autre

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des trois piliers de la gestion stratégique : la vision industrielle, la RBV et la vision

institutionnelle (figure 2.2) (Peng et coll., 2009).

Figure 2.2. Cadre théorique général de la thèse.

2.2.1. Les déterminants industriels de la performance de la firme

La vision industrielle de la firme est restée pratiquement inchangée depuis les travaux de

Mason (1939) et Bain (1956, 1968). Selon cette perspective, l’ACD de la firme est

déterminé par les caractéristiques de son industrie, comme l’illustre la théorie des cinq

forces de la concurrence de Porter (1979). Popularisé à la base par ce même auteur, le

concept d’avantage concurrentiel évolue en parallèle au courant de la littérature sur

l’existence possible de différences persistantes de profits (Mueler, 1986).

Comme suggéré par Porter (1979, 2008a, 2008b), les variables basées sur l'industrie

englobent les menaces et opportunités du marché, et le niveau de concurrence. Plusieurs

études en gestion stratégique reconnaissent l'importance de ces facteurs, car ils

conditionnent en quelque sorte les choix stratégiques des entreprises. Porter (1980) s'est

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aussi intéressé, dans cette optique, à la relation entre les forces de la concurrence, les choix

stratégiques et la performance de l'entreprise (par exemple : ses stratégies génériques),

stipulant qu'en dépit d'un contexte industriel défavorable, une entreprise qui est positionnée

de manière optimale (ayant la bonne stratégie) peut quand même développer et maintenir

des avantages concurrentiels.

2.2.2. Les déterminants basés sur les ressources

Contrairement à la vision industrielle qui insiste sur le rapport de la firme avec la

concurrence et sur les caractéristiques structurelles de l’industrie, la RBV focalise son

attention sur le portefeuille de ressources de la firme (Barney, 1991). Ces dernières sont

instrumentales à son processus de création de valeur.

Les ressources acquièrent une valeur stratégique lorsqu’elles sont distribuées inégalement

d’une firme à l’autre et que les marchés destinés à leur échange sont imparfaits (Barney,

1991). Les ressources étant distribuées de façon hétérogène entre les entreprises et n'étant

pas parfaitement mobiles, les ressources rares qui ne sont ni parfaitement imitables ni

substituables sans grand effort (Barney, 1991) seraient à l'origine de la capacité des firmes à

maintenir des rendements supérieurs à la moyenne de leur industrie pendant un certain

temps.

Plus particulièrement, des ressources tangibles et intangibles contribuent à la création de

valeurs à l’échelle de la firme (Lowendahl, 2005; Tan et coll., 2008). Les ressources

tangibles incluent les ressources matérielles, infrastructurelles et financières de la firme. Tel

que mis en lumière par la revue de la littérature systématique, les ressources intangibles

incluent les ressources cognitives et relationnelles ainsi que le portefeuille d'opportunités de

la firme. Contrairement aux ressources intangibles, les ressources tangibles ont des

caractéristiques qui les rendent faciles à acquérir, à imiter ou à substituer. Conséquemment,

selon la RBV, ces ressources ne possèdent pas les qualités requises pour être de bonnes

variables explicatives de la persistance de l’ACD.

Cela étant dit, la RBV suppose que l'ACD de l'entreprise réside dans sa base de ressources

(Barney, 1991). Depuis le début des années 90, la RBV jugée trop statique (s'intéressant

seulement au stock de ressources de la firme) a laissé une place de taille à une nouvelle

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littérature sur les capacités dynamiques de la firme (Barney, 1991; Ambrosini et coll.,

2009). Les capacités dynamiques telles que l'absorption des connaissances, l'innovation et

l'apprentissage (Cohen et Levinthal, 1990; Todorova et Durisin, 2007) sont de bons

exemples illustrant ces capacités sous-jacentes à l'adaptation et au renouvellement des

ressources et du portefeuille d'opportunités de l’entreprise.

2.2.3. Les déterminants institutionnels de l'avantage concurrentiel

La vision institutionnelle est maintenant plus formellement reconnue comme une des trois

principales perspectives de la discipline du management stratégique (Peng et coll., 2009).

Tel que défini par North (1990, p. 3), les institutions sont des contraintes humainement

construites qui structurent les interactions humaines. Elles sont transversales à

l’environnement externe et interne de la firme et sont plus ou moins formelles (Scott,

1995).

Tel que mentionné précédemment, les institutions visent à remédier à certaines

inefficiences de marchés. Lorsqu’il est question de l’ACD, la vision institutionnelle se

distingue par la reconnaissance de l’existence d’imperfections dans les mécanismes de

création et d’appropriation de la valeur (Williamson, 1975). Ces imperfections ou ces «

frictions », pour emprunter le vocabulaire de Williamson (1975), impliquent que la valeur

créée par une firme n’est pas toujours convertie en bénéfices pour celle-ci (Coff, 1999;

Makadok et Coff, 2002; Lepak et coll., 2007). La valeur créée et les coûts engendrés sont

parfois partagés avec d’autres acteurs, notamment les clients, les employés et les

générations futures (coûts sociaux et environnementaux).

Lorsqu’il est question des facteurs institutionnels, il est nécessaire de différencier plusieurs

types d'institutions. En fait, les variables institutionnelles se rapportent non seulement à la

gouvernance et aux réseaux de l'entreprise (Williamson, 1975; Powell, 1990; Dyer et Singh,

1998), mais aussi aux institutions nationales favorisant la libre circulation de l'information,

ainsi qu’au respect des lois et des réglementations (Peng et coll., 2009). D'une part, les

mécanismes de gouvernance (Williamson, 1985; Eisenhardt, 1989) régissent la façon dont

la valeur créée par l'entreprise est partagée avec les différentes parties prenantes de

l’organisation. D'autre part, les réseaux reflètent l'importance pour les firmes de collaborer

avec leurs fournisseurs, leurs clients, ainsi qu'avec leurs compétiteurs afin d'explorer de

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nouvelles opportunités de développement, de réduire les coûts et les risques, et d’accélérer

la commercialisation de nouveaux produits et services (Hagedoorn et Schakenraad, 1992).

En dernier lieu, les institutions externes à la firme se rapportent aux lois et à la

réglementation (North, 1990; Scott, 1995) et aux caractéristiques macroéconomiques

nationales propres au pays de chaque entreprise.

2.3. Le développement de l'avantage concurrentiel en entreprise (problématique de complémentarité et de substitution)

Lors de la présentation de l’ACD comme variable dépendante (comme un construit de la

performance de la firme), les concepts rivaux de protection et de partage de la valeur ont

été présentés. En effet, tel que mentionné précédemment, la littérature institutionnelle, à

travers les théories des coûts de transaction et de l'agence, s'est fortement intéressée à l'idée

de protection de valeur créée par l'entreprise, mais peu ou pas à son partage (à la valeur

créée). Qui plus est, l'opposition entre ces deux concepts (protection de la valeur des

actionnaires versus partage de la valeur avec les parties prenantes) est à l'origine d'un

dilemme décisionnel important pour les gestionnaires face à la question : comment investir

les ressources de l'entreprise parmi des activités qui profitent à différentes parties

prenantes? De cette question émergent deux hypothèses.

La première repose sur une hypothèse de substitution, enracinée dans l'économie

néoclassique, et postule que les investissements pour améliorer la performance sociale ou

environnementale de l'entreprise le sont nécessairement au détriment de la performance de

l'entreprise pour ses actionnaires, car ils génèrent des coûts supplémentaires. Parmi les

partisans de cette école, Friedman (1962, 1970) est le plus connu. Cet auteur soutient que la

seule responsabilité d'une entreprise est d'être gérée en conformité avec le désir de ses

actionnaires de faire autant de profit que possible. En effet, selon ce courant de la

littérature, les ressources consacrées à des programmes ou à des actions sociales et

environnementales sont mal investies et devraient être soit redirigées afin d'améliorer

l'efficience de l'entreprise, soit retournées aux actionnaires (Barnett, 2007; Scherer et

Palazzo, 2011).

La deuxième hypothèse (l'hypothèse de complémentarité) suggère que les performances

économique, sociale et environnementale de l'entreprise se renforcent mutuellement.

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L'hypothèse de complémentarité a été progressivement introduite dans la gestion

stratégique suivant les travaux de Freeman (1984) concernant la théorie des parties

prenantes, un modèle de gestion en rupture avec le modèle néoclassique. Cette théorie

affirme qu'il est nécessaire pour une entreprise de savoir qui sont ses parties prenantes les

plus pertinentes et dans quelle mesure leurs besoins doivent être intégrés dans les objectifs

stratégiques de l'entreprise. Clarkson (1995) va même plus loin en déclarant que la survie et

la rentabilité de l'entreprise dépendent de sa capacité à remplir sa mission économique et

sociale. Celle-ci est de créer et de distribuer suffisamment de richesse afin d'assurer que

chaque partie prenante primaire continue à faire partie du système de l'entreprise. Ainsi,

une faible orientation de l'entreprise vers ses parties prenantes pourrait nuire au rendement

de l'entreprise et, par conséquent, à la valeur créée pour les actionnaires (Harrison et John,

1994; Frooman, 1997). L'hypothèse de complémentarité suggère que les ressources

investies pour améliorer l'avantage concurrentiel social et environnemental de l’entreprise

prédiraient non seulement la persistance de ces types d'avantage concurrentiel, mais aussi la

persistance de l'avantage concurrentiel économique et vice-versa.

Cette question est très importante considérant la nature très prolifique de la littérature sur la

performance sociale de la firme et du débat qui y règne, à savoir si ces investissements sont

complémentaires ou en substitution (Orlitzky et coll., 2003).

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Chapitre 3 : Objectifs de recherche et évolution de la thèse

3.1. Objectifs

L'objectif général de la thèse est de contribuer à l’avancement des connaissances sur l’ACD

comme variable dépendante, sur ses déterminants ainsi que sur son développement en

entreprise. De nombreuses implications pour la recherche et pour la pratique découlent

potentiellement de cet objectif.

3.1.1. Revue systématique de la littérature

De prime abord, la thèse permettra de remédier au manque d'intégration en management

stratégique traité lors du chapitre précédent (Hafsi et Thomas, 2005; Enders et coll., 2009).

Le domaine d'étude de l'ACD fait face à un défi de taille, étant caractérisé par un grand

nombre de débats isolés les uns des autres (Armstrong et coll., 2009).

En fait, bien que la RBV soit considérée comme un pilier fondamental soutenant

l’avancement des connaissances sur l'avantage concurrentiel en gestion stratégique

(Newbert, 2007; Armstrong et coll., 2009; Lockett et coll., 2009), celle-ci ne suffit pas. De

plus, l'utilisation de la RBV, isolé des autres perspectives, limite la représentativité de la

définition de l'avantage concurrentiel comme variable dépendante et limite aussi la diversité

des déterminants à considérer. La vision industrielle, la RBV et la vision institutionnelle

seront transversales à toute la thèse.

Le premier objectif spécifique de recherche de cette thèse est de réaliser une revue

systématique de la littérature sur les fondements et les déterminants de l'ACD, incluant une

plus grande diversité de perspective que les études antérieures. Ceci permettra de définir

l'avantage concurrentiel comme variable dépendante et d’identifier ses déterminants : la

vision industrielle, la RBV et la vision institutionnelle.

Plus spécifiquement, la revue systématique de la littérature permettra de documenter :

• les différentes formes d’avantage concurrentiel;

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• les déterminants de la performance économique, sociale et

environnementale de la firme.

3.1.2. Validation de construit

En deuxième lieu, suivant la revue systématique de la littérature présentée au chapitre 4,

plusieurs autres limites importantes de la littérature ont été observées. En fait, la revue

systématique de la littérature a confirmé que les études antérieures sur l'ACD se sont en

quasi-totalité intéressées aux déterminants de la performance absolue de l’entreprise pour

ses actionnaires en tenant rarement compte de la relativité de la performance de l’entreprise

par rapport à ses compétiteurs, de la persistance temporelle de ses avantages ou de leur

durabilité (en considération de multiples parties prenantes) (Newbert, 2014; Cloutier et

coll., 2016).

Le deuxième objectif spécifique de recherche vise à remédier à cette lacune en proposant

et en validant un construit plus riche de l'ACD comme étant la persistance simultanée de

l'avantage concurrentiel économique, social et environnemental de l'entreprise.

Plus spécifiquement, la poursuite de cet objectif a permis de :

• collecter des données secondaires sur la performance économique,

sociale et environnementale des entreprises;

• mesurer la persistance de l'avantage concurrentiel économique,

social et environnemental de chaque firme;

• valider, à l'aide d'analyses exploratoires et confirmatoires, la

structure du construit de l'ACD.

3.1.3. Étudier les déterminants et le développement de l’ACD en entreprise

Finalement, notre revue systématique de la littérature montre qu'un débat important persiste

dans la littérature, à savoir si les investissements de ressources pour l'amélioration de

différents types d'avantage concurrentiel (profitant à diverses parties prenantes) entrent en

conflit ou se renforcent mutuellement (Orlitzky et coll., 2003). De plus, la plupart des

études antérieures, tenant compte de plusieurs types de performance, se concentrent soit sur

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la relation entre la responsabilité sociale et la performance financière de l'entreprise, soit se

contentent d'examiner les déterminants des diverses formes de performance dans des

modèles séparés (Orlitzky et coll., 2003). Aucune étude n'a, selon notre revue de la

littérature systématique, examiné comment les entreprises décident d'investir leurs

ressources dans des activités qui profitent à différentes parties prenantes.

Le troisième objectif spécifique de recherche vise à remédier à cette lacune : 1) en

effectuant une analyse de complémentarité, de substitution et d’indépendance entre la

persistance de l'avantage concurrentiel économique, social et environnemental de

l'entreprise ; et 2) en identifiant les variables explicatives de ces différents types d'avantage.

Plus spécifiquement, la poursuite de cet objectif a permis de :

• collecter des données secondaires sur la performance économique,

sociale et environnementale des entreprises et sur les facteurs basés

sur l'industrie, les ressources et les institutions pouvant influencer

l'avantage concurrentiel;

• effectuer une analyse d'équations simultanées afin de mettre en

évidence les relations de complémentarité, de substitution ou

d'indépendance entre les équations et identifier, du même coup, les

déterminants de la persistance des trois avantages concurrentiels

(économique, social et environnemental).

3.2 Évolution de la thèse et dimensions mobilisées

L'ACD représente l'aspect transversal de cette recherche. Le point de départ de celle-ci (le

premier article) constitue une revue systématique de l'état des connaissances sur les

fondements et déterminants de l'ACD en entreprise. Les limites théoriques et

méthodologiques de cette littérature ont mené à la proposition de deux autres articles :

d'une part, sur l'ACD à titre de variable dépendante et, d'autre part, sur les déterminants et

les modèles de complémentarité et/ou de substitution liés aux différentes formes d'avantage

concurrentiel.

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Les trois études sont illustrées à la figure 3.1 avec une reproduction sommaire du cadre

théorique global de la thèse afin de faire ressortir le lien entre les différentes études.

Figure 3.1. Évolution des articles selon le cadre théorique principal de la thèse.

Considérant les trois perspectives transversales à notre analyse théorique, la théorie

industrielle, basée sur les ressources, et institutionnelle ont permis de formuler un ensemble

de constats concernant l'avantage concurrentiel. L'ensemble des dimensions mobilisées

dans la thèse sont illustrées à la figure 3.2.

L'article 1 a pour objectif de documenter les différentes formes d'avantage concurrentiel

dans la littérature ainsi que les déterminants basés sur l'industrie, les ressources ou sur les

institutions, tel qu'illustré à la figure 3.2.

L'article 2 a pour objectif de valider un nouveau construit de l'ACD, celui-ci comprenant

trois dimensions, soit la persistance des avantages concurrentiels économique, social et

environnemental. Ce construit est illustré à la figure 3.2.

L'article 3 de la thèse vise à identifier les déterminants de ces trois avantages concurrentiels

persistants (les caractéristiques de l'industrie, les ressources, les capacités dynamiques et les

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mécanismes de gouvernance de la firme). Il s’intéresse aussi aux relations de

complémentarité et/ou de substitution illustrées par les corrélations entre les relations de

causalité prédisant les trois types d’avantage concurrentiel persistant (figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2. Dimensions mobilisées et évolution de la thèse.

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Chapitre 4 : Sustainable competitive advantage: a systematic review of the literature from 2007 to 2013

Jean-Samuel Cloutier, Nabil Amara, et Réjean Landry

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Résumé

L'ACD est un concept fondamental en gestion stratégique. Sur la base d'une revue de la

littérature systématique des études empiriques publiées entre 2007 et 2013, cet article

montre que l'ACD, à titre de variable dépendante, est un construit de la performance de

l'entreprise incluant trois propriétés dyadiques fondamentales : 1) absolue vs relative; 2)

ponctuelle vs persistante; et 3) uni- vs multipartite. Cette étude confirme le rôle structurel

des trois piliers qui soutiennent le développement de l'ACD en entreprise : la vision basée

sur l’industrie, sur les ressources et sur les institutions. Les résultats de la revue

systématique de la littérature révèlent que les stratégies de différenciation, les actifs

incorporels, les capacités dynamiques, la gouvernance et les réseaux sont parmi les leviers

les plus importants de l'ACD en entreprise. Des pistes de recherche et des recommandations

pratiques susceptibles de faciliter l'étude et la promotion du développement de l'ACD en

entreprise sont proposées.

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Abstract

Sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) is a fundamental construct in strategic

management. Relying on a systematic review of empirical studies published between 2007

and 2013, this article shows that SCA as a dependent variable is built upon three

fundamental dyadic properties: 1) absolute vs. relative, 2) punctual vs. persistent, and 3)

unistakeholder vs. multistakeholder. Moreover, our review supports the structural role of

the three pillars supporting SCA development in a firm: 1) the industry-, 2) resource-, and

3) institution-based views. Overall, this study reveals that differentiation strategies,

intangibles assets, dynamic capabilities, governance, and networks are among the most

direct and important levers to trigger a firm’s SCA. Finally, this paper outlines the research

and practical recommendations that may facilitate further initiatives in studying and

fostering SCA development in firms.

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4.1. Introduction

Strategic management as a discipline is organized around four fundamental questions

(Rumelt et al. 1994, Peng et al. 2009): 1) what differentiates firms?; 2) how do they

behave?; 3) what determines their scope?; and 4) what determines their success or failure

around the world? In the end, strategic management aims to help firms and industries

understand their competitive advantage and reproduce their success in a sustainable

fashion. Indeed, the number of papers on firm SCA has evolved steadily during the last

decade.

As shown in Newbert’s (2007) recent systematic review of studies on this subject, which

exclusively used the resource-based view (RBV) lens, several researchers have tested the

effect of a large number of resource-based related variables. However, the RBV hypothesis

has received only modest support overall, which varies considerably depending on the

independent variable and theoretical approach employed (Newbert 2007, Armstrong et al.

2009).

Nonetheless, SCA literature encompasses the use of many theoretical perspectives. Even if

the RBV is seen as a fundamental pillar supporting SCA conversation in strategic

management (Newbert 2007, Armstrong et al. 2009, Lockett et al. 2009), it is not sufficient.

Considering the challenges facing the SCA field of study, “not having a small set of central,

directed conversations, but a large set of numerous, somewhat fractured, conversations”

(Armstrong et al. 2009, p.14), it seems that there is still a need for more integrative SCA

research (Hafsi and Thomas 2005, Enders et al. 2009).

This paper aims to go beyond the highly dispersed work on SCA, by providing a

multidisciplinary systematic review of empirical articles published between 2007 and 2013

on the subject. In contrast to Newbert (2007), our review will not limit its scope to RBV

studies. Besides, the resource-, industry-, and institution-based views have also contributed

to the study of the determinants of firm performance (Peng et al. 2009). Our main purpose

is to integrate the conceptualizations and findings of these studies in order to identify where

they both converge and diverge. This may provide important insight to researchers for the

development of a more comprehensive framework and empirical studies on the

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determinants of SCA, and better recommendations for managers and policymakers for the

fostering of SCA development in firms.

This article is organized as follows. First, we will explain in more detail the objective and

scope of our study, and then describe the method used to locate, select, and analyze the

relevant literature. Next, we will present some general features of the reviewed studies. We

will then present and discuss the results of our review, and finish with the main

conclusions, implications, and recommendations for future research and practice in the

field.

4.2. Materials and methods

4.2.1. Objective and scope of our study

We conducted a systematic review of empirical articles published in scholarly journals

between 2007 and 2013 on the topic of SCA. Contrary to the traditional narrative literature

review methodology, widely criticized for its lack of relevance due to subjectivity and bias,

our study will use the principles of the systematic review methodology. The systematic

review method is seen as a more rigorous, replicable, scientific, and transparent process to

select and review the studies (Littell et al. 2008). It will enable us to identify key scientific

contributions in relation with our two main research objectives: 1) to study how the

dependent variable “SCA” was approached and measured by the authors, and 2) to identify

the main explanatory variables that determine firm SCA. For this review, we used a

diversity of perspectives to define the scope of firm SCA.

SCA is perceived in strategic management literature as a desirable finality for firms

because it focuses on the factors that explain a firm’s probability of sustaining a superior

performance than that of its counterparts (Wiggins and Ruefli 2002). Indeed, the notion of

SCA is closely linked to that of performance (Porter 1980), profit (Lockett et al. 2009), and

return (Amit and Schoemaker 1993). Moreover, for Porter (1985), SCA is a time-related

concept. Therefore, our study includes papers on the sustainability and persistence of such

an advantage.

However, the concept of sustainability should not be seen as having only a temporal

signification. Once implemented at the firm level, sustainability refers to the ability of the

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firm to meet the needs of its direct and indirect stakeholders (Dyllick and Hockerts 2002,

Steurer et al. 2005). Therefore, we needed to expand our research statement to include

studies on the social and environmental performance of the firm. Consequently, we looked

for studies that refer to corporate social responsibility or a firm’s social and environmental

performance, in their title or abstract.

Moreover, we chose a priori to only include studies using causal quantitative analyses to

confirm or infirm the influences of the suggested SCA determinants. In order to capture

these, we looked for studies that included the following keywords in their abstract:

regression*, “structural equation,” “confirmatory factor analysis” or “path analysis.”

To limit our research to studies on firms, we looked for studies that included the following

keywords in their title or abstract: company*, business*, firm*, enterprise*, ventur* or

corp*. The final research statement used in this study is presented in Table 4.1.

Table 4.1. Research statement used in this study. RESEARCH STATEMENT

In EBSCO, EconLit and ABI: ((TI((Sustain* OR CSR OR Social OR environmental OR Persist*) AND ("competitive advantage" OR performance OR return* OR profit*))) OR (AB((Sustain* OR CSR OR Social OR environmental OR Persist*) AND ("competitive advantage" OR performance OR return* OR profit*) AND (company* OR business* OR firm* OR enterprise* OR ventur* OR corp*) AND (regression* OR "structural equation" OR "confirmatory factor analysis" OR "path analysis")))) In ISI Web of knowledge Social Social Science Index: (((TI=((Sustain* OR CSR OR Social OR environmental OR Persist*) AND ("competitive advantage" OR performance OR return* OR profit*))) OR (TS=((Sustain* OR CSR OR Social OR environmental OR Persist*) AND ("competitive advantage" OR performance OR return* OR profit*) AND (company* OR business* OR firm* OR enterprise* OR ventur* OR corp*) AND (regression* OR "structural equation" OR "confirmatory factor analysis" OR "path analysis")))))

4.2.2. Literature search

The notion of SCA reaches beyond administrative science and has ramifications in

economics as well. Upon the recommendations of the library advisors of Laval University,

specialized in administrative science and economics, we queried four multidisciplinary

databases to locate and retrieve peer-review articles on the subject, published from 2007 to

2013 (Table 4.2). We chose 2007 as the beginning of our time period because this was the

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last publication year for articles included in the systematic review by Newbert (2007).

However, contrary to Newbert (2007), our study did not limit its scope to RBV literature.

We searched using the keywords presented in Table 4.1.

Table 4.2. List of electronic databases used in this study and initial citation search results. Database URL Unique

documentsProQuest ABI/INFORM global

http://www.proquest.com/ 1571

ProQuest EconLit http://www.proquest.com/ 743 EBSCO : Business source premier

http://wwwebscohost.com/academic 2045

Thomson social sciences citation index

http://thomsonreuters.com/social-sciences-citation-index/

2402

Total 6761 Citation deleted upon important missing

information 77

Duplicates 2730 Total unique 3954

This search generated 3954 unique citations after the elimination of the duplicates (Table

4.2). Articles were excluded if reviewed titles and/or abstracts indicated that they did not

meet the selection criteria. A full review of the remaining abstract (n=672) was required to

determine whether it met the inclusion/exclusion criteria (Table 4.3). Of these, 448 were

excluded based on the above exclusion/inclusion criteria, yielding a final sample of 224

studies for in-depth analysis (Figure 4.1).

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Table 4.3. Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion criteria

Exclusion criteria

Method: qualitative design; descriptive analysis only

Topic: studies on other types of performance such as marketing, 

operational, job, and innovation performance. 

Unit of analysis: other units of analysis (industry, country, and 

individual) were not considered.

Type of publication: an article published between 2007 and 2013 

inclusively in a  peer‐review journal.

Method: regression, structural equation or path analysis.

Topic: consider firm economic, social, and environmental 

performance as a dependent variable (i.e., the variable to be 

explained).   

Unit of analysis: an empirical study of a sample of firms. 

Type of publication: grey literature (conference proceedings, 

books, theses, newspapers articles, unpublished works, etc.)

Figure 4.1. Study selection process.

4.2.3. Data extraction and analysis

The first step in the analysis of the study was to extract data on firm SCA from all of the

included articles. A first information extraction form was created to collect all of the

relevant theoretical and operational definitions of dependent and independent variables

within each study. Next, firm performance variables and their determinants from all studies

were aggregated, following an interactive process, into diverse mutually exclusive

categories. This method of analysis was a helpful means through which our large dataset

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could be systematically scrutinized and categorized. For this, we used existing theoretical

frameworks.

When possible, SCA dependent variables were organized following Freeman’s (1984)

seminal stakeholder typology (Figure 4.2). Although much narrower than the diversity of

Freeman’s stakeholder types, the range of performance types identified in our study

pertained to the stockholder, customer, employee, community, and environment. However,

as a significant number of studies used aggregate multistakeholder measures encompassing

two or more of these previous types of performance, we also defined a sixth category that

we labeled “overall social performance” (Table 4.4).

Figure 4.2. SCA framework.

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Table 4.4. SCA dependent variables and their operational definitions. Dependent variables Definition Exemplary articles Firm performance for its:

Stockholders Measures of profit (ROA, ROE, ROI, ROS, others) and market performance (Tobin's Q, stock return, and market value).

(Bogner and Bansal 2007, Dehning et al. 2007, McDonald et al. 2008, Baron et al. 2011, Modi and Mishra 2011, Yang et al. 2011, Hoque et al. 2013, Kwon and Rupp 2013, Wu and Shen 2013)

Customers Measures, such as sales and sales growth, market share, and multidimensional indicators of satisfaction.

(Cho et al. 2008, Kumar et al. 2011, Huang and Lien 2012, Wu 2013)

Employees Measures, such as salary and bonus, employee turnover, and multidimensional indicators of satisfaction.

(Rettab et al. 2009, Huang 2010, Jalbert et al. 2011, Melo 2012a)

Community Measures, such as charitable giving, community relations, and participation in volunteer programs.

(Brammer and Millington 2008, Huang 2010, Melo 2012a, 2012b)

Environment Measures, such as adoption of practices and policies for clean energy use and pollution prevention measures, and emission reduction.

(Darnall 2009, Lafuente et al. 2009, Carrión-Flores and Innes 2010, Yang et al. 2011, Gholami et al. 2013)

Firm overall social performance

Measures that aggregate two or more of the previous types of performance.

(Pavelin and Porter 2008, Baron et al. 2011, Chiu and Sharfman 2011, Ioannou and Serafeim 2012)

As will be seen in Table 4.5, the independent variables that were quantitatively tested to

predict one or the other type of performance were organized according to the three pillars

of strategic management: the industry-, resource-, and institution-based views (Peng et al.

2009). First, as suggested by Porter (1979, 2008), industry-based variables encompass

industry structures (market threats and opportunities), the level of competition, and firm

strategies as predictors of SCA. Second, resource-based variables refer to a firm’s tangible

and intangible resources, as well as dynamic capabilities (Barney 1991, Ambrosini et al.

2009). Finally, institution-based variables refer to firm-level governance and networks

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(Williamson 1975, Powell 1990, Dyer and Singh 1998), as well as country-level institutions

(Peng et al. 2009). Moreover, some papers report multiple models for the same analysis

(i.e., a general model and other multiple sub-models for the same dependent variable). In

most cases, we only considered the most general model and, when pertinent (e.g., when the

sub-models included new variables), we only considered results that were the most

consistent across the sub-models.

It is worth noting that an individual study could contain a causal analysis on multiple

dependent variables with similar predictors. Therefore, to limit redundancy in coding, a

second extraction form was automatically generated, presenting all possible combinations

of dependent and independent variables. As a means to synthesis data across studies, we

used the vote counting approach (Littell et al. 2008). This led us to organize all of the tested

causalities into three categories: positive (+), negative (-), and non-significant (ns). Thus,

we were able to determine how many times each determinant was included in an

econometric model, and to categorize their effects on each dependent variable (the

significance of the direction of the effect). However, only causalities that were significant

at the 5% level were considered.

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Table 4.5. SCA independent variables and their operational definitions

Independent variables Definitions Exemplary articles Industry-based view Industry dummies Represent the sectoral activity of the firm. Generally coded as a dummy

variable to identify firm pertaining to a specific industry. (Bogner and Bansal 2007, Dehning et al. 2007, Brammer and Millington 2008)

Market and technological opportunities Environmental munificence, industry

investment, growth, innovation, and performance

Environmental munificence refers to the availability of resources in the environment.

(Karaevli 2007, Hsu and Pereira 2008, O'Brien and Folta 2009, Sirmon et al. 2010, Kumar et al. 2011, Modi and Mishra 2011)

Market turbulence and competition Market turbulence Environmental turbulence pertains to the level of instability on four markets

(employees, customers, innovation, and competitors). (Hmieleski and Ensley 2007, Lin and Shih 2008, Lin et al. 2009, Kumar et al. 2011)

Industry concentration and perceived competition

The concentration of firms in an industry is generally measured as a function of the number of firms and their respective market shares. The Herfindahl–Hirschman Index is the most used measure.

(Carrión-Flores and Innes 2010, Modi and Mishra 2011, Ho et al. 2012, Barroso and Giarratana 2013, Wu and Shen 2013)

Firm-generic strategies Cost leadership Cost leadership strategy can be operationalized by the ratio of cost of goods

sold over total sales (efficiency) and capital intensity and capital expenditures (assets parsimony).

(Lee and Qu 2011, Modi and Mishra 2011, Yamakawa et al. 2011, Belu and Manescu 2013, Klingenberg et al. 2013, Kwon and Rupp 2013)

Differentiation The differentiation strategy is generally measured by the ratio of a firm’s marketing expenses over total sales, which captures a firm’s willingness to differentiate itself from its rivals.

(Yamakawa et al. 2011, Barroso and Giarratana 2013, Hsu et al. 2013)

Market diversification (international) Measured as the ratio of foreign sales to total sales. (Lafuente et al. 2009, Carrión-Flores and Innes 2010) Product diversification Degree of focal firm product-market diversification using Jacquemin-Berry

entropy measure or the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index. (Lin et al. 2009, Sirmon et al. 2010)

Firm resources Tangible resources Debt Total debt to total assets, debt to capital ratio, or debt to equity ratio. (Brammer and Millington 2008, Elyasiani and Jia 2010,

Lourenço et al. 2012) Equity Refers to capital adequacy (calculated as equity to total assets), market

capitalization, or total shares outstanding. (Dehning et al. 2007, Coccorese and Pellecchia 2009, Baron et al. 2011, Wu and Shen 2013)

Liquidity Measured by the ratio of cash over sales or assets. (Brammer and Millington 2008, Artiach et al. 2010) Total assets Measured by total assets. (Brammer and Millington 2008, Elyasiani and Jia 2010,

Modi and Mishra 2011, Tang et al. 2012) Intangible resources Culture Cultural dimensions including organizational culture, organizational climate,

bureaucratic, consensual, corporate culture, individualism, cultural capability, and environmental culture.

(Farley et al. 2008, del Valle et al. 2009, Fraj et al. 2011, Wong and Wong 2011, Uzkurt et al. 2013)

Experience Defined as the number of years directors have worked for the firm. (Karaevli 2007, Chen et al. 2009, Camisón and Villar-López 2011, Hoque et al. 2013)

Intellectual capital Measured by value-added capital coefficient, human capital coefficient, or structural capital value added.

(Komnenic et al. 2013, Kwon and Rupp 2013)

Expertise Firm dynamic capability R&D, absorptive capacity, and

innovation Refers to how well the firm can use new knowledge and knowledge bases to achieve outcomes. Number of patents of the firms, product and process innovation, or R&D intensity.

(Brammer and Millington 2008, Carrión-Flores and Innes 2010, Lee 2010, Das and Joshi 2012, Hung and Chou 2013, Pesämaa et al. 2013, Tsai and Yang 2013)

Learning Formal training expenditures per employee. (Hsu and Pereira 2008, Camisón and Villar-López 2011, Kwon and Rupp 2013)

Institution-based view Firm governance Board diversity Members’ gender (male/female) and ethnicity. (Jiang et al. 2010, Hafsi and Turgut 2013) Duality CEO-Chairman Chairman that occupied or not the position of the chief executive officer. (Horton et al. 2012) Non executives outside directors Proportion of independent/non-executive directors. (McDonald et al. 2008, Baron et al. 2011, Horton et al.

2012) Board size Number of board members. (Hafsi and Turgut 2013, Hoque et al. 2013) Compensation Amount of salary, bonus, and/or stock options holding of board (CEO and/or

VPs). (Cordeiro et al. 2007, McDonald et al. 2008, Adams et al. 2009, Hoque et al. 2013)

Ownership concentration Calculated as a GIndex of the percentage of shares held by investors or as the proportion of total ownership represented by shareholder, with more than 5 or 10% share to the total capital of the firm.

(Guedri and Hollandts 2008, Baron et al. 2011, Ioannou and Serafeim 2012)

Ownership type (dummies) Percentage of shares owned by domestic, foreign, institutional, government, and state shareholders.

(McDonald et al. 2008, Wolf 2009, Elyasiani and Jia 2010, Sirmon et al. 2010, Wu 2013)

Networks Network Number of alliances, including business ties, strategic alliance, horizontal

linkages and commercial cooperation; political connection of the firm; exploration; number of times during the past year that a focal CEO had solicited strategic advice from managers at other companies.

( McDonald et al. 2008, Lin et al. 2009, Chellappa and Saraf 2010, Jiang et al. 2010, Omil et al. 2011, Yamakawa et al. 2011, Deng et al. 2012, Doran and Ryan 2012, Wang et al. 2013)

Country-level determinants Country A dummy variable taking the value 1 for firm from a specific country. (Darnall 2009, Kwon and Rupp 2013) Culture Cultural dimensions of Hofstede and GLOBE Model. (Ringov and Zollo 2007, Ioannou and Serafeim 2012, Wu

2013) Law Legislative regulation. (Aguilera-Caracuel et al. 2013, Wu 2013) Macroeconomic variables Refer to GDP, inflation, interest margin, energy cost, and unemployment rate. (Kosmidou 2008, Wolf 2009, Chiou et al. 2011, Dietrich

and Wanzenried 2011, Ioannou and Serafeim 2012) Openness (Import-Export-FDI) Defined as the sum of exports and imports divided by GDP. (Galdeano-Gomez 2008, Ioannou and Serafeim 2012) Tax rate Percentage of total taxes over pretax profit. (Dietrich and Wanzenried 2011, Roxas et al. 2012) Others Firm size Number of employees. (Carrión-Flores and Innes 2010, Chellappa and Saraf

2010, Camisón and Villar-López 2011) Firm age Number of year since firm foundation. (Chen et al. 2009, Elyasiani and Jia 2010, Kwon and Rupp

2013)

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4.3. Results

4.3.1. Some general characteristics of the included studies

A total of 224 published research studies met the criteria for inclusion in this review (as

shown in Figure 4.2). The distribution of the reviewed articles per publication year shows

that the literature on SCA had grown steadily over the reviewed period (Table 4.6). Indeed,

the distribution of the authors shows that SCA research was split into several areas of

inquiry. Management and economics were the disciplines in which this phenomenon was

most examined, followed by finance and accounting.

In accordance with our selection criteria, all articles included in this review evaluated the

firm as their unit of analysis. The reviewed studies encompassed great cultural and

institutional diversity, representing 51 different countries. Mostly from America, Europe,

and Asia, firms from the United States, Taiwan, Spain, Turkey, China, Iran, and Pakistan

accounted for more than half of these studies (53%). Moreover, nearly half of the studies

(48%) focused on a specific industry. Of these, 49% focused on manufacturing and 44% on

service firms. The remaining 52% of the studies used unselective multi-industrial samples

of firms. Overall, 8% and 4%, respectively, of the studies focused only on innovating firms

or small and medium enterprises.

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Table 4.6. Review study and firm sample characteristics. Review study characteristics

Publication year Disciplines 2007 9 Management 832008 17 Economics 442009 27 Finance 362010 22 Accounting 302011 38 Operational research 162012 43 Marketing 72013 68 Information and HR

management 8

Total 224

Total 224

Firm sample characteristics

Continent Country Multiple continent study 13 Multiple country study 11Single continent study 211 Single country study 233Africa 14 United States of America 52 North America 56 Taiwan 17 South America 2 Spain 16 Asia 80 Turkey 9 Europe 52 China 9 Oceania 7 Iran 8

Total 224 Pakistan 8 Others 114 Total 224Industry Multiple industry study 116 Single industry study 108

Manufacturing 57 Services 48 Others 3

Total 224

As shown in Table 4.7, articles reviewed by our study more recurrently analyzed secondary

data (74%) than primary (survey) data in their econometric models. Generally, secondary

data was obtained through third party databases (e.g., Standard and Poor’s Compustat

platform for American firms). Of these studies, 187 (83%) used regression analysis and 37

(17%) used structural equation and path analysis. Among the 187 regression studies, 51

used cross-sectional regression and 136 used panel regression. A vast majority of studies

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used ordinary least square, while less than twenty studies used other methods such as

binomial, logit, probit, and hierarchical regressions.

Table 4.7. Econometric models and causality characteristics reviewed. Econometric models and causalities characteristics Data Analysis

Primary 58 Secondary 166 Regression 187

224 Cross-sectionnal 51 Cross-sectionnal 84 Panel 136 Longitudinal 140 SEM 37

Total 224

Total 224

Causalities Dependent variables Determinants

Shareholders 1490 Industry-level determinants 431Customers 252 Strategy 256Employees 58 Firm resources 841Community 30 Dynamic capabilities 184Social 292 Firm governance and networks 422Environmental 133 Country-level institution and

culture 121

Total 2255

Total 2255

As previously mentioned, we gathered evidence at the causality level. As a result, we

documented 2255 causalities regarding six types of performances and various SCA

predictors. A strong majority of these causalities (66% or 1490) were to predict a firm’s

performance for its stockholders. Next, firm overall social performance (13%),

environmental performance (6%), and firm performance for its customers (11%) were the

most studied. On the determinant side, firm resources was the most leveraged predictor,

followed by industry-level determinants, and firm governance mechanisms.

4.3.2. SCA as a dependent variable

As an output, SCA refers to a firm’s probability of sustaining a superior performance over

its counterparts (Wiggins and Ruefli 2002). As previously mentioned, SCA is by definition

a construct of firm performance that is relative to competitors, time-related, and

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multifaceted. Therefore, we assessed how aligned the constructs used by the authors were

with this definition.

Among the studies reviewed on the subject of SCA, a majority (211) used an

unbenchmarked (absolute) firm performance measure. In contrast, only 15 articles were

found to study the relative performance of firms (benchmarked to their competitors) (Cho

et al. 2008, Peiró-Signes et al. 2012, Losonci and Demeter 2013, Uzkurt et al. 2013).

Moreover, we identified studies looking at the temporal persistence of firm profits (Chacar

et al. 2010, Chen and Lin 2010, Powell and Reinhardt 2010, Chari and David 2012).

However, these papers were excluded from the review since they focused more on the

profit erosion vs. persistence debate than on the identification of the determinant of such a

persistence. Finally, 45 studies were found to focus on more than one type of performance

at the time (Kim 2009, Camisón and Villar-López 2011, Chiou et al. 2011, Germann et al.

2013). Consequently, the firm performance constructs privileged by the authors could be

classified into four streams of literature: 1) study on absolute performance, 2) on relative

performance, 3) on profit persistence, and 4) on multistakeholder performance. These

streams are illustrated in Figure 4.3 along three axes, as they differ given the three

fundamental SCA dyadic properties (absolute vs. relative, punctual vs. persistent, and

unistakeholder vs. multistakeholder).

Figure 4.3. Representation of the four streams of literature given the three fundamental dyadic properties of SCA (in the x, y, and z axes).

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4.3.3. SCA predictors

4.3.3.1. Industry-based variables The industry-based determinants of SCA refer mainly to industry structure and firm

strategy, as illustrated by Porter’s (1979, 2008) five forces framework, as well as his

prescription in terms of generic strategies (Porter 1980). Many strategic management

scholars recognize the importance of industry-level variance as good and persistent

predictors of the differences in inter-firm performance (McGahan and Porter 1997). Indeed,

the sectoral activity of a firm is regularly found as a significant predictor of firm

performance for its stockholders (Lichtenthaler 2009, Kwon and Rupp 2013), customers,

community, and environment (Brammer and Millington 2008, Pavelin and Porter 2008,

Darnall 2009, Kumar et al. 2011).

4.3.3.1.1. Industry structure When it comes to the influence of specific industrial environments on firm performance,

our review documented the effect of market and technological opportunity, market

turbulence, and competition intensity. Indeed, we expected that threatening conditions, such

as higher turbulence and competitive intensity, would have a negative impact on firm

performance, and that market and technological opportunities would positively affect firm

performance. As expected, Table 4.8 shows that the studies reviewed more often reported

the positive impact of market and technological opportunities on firm performance for its

stockholders, employees, and customers. For instance, Yamakawa et al. (2011) show that

growth opportunity has a positive impact on firm performance for its stockholders.

Likewise, Lin and Shih (2008), using a sample of 201 firms from all types of industries,

find that environmental munificence (environmental opportunities) has a positive effect on

firm stockholder returns. Finally, Lafuente et al. (2009), using a sample of 163 Spanish

manufacturing firms for the period 1996–2000, find a positive relationship between

industry aggregate technological investments and firm performance for its stockholders, as

measured by ROA and ROE.

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Table 4.8. Determinants of firm SCA and their effects. Firm performance for its Independent variables Number

of significant causalities

Stockholders Customers Employees Community Overall social

Environment

Industry-based view Industry dummies 90 +/- + - +/- + + Market and technological opportunities Environmental munificence, industry

investment, growth, innovation, and performance

37 +

+ + - +/-

Market turbulence and competition Market turbulence 18 - - + Industry concentration and perceived

competition 25

- - -

Firm-generic strategies Cost leadership 56 - +/- + + + Differentiation 52 + + + + + + Market diversification (international) 20 + + +/- Product diversification 10 +/- Firm resources Tangible resources Debt 97 - - + - - Equity 32 - + Liquidity 29 - + + Total assets 119 + + + + + + Intangible resources Culture 9 + + + Experience 22 + - + +/- Intellectual capital 30 + + Expertise 13 + + + Firm dynamic capability R&D, absorptive capacity, and

innovation 78

+ + + + + +

Learning 20 + + + + Institution-based view Firm governance Board diversity 12 + + + Duality CEO-Chairman 10 - Non executives outside directors 26 + + + + Board size 15 + Compensation 16 + + Ownership concentration 14 + - Ownership type (dummies) 74 + + +/- + + + Networks Network 24 + + + Country-level determinants Country 5 + - Culture 10 - + - Law 10 +/- + + Macroeconomic variables 40 + + + + Openness (Import-Export-FDI) 5 +/- - Tax rate 3 - Others Firm size 52 + + + + + Firm age 29 - + - +

Moreover, market and technological opportunities, when significant, were always found to

positively influence firm performance for customers and employees (Table 4.8). For

instance, Ağca et al. (2012), with a sample of 331 Turkish manufacturing firms, show that

environmental munificence positively influences customer and employee satisfaction.

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As expected, the reviewed studies reported more frequent negative effects of market

turbulence and competition intensity on firm performance for stockholders and customers,

and on a firm’s overall social performance. For instance, Wahyudi (2013), with a sample of

42 public Indonesian firms during the period 1996–2010, reports that market turbulence

negatively affects stockholders’ return. Similarly, Cho et al. (2008) report, using a sample

of 117 firms, that market turbulence negatively affects the profitability of a firm. Moreover,

Wu and Shen (2013), using a sample of 162 banks, report that industry concentration has a

negative impact on firm performance for its stockholders (as ROA) and customers (as

income).

Likewise, Garcia-Zamora et al. (2013), with a sample of 440 Spanish companies in four

sectors of activity (industry, construction, agriculture, and services), find that market

turbulence (measured with items such as changes in consumer demand and the introduction

of new products) has a negative influence on firm performance for customers, as with sales

and market share growth. Again, using two samples (the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest

growing startups and a national (United States) random sample of new ventures), Hmieleski

and Ensley (2007) find that market turbulence negatively affects firm performance for

customers, calculated by revenue growth.

4.3.3.1.2. Firm-level strategies On the firm’s conduct side, given a specific industry structure, a firm that is optimally

positioned can, in spite of an industry context that is for some reason unattractive, generate

superior returns and gain a competitive advantage over rivals (Porter 1980). Indeed, our

review documented the influence of four distinct positioning strategies: cost leadership,

differentiation, product diversification, and market diversification (Table 4.8). However, we

did not elaborate on the influence of product diversification for which the reviewed

evidence was scant and insignificant.

As shown in Table 4.8, our review found that differentiation strategies, when significant,

were more frequently reported to have a positive impact on firm performance for the

stockholders, customers, employees, community, and environment. For instance, Mody and

Mishra (2011), using a sample of 3608 US-based manufacturing firms across the period

1991–2006, find that differentiation strategies positively influence stockholders’ benefits.

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Moreover, using a large sample of 2098 Spanish firms, Fraj-Andrés et al. (2009) find that

differentiation (as a marketing investment) has a positive effect on firm performance for

customers. In addition, Melo (2012b) finds that differentiation strategies, measured as

firms’ advertising intensity, positively influence firm performance for the employees,

community, and environment (all measured using Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini and Co.

Research and Analytics Inc. (KLD)), in a sample of 624 American companies for the period

2001–2007.

Moreover, our study more recurrently reported a positive influence of international market

diversification on firm performance for stockholders, employees, and overall social

performance (Table 4.8). For instance, using a sample of 372 manufacturing firms in

Germany, Jirjahn and Kraft (2007) find that exports (measured by the percentage of the

establishment’s sales generated by exports) positively influence firm performance for

stockholders, measured using ROA. Hsu and Pereira (2008) find that internationalization

positively impacts firm performance for employees in a sample of 110 American

multinational enterprises. Sciascia and Mazzola (2008), using a sample of 620 family firms

in Italy, find that the level of internationalization (defined as the percentage of sales

generated from international markets in 2000) positively affects a firm’s overall social

performance.

On the other hand, it seems clear that businesses that over-pursue the turnover of capital

and fixed assets (i.e., adopt cost leadership strategies) hinder their performance. For

instance, Love et al. (2009) find that capital intensity (measured as the capital investment

per employee) negatively impacts the return on sales of manufacturing firms. Again, Lee

and Qu (2011) show that capital intensity (measured by dividing total fixed assets by total

revenues) negatively impacts Tobin’s Q in the US hotel industry. However, the impact of

such a strategy on other types of performance is too scant to be reported.

4.3.3.2. Resource-based variables and dynamic capabilities The RBV assumes that a firm’s SCA lies in its resource base. Since resources are

heterogeneous among firms, and not perfectly mobile, the firms that possess valuable

resources that are neither perfectly imitable nor substitutable without great effort (Barney

1991) would be able to maintain above average returns during a certain time. On the other

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hand, dynamic capabilities, such as innovation and learning, refer to the dynamic

underlying stock adaptation of firm resources, and their renewal.

That is to say, every firm is endowed with a bundle of valuable tangible and intangible

resources, as well as dynamic capabilities (Penrose 1959, Wernerfelt 1984, Teece et al.

1997). Indeed, resources and dynamic capabilities are the most leveraged and significant

predictors of firm performance that we reviewed. However, our review gathered much

more evidence on the influence of tangible resources, than of intangible resources and

dynamic capabilities.

4.3.3.2.1. Tangible resources Tangible resources are generally reported in a firm’s balance sheet. Indeed, a firm can use

its assets, equity, or debt to feed and develop its activities. As shown in Table 4.8, a firm’s

total assets were recurrently found to have a positive influence on firm performance for the

stockholders, customers, employees, community, and environment. For instance, Wu and

Shen (2013), using a sample of 162 banks in 22 countries, find that a firm’s total assets

positively impacts its performance for stockholders, as measured using ROA. Again, using

a sample of 297 electronics companies in Taiwan, Huang (2010) finds that firm size,

measured by the log of total assets, positively impacts the four dimensions of corporate

social performance (customers, community, environment, and workers), using KLD.

In addition, as shown in Table 4.8, the influence of highly mobile firm liquidity on firm

performance for stockholders was less clear. However, firm liquidity was found to

positively influence firm performance for employees and the community, in line with the

resource slack hypothesis (Ullmann 1985, Waddock and Graves 1997). For instance, Jalbert

et al. (2011) find that free cash flow positively impacts firm performance for employees, as

the non-salary element of total compensation in a sample of 6305 firm-year observations,

from all industry sectors, over the period 1997–2006. Moreover, using a sample of 537

large UK enterprises from all sectorial activities, Brammer and Millington (2008) report

that liquidity, measured by the ratio of cash and equivalent balances to sales, positively

affects firm performance for the community (as the ratio of charitable donations to sales).

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On the other hand, leverage with debt and equity was recurrently found to have a negative

impact on firm performance for stockholders, customers, the community, and overall social

performance. For instance, using a sample of 1532 firms, Elyasiani and Jia (2010) find that

leverage, defined as the ratio of total debt to total assets, is negatively associated with

industry-adjusted ROA. Moreover, Lourenço et al. (2012) show that leverage, measured by

end-of-year total debt divided by end-of-year market capitalization, has a negative

influence on stockholders’ return, calculated as the market price at the fiscal year-end, in a

sample of 418 firms for all industry sectors. In addition, Wu and Shen (2013) find that

leverage (the ratio of equity to total assets) has a negative effect on firm performance for

stockholders, as measured using ROA and non-interest income, in a sample of 162 banks in

22 countries.

When it comes to the other types of performance, Brammer and Millington (2008), using a

sample of 537 large UK enterprises from all sectorial activities, find that leverage,

measured by the ratio of total debt to equity, negatively affects firm performance for the

community (as the ratio of charitable donations to sales). Again, Crisóstomo et al. (2011)

report that leverage, measured by the ratio of total liabilities over total assets, negatively

impacts the index of social action related to employees, in a sample of 78 firms from all

industry sectors, over the period 2001–2006. Finally, Ho et al. (2012) show that leverage,

calculated by total debt divided by total assets, negatively impacts a firm’s overall social

performance, using KLD and Innovest, in firms from all industries.

4.3.3.2.2. Firm intangibles and dynamic capabilities As tangible assets are becoming commodities, firm intangibles and dynamic capabilities are

increasingly taking center stage in business strategies to create dominant market positions,

generate abnormal profits, and achieve growth and wealth. Indeed, as shown in Table 4.8,

most of the studies reviewed showed that expertise, experience, intellectual capital,

organizational culture, and dynamic capabilities more often had a significantly recurrent

positive influence on firm performance for the stockholders, customers, employees,

community, and environment.

When it comes to the influence of expertise, Guo et al. (2012) find that the percentage of

PhD degrees of CEOs and Vice-Presidents positively affects firm performance for

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stockholders (as ROA), in a sample of 279 biotech firms listed in the US market for the

period 1994–2005. Moreover, Goll et al. (2008) find that expertise (as the education level

of human resources) positively impacts firm performance for stockholders (as operating

profit) and customers (as operating revenue), using panel data (1972–1995) from major US

airlines.

When it comes to experience, Hoque et al.’s (2013) study, which examines the relationship

between the CEO turnover and financial performance of 118 Australian firms for the period

1999–2007, finds that CEO tenure (as measured by the number of years on the board) has a

positive impact on firm performance for stockholders, as measured with ROE. Moreover,

using a sample of 6305 firm-year observations from all industry sectors over the period

1997–2006, Jalbert et al. (2011) show that CEO’s age positively affects firm performance

for employees (as the non-salary elements of total compensation). Likewise, using a sample

of 295 firms from all industries for the period 2000–2005, Melo (2012a) shows that

management tenure (measured as the average time members of the board have been

employed in their current firm) positively impacts firm performance for employees, as well

as a firm’s overall social performance, both measured with KLD.

More recurrently, a positive effect of intellectual capital on firm performance for

stockholders and customers has also been reported. Using data from 24 Serbian banks for

2006–2008, Komnenic et al. (2013) find that human capital efficiency, structural capital

efficiency, and capital employed efficiency coefficient all have a positive influence on firm

performance for stockholders, as measured by ROA and ROE. Likewise, Fathi et al. (2013)

examine the relationship between intellectual capital and performance in 49 Iranian

companies over the period 2001–2010. They find that the value-added efficiency of

structural capital and value-added intellectual coefficient positively affect firm performance

for customers, as measured by its growth in revenues.

Finally, Uzkurt et al. (2013) examine the relationship between organizational culture and

firm performance in 154 branches of 10 prominent banks in Turkey. These authors measure

the organizational culture using the scale developed by Ernest Chang and Lin (2007)

(managers actively lead the staff to grow and innovate, the company pays attention to the

uniqueness of employees and encourages innovation from employees, and managers have

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vision and insights to create new business opportunities). The findings from their study

reveal that organizational culture has a direct and positive effect on firm performance for

stockholders (as firm profitability) and customers (as market share). Using a sample of

12764 observations for the period 2002–2008, including all industry sectors, Ioannou and

Serafeim (2012) report that the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups

positively impacts a firm’s overall social performance, as measured using a global ESG

dataset.

When it comes to the innovation dynamic capability, Bogner and Bansal (2007) reveal that

R&D intensity positively affects firm performance for stockholders, using ROE. Again,

Hung and Chou (2013), using a sample of 176 Taiwanese high-tech manufacturing firms,

find that R&D intensity (measured by dividing company R&D expenditures by its sales)

positively affects Tobin’s Q. Moreover, Lee and Roh (2012) show that R&D intensity

(measured as R&D expenditures/total sales) positively impacts ROA, ROE, and Tobin’s Q,

as well as positively influences firm performance for customers, as measured by sales

growth, in a sample of 108 high-tech firms. Again, Melo (2012b), in a sample of 624

American companies (in all industrial sectors) for 2001–2007, reports that R&D intensity

(calculated as a ratio of investment in R&D by total assets) positively impacts corporate

social performance and firm performance for employees, using KLD. Also, using a sample

of 537 large UK enterprises from all sectorial activities, Brammer and Millington (2008)

find that R&D intensity (calculated as the ratio of R&D by sales) positively affects firm

performance for the community, as the ratio of charitable donations to sales. Finally,

Carrion-Flores and Innes (2010) show that R&D intensity and patents have a positive

impact on firm performance for the environment (as the number of environmental patents

and reduction of toxic air emissions), in a sample of 127 manufacturing industries over the

period 1989–2004.

When it comes to the learning dynamic capability, Hsu and Pereira (2008), using a sample

of 110 American multinational enterprises, find that social learning (measured using items

such as penetrating new foreign markets, identifying foreign buyers, and gaining

confidence in managing different country risks) and market learning (with items such as

adapting products for local markets targeting multiple market segments in a foreign

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country) positively influence firm performance for stockholders (ROS, ROE, and ROI). In

their paper, Theriou and Chatzoglou (2009) report that organizational learning capability

(measured using these items: commitment to learning and empowerment; systems

perspective and clarity of purpose and mission; openness and experimentation; and

organizational memory) has a positive effect on firm performance for stockholders (as

profitability) and customers (as market share), in a sample of Greek firms from the service

sector industry. Finally, del Valle and Castillo (2009) show that training, measured by

hours per employee/year, is positively associated with firm performance for employees, as

well as with customer loyalty, in a sample of 40 firms from all industries.

4.3.3.3. Country-level institutions, governance, and networks As the third leg of strategic management (Peng et al. 2009), the institution-based view

recalls that institutions are more than background conditions (Peng and Heath 1996, Oliver

1997). Indeed, the institution-based conversation exceeds a firm’s national and cultural

environment, as the questions of “humanly devised constraints” (North 1990) can be

assessed, as well as the level of the firm and its networks (Powell 1990).

4.3.3.3.1. Macroeconomics, regulation, and tax Following our review, international studies of firm performance, that have included some

country dummies, found no significant association with firm performance for stockholders,

but did for the environment and a firm’s overall social performance (Darnall 2009, Ho et al.

2012, Kwon and Rupp 2013).

However, our review documented interesting evidence regarding the influence of firm

country macroeconomics, regulation, and taxes. As seen in Table 4.8, the studies included

in our review frequently found that macroeconomics variables, such as GDP, interest rates,

and government subsidies, were more frequently reported to have a positive influence on

firm performance for stockholders. For instance, Dietrich and Wanzenried (2011), with a

sample of 372 commercial banks in Switzerland over the period 1999–2009, find that GDP

and the interest margin positively affect firm performance for stockholders (as ROAA).

Likewise, de Carvalho et al. (2013), using a sample of 182 small and medium-sized

Portuguese fitness firms, find that government subsidies positively impact firm

performance for stockholders (as profitability).

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However, inflation, recession, regulation, and tax rates were, as expected, reported to have

a negative influence on firm performance for stockholders. For instance, Kosmidou’s

(2008) study reports that the annual inflation rate negatively affects the ROAA of the firm,

using a sample of 23 banks. Again, Muñoz-Bullón and Sanchez-Bueno (2011), using the

panel data of small and medium-sized Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 1993–

2006, find that recession negatively impacts the ROA and ROS of the firm. Moreover, Cho

et al. (2008) find that government regulation negatively affects the profitability of the firm

in a sample of 117 firms. Moreover, using the panel data of 372 banks in Switzerland

(1999–2009), Dietrich and Wanzenried (2011) find that the effective tax rate (calculated by

total taxes over pretax profit (%)) negatively impacts firm performance for stockholders,

measured by ROAA and ROAE.

When it comes to other types of performance, the reviewed studies found a positive

influence of legislative regulation on a firm’s overall social (Pavelin and Porter 2008) and

environmental performances (Aguilera-Caracuel et al. 2013). For instance, Aguilera-

Caracuel et al. (2013) find that environmental regulation (air pollution regulations,

chemical waste regulations, etc.) has a positive effect on a firm’s environmental

performance, in a sample of 128 multinational firms from high-polluting industries. Finally,

Pavelin and Porter (2008) report that government regulation positively impacts a firm’s

overall social performance, in a sample of 3464 UK companies from several sectors.

4.3.3.3.2. Firm governance structures and mechanisms At the firm level, organizational governance relates to board structures and incentives that

can be employed to deal with agency problems stemming from goal and objective

divergences among firm managers and stockholders. Indeed, larger, more diversified, and

independent boards were often found to have a positive influence on firm performance for

stockholders, customers, and overall social performance. For instance, using a sample of

174 banks for the period 1995–2002, Belkhir (2009) shows that the number of directors

sitting on the board (board size) positively impacts a firm’s ROA. When it comes to board

diversity, Reddy et al. (2008), using a sample of 355 small-cap firms, find that the

proportion of female directors on the board positively affects the financial performance

(Tobin’s Q). Moreover, Jalbert et al. (2013), using a sample of 6305 annual firm

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observations that covers a 10-year period and includes all industry sectors, find that the

presence of a female CEO is positively associated with firm performance for customers (as

measured by sales growth). In addition, using a sample of 95 manufacturing and service

firms, Hafsi and Turgut (2013) report that the percentage of female directors on a given

board positively affects a firm’s overall social performance, as measured with KLD.

Likewise, Horton et al. (2012) find that having an outside director positively impacts

financial performance (ROA), in a sample of 4278 UK firms. Finally, Huang (2010) shows

that the percentage of the total number of independent directors on the board positively

impacts the four dimensions of corporate social performance (customers, community,

society, and workers), using KLD, in a sample of 297 electronics companies in Taiwan.

This tends to confirm the positive impact of practices meant to increase the independence

of board decisions on firm performance for stakeholders (a larger, more diversified board

with a superior proportion of non-executive directors).

On the other hand, practices that, instead, favor conflicting interests, such as when the CEO

also holds the position of the chairman of the board (CEO duality), were more often found

to have a negative influence on firm performance for shareholders. For instance, a negative

association between CEO duality and firm performance for stockholders, measured by

ROA, is reported in a sample of 187 Taiwanese-listed firms (Wen-Ting and Yunshi 2012).

The effect of ownership concentration was more often found to have a positive influence on

a firm’s shareholder performance. This might mean that adequate board control and

monitoring of managers, dependent on some focused objectives, can improve firm

performance for stockholders. For instance, Lafuente et al. (2009), with a sample of 163

Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1996–2000, find that ownership concentration,

measured by the shares held by the largest stockholder, positively impacts firm ROE.

However, in a sample of 12764 observations for the period 2002–2008, including all

industry sectors, Ioannou and Serafeim (2012) find that the percentage of shares held by

investors, owing more than 5%, negatively influences corporate social performance, as

measured using a global ESG dataset.

When it comes to incentives, director compensations were more frequently found to foster

firm performance for stockholders and a firm’s overall social performance. For instance,

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Cordeiro et al.’s (2007) study shows that the grant ratio (corresponding ratio of dollar stock

grant compensation) and the stock option ratio (ratio of dollar stock option compensation to

total dollar director compensation) are positively associated with firm performance for

stockholders (stock returns), in a sample of 450 Standard and Poor 500 firms over the

period 1995–1997. Likewise, Jalbert et al. (2013), using a sample of 6305 annual firm

observations covering the period 1997–2006, find that total compensation is positively

associated with firm performance, as measured by ROA. Moreover, Elyasiani and Jia’s

(2010) study, using a sample of 1532 firms, finds that the CEO incentive ratio positively

influences firm performance for stockholders (ROA). Finally, using a sample of 288 firms

from all industry sectors over the period 2003–2005, Callan and Thomas (2011) report that

annual cash remuneration for firms’ CEO has a positive effect on corporate social

performance, as measured with KLD.

Moreover, the reviewed studies tend to favor having a great diversity among firm

ownership types. When significant, the percentage of shares owned by domestic, foreign,

institutional, public, and state stockholders was more recurrently shown to positively

impact firm performance for the stockholders (O'Brien and Folta 2009, Elyasiani and Jia

2010), customers, employees, community, and environment (Table 4.8).

4.3.3.3.3. Networks At the meso level, firm network was more recurrently found to have a positive effect on

firm performance for the stockholders, customers, and environment. For instance, Omil et

al. (2011) find that commercial cooperation positively influences the profitability of

Spanish companies. Likewise, Wang et al. (2013) find that business ties (measures with

items such as relationships of top managers with buyers, suppliers, and competitors) and

political ties (measures with items such as relationships with officials in government

departments, industrial bureaus, and regulatory and supporting organizations) are positively

associated with relative firm performance, using several indicators (ROS, ROI, ROE, ROA,

and net profits), in a sample of 253 firms in China from all industry sectors. Finally, when

it comes to other types of performance, Chellappa and Saraf (2010), using a sample of

software enterprises, find that the number of alliances formed, and total number of linkages,

are positively associated with firm performance for customers (as sales). Moreover, using a

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sample of 2181 firms from all industry sectors, Doran and Ryan (2012) report that

backward linkages are positively associated with a firm’s environmental performance (as

the engagement in eco-innovation activities).

4.4. Discussion and conclusions

The systematic review found numerous challenges for the study and for the promotion of

SCA in a firm. Upon the great diversity of measurements and methodologies used by

researchers to capture firm SCA, and to assess the influence of such a wide array of

determinants, the very complex nature of SCA development in a firm cannot be ignored.

Given the main limitation of our study, namely, that it only included articles published in

peer-review journals and that some of the knowledge produced about SCA might have been

overlooked, we propose that our results be considered as suggestions, so as not to fall into

abusive generalizations. Though we are aware of these limits and the specificity of each

firm, industry, and field of practices, we are quite confident in most of our conclusions and

recommendations.

Regarding SCA as a dependent variable, four literature streams were identified.

Divergences and convergences, among reviewed streams of literature, highlight that SCA is

a multifaceted construct built on three fundamental dyadic properties: absolute/relative,

punctual/persistent, and unistakeholder/multistakeholder. From these properties arise eight

possible forms of advantage, of which only four were documented by our review. Above

all, no academic attention has been given to the richest possible form of SCA (relative,

persistent, and multistakeholder). In the end, firm SCA should be conceptualized as the

simultaneous persistence of superior performance for all firm stakeholders.

However, a strong majority of SCA studies consider only an absolute, punctual, and

unistakeholder performance-based construct of SCA. This confirms Newbert’s (2014)

observation that scholars more often use the measure of absolute performance when

capturing firm SCA. Moreover, most of the time, the link between review article theories

and the methodology relating to the use of a specific SCA construct is, at best, implicit.

That is to say, no systematic review has, to our knowledge, highlighted, as we did in this

paper, the prevalent complexity behind the SCA construct and its measurement. Therefore,

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it is suggested that future studies on SCA more explicitly posit their dependent variables,

given these three dyadic properties, thereby making it much clearer what form of SCA they

are, in fact, studying. Indeed, more studies should adopt, when possible, a richer vision of

competitive advantage as an outcome.

Regarding SCA predictors, our study went further than previous systematic reviews on the

subject. In fact, while previous reviews limited their scope to studies grounded in the RBV

(Newbert 2007, Lockett et al. 2009), our review was more inclusive. As previously

mentioned, SCA literature encompasses the use of many theoretical perspectives and, even

if the RBV is seen as essential, it is not sufficient. Indeed, our study intended to confirm the

structural role of the three pillars supporting the SCA conversation in strategic

management: the industry-, resource-, and institution-based views (Peng et al. 2009).

However, a strong majority of the reviewed studies only focus on the determinants of

stockholder performance. Yet, it seems clear that industry-, resource-, and institution-based

variables are at play when it comes to the prediction of other types of performance than that

of the stockholders. Indeed, future research should focus on the identification of the

determinants of a firm’s competitive advantage for the customers, employees, community,

and environment. Even though we organized the presentation of our results given Peng’s

(2009) tripod, future studies should not restrict themselves to such frameworks. For

instance, the business model framework (Chesbrough 2006, 2010) could be of special

interest when analyzing the determinants of SCA and their interplay.

At the firm level, our study confirmed that differentiation and internationalization

strategies, intangibles assets, dynamic capabilities (such as innovation and learning),

governance, and networks are among the most significant levers to trigger a firm’s SCA.

However, notwithstanding the importance of variables, such as diversification strategies,

innovation, and learning, they cannot be reduced to unidimensional measures such as

marketing, training, and R&D investments. Further studies should favor the use of more

reliable measures over more simplistic measures. For example, innovation is not limited to

product and process innovation. Rather, innovation occurs in business practices as well as

in the market. Likewise, organizational learning is not limited to deliberate learning through

training. Better indicators exist and, therefore, should be used.

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Conversely, the results were more conflicting when it comes to the effect of contextual,

industrial, and institutional variables. Why? One explanation might be that most of the

tested causalities we reviewed were direct and overlooked indirect effects, which we

posited are of great importance when it comes to the effect of such contextual factors on

firm performance. Although our study failed to systematically review the indirect effects

due to an unexpected higher level of complexity when coding indirect causalities, some

interactions were observed between industry-level determinants (e.g., competitive intensity

and industry turbulence) and firm dynamic capabilities (e.g., innovation) (Akgün et al.

2008, Lichtenthaler 2009, Oh et al. 2012, García-Zamora et al. 2013, Jiao et al. 2013). This

suggests that more studies should take into account the indirect effect of industrial and

institutional contexts on firm SCA. Indeed, since a strong majority of the reviewed studies

chose typical regression as the method of analysis, future studies should favor more

powerful tools to assess the indirect causalities and mediating effects, such as structural

equations and path analysis.

Moreover, one important limit of previous studies on the influence of the industrial and

institutional context on SCA is that they did not take regional diversity into account, thus

implicitly postulating that regions are homogeneous. Practitioners that support businesses at

the regional level generally observe great differences between their regions and

surrounding regions. Indeed, to be useful to stakeholders that act at the regional level,

future studies should take into account the variety of regional contexts, diversity of abilities

and attitudes of businesses, and the diversity of factors facilitating or impeding SCA

development in firms.

For managers, investors, and policymakers, promoting SCA development in firms begins

with, among other things, a clear and precise vision of the complexity underlying firm

SCA. However, a reliable instrument that captures the relativeness of firm performance (in

comparison with that of its competitors), and the persistence of a firm’s competitive

advantage for all firm stockholders, has yet to be developed. Nonetheless, studying richer

forms of competitive advantage entails numerous challenges: 1) the identification of the

most appropriate and least biased performance measures in a given empirical setting, 2)

selection of a valid benchmark to detect over-performers, and 3) access to longitudinal data

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to assess the persistence of such a superior performance. Moreover, these instruments might

have to be context-specific, considering that the stakeholder landscape may vary

significantly from one context to another. Indeed, given the state of knowledge and

empirics pertaining to a specific empirical setting, qualitative analyses might be required

prior to the development of quantitative tools (Edmondson and McManus 2007).

Finally, the challenge for all researchers and practitioners is less to understand what enables

a firm to perform for stockholders in absolute terms, and more to understand how a firm

can maintain a superior performance through time than that of its counterparts, not only in

the eyes of stockholders, but in those of all firm stakeholders. As such, practitioners should

promote the development and use of skills, experience, learning, innovation, good

governance mechanisms, and networking when managing, investing, or policymaking.

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Chapitre 5 : Conceptualizing and operationalizing sustainable competitive advantage as persistent superior economic, social, and environmental performance

Jean-Samuel Cloutier, Nabil Amara, and Réjean Landry

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Résumé

L'article propose une nouvelle conceptualisation de l'ACD comme un construit de la

persistance de l'avantage concurrentiel économique, social et environnemental de

l'entreprise. Le nouvel instrument de mesure a été construit et validé en utilisant la

modélisation par équation structurelle et un échantillon de 1 419 entreprises cotées en

bourse. Les résultats soutiennent un construit de l'ACD comportant trois dimensions.

Contrairement aux études précédentes qui ont capté l'ACD en utilisant des mesures

ponctuelles, absolues et unipartites, ce document présente une conceptualisation et une

mesure de l'ACD qui tient compte de sa nature relative, persistante et multipartite. Une des

limites potentielles concerne la gamme de sous-dimensions développées, telles que

certaines facettes de l'ACD qui auraient pu avoir été négligées. Une autre limite concerne

les obstacles d'application à prévoir lors de cadres empiriques différents, par exemple

lorsqu'il est question de petites et moyennes entreprises.

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Abstract

Purpose : This study served as a first step in introducing an interdisciplinary

conceptualization and operationalization of sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) as a

construct of persistent, higher than average economic, social, and environmental

performance.

Design/methodology/approach : A new measurement instrument was constructed and

validated using structural equation modeling and a sample of 1419 publicly traded firms.

Findings : The proposed measurement model provides a promising first step for measuring

SCA. The findings support the conceptualization and operationalization of SCA as a three-

dimensional construct.

Originality/value : The proposed model is unique in that unlike previous studies capturing

SCA using absolute, punctual, and uni-stakeholder measures, this model conceptualizes and

measures SCA to account for its relative, persistent, and multi-stakeholder nature.

Limitations : The range of developed sub-dimensions may be limited as some facets of

SCA may have been overlooked. Given the study’s empirical setting, the instrument may

not apply in the context of small and medium enterprises.

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5.1. Introduction

The extensive strategic management literature presents sustainable competitive advantage

(SCA) as a desirable outcome because it focuses on the factors explaining their probability

of sustaining superior performance compared to competitors (Porter, 1985). Our previous

systematic reviews (Cloutier et al., 2016), along with a previous review (Newbert 2007),

show that earlier empirical studies have focused much more on confirming or disproving

particular relationships between explanatory variables and firm performance (Industry,

Resource, and Institution-based predictors) than on SCA as an outcome. Despite this

extensive literature on SCA determinants, surprisingly few systematic efforts are devoted to

conceptualizing and developing a valid SCA outcome measure (Wiggins and Ruefli, 2002,

Armstrong and Shimizu, 2007, Newbert, 2007, Newbert, 2014).

In most of the SCA empirical literature, the link between theories and methodology relating

to a specific SCA construct was at best implicit (Newbert, 2014, Cloutier et al., 2016). SCA

is predominantly operationalized as a firm’s absolute performance for its stockholders

without considering competitor performance nor sustainability (Newbert, 2014, Cloutier et

al., 2016). Moreover, a study acknowledging for relativity or persistence of SCA has used

uni-stakeholder constructs (Cloutier et al., 2016). Thus, a SCA construct refers to a firm’s

ability to persistently outperform its competitors from the viewpoint of all stakeholders.

This paper aims to address this gap by providing a richer conceptualization and

measurement of SCA as a construct of a firm’s persistent, abnormal economic, social, and

environmental performance. This perspective has several advantages: (1) it captures the

very relative and persistent nature of SCA overlooked by previous studies; (2) it captures

the persistence of firm competitive advantage for multiple stakeholders that seems not to

have been covered in earlier research; (3) it provides more accurate benchmarking tools to

assess SCA; and (4) from a managerial perspective, such a tool can help managers detect

specific strengths and weaknesses to guide their strategic and resource allocations

decisions.

Given SCA’s potentially important role in strategic management and the limitations noted

above, this paper has four primary purposes. First, this study uses the results of our

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previous literature review (Cloutier et al., 2016) to describe the different operationalizations

of SCA, and to propose a relative, persistent, and multi-stakeholder conceptualization of

SCA. Second, relying on the best economic, social, and environmental performance data of

publicly traded firms, this study suggests an operationalization for the SCA construct.

However, given the lack of scholarly consensus in establishing the number of dimensions

comprising the construct (Callan and Thomas, 2009, Hubbard, 2009), this study compares

two competing models using exploratory and confirmatory structural equation modeling

analysis. Finally, the results are developed and analyzed, with limitations, and proposals for

future lines of research are made.

5.1.1. From absolute performance to persistent competitive advantage

There is as yet no agreement regarding the conceptualization and operationalization of

SCA. In this regard, the approaches used in empirical studies to the determinants of SCA

should connect with the definition of SCA in firms. A recent systematic literature review

suggests that there are four approaches to SCA: 1) absolute performance, 2) relative

performance, 3) profit persistence, and 4) multi-stakeholder performance (Cloutier et al.,

2016). A majority of articles use an unbenchmarked (absolute) measure of firm

performance, and few benchmarked firms’ performance relative to their competitors,

studied the temporal persistence of profits (Chacar et al., 2010, Chen and Lin, 2010, Powell

and Reinhardt, 2010, Chari and David, 2012) or examined more than one type of

performance (Kim, 2009, Camisón and Villar-López, 2011, Chiou et al., 2011, Germann et

al., 2013).

As underlined by Newbert (2014), the main shortcoming of previous empirical studies

using the first approach is a misalignment between theory and measurement, leading to

inconsistent findings in that even if strategic management scholars traditionally

conceptualized SCA as firm performance compared directly to that of its competitors

(relative performance), the overwhelming majority operationalizes the dependent variable

in terms of a firm’s performance in isolation or absolute performance (Newbert, 2014,

Cloutier et al., 2016). In contrast, the second approach investigating firms’ relative

performance underlines the importance of using a competitive benchmark (industry

average) to assess a firm’s competitive position and competitive advantage.

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However, the second approach does not account for the sustainability of competitive

advantage by any means (Wiggins and Ruefli, 2005). In contrast, empirical studies

following the third approach accounted for the persistence of firm competitive advantage.

Temporal persistence is a fundamental property of SCA that challenges the very

foundations of the theory of general equilibrium (Arrow and Debreu, 1954) and the

resulting profit convergence hypothesis (Mueller, 1986). Indeed, two particularly explicit

references to temporal sustainability worth mentioning are publications by Porter (1985) on

sustained superior performance and Lockett et al.’s (2009) review on the resource-based

view of competitive advantage that defines SCA as an abnormal profit persisting in the

longer term (Lockett et al., 2009, p.11). However, despite the importance of persistent

abnormal returns as a research stream in economics (for a review see Mueller, 1986), few

studies in strategic management focus on this phenomenon (Wiggins and Ruefli, 2002,

Wiggins and Ruefli, 2005, Choi and Wang, 2009, Powell and Reinhardt, 2010).

As shown in Figure 5.1, this study distinguishes between three forms of competitive

advantage. All firms performing a significant economic activity yielding a certain

performance have a potential competitive advantage. Only those firms that outperform

their competitors have a realized competitive advantage, and among these, only those

with superiority persisting over time have a persistent competitive advantage (PCA).

Figure 5.1. From potential competitive advantage to persistent competitive advantage.

However, the concept of sustainability has more than a simply temporal signification.

Studies of absolute performance, relative performance, and persistence of abnormal returns

focused only on shareholder performance. The form of competitive advantage proposed

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here (potential, realized or persistent) is non-specific and unrelated to any particular

stakeholder. Indeed, these forms of competitive advantage apply to any type of

performance. The next section discusses SCA using a multi-stakeholder perspective to

account for the sustainability of PCA, as suggested by the fourth approach.

5.1.2. From persistent to sustainable competitive advantage: two competing models

A recent systematic review of the literature into SCA reveals a range of performance types

pertaining to stockholders, customers, employees, the community, and the environment

(Cloutier et al., 2016). Stockholder performance was most often captured with measures of

profit such as return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), return on investments (ROI),

and return on sales (ROS) (Bogner and Bansal, 2007, Dehning et al., 2007, McDonald et

al., 2008, Baron et al., 2011, Modi and Mishra, 2011, Yang et al., 2011, Hoque et al., 2013,

Kwon and Rupp, 2013, Wu and Shen, 2013).

Firm performance for its customers was generally captured with measures of sales growth

and market share. Market share is calculated as the ratio of sales to all firms’ sales

(Galdeano-Gomez, 2008) and sales growth as measured by the average growth rate of sales

revenue (Lee and Roh, 2012).

Firm performance for its employees was captured with measures such as salary and

bonuses, employee turnover, and perceived satisfaction (Rettab et al., 2009, Huang, 2010,

Jalbert et al., 2011, Melo, 2012a).

Firm performance for its community was generally captured with measures of charitable

giving and volunteer program participation (Brammer and Millington, 2008, Huang, 2010,

Melo, 2012a, Melo, 2012b).

Firm performance for the environment was measured according to its adoption of practices

and policies for clean energy use and pollution prevention, and effective reductions in

emissions (Darnall, 2009, Lafuente et al., 2009, Carrión-Flores and Innes, 2010, Yang et

al., 2011, Gholami et al., 2013).

A previous systematic review (Cloutier et al., 2016) provides a broader vision of SCA

conceptualized as a multi-stakeholder construct of a firm’s PCA, including: stockholders,

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customers, employees, the community, and the environment. However, even if many

studies published to date agree that sustainability is essentially multidimensional (e.g.,

(Brundtland, 1987, Elkington, 1997)), they establish a different number of dimensions with

a different content, thus leading to two competing models of SCA (Figure 5.2).

Studies into corporate social responsibility in a previous systematic review (Cloutier et al.,

2016) almost always conceptualize SCA as a two-dimensional construct: a firm’s ability to

have good corporate social responsibility (social and environmental performance) that does

not hinder financial performance; or using the triple bottom line theory (Elkington, 1997,

Hubbard, 2009) that sees sustainability as a firm’s ability to perform economically,

socially, and environmentally, thereby suggesting a three-dimension construct.

Figure 5.2. Two competing models of SCA suggested by : a) corporate social responsibility studies, and b) the triple bottom line.

5.2. Methodology

5.2.1. Data and measures

Data from KLD Research and Analytics Inc. was used to construct measures of firm PCA

for stockholders, customers, employees, the community, and the environment. These data

were analyzed for the 7-year period from 2003 to 2009, which was then merged with

COMPUSTAT data to obtain information about financial performance. After preserving

only firms present in the database for the total sample period, those whose status was

"active'', and eliminating those whose status was "in reorganization," "acquired,"

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"liquidated," or "out of business", a final sample of 1419 firms and 9933 firm-year

observations was left. All firms from our sample pertain to the Russell 3000 Index which

measures the performance of the largest 3,000 U.S. companies, representing approximately

98% of the U.S. equity market. The Russell 3000 Index is constructed to provide a

comprehensive, unbiased, and stable barometer of the broad market (Russell Investments).

According to Bloomberg, the number of firms in the Russell 3000 on 31 January 2009 was

2950, the sample is quite representative (48%) of the large publicly owned American firms.

KLD employee, community, diversity, product safety, and environmental performance

measures are appraised in terms of several “strengths” and “concerns.” To arrive at a net

score for each dimension, the total number of concerns was subtracted from the total

number of strengths (Graves et al., 2005). Firm performance for its stockholders was

measured using ROA and return on capital (ROC). Firm performance for its customers was

measured using sales growth. Following previous studies on persistence performance

(McGahan and Porter, 1997, 1999), all economic, social, and environmental measures of

firm performance were adjusted by its industry average (for COMPUSTAT measures) or

median (for KLD measures) calculated at the four-digit Standard Industrial Classification

code level. All firms with a positive relative performance in a given year were given the

value 1, and 0 otherwise, and were considered to have a competitive advantage over rivals

in a given year. The persistence of each competitive advantage was obtained by counting

the number of years a firm held a competitive advantage. Two random, independent

samples were then drawn from the total sample. The first sub-sample includes 664

observations and the second 754, used for the exploratory and confirmatory stages of the

study, respectively.

The most commonly used statistical estimators for structural equation modeling, such as the

Maximum Likelihood and Generalized Least Squares, assume the normality of the data.

The SPSS software package is used to analyze the normality of each indicator, which

indicated the absence of normality in the data. This study therefore used the MLR

estimator, which is a maximum likelihood parameter estimate with standard errors and a

chi-square test statistic that are robust to non-normality of observations.

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5.2.2. Exploratory analysis

The exploratory analysis uses the first sub-sample of 664 observations, using principal

component factor extraction with Varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization and set free

the number of factors to extract. Before the analysis, the correlation matrix between the

items was first checked for problems of multicollinearity to ensure that no variable

displayed a correlation coefficient greater than 0.80 or less than 0.30 with all other

variables (Field, 2009, p.647). Second, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling

adequacy is 0.631, indicating that the sample size is sufficient for the number of processed

variables. Third, the Bartlett's Test of Sphericity was significant at 1% (α = 0.000),

rejecting the null hypothesis that the correlation matrix is an identity matrix and indicating

that the observed variables are sufficiently correlated to perform the analysis. The

exploratory analysis was performed as these three conditions were verified (Stafford and

Bodson, 2006).

With almost all communalities greater than 0.5, except competitive advantage for

employees and the environment, which were lower (0.385 and 0.388, respectively), the

proportion of each variable's variance that can be explained by the analysis is sufficient,

though not optimal. These two variables were retained as they are important in the

construct. Thus, as shown in Table 5.1, all items in the analysis have significant loadings on

a single factor such that three latent factors remained after this exploratory analysis.

The total variance explained by these five factors is 57.9%, with an additional uni-

dimensionality and internal consistency check performed using Cronbach's Alpha index of

reliability (Cronbach, 1951) for each of the three factors. While they prove uni-

dimensional, the Cronbach (0.71, 0.45, and 0.294) coefficients were rather weak, especially

for the social and environmental dimensions (see Table 5.1). This study served as a first

step in introducing an interdisciplinary conceptualization and operationalization of the SCA

construct as economic, social, and environmental PCA. The weakness of the psychometric

quality of these dimensions calls for the development of better data collection tools for the

assessment of the social and environmental performance of firms.

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Table 5.1. Exploratory analysis of the SCA dimensions. Factors Persistence of firm competitive advantage for: 1 2 3 Stockholders (Profit margin) 0.849 -0.119 0.091 Stockholders (ROA) 0.706 0.111 -0.125

Customers (Sales growth) 0.816 0.124 0.207 Community (Charitable giving) -0.039 0.741 Diversity (Respect for minorities) 0.092 0.745 Employee (Union relations and profit sharing) 0.082 0.538 Environment (Input and emission reduction) 0.032 0.194 0.700 Environment (Product safety) -0.004 -0.05 0.778 Cronbach's Alpha 0.705 0.45 0.294

Principal component analysis with Varimax rotation

A priori, the exploratory analysis favors a three-factor model in line with the three baselines

theory. The first dimension of SCA would be a persistent economic advantage (for its

stockholders and customers), the second would be a persistent social competitive advantage

(for its employees, the community, and diversity), and the third would be a persistent

environmental competitive advantage (for input and emission reductions, and product

safety). However, further analyses are required to confirm this assertion.

5.2.3. Confirmatory analysis

As illustrated in Figure 5.2, studies into the corporate social responsibility theory or the

triple bottom line theory agree that sustainability is a multidimensional construct, but

establish a different number of dimensions with different contents. Corporate social

responsibility studies identified in a previous systematic review (Cloutier et al., 2016)

suggest a two-dimensional construct for SCA: the first is PCA for stockholders and

customers, and the second is PCA for all other stakeholders (employees, community,

diversity, pollution prevention and reduction, and product safety).

On the other hand, the triple bottom line theory suggests a three-dimensional construct for

SCA. Operationally, and given the previous exploratory analysis, the first dimension of

SCA is PCA for stockholders and customers, the second is PCA for other stakeholders

(employees, community, and diversity), and the third is PCA in terms of environmental

performance.

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Our confirmatory analysis in light of this theoretical discussion aims to determine the

theoretical configuration of SCA that best represents the empirical setting. Nonetheless,

since the two proposed SCA configurations consist of models of a second order, this study

adopted a systematic hierarchical approach to validate the better of two theoretical

configurations. Following Koufteros et al.’s (2009) paradigm for second-order modeling,

this exercise is necessary as there could be multiple measurement model configurations that

can characterize a given data set, and this effort is hierarchical in nature.

This hierarchical approach analyzes the seven alternative empirical configurations that

potentially describe the relationships between observed and latent variables. Model 1 is

hypothesized to include one first-order latent variable with 8 observed indicators. Models

1a and 2a hypothesize second order models with two and three first-order uncorrelated

factors, respectively. Models 1b and 2b are similar to Models 1a and 2a, except that factor

correlations are specified. Models 1c and 2c hypothesize second order models with two and

three latent factors.

The confirmatory analysis uses the second sub-sample of 754 observations, with the

goodness of fit for each configuration based on the absolute fit indices (Chi2/dl and

RMSEA), which determine how well an a priori model fits the sample data (McDonald and

Ho, 2002), Incremental fit indices (CFI and TLI) compare different models (McDonald and

Ho, 2002, Miles and Shevlin, 2007), and parsimonious fit indices (BIC) indicate which of

the models is the most practical.

The results of the confirmatory analyses determine which SCA construct is the best for this

empirical setting. The next section examines the fit of each of these theoretical and

empirical configurations.

5.3. Results

Figure 5.3 illustrates a comparison of all model configurations, and Table 5.2 reports their

goodness of fit indices. The one factor (Model 0) specifies that economic, social, and

environmental items reflect one latent variable. The chi-square per degree of freedom of the

model was above 5, and other fit indices indicate a poor model fit, which also illustrates

one of the adverse consequences of combining observed variables representing different

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content domains into the same latent variable. Although they are somewhat correlated, this

indicates that the items in each domain reflect distinct facets of SCA that are not

acknowledged through a specification such as that represented by Model 0.

The uncorrelated two and three factor models (Models 1a and 2a) show that the latent

variables in the model are too strongly correlated to produce a good model fit with such an

orthogonal specification. These models did have a poor fit. When first-order factors are

poorly correlated, this specification could prove appropriate, though this case has high

correlations between first-order factors, so Models 1a and 2a are not adapted. Models 1b

and 2b were similar to Models 1a and 2a, except that the latent variables were free to

correlate. A second-order model structure was then added to test Models 1c and 2c. Though

freeing the correlation and adding a second order structure significantly improved the fit for

both the two and the three factor models, all models except 2c show a poor fit. The three-

factor model with a second order structure fit was the best of all tested models, as almost all

fit indices met the minimum criteria. Given the need for second-order models from a

conceptual point of view, Model 2c appears to be a reliable alternative for SCA modeling in

this empirical setting.

Overall, given the absolute and incremental fit indices, the three-factor second order model

(Model 2c) has the best fit. However, an initial review of the data could suggest that the

two and the three-factor models have an insignificantly different fit. Indeed, comparing

their respective BIC, a difference of 7 indicates strong evidence (Kass and Raftery, 1995)

that the three-factor second order model is more appropriate than the two-factor second

order model, given this empirical setting.

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Figure 5.3. Alternative models for the SCA construct of PCA.

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Table 5.2. Goodness of fit indices for alternative models.

5.4. Discussion

The measurement model proposed in this study offers a very good fit for measuring SCA.

SCA has previously suffered from theoretical and measurement misalignment, leading to

inconsistent findings resulting from overlapping conceptualizations of performance,

competitive advantage, persistence, and SCA, or from failing to provide a clear distinction

between these concepts. Unlike previous studies, this study offers a conceptualization and

measurement of SCA as the firm’s ability to simultaneously develop an economic, social,

and environmental PCA.

The new measurement instrument was constructed and validated following a hierarchical

methodology to test multiple measurement model configurations that can characterize a

given data set, repeated to validate the two main competing models of firm SCA and

identify the most reliable one. Given the empirical setting, evidence suggests that the triple

bottom line model is more appropriate than the two factor model used by most corporate

social responsibility studies in terms of SCA. The exploratory and confirmatory analysis

supports the conceptualization and operationalization of SCA as a three-dimensional

construct of persistent economic, social, and environmental competitive advantage

(superior performance than competitors). In fact, most of the reviewed corporate social

responsibility studies use an aggregate measure of corporate social/environmental

performance (Graves and Waddock, 1994, Griffin and Mahon, 1997, Waddock and Graves,

1997, Johnson and Greening, 1999, Hillman and Keim, 2001, Ruf et al., 2001, Deckop et

al., 2006, Shropshire and Hillman, 2007, Hull and Rothenberg, 2008, Callan and Thomas,

Fit indices Chi2/dl CFI TLI RMSEA BIC

Acceptable Threshold Levels < 3 > 0.95 > 0.95 < 0.05 Model 0 (one factor) 9.82 0.80 0.72 0.11 1667.07 Model 1a (2 factors uncorrelated) 4.47 0.91 0.88 0.07 1538.28 Model 1b (2 factors correlated) 3.65 0.93 0.91 0.06 1523.54 Model 1c (second order 2 factors) 3.65 0.93 0.91 0.06 1523.54 Model 2a (3 factors uncorrelated) 4.76 0.91 0.88 0.07 1553.76 Model 2b (3 factors correlated) 3.35 0.95 0.93 0.06 1523.19 Model 2c (second order 3 factors) 3.10 0.96 0.93 0.05 1516.72 Sub-Sample 2 (n= 754)

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2009, Nelling and Webb, 2009, Gibbs, 2012, Mulyadi and Anwar, 2012, Sun, 2012, Lee et

al., 2013, Peters and Golden, 2013), as Waddock and Graves (1997) and McWilliams and

Siegel (2000) recommend. However, combining manifest variables from various content

domains (i.e., that are not unidimensional) into one first-order latent variable is

conceptually and methodologically perilous. Therefore, future studies must follow more

rigorous steps when combining observed variables to form latent indices.

The measurement instrument developed herein could facilitate the identification of direct

and indirect determinants of economic, social, and environmental persistence and SCA.

Industry characteristics, firm resources, dynamic capabilities, and governance mechanisms

greatly influence a firm’s economic, social, and environmental performance (Cloutier et al.,

2016). However, no study has considered the influence of these industry and firm level

predictors on economic, social, and environmental PCA, nor on SCA as defined in this

study.

Moreover, since firms invest their resources to improve their ability to develop economic,

social, and environmental PCA, a question emerges: How do firms decide which categories

of activities to invest their resources in? The complementary hypothesis suggests that

resources invested in one activity predict performance in that activity as well as in other

associated activities. The substitution hypothesis rests on the idea that investments in one

activity come at the expense of investments in and the performance of other activities.

Researchers could examine the interaction patterns (i.e., complementarity, substitution, and

independence) among the development of a persistent economic, social, and environmental

competitive advantage in firms.

This study sought to conceptualize and operationalize SCA, though it has several

limitations. One potential limitation concerns the range of the developed sub-dimensions

for SCA, since its complexity may mean that some facets of SCA may have been

overlooked. Indeed, the data in this study cover only a limited set of stakeholders than those

defined according to the Freeman stakeholder types (1984). However, this limitation seems

to have minimal impact because the conceptualization of SCA incorporated multiple rounds

of theory built upon a previous extensive systematic literature review (Cloutier et al., 2016).

Moreover, each of the dimensions was included, solely or with others, in previous studies.

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Another potential limitation concerns the nature of the samples used in this research. The

survey targeted publicly traded enterprises likely to have longitudinal data available for

their economic, social, and environmental performance. The specific nature of the sample

used in this study may have had an impact on the conceptualization of SCA and thereby on

the generalizability of the results. The instrument developed herein may not apply to small

and medium enterprises, which are the cornerstone of several economic systems. For

instance, there may be more relevant dimensions in the small and medium enterprises

context. A further validation of the SCA conceptualization and measurement should also

examine other types of organizations.

In conclusion, this study served as a first step in introducing an interdisciplinary

conceptualization and operationalization of the SCA construct as economic, social, and

environmental PCA. Despite the limitations noted earlier, these results provide a promising

first step that will hopefully facilitate the future study of the extent and determinants of

SCA in different industries and types of firms.

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Chapitre 6 : The virtuous cycle of economic, social, and environmental persistent competitive advantage

Jean-Samuel Cloutier, Nabil Amara, and Réjean Landry

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Résumé

Cet article s'intéresse à la question suivante : comment les entreprises gèrent-elles le

développement de leur ACD lorsqu'elles ont à choisir parmi des activités qui profitent à

différentes parties prenantes? Un échantillon de 992 entreprises cotées en bourse est utilisé

pour étudier les relations de complémentarité entre la persistance de l'avantage

concurrentiel économique, social et environnemental et leurs déterminants. Les résultats de

l'étude suggèrent que ces types d'avantage concurrentiel se renforcent mutuellement,

comme si les ressources investies pour améliorer l'avantage concurrentiel social et

environnemental de la firme prédisaient non seulement la persistance de ces types

d'avantage concurrentiel, mais aussi la persistance de l'avantage concurrentiel économique.

En outre, les résultats montrent également que les caractéristiques de l'industrie, les

ressources, les capacités dynamiques et les mécanismes de gouvernance sont des

déterminants importants de la persistance de l'avantage concurrentiel économique, social et

environnemental.

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Abstract

Purpose: This study examines how firms manage to develop a sustainable competitive

advantage when choosing among activities that benefit different categories of stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach: This article uses data on publicly traded firms and employs

structural equation modeling to investigate relationships between several dimensions of

persistent competitive advantages (PCA).

Findings: The results show significant complementarities among three dimensions of

competitive advantages, suggesting that economic, social, and environmental PCA

reinforce each other. Moreover, the results also show that industry characteristics, firm

resources, dynamic capabilities, and governance mechanisms are important determinants of

these PCAs.

Originality/value: This study differs from most prior articles studying multiple type of

performance in separate models, since it simultaneously investigate complementarities

between economic, social, and environmental persistent competitive advantage.

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6.1. Introduction

The strategic management literature presents sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) as a

desirable outcome for firms because it focuses on the factors that explain their probability

of sustaining a superior performance compared to competitors (Porter, 1985). The

importance for firms of developing and sustaining a competitive advantage has increased in

the 1990s as a result of changes in market conditions and increasing competition (D'Aveni,

2010). These changes generate threats and opportunities, giving new significance to the

question: how should firms develop and maintain SCA when they must choose among

activities that benefit different stakeholders?

This study has two primary aims. First, it examines complementarities between economic,

social, and environmental persistent competitive advantage (PCA) to understand how firms

invest in these activities benefitting different stakeholders. Studying the relationships

between these three dimensions of PCA can provide insights into firm strategies to develop

SCA. Second, this study identifies industry-, resource-, and governance-based determinants

of the three forms of competitive advantage.

Prior studies of SCA focus on the determinants of absolute performance for stockholders,

rarely considering the performance relative to competitors, temporal persistence, or

sustainability (benefits for multiple stakeholders) (e.g. Newbert, 2014, Cloutier et al.,

2016b). The richer form of competitive advantage captured by relative, persistent, and

multi-stakeholder measures and the question of how firms allocate investments to activities

that benefit different categories of stakeholders have received much less attention. This

study aims to fill this gap by examining a sample of publicly traded firms to shed light on

the determinants of economic, social, and environmental PCA, and on the interaction

patterns among these competitive advantages.

Moreover, while prior studies have examined the determinants of firm stockholders, social,

and/or environmental performance in separate models, this study simultaneously estimates

three regression equations to reflect the fact that, in practice, firms must constantly choose

among activities that benefit different stakeholders when deciding where to invest their

resources. This study uses three dependent variables, namely, economic, social, and

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environmental PCA, and includes industry competition, firms’ tangible and intangible

resources, experience, R&D intensity, networks, governance, firm size, and age as

explanatory variables. The results show that most explanatory variables are consistent

significant predictors across the different forms of competitive advantage.

The paper is organized as follows. First, a construct of SCA is presented as the persistence

of economic, social, and environmental competitive advantage, followed by the hypothesis

of substitution and complementarities in how firms allocate their resources among activities

to increase their economic, social, and environmental PCA. Third, relying on the best

available data on the economic, social, and environmental performance of publicly traded

firms, a structural multivariate model is estimated to identify the patterns of

complementarities and/or substitution, and the determinants of each form of PCA. The

subsequent section outlines the estimation results. Last, the paper concludes with a

discussion of the implications of the results on firm strategies and offers future research

avenues.

6.2. Literature review

6.2.1. An extended vision of competitive advantage

Strategic management scholars generally conceptualize SCA as a firm’s performance in

direct comparison to that of its competitors (relative performance) (Newbert, 2014).

Moreover, many authors (e.g. Porter, 1985, McGahan and Porter, 1997, McGahan and

Porter, 1999) and profit persistence studies (Chacar et al., 2010, Chen and Lin, 2010,

Powell and Reinhardt, 2010, Chari and David, 2012), suggest that the sustainability of

competitive advantage is a time-related concept. Cloutier et al. (2016a) distinguish between

absolute and relative, and between punctual and persistent measures of competitive

advantage, and propose three forms of competitive advantage: potential, realized, and

persistent. Indeed, all firms performing a significant economic activity yielding a certain

performance have a potential competitive advantage. Firms that outperform their

competitors (i.e. that have a positive relative performance), have a realized competitive

advantage. Subsequently, only the firms that maintain this superiority over time have a

PCA.

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However, since the concept of sustainability as applied to firms’ SCA should not be seen as

having only a temporal significance, this study uses the multi-stakeholder construct of SCA

previously proposed by Cloutier et al. (2016b) as well as a similar empirical setting. Figure

6.1 illustrates SCA as a construct of persistent economic, social, and environmental

performance (Cloutier et al., 2016b). As shown in Cloutier et al. (2016b) systematic review,

industry-, resource-, and institution-based variables are at play when it comes to the

predictor of SCA, the most significant lever to trigger a firm’s SCA being: the firm’s

intangible resources, experience, networks, innovation, and governance mechanisms.

Indeed, this study tests these most leveraged determinants as shown in Figure 6.1.

Figure 6.1. SCA as the persistence of economic, social, and environmental performance and its determinants.

6.2.2. Interaction patterns among economic, social, and environmental PCA

From the question: “How do firms decide to invest their resources among activities that

benefit different stakeholders?”, two hypotheses emerge. The first, a substitution hypothesis

rooted in neoclassical economics, rests on the idea that investments to improve a firm’s

social or environmental performance come at the expense of performance for stockholders,

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as they generate unnecessary costs that decrease competitive advantage. Among the

proponents of the substitution hypothesis, Friedman (1962, 1970) is the best known for

arguing that a company’s sole responsibility is to conduct business according to the

shareholders’ desire to make as much money as possible. According to this research stream,

resources dedicated to social and environmental programs or actions are better spent

improving efficiency or should be returned to shareholders (Barnett, 2007, Scherer and

Palazzo, 2011).

On the other hand, proponents of the complementary hypothesis suggest that resources

dedicated to social and environmental performance also predict firm performance for its

stockholders, and vice versa. The complementarity hypothesis was developed following

Freeman's (1984) seminal work setting the basis for a new managerial model involving

radical changes in the neoclassical model. The stakeholder approach introduces the

necessity for a firm to know the most relevant stakeholders and the extent to which their

needs are integrated into the strategic objectives. Following proponents of the stakeholder

theory, value is generated for shareholders when the firm generates value for different

stakeholders, and vice versa (Freeman, 2004, Husted and de Jesus Salazar, 2006). Clarkson

(1995) goes even further, arguing that ''the survival and continuing profitability of the

corporation depend upon its ability to fulfil its economic and social purpose, which is to

create and distribute wealth or value sufficient to ensure that each primary stakeholder

group continues as a part of the corporation’s stakeholder system.” A weak stakeholder

orientation negatively affects a firm’s performance and thus, shareholder value (Harrison

and John, 1994, Frooman, 1997).

However, the few previous studies that consider simultaneously several types of

performance are either studying the relationship between corporate social/environmental

performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP), or examining the

determinants of firms’ stockholders and social and/or environmental performance in

separate models. We are unaware of other studies that examine how firms allocate

resources among activities that aim to increase the persistence of competitive advantages

which benefit simultaneously several stakeholders. Moreover, determinants tested in this

study are included on the basis of a systematic review of literature and encompass industry-

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, resource-, and institution-based predictors, contrary to many previous studies which limit

their scope to predictors of the resource-based view (Newbert, 2007, Lockett et al., 2009).

6.3. Methodology

6.3.1. Data and measures

Data from KLD Research and Analytics Inc. are used to construct measures of social and

environmental competitive advantage persistence. KLD data are merged with accounting

and financial data from COMPUSTAT to construct measures of economic competitive

advantage persistence, and analyzed for the 7-year period from 2007 to 2013. KLD data on

employee, community, diversity, product safety, and environmental performance are

appraised in terms of several “strengths” and “concerns.” To arrive at a net score for each

dimension, the total number of concerns is subtracted from the total number of strengths

(Graves et al., 2005). Firm performance for stockholders is measured using return on assets

(ROA) and return on capital (ROC). Firm performance for its customers is measured using

growth in sales. Following previous studies on persistence performance (Waring, 1996,

McGahan and Porter, 1999), all economic, social, and environmental measures of firm

performance are adjusted by the industry average (for COMPUSTAT measures) or the

industry median (for KLD measures) calculated at the four-digit Standard Industrial

Classification (SIC) code level.

Data about industry concentration, firm’s tangible and intangible resources, R&D

investments, age, and number of employees are also obtained from COMPUSTAT. Data

from GMI Ratings, the leading independent provider of global corporate governance

ratings, are used to construct measures of governance, and board director experience and

networks. The operational definitions of independent variables used in this study are

presented in Table 6.1. After preserving only companies whose status was "active,'' and

eliminating the firms whose status was "in reorganization," "acquired," "liquidated," or "out

of business," a final sample of 992 firms in various industries is left.

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Table 6.1. Operational definitions of independent variables. Exogenous variables Operational definition Industry concentration The Herfindahl–Hirschman Index. Tangible resources Firm total asset = current asset + long term asset. Intangible resources An indice of three items (Cronbach alpha = 87.6):

- Good will: is another intangible asset representing the premium a buyer would pay to acquire the firm over its fair market value. -Intangible asset: The net value of intangible assets. Intangibles are assets that have no physical existence in themselves, but represent rights to enjoy some privilege (in millions of dollars). -Value added: Firm’s ability to create value added (VA) to all stakeholders is the difference between net sales revenues and all the expenses incurred in earning the sales revenues except labour costs.

Experience An indice of two items (Cronbach alpha = 79): - Sum of all directors with tenure exceeding 10 years on a given board. - Sum of all directors with tenure exceeding 15 years on a given board.

Networks Percentage of directors with more than 4 corporate (public) directorships on a given board.

R&D Research development expenses. Board independence Proportion of independent/non-executive directors. Ownership concentration Percentage of shares held by 5% greater holders. Board diversity Percentage of female directors on a given board. Firm size Number of employees. Firm age Number of years since firm foundation.

6.3.2. Measures of PCA and their determinants

This study uses a previously proposed multi-stakeholder construct of SCA (Cloutier et al.,

2016b), but with more recent data. All firms with a positive relative performance given

their industry average, thereby having a competitive advantage over rivals in a given year

for each performance indicator, are assigned the value 1, and 0 otherwise. The persistence

of competitive advantage is obtained by counting the number of years a firm has a

particular competitive advantage. Figure 6.1 illustrates the model of SCA as a construct of

the persistence of economic, social, and environmental performance.

A confirmatory analysis on the second order model using the MPLUS 3.13 software

package is performed to ensure the construct’s validity for this new dataset. The models

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performed quite well, as indicated by the CFI of 98.9, the TLI of 98.3, the chi-square per

degree of freedom of 2.5, and the RMSEA of 0.04. The latent factors for each firm are

computed along the previous confirmatory analysis and the scores are saved for further

analysis. The reliability of all latent factors is assessed and the uni-dimensionality of their

underlying variables is assessed using SPSS principal component analysis. All items

composing the three factors are uni-dimensional and have a Cronbach’s alpha value of

91.5, 66 and 0.42 for economic, social, and environmental PCA, respectively.

Moreover, the data distributions have to be assessed for both the dependent and exogenous

variables. A Q-Q plot procedure plotting the quintiles of a variable's distribution against the

quintiles of a normal distribution indicates that most of the dependent and independent

variables are not clustered around a straight line corresponding to normal distributions.

According to the limited improvements achieved using traditional variable transformation,

this study adopts a more suitable estimator for this type of data. Most commonly used

statistical estimators for structural equation modeling, such as the Maximum Likelihood

and Generalized Least Squares, assume normality in the data. Thus, this study uses MLR,

which is a maximum likelihood parameter estimate with standard errors and a chi-square

test statistic that is robust to non-normality of observations for all estimations.

This study also checks for potential multicollinearity problems, as the correlation matrix

between the predictors used in the regression model indicates a rather high correlation

coefficient between variables such as board independence and ownership concentration

(0.52), R&D and tangible assets (0.52), and intangible and tangible assets (0.86). The

tolerance statistic values (reciprocal of Variance Inflation Factors (VIF)) for these

predictors is therefore checked, all of which are much higher than 0.2, thereby minimizing

the risk of multicollinearity issues (Menard, 1995, Field, 2009).

6.3.4. Analytical plan

The analytical plan contains two stages. The first simultaneously estimates three linear

equations (see Muthén 2004) to explore the correlates of this study’s three interaction

patterns. The model is similar to univariate linear models, except that it applies three

simultaneously estimated linear equations with free error-term co-variances.

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The same model is then estimated by removing insignificant variables (i.e., those with two-

tailed p-value > 0.10,) from the model. Ouimet et al. (2007) highlight that statistically

significant effects can be diminished due to multicollinearity with insignificant effects, so

saturated models are difficult to interpret. To address these shortcomings, Golob and Regan

(2002) recommend fixing insignificant parameters to zero. Unlike the first model, the

second is assessed for model fit.

6.4. Results

6.4.1. Sample characteristics

Of the 992 firms, 56% are manufacturing firms and 35.6% are from the service sector. The

average industry concentration was of 13.9%. At the firm level, the descriptive statistics

show that, the average firm has 82 employees and 47.4 years of existence, 8.4 billion in

tangible assets, 1.3 billion in goodwill, 2 billion in intangible assets, and 3 billion in value

added. Moreover, each firm has 40% and 17% of its directors with 10 or 15 years of

experience, respectively, and Research and Development Expenses of 150,000 U.S. dollars.

As for the board of director network, firms have 16.2% of directors that also served on

other boards as a CEO and 1.5% serving as board members of 4 or more other firms. In

terms of governance, firm boards have an average of 38% independent directors and 12.8%

female directors. The average ownership concentration is of 27%.

6.4.2. Regression results

As the saturated structural multivariate model estimated in the first stage could not be

assessed for model fit as it typically has zero degrees of freedom, only the fit of the final

model is presented, which excludes the insignificant parameters found in the saturated

model estimated in stage 1. The final unsaturated model had 13 degrees of freedom and an

insignificant Chi-Square statistic of 0.90 (p = 0.70), indicating that the final model has an

excellent fit.

Table 6.2. Percent of variance accounted for by different models. Endogenous variable Estimated R2 Final model Saturated model Persistence of economic competitive advantage 0.119 0.123 Persistence of social competitive advantage 0.431 0.431 Persistence of environmental competitive advantage 0.221 0.233

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Table 6.2 lists the R2 estimates for both the saturated and final multivariate models, and

these values refer to the proportion of explained variance. The differences in R2 values

between the final and saturated models describe the reduction in the explanatory power

from eliminating all statistically insignificant exogenous variable effects (Golob and Regan,

2002, Ouimet et al., 2007). The persistence of social and economic advantage is the most

effectively explained in both models. However, the model does a relatively poor job of

explaining the persistence of economic and environmental competitive advantage.

Table 6.3. Initial correlation estimates among dependent variables / estimated error-term covariance for the final model. (1) (2) (1) Persistence of social competitive advantage

(2) Persistence of economic competitive advantage

13.582***/ 4.617***

(2.100) / (3.095)

(3) Persistence of environmental competitive advantage

12.898*** / 6.574***

(1.044) / (9.843) 6.524*** / 3.152***

(0.875) / (4.418) *** p ˂ 0.01; two-tailed; χ2 statistic in parentheses.

Table 6.3 provides the correlation coefficients between dependent variables and among the

disturbances of the six estimated equations. All correlation coefficients are significant and

positive at the p = 0.01 level.

The error-term co-variances are all lower than the initial correlations among dependent

variables listed in Table 6.3, indicating that the final structural model explains a relatively

good proportion of the relationships between interaction types (see Golob and Regan, 2002,

Ouimet et al., 2007). Three other models were tested: 1) forcing the correlations between

the equations’ disturbances to be equal to zero, 2) constraining the three equation to have

equal intercepts, and 3) forcing the regression coefficients for each independent variable to

be equal across the three equations. The first two alternative restricted models had highly

significant Chi-Square statistics, and the third restricted model did not converge, indicating

poor fit and the inappropriateness of these three restricted models. This strongly suggests

that first, the correlation coefficients between the equations’ disturbances differ from zero,

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that the three equation intercepts are not all equal, and that there is at least one independent

variable with a heterogeneous effect across the equations. Indeed, this last result provides

evidence, at least for our data, that the use of the separate regression models is

inappropriate to estimate the determinants of these three PCAs.

The results listed in Table 6.3 indicate that the unexplained variance of all types of PCA is

significantly and positively correlated with one another. Overall, this provides evidence in

favor of the complementarity hypothesis, suggesting that resources dedicated to boost a

firm’s social, environmental, and economic competitive advantage reinforce each other.

These findings are consistent with earlier findings (Cochran and Wood, 1984, Wokutch and

Spencer, 1987) stressing the complementarities between corporate social responsibility and

traditional profit-oriented management. However, some correlations are higher than others.

The high correlation among social and environmental PCA indicates that there seems to be

an important virtuous cycle in which social and environmental PCA are mutually

reinforced. On the other hand, the correlations involving economic PCA and social or

environmental PCA are much weaker, with the correlation between economic and

environmental PCA being the strongest.

6.4.3. Determinants of economic, social, and environmental PCA

Table 6.4 lists the estimated effects of industry-, resource- and institution-based variables

on economic, social, and environmental PCA. Let us first consider the capacity of the

different variables to explain these different PCAs. Innovative dynamic capability, board

independence, and firm age had a significant positive impact on all three persistent

competitive advantages. The positive influence of R&D intensity on the likelihood of

developing an economic, social, and environmental PCA we observed is consistent with

previous studies finding that R&D intensity had a positive effect on firm performance for

stockholders and customers (Bogner and Bansal, 2007, Lee and Roh, 2012, Hung and

Chou, 2013) as well as on social (Brammer and Millington, 2008, Melo, 2012b) and

environmental (Carrión-Flores and Innes, 2010) performance. Moreover, the positive

influence of board independence on firms’ economic, social, and environmental PCA we

observed is consistent with previous studies finding a positive influence from this variable

on economic (Horton et al., 2012) and social performance (Huang, 2010).

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Table 6.4. Estimated effects of industry-, resource- and institution-based variables on economic, social, and environmental PCA. Exogenous variables Persistence of

economic competitive advantage

Persistence of social competitive advantage

Persistence of environmental competitive advantage

Industry concentration -0.055* (-1.769)

0.072*** (3.274)

Tangible resources 0.276*** (4.710)

Intangible resources 0.116** (2.529)

Experience 0.192*** (6.295)

Networks 0.067** (2.518)

0.078*** (2.671)

R&D 0.095*** (3.937)

0.149*** (3.460)

0.195*** (3.748)

Board independence 0.224*** (7.154)

0.321*** (5.850)

0.192*** (6.059)

Board diversity 0.321*** (11.895)

0.148*** (4.886)

Firm size 0.078*** (2.596)

Firm age 0.061** (2.002)

0.084*** (3.144)

0.099*** (3.397)

χ2 statistics are in parentheses. * p ˂ 0.1, ** p ˂ 0.05, *** p ˂ 0.01; two-tailed. Unconstrained model : χ2 = 9.90 P-value = 0.7 Disturbances = 0 model: χ2 134.10 P-value = 0.0000 Equal intercepts model: χ2 213.98 P-value = 0.0000 Equal coefficients model: no convergence

In addition, network and board diversity significantly explained social and environmental,

but not economic PCA. The positive influence of network on social and environmental

PCA we observed is in line with Doran and Ryan (2012), who found that company

networks had a positive influence on environmental performance. This is the first study to

report a positive influence of firm networks on the persistence of social competitive

advantage. However, the results show no significant influence of firm networks on

economic competitive advantage, though this is expected and suggested in previous studies

(Chellappa and Saraf, 2010, Omil et al., 2011, Wang et al., 2013). Moreover, the positive

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influence of board diversity on social and environmental PCA we observe is consistent with

other studies reporting that the proportion of female directors on a board positively affects

overall social performance (Hafsi and Turgut, 2013, Jalbert et al., 2013). However, where

this study did not find a significant effect, Reddy et al. (2008) did find a positive impact of

board diversity on economic performance. The present study may be the first to report a

positive influence of board diversity on the persistence of environmental competitive

advantage.

When it comes to industry-level variables, the results show that industry concentration has

a negative impact on the persistence of economic competitive advantage and a positive

impact on the persistence of social competitive advantage. Wu and Shen (2013) found

similar results in the negative influence of industry concentration on firm performance for

its stockholders and customers. In contrast, the results from this study regarding the

positive influence of industry concentration on the persistence of social competitive

advantage differ from García-Zamora et al. (2013) who found a negative influence of

industry concentration on firms’ social performance, the only one addressing the influence

of this variable on social performance. One rationale for this positive influence could be

that a higher concentration increases the competition for employees and reputational assets.

Therefore, firms evolving in a more competitive setting need to invest more resources to

satisfy their employees and to maintain good social performance.

At the firm level, tangible resources have a significant positive impact on the persistence of

social competitive advantage, a result consistent with those of Huang (2010), who found

that total assets positively affect the four dimensions of corporate social performance.

However, in contrast with Wu and Shen (2013), who found that a firm’s total assets

positively affect its performance for stockholders, this study did not find a significant effect

of tangible resources on economic competitive advantage persistence. Intangible resources

had a positive influence on the persistence of environmental competitive advantage. This

may be the first study addressing the influence of intangible assets on environmental

competitive advantage. On the other hand, the results indicate no significant influence of

intangible resources on social and economic performance, though a positive influence of

this variable is expected on economic competitive advantage persistence, as suggested by

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previous studies (Fathi et al., 2013, Komnenic et al., 2013). Moreover, directors’

experience has a positive effect on the persistence of economic competitive advantage.

Hoque et al. (2013) found similar results indicating that CEO experience (number of years

on the board) had a positive impact on firm performance for stockholders. However, this

study finds no significant influence of experience on social and environmental

performance, though a positive influence was expected, as is suggested by previous studies

(Jalbert et al., 2011, Melo, 2012a).

Finally, the results related to firm size are consistent with Kumar et al. (2011), who found

that firm size positively affects the persistence of economic competitive advantage.

However, in contrast with Carrión-Flores and Innes (2010) and Pavelin and Porter (2008),

who found a positive influence of firm size on social and environmental performance, our

study found no significant relationship.

6.5. Discussion

Competitive advantage can benefit multiple stakeholders. Compared to previous studies

defining SCA using absolute, punctual, and uni-stakeholder constructs, this study measured

SCA as persistent, above normal economic, social, and environmental performance.

Contrary to prior studies examining the determinants of multi-stakeholder competitive

advantage in different models, this study uses a multivariate model that includes three

equations simultaneously estimated to account for the fact that firms must concurrently

consider investments in activities benefitting different stakeholders. The simultaneous

equation model indicated positive significant correlations between all equations to predict

economic, social, and environmental PCA, suggesting that resources invested in one type of

competitive advantage predict this type of PCA as well as that of other types.

As a direct consequence of earlier operationalizations of SCA as a dependent variable, no

study has considered the influence of industry- and firm-level predictors on economic,

social, and environmental PCA, nor on SCA as defined in this study. This study’s results

show that industry competition, firm resources, dynamic capabilities, and governance

mechanisms are important determinants of these different forms of PCA.

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Moreover, regarding literature on the determinants of all types of competitive advantage

(absolute, relative or persistent), this study may be the first to report a positive influence of

intangible resources on environmental competitive advantage, a positive influence of the

company’s network on social competitive advantage, and a positive influence of board

independence and board diversity on environmental competitive advantage.

Finally, this study attempts to identify the dynamics and determinants of various forms of

PCA, conceptualizing and operationalizing SCA in a richer form than all previous studies,

with the exception of Cloutier et al. (2016b). Thus, this study could be seen as exploratory.

However, debates about the sustainability of competitive advantage and the industry-,

resource-, and institution-based views seem mature enough to benefit from the development

of a new area of inquiry.

Another potential limitation concerns the nature of the sample used in this study, which

necessarily affects the generalizability of the results. This study examines publicly traded

enterprises likely to have longitudinal data about their economic, social, and environmental

performance, as well as about the industry-, resource-, and institution-based determinants of

SCA. Therefore, these results may not apply in the context of small and medium

enterprises, which are the cornerstone of several economic systems. Indeed, large public

firm were once small-medium sized ones that succeeded. However, the results indicate that

practitioners take few risks in promoting the development and good use of experience,

innovation, governance mechanisms, and networking in management, investments, setting

policies, and working to leverage the complementarities among the firm's economic, social,

and environmental competitive advantage.

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Chapitre 7 : Conclusion

Cette thèse porte sur les fondements, les déterminants et le développement de l'ACD en

entreprise. Ce chapitre se penche sur les trois articles et présente certaines conclusions et

implications pour la recherche et la pratique. Une dernière section établit les limites

inhérentes à ces trois articles après avoir proposé quelques pistes pertinentes de recherche

sur le sujet.

7.1. Synthèse

L'examen systématique de la littérature présenté dans l'article 1 a mis en lumière de

nombreuses pistes pour l'étude et pour la promotion de l'ACD en entreprise. Cette

littérature est très diversifiée en ce qui a trait aux mesures utilisées par les chercheurs pour

capter l'ACD en entreprise et à l'éventail des déterminants testés. La complexité mise en

lumière relativement à la nature et au développement de l'ACD en entreprise ne doit plus

être ignorée.

Pour ce qui est de l'ACD à titre de variable dépendante, quatre courants de la littérature ont

été identifiés dans ce premier article. Les divergences et convergences entre les différents

courants de littérature recensés indiquent que l'ACD est un construit de la performance de

la firme incluant trois propriétés dyadiques sous-jacentes fondamentales : absolu / relatif,

ponctuel/ persistant, et uni- / multipartie.

En ce qui concerne les déterminants de l'ACD en entreprise, l’étude pousse la réflexion plus

loin que les précédentes revues systématiques sur le sujet. Alors que les travaux précédents

ont limité leur champ d'application à des études utilisant la RBV (Newbert, 2007; Lockett

et coll., 2009), la revue systématique de la littérature présentée dans la thèse est beaucoup

plus inclusive. L'article 1 confirme le rôle structurel des trois piliers soutenant l’avancement

des connaissances sur l'ACD en gestion stratégique: la vision industrielle, la RBV et la

vision institutionnelle (Peng et coll., 2009).

En somme, plusieurs pistes de recherche émergent de ce premier article. La revue

systématique de la littérature démontre que les études antérieures sur l'ACD se sont en

quasi-totalité intéressées aux déterminants de la performance absolue de l'entreprise pour

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ses actionnaires en tenant rarement compte de la relativité de la performance de l'entreprise

par rapport à ses compétiteurs, de la persistance temporelle des avantages concurrentiels ou

de leur durabilité (considérant de multiples parties prenantes) (Newbert, 2014; Cloutier et

al., 2016). Dans une majorité des études recensées dans la revue de la littérature

systématique (chapitre 4), l'opérationnalisation de la variable dépendante suggère que

l’ACD est une construction absolue, ponctuelle et unipartie de la performance de

l'entreprise. Newbert (2014) avait déjà observé ce problème d'alignement entre les

méthodes utilisées et que peu d’études prenaient en compte le fait que l'ACD soit un

construit de la performance relatif à celle des compétiteurs. La revue systématique de la

littérature effectuée dans le cadre de cette thèse montre que ce problème d'alignement

s'étend à d'autres propriétés fondamentales de l'ACD, notamment à sa persistance et à sa

nature multipartie.

La validation de construit effectuée dans l'article 2 propose un construit plus riche de l'ACD

que les études antérieures (Armstrong et coll., 2009; Newbert, 2014), tenant compte de la

relativité de la performance et de la persistance de l'avantage concurrentiel économique,

social et environnemental de l'entreprise. En réalité, l'instrument de mesure présenté offre

une très bonne piste pour développer des outils afin de mieux mesurer l'ACD et, à notre

connaissance, il est le seul en son genre.

Le nouvel instrument de mesure a été construit et validé suivant une méthodologie

hiérarchique impliquant l'analyse de plusieurs configurations de modèles de mesure qui

peuvent caractériser l'échantillon. La même méthode a été répétée pour la validation

comparée des deux principaux modèles concurrents concernant la durabilité de l'avantage

concurrentiel en entreprise. Compte tenu du contexte empirique choisi, l’article 2 présente

des évidences qui supportent l’idée que le modèle proposé par la théorie de la triple

performance (« Triple bottom line ») est plus approprié que le modèle à deux facteurs

utilisé par la plupart des études sur la responsabilité sociale (Orlitzky et coll., 2003). Ce

modèle est réutilisé dans le troisième article sur la complémentarité de ces différents

avantages concurrentiels persistants et sur leurs déterminants.

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Dans l’introduction de la thèse, nous avions mis en opposition les concepts de protection et

de partage de valeur donnant lieu à un dilemme décisionnel pour les gestionnaires. La revue

systématique de la littérature a aussi permis de confirmer l’existence et l’importance de ce

débat de longue date, toujours d'actualité, opposant les hypothèses de substitution et de

complémentarité lorsqu'une entreprise doit choisir d'investir ses ressources dans des

activités qui profitent à différentes parties prenantes (Orlitzky et coll., 2003).

Le troisième article s'inscrit dans ce débat et vise à combler certaines lacunes de la

littérature. Par l'utilisation d'équations simultanées, l'article a permis de remédier aux

faiblesses des précédents articles étudiant plusieurs types de performance dans des modèles

séparés. En fait, le modèle d'équations simultanées de l'article 3 montre des corrélations

significatives positives entre toutes les équations pour prédire la persistance de l'avantage

concurrentiel économique, social et environnemental. Ceci suggère que les différents types

d’avantage se renforcent mutuellement.

De plus, cet article a permis d’identifier plusieurs déterminants de ces trois formes

d'avantage concurrentiel persistant. Les résultats montrent que la compétition, les

ressources tangibles et intangibles, l'expérience, la capacité dynamique d'innovation et les

mécanismes de gouvernance sont des déterminants importants de ces différents avantages

concurrentiels.

7.2. Implications

Pour les gestionnaires, les investisseurs et les décideurs politiques, la promotion du

développement de l'ACD dans les entreprises commence par une vision claire et une bonne

compréhension des fondements, des déterminants et du développement de l'ACD en

entreprise. Le défi pour tous les chercheurs et les praticiens consiste donc moins à

comprendre ce qui permet à une entreprise d'améliorer sa performance économique en

termes absolus pour ses actionnaires, mais beaucoup plus à savoir comment une entreprise

peut maintenir dans le temps une performance supérieure à celle de ses compétiteurs, non

seulement aux yeux de ses actionnaires, mais aux yeux de toutes ses parties prenantes. Dans

un marché concurrentiel, si l'entreprise n'offre pas un rendement sur investissement

supérieur, ses investisseurs se retireront pour aller investir leur patrimoine dans les

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entreprises concurrentes. Si l'entreprise n'offre pas des conditions d'emploi supérieures, les

employés quitteront l'entreprise avec leur savoir, souvent critique au fonctionnement et à

l'avantage concurrentiel de l'entreprise, et iront travailler pour la concurrence. Enfin, si

l'entreprise n'offre pas des produits se démarquant suffisamment, c'est la concurrence qui se

saisira des parts de marché les plus importantes.

Cependant, développer des instruments fiables qui captent toute cette complexité entraîne

de nombreux défis : 1) l'identification de mesures de rendement les plus appropriées et les

moins biaisées, 2) la sélection d'une mesure étalon pour détecter l'occurrence d'avantage

concurrentiel, et 3) l'accès à des données longitudinales permettant d'évaluer la persistance

d'un grand nombre d'avantages concurrentiels se rapportant à différentes parties prenantes

de l'entreprise.

Ces différents défis ont été relevés pour la validation d’un premier construit développé dans

l'article 2. Celui-ci pourrait servir de première piste afin de développer de meilleurs outils

pour mesurer l'ACD et suivre son évolution dans les entreprises américaines cotées en

Bourse. Suivant cette prémisse, d’autres instruments de mesure pourraient être développés

pour d’autres contextes empiriques.

De plus, les gestionnaires, les investisseurs et les décideurs politiques doivent intégrer, dans

leur prise de décision, l'implication des évidences présentées dans le troisième article sur la

complémentarité des différentes formes d'avantage concurrentiel. En fait, il s'avère qu'en

investissant ses ressources afin d'accroître un type d'avantage concurrentiel (i.e. social ou

environnemental), l'entreprise favorise aussi le développement d'autres types d'avantage

concurrentiel (économique) et vice-versa. Ainsi, l’élaboration de stratégies de gestion et

d'investissement ou le développement d'instruments politiques devrait être plus intégratif de

façon à tirer profit et favoriser ces relations de complémentarité. Par exemple, les stratégies

et les mesures visant à accroître la performance économique, sociale ou environnementale

des entreprises ne devraient pas être développées isolées les unes des autres.

De la même façon, cette thèse ne défend pas l'idée que les entreprises ont tout à gagner ou

qu'elles doivent absolument investir afin d'accroître l'un ou l'autre de ces types de

performance. Aucune évidence n’a été recensée à savoir comment se développent ces

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avantages, s'ils se développent simultanément ou de façon différée. Est-ce que certaines

formes d'avantages sont préalables à d'autres et est-ce que le développement de ces

avantages diffère selon le contexte étudié?

Enfin, le troisième article a montré que l'intensité de la concurrence, les ressources

tangibles et intangibles de l'entreprise, la capacité dynamique d'innovation et les

mécanismes de gouvernance de l’entreprise sont d'importants déterminants de la

persistance de son avantage concurrentiel économique, social et environnemental. Les

entreprises doivent continuer à investir, et les gouvernements à promouvoir, le

développement d’avantages concurrentiels basés sur l’innovation et sur le partage de la

valeur créée à l’aide de bons mécanismes de gouvernance.

Cela dit, de futures études devraient élargir et approfondir l'éventail des déterminants

connus de ces différents types d'avantage.

7.3. Principales contributions de l'étude

Dans cette section, les contributions de cette thèse seront présentées. Elles s'inscrivent dans

les plus récents développements de la littérature sur l'ACD en entreprise. La revue

systématique de la littérature a permis d'identifier plusieurs pistes de recherche importantes

à exploiter. La nature de ces contributions est présentée ci-dessous.

7.3.1. Contributions théoriques

La thèse est beaucoup plus inclusive que les travaux antérieurs en ce qui a trait aux

différentes perspectives sur l'ACD et ses déterminants (Peng et coll., 2009; Newbert, 2014).

Cette thèse a tenté de mieux capter la complexité sous-jacente au phénomène.

La majorité des études antérieures se limitait à une perspective (par exemple, RBV)

(Newbert, 2014). La revue systématique de la littérature ainsi que le troisième article

confirment le rôle structurel des trois piliers soutenant l’avancement des connaissances sur

l'ACD en gestion stratégique: la vision industrielle, la RBV et la vision institutionnelle

(Peng et coll., 2009).

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Sur le plan théorique, cette étude a contribué à l'avancement des connaissances en

proposant de nouvelles définitions de l'ACD découlant d'une revue systématique de la

littérature sur l'avantage concurrentiel. La thèse distingue quatre formes d'avantage

concurrentiel pouvant être mesurées : potentiel, réalisé, persistant et durable. Il est donc

suggéré que les futures études sur l'ACD positionnent plus explicitement leurs variables

dépendantes selon les trois propriétés dyadiques fondamentales de l'ACD présentées

précédemment. Cela mettrait en évidence les formes d'ACD étudiées d’une façon plus

explicite que ce fut le cas dans les études antérieures.

Enfin, comme mentionné ci-haut, un débat de longue date, et toujours d'actualité, oppose

les hypothèses de substitution et de complémentarité relativement aux décisions de

l'entreprise visant à investir ses ressources dans des activités qui profitent à différentes

parties prenantes (Orlitzky et coll., 2003). En guise de contribution à ce débat, le troisième

article présente des évidences à l'effet que les ressources investies dans un type d'avantage

concurrentiel prédisent ce type d'avantage concurrentiel persistant ainsi que les autres

types.

7.3.2. Contributions empiriques

À la différence des études antérieures utilisant des instruments de mesure absolue,

ponctuelle et unipartie afin de capter l'ACD comme variable dépendante (Newbert, 2014),

l'ACD est présenté comme un construit de la performance relative, persistante et multipartie

de l’entreprise. En ce sens, la thèse contribue à l'avancement des connaissances par la

validation d'un construit plus riche de l'ACD.

Enfin, selon les études recensées dans la revue systématique de la littérature concernant les

déterminants de tous les types d'avantage concurrentiel confondus (absolu, relatif,

persistant ou multipartie), cette étude est la première à montrer une influence positive des

ressources intangibles sur l'avantage concurrentiel environnemental, une influence positive

du réseau de l'entreprise sur l'avantage concurrentiel social, et une influence positive de

l'indépendance et de la diversité du conseil d'administration sur l'avantage concurrentiel

environnemental en entreprise.

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7.4. Limites et pistes de recherche

Puisque cette thèse s’est référée uniquement à des articles scientifiques publiés dans des

revues spécialisées, certaines connaissances à propos de l’ACD auraient pu avoir été

négligées et non incluses.

En ce qui a trait au nouveau construit de l'avantage concurrentiel validé dans le deuxième

article, il est évident qu’il s’agit d’une première tentative de modéliser un phénomène dans

sa complexité et que la gamme de sous-dimensions développées pour modéliser l'ACD

pourrait potentiellement être développée. En effet, le paysage des parties prenantes

couvertes par nos données est beaucoup plus étroit que les types de parties prenantes définis

par Freeman (1984). En raison de la complexité de l'ACD en entreprise, de meilleures

mesures de performance et de mesures étalons (comparatives) pourraient également être

développées. Malgré les faiblesses psychométriques du construit proposé, celui-ci comporte

un intérêt méthodologique certain pour de futures recherches. Considérant les limites

inhérentes aux instruments de mesure et aux données sur la performance sociale et

environnementale des firmes utilisés dans cette thèse, le développement et la validation

d'un instrument de mesure plus systématique s'imposent. Par exemple, en plus de s'appuyer

sur une revue systématique de la littérature, de futures recherches devraient considérer

l'avis d'experts, ainsi que développer un questionnaire qui aura été préalablement validé au

cours d'une étude pilote, avant d'être administré dans le cadre d'une collecte de données à

grande échelle.

Dans le même sens, même si notre troisième article confirme l'influence de plusieurs

déterminants de l'ACD en entreprise, certaines mesures utilisées pour capter les ressources

intangibles et les capacités dynamiques pourraient être vues comme simplistes. De futures

recherches devraient définitivement favoriser l'utilisation de mesures plus riches. Par

exemple, l'innovation ne se limite pas à la recherche et au développement, de même que

l'expérience ne se limite pas à l'ancienneté des directeurs qui siègent au conseil

d'administration de l'entreprise.

Cela étant dit, ceci n’est qu’un léger désavantage lié à l’utilisation de données secondaires.

Rappelons-nous que c'est sur la base de la collecte, de l'analyse et de l'interprétation de ces

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données que des trillions (milliers de milliards) de dollars sont investis chaque année par les

investisseurs institutionnels qui gèrent, d’une façon non limitative, la quasi-totalité de notre

richesse collective. Une faible amélioration des décisions de ces investisseurs

institutionnels se traduirait par un impact économique majeur.

De plus, cette thèse se limite à l'étude des relations directes entre les caractéristiques de

l'industrie, les ressources, les capacités dynamiques et les mécanismes de gouvernance, et

l'ACD en entreprise. Plus d'études devraient s'intéresser aux relations indirectes de

médiation et de modération existant dans la prédiction des différentes formes d'avantage

concurrentiel.

Finalement, une autre limite importante concerne la nature de l'échantillon utilisé dans cette

recherche. Comme indiqué, le cadre empirique se limite aux entreprises cotées en Bourse

qui étaient susceptibles d'avoir fourni des données longitudinales sur leur performance

économique, sociale et environnementale. La nature spécifique de l'échantillon utilisé dans

cette étude peut avoir eu un impact sur la conceptualisation de l'ACD et sur les

déterminants identifiés. Cela influence nécessairement la généralisation des résultats.

L'instrument de mesure développé ici pourrait rencontrer certains obstacles pour son

application dans d'autres contextes (par exemple, les petites et moyennes entreprises).

Ainsi, de futures recherches devraient s'intéresser au construit de l'avantage concurrentiel

dans d'autres cadres empiriques.

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